$580/hr: how to get paid for your thinking
New spots opening up for the masterclass
What’s good young and eager mind?
Happy to announce my brand new masterclass called "First Sale" on February 17th, co-hosted with my friend Jennifer (Unhinged Productivity Girl).
This is my first new product in a minute.
Together we’ll be covering how to get into the business of expertise as a career path.
When we opened the doors, we sold out immediately.
A testament to the demand. This was not by accident but more on the marketing strategy in a second.
Jennifer & I got a lot of DMs/emails asking us for access.
So we’re gonna be opening up the next tier.
Our first run was 20 tickets at $29.
Now, we're making an additional 20 tickets available at $99
If you wanna skip the line and get in before we sell out again, reply “back door” and I’ll let you in via the staff’s entrance in the back before we open officially.
If you want to join, act today.
When these sell out, the price goes up again so this is the cheapest they’ll ever be.
You’re probably wondering what to expect…
Jennifer & I will be teaching you how to get into the business of expertise
I’ll be covering:
How to become the go-to-person in your space
How to craft an offer people wanna buy
How to ACTUALLY start getting clients instead of followers
Jennifer’s going to cover
How to build a social media following quickly
How to grow your e-mail list
Mistakes to avoid as a rookie solopreneur
The Masterclass will be about 2 hours and includes a Q&A for personalized advice.
Honestly, it’s a no-brainer at $99.
Because I’m aiming for a 10X return for your money.
So if you’re serious about becoming someone who’s able to make a full-time living by selling their brain instead of their hands, you should definitely consider joining.
Breaking down our launch strategy
I promised you yesterday I’d open the kimono, so let’s get into it.
My main goal was to sell out instead of optimizing revenue.
Because of that, I chose to use a staircase pricing architecture.
Here’s an example of staircase pricing architecture:
10 spots at $100
10 spots at $200
10 spots at $400
The reason this works well in solopreneurship is because:
You’re selling a limited quantity so you’re introducing ethical scarcity for something that could be technically unlimited like an eBook or course.
You introduce fear of missing out because the price keeps going up.
Scarcity matters because it’s hard to get people to act and even harder to get them to act now.
The price increase is another vector pointing in the direction of action.
Lastly, it lets you “build in public'“ which is what I’m doing right now.
You get to tell the story of how you sold out (or not) by doing XYZ which is something people resonate with extremely well.
Another reason why I opted for a staircase is because I’m not sure what the willingness to pay (WTP) is.
WTP is a term used in marketing science term that refers to the maximum price a consumer/customer is willing to pay. If the average WTP is $500, less people will buy at $600. Of course this is all much more messy IRL but it’s a good framework to keep in mind.
Here’s a good introductory video for more on this:
I roughly know what my audience’s WTP is but when you’re working with someone else it isn’t just about you.
With a staircase, you’re leaving money on the table.
That’s why most people don’t do it.
After all, the people who buy the fastest are your biggest fans.
Your biggest fans have the highest WTP.
So you’re giving the biggest discount to the people who need it the least.
Resulting in consumer surplus.
Consumer surplus = WTP - price.
If people would pay $100 and you’re charging $80, there’s $20 in consumer surplus. $20 that could be turned into additional profit.
I’m okay with that though because as the price increases, we’ll find what WTP is for us.
And by implication, help us gauge the elasticity of demand for our masterclass.
Not a theoretical WTP either, but the real WTP, which differs from product to product and industry to industry.
Another reason why I’m okay with leaving money on the table is because I like the customers feeling like they got a massive bargain.
Hopefully, that’ll lead to word of mouth & increased future revenue.
When it was time to take action I created a to-do list in Notion
Jennifer loves Notion so that’s why.
Here’s the draft.
Keep in mind that you’re watching me cook live.
So expect this to change.
It’s messy when you see how the sausage is made.
I wrote my own email copy and hers.
She then used that as inspiration to write something that matched her own tone of voice.
The sales page was really bare bones
Since no cold traffic was gonna see it anyway, I could’ve probably gotten away with zero copy.
More on why it’s so important to be ghetto & ship as quickly as you can in yesterday’s essay:
Here’s the sales page
All of this copy is re-used and polished from the newsletter copy I wrote.
Pretty straightforward.
Some practical details, a little social proof, and a recap of the offer.
There’s also a link to the waitlist for when it would sell out & a bit of urgency about how there are only 20 tickets at that price.
The digital assets, I made in DALL-E.
People seemed to like it haha.
Another friend (another Jenni) loved the sweater as did my mentor, marketing Professor Tom Elmer.
Future merch business???
Some of the other AI pics during prompting
Including skinny RJY and hulk RJY and mini Jen and normal Jen haha
The waitlist to capture demand
I also quickly whipped up a waitlist cuz I knew we were gonna sell out & people would beg to get in.
In the past, Jen would let them because she’s a sweetheart.
But I believe that damages your brand (which in some sense is a promise).
So people won’t take you seriously the next time you have an offer with a hard cap.
Also, FOMO and people wanting in but not being able to was the entire point of my marketing strategy in the first place; getting demand to exceed supply.
By setting up a waitlist, we’re able to give those people an alternative option AND we’re increasing the odds that we’ll sell a few tickets next time since we already have folks waiting to grab one.
Then we went live and sold out in a couple of hours
Word-of-mouth strategy
If you wanna get word-of-mouth, the product needs to be good but you also need to make it easy for people to help you.
You make it easy when:
you tell them exactly what to do and,
you incentivize them
During the masterclass, we’re gonna ask them to post an IG story or X post sharing their experience in exchange for a bonus.
Then I’ll grab all of those & use them as testimonials.
That’ll drive some word of mouth and the testimonials are social proof which decreases buying friction in the future.
The marketing strategic decision I now have to make is about price
You can’t build a business with just low-ticket offers.
Well, you can… but you need tons of volume & you lose personalization.
I believe solopreneurship is like MMA.
You just can’t teach it without being there with your students.
Because it’s too difficult
But also because people just need to be pushed in order to get passed their mental sticking points.
If the self-study approach actually worked, we’d have WAY more successful solopreneurs.
So we’re probably gonna upsell to a mid-ticket offer
We can keep the price low, get as many customers as possible, and then upsell a tiny percentage.
Or, I can assume that a higher price point will increase conversions.
After all, if someone is unwilling to invest $100 in their solopreneur journey, will they really invest $1,000?
Logic dictates no.
However, we’ve seen weirder things in marketing science.
So to be continued…
Have a lovely Friday fam.
RJY
Wood & Water
P.S. Reply “back door” if you want me to let you sneak in before the doors open officially.
P.P.S. I started an Instagram to implement what Jennifer is gonna be teaching. Who wants to be my first friend?