Hey there, wellness entrepreneur!
Before we get to this week’s episode, I want to make sure you know about a two-hour live workshop I have coming up. It’s Two Hours To Workshop With Me For $15 and here’s what we’re going to do: Just a few podcast episodes ago, I told you the Five Steps To Create Six-Figure Regeneration Workshops and that can be your system that you refine and rinse and repeat to six-figure wellness business.
In this Two-Hour Workshop With Me Live, we are going to workshop your workshop system. So yes, that’s right! It’s the Workshop To Workshop Your Workshop System. I get a kick out of saying that every single time, but I’m super excited about it because I’ve taken a lot of clients through the system myself. I’ve used this system for years and it’s what has created two six-figure plus businesses for me and it can be your six-figure system to sell out your workshops so you can create your online six-figure.
So when you come to this workshop live, if you have a workshop that you want to create but you’re struggling to get a topic that you feel is compelling and popular and people will really want, and then creating a headline for that or you’re getting stuck in the messaging or you don’t know where to market it or what to say to get people to join, or maybe you’ve taught workshops and you have no problem getting people in the room but you’re having trouble converting to consultations at the end, then this is the place to come and we’re going to workshop all of this out so you can get your personal questions answered by me.
So then, you can just go out and teach your next workshop, feel confident about it, be more efficient in your time, so you can teach it, get your clients, help more people, help them get more results in that workshop, get excited about working with you in your next wellness program, your high ticket wellness offer, then you have more free time to spend with your family and just live your life.
So I’ll see you there! Two hours for $15! The link to get registered is <LINK>. Of course, there’ll be a replay if you can’t show up live. If you want to workshop anything but can’t show up live, then you can just send it to me ahead of time. I’ll make sure to answer it live.
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Hey there wellness entrepreneur. Welcome back! In today’s blog, I am introducing the Workshop Series: A Case Study Special.
So over a few blogs, I will be interviewing my clients and their experiences with workshops. Now these workshops are sometimes live, sometimes collaborations, sometimes in-person, sometimes online, the purpose is to inspire you on topics, different creative ideas of how you can utilize workshops in your business in many different ways.
So the title workshop is really just a starting point because some of my clients do challenges, some of my clients do in person running form clinics, some of my clients do free master classes or in-person paying to our workshops collaborating with a specific studio.
So you can read about all their ideas, all their success, and be inspired to put on your own workshops or events in a way that really lights you up and serves your audience so that you can start signing more clients, get fully booked, and hit your 100k year, whether it be in person or online or a hybrid of both. So I hope you enjoy these very inspiring case studies!
Alison: Hello wellness entrepreneur. Welcome back!
Today I’m honored to have on special guest Jess Spinner who is a health nutrition and lifestyle coach for dancers. And Jess has been on the podcast several episodes ago. Welcome back Jess!
Jess: Thanks so much for having me!
Alison: Oh, it’s an honor!
Question to Jess: So can you tell them right off the bat, in case they haven’t listened to the previous podcast, where can they find you and a little bit about what you do and who you help?
Jess: Sure! So I’m pretty consistent across social media and web channels and I am the whole dancer. thewholedancer.com and on Instagram and on YouTube and I have a podcast and all of that good stuff but I support aspiring and professional dancers to have a more easygoing relationship to food, their bodies, dance, and life. It’s the kind of field that can get very extreme in pretty much every area just based on the dance mentality and what it actually requires to be a dancer at a high level.
So I do the work to help them do the work to bring their lives back to balance and just back to a place of ease and joy and I mean, I would say like fulfillment as well.
Alison: Yeah! I love this! And I feel that you really are changing, helping to change the dance industry in terms of the dancers’ mindset regarding their body and what’s possible for auditioning and being in schools and what they’ll tolerate in those schools, which is paving the way for the current generation and generations to come. This really is a legacy that you will be leaving behind. So I just love that!
Jess: Yeah! It means a lot to me! So, it’s really, there’s a lot of passion behind the work, so I do hope to have a more lasting impact on the dance world, for sure.
Alison: Yeah! Amazing! And so, this year and maybe leading up to this year as well, but this year in particular, we’ve seen some big growth in your business. If you don’t mind, can I share a revenue number?
Jess: Sure!
Alison: Okay! So, and correct me if I’m wrong, when we first started working a few years ago, you were in around the 4K-6K revenue month and most recently, you hit a 9k revenue month, which is amazing! So, huge congrats!
And some of that comes from, you do have a really amazing large audience on Instagram, you’ve been very consistent with both your podcast and YouTubing and a blog. The YouTube and blog has been going on for some time. The podcast is a little bit newer, but you’ve been very consistent putting out content as well as today.
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Question to Jess: We were going to focus on how workshops have also helped you to hit these higher revenue months. So can you tell us a little bit about how you strategize or think because you lead different types of workshops, if you should do a paid workshop or a free workshop versus a workshop that maybe be collaborative with a dance school. What’s your line of thinking with all of that?
