Listen to the full interview:
1. What inspired you to make the leap and start your own business?
“It really got to a point where I had a young daughter. She was 2 years old at the time. And I felt like if I continued down the path I was on, I wasn’t going to have the time freedom I wanted to reach my revenue goals but also spend time with my family. And I’m sure some of your audience knows that when you take that step to start your own business, it is a lot of work. So, time freedom is something you want in the long-term, but it’s something you may struggle with when you’re first starting your business. We were potty training my daughter and I remember making consulting calls on the phone at the same time as I held her little hand while she was trying to use the bathroom. A lot was happening.”
2. How did you start your business journey?
“I ended up joining a mastermind where there were a lot of different course creators in all kinds of different niches. And it’s funny because I went there to get better at launching. But nevertheless, one of the guys I met—he was selling a course he had created that was all about how to declutter your home. And he was making over $300,000 per month without launching. So, when I learned that, it cracked open a brand-new vision for my company that I never even thought was possible. He literally walked me through everything. He was so generous. He opened his spreadsheets. He was like, here’s the revenue that we made yesterday and here’s what we made last week. And in that moment, I knew I had found a new way for me to grow and scale my business. I didn’t know how I was going to make it happen. I wasn’t sure how I was exactly going to go about it. But knowing that one person had done it before me… I thought, if he can do it, I can do it.”
3. How do you define launching vs. selling?
“The biggest difference between launching and evergreen selling is that, typically, launching is something that you do a couple times a year. Basically, it requires 2-3 months of really intense list building and content distribution leading up to what’s called an ‘open cart.’ And then, that open cart period, which can last anywhere between 5-7 days, is when you are allowing people to enroll in your coaching program, your course, sign up for services, whatever it is. And then when the cart closes, nobody can buy that product until your next launch begins, or until your next launch ‘open cart’ period, which could be 4 months later, it might be a year later. In the process of doing that, what most course creators find is that as soon as their cart closes and their launch ends, so does the momentum they’ve been working so hard to generate for their business. So, it’s like you’re in this flurry of activity and then it’s just radio silence until the launch cycle begins all over again.”
4. What does an evergreen sales model look like?
“When you’re selling with an evergreen model, you need to have some kind of conversion mechanism. The conversion mechanism is not just a sales page that sits on your website, collecting dust and you’re hoping and praying that someone’s going to enroll. The sales mechanism looks different for different people depending on what you’re selling. So, if you’re selling a 1-1 service, the conversion mechanism might be a sales call; you might be collecting applications, booking appointments, and having sales calls. If you’re selling something on autopilot, which is the method that I teach for selling courses specifically, you would be directing people to a free master class where they would watch the content, get educated, and be able to enroll inside of your program.”
3 Ways to Practice Genuine Connection
“But I think that one of the key things to making evergreen work and to be able to sell consistently and not just be in this place where you’re like, ‘Oh, I’m just going to put my offer out there and I really hope people start buying 24/7’ is this idea of genuine connection. And there are three different ways that I practice genuine connection and continue to practice it.”
- Speak about the problems your audience is actively looking for on the internet. Talk about problems they’re already aware they have and want to solve.
- Investigate why people didn’t buy during your sales process. A great tool for this is surveys or even phone interviews.
- Consistently connect with your audience. Consistently posting and sharing on your desired platforms builds trust and credibility with your audience.
5. How would you describe a million-dollar mindset and how did you develop yours?
“Before I was able to cross the million-dollar mark, I was making money, but I wasn’t meeting my revenue goals. And one of the big reasons is because I was one of those people who was constantly beating myself up. I had confused personal accountability with beating myself up, and I’m a big fan of personal accountability. I talk about it a lot. And the reality is that… if you’re looking to scale from 6 figures to 7 figures or from 0-7 figures or whatever, it’s a different level of personal accountability. There’s one level of personal accountability to get you to 6 figures. It’s a whole other ball game to get to 7. There is no blaming other people. There is no being hard on yourself. There is no getting sucked in for too long to think. It’s such a different paradigm shift. It’s not just a 10X mindset shift. It’s like a 1,000X mindset shift. And it’s figuring out how to hold yourself personally accountable without falling into self-blame. There’s no time for that.”
6. How did your Brilliant Difference™ support you in showing up as your best self in your business?
“When I think about my Brilliant Difference™, I think back to when I was a little girl and my dad. One of his favorite phrases was, ‘Can’t is not a word in my vocabulary.’ So my sister and I would be getting ready for school, trying to tie our shoes, kind of like flailing on the floor. And he’s like, ‘We need to go, like it’s go time.’ And we’d be like, ‘We can’t, but I can’t tie my shoe, but I can’t, you know, do this or that.’ And he would just—very flat—be like, ‘Can’t is not a word in my vocabulary.’ And he wouldn’t tell us what to do. He wouldn’t tell us how to work out that problem. He was just like, ‘Can’t is not an option here.’ And so, whenever he would say that, then we’d be like, ‘Okay, well, I guess we need to figure this out.’ I see that show up in my business every day. I see it show up as I grew my business and I see it continuing to show up for me in the future—how do we go from why you can’t to how you can. When it comes to thinking about my bigger purpose or the bigger impact that I want to have in the world, that’s essentially what I’m doing through my programs, through my coaching: I‘m helping people figure out how do you go from yhy you can’t to how you can. Because there are always a million reasons why we can’t do something, and the only way we’re going to get to where we want to go is if we shift our attention away from all the reasons why we can’t.”
Interviewer
Finka Jerkovic
Leadership Coach and Performance Advisor at Finka Inc.
With 25+ years in leadership and sales and the financial services industry, she has witnessed the power of recognizing and celebrating people’s unique strengths and differences (a.k.a Brilliant Differences™) within a workplace. When everyone’s unique talents are appreciated and people work together using them, that’s when the real magic of business growth happens. Fast forward 10 years. Finka has established programs that help corporate companies grow their businesses by tapping into the full potential of their teams, so they can clearly define their strengths, value their differences, and perform at their best.
Interviewee
Caitlin Bacher
Creator of Scale With Success®
Caitlin Bacher is the CEO of Scale with Success®, a company dedicated to teaching coaches and course creators how to turn their online course into a 7-figure business without launching. Her company has rapidly grown to over $11m in revenue over the last few years with no signs of slowing down. A chance encounter with a new friend revealed a completely different approach to selling Caitlin’s course – one that allowed her to generate consistent revenue from her course and build the momentum she needed to scale her business with success. Once she made the switch from launching to selling her course on auto-pilot, she was able to make her first $1m in 9 months just by selling one of her online courses. She now teaches this method to course creators all over the world.