Jess: Yeah, so I do majority free workshops. When I do a paid workshop, it’s something that I want people to really be committed to their participation in and I want to make sure that there’s a clear outcome from just the workshop in and of itself when I offer a free workshop, It’s very often talking through the process of something but maybe not necessarily inspiring them to take that much action on their own, beyond perhaps signing up to talk with me for a coaching consultation.
When I do a workshop for a school, it’s a pretty separate thing wherein they are paying me to do the workshop. So it’s very information dense. I try to make it very actionable throughout the whole thing and my hope is that their students will come away from it feeling inspired and energized and they have some things to try in their lives and strategies and then from those paid workshops, there are still often students or parents who will reach out to me after the fact to set up some coaching or a consultation or something like that as well, but I don’t like beyond recommending and suggesting that they reach out if they’re interested. I don’t put too much of like a pitch into it.
Alison: So just for the logistics, when you do a collaboration with a dance school, the school pays you for this type of workshop, just so the audience can be aware and then it’s more value-packed strategy oriented so they’re leaving with insights and takeaways because that’s what the school is paying you for and less of a pitch, but you still get consultations.
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Jess: Right!
Alison: Where I love your strategy for the free webinars that you do on your own is less action-based and a stronger pitch for the consultation?
Jess: Exactly!
Alison: Amazing!
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Question to Jess: Now, when you’re doing your free webinars or if you have your own paid workshop, how do you go about filling these workshops?
Jess: Yeah! I have been on lead pages for a very long time which sometimes I say that it feels like it’s a less common platform for people to be using these days. I don’t know, just because there’s so many options, but I’ve had lead pages for forever! So I always create a sign up on there. I have at this point a template that I pretty much just refill with whatever is relevant to the newest workshop and I send out invites to my e-mail list and I will have usually at least one dedicated Instagram reel or post that talks about the workshop and the dates and says in the caption, just follow the links to sign up, share on Instagram stories.
I have some brand ambassadors who I will ask to share about the workshop with their audiences as well. So, just trying to cover as many of those bases as I can.
Facebook, I don’t have as many things going on on Facebook just because it’s not the main place that my audience hangs out, but I will share on Facebook as well and from Facebook, I more often get some dance teachers and dance parents who sign up which is cool also!
Alison: Yeah! So I think that was a key point is that where you’re focusing your time on where your ideal audience hangs out, which is also where you have primarily most of your audience is located and you’re doing all the things to just get people in the door.
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I used to use lead pages for a while as well. Now, I have it in my e-mail, my registration page, in my e-mail software. But you know, it’s possible even to host a workshop free or paid without a registration page, just by having people DM, but now you have that system in place. So that helps with less manual work.
Question to Jess: And when you’re doing a workshop on your own or with the school, is there a difference in terms of audience growth? So, if you’re doing a free or paid workshop for yourself, is it mostly the people that are attending, is it mostly the people that are already on your list or you’re growing your list too versus, collaborating with a school, do you see a big audience? Your email list growing and changing?
Jess: I would say more with the workshops that I see some e-mail list growth and generally speaking, from all of the registrants, like 50% are already on my e-mail list and then there’s like 50% are new people to the list.
When I give paid workshops to schools, it’s less often. Actually, this is something I think you and I had talked about, but I have yet to, I have to actually, I just did a paid workshop for a school, and I’m thinking I actually have to reach out to the owner and recommend that she sends them to my website because fewer times are people like at least to my knowledge, immediately like going to the website and signing up for the e-mail list. I’ll talk about the resources that I have on my website to try to encourage them to go and do that but I think sometimes it’s a much a slower burn on with those people.
Alison: Sure sure!
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Question to Jess: So with the audience growth, how do you, in terms of your time, because you’re also a mom, how do you know what to prioritize in terms of because there’s only so many workshops you might be able to lead a week or a month. How do you prioritize whether doing a workshop or a free class for yourself or for a school?
Jess: I don’t really put those two things against one another. Like for schools, it’s mostly just a matter of scheduling it in a way that can work for me and luckily, a lot of times they want them in the evening or even my daughter’s young, so she goes to bed by eight o’clock. So I do a lot of workshops around 7:30 or 8:00 so I don’t feel limited in schedule in terms of making those things happen.
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And then the workshops that I present just on my own, I really just kind of like look at my calendar and I say to myself like, “When is this realistically feasible?” and at this point, I’m like usually trying to get a couple of months ahead of myself and not totally last minute and so I’ll like pick a date and I’ll set it in and then if a school was to reach out and say like, “Oh, we want to schedule a workshop in June,” I just would not give them that date as an available option.
Alison: Perfect. So you make it work.
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Question to Jess: So how many people on average if for your free workshop, do you have register?
Jess: Yeah, it depends a lot on the topic, but like the last few, it’s been between 40 and 100.
Alison: Okay, that is a big difference.
Question to Jess: And how do you choose the topic?
Jess: There’s a lot that goes on in a dancer’s year that is relatively specific to the time. So for example, I’ve done in November or December, I’ve done like nutcracker related workshops, like self-care for nutcracker season, or like, how to have a balanced or easier time through nutcracker season, just because it’s a period of time when most dancers have a lot more performing going on.
And then like there’s a period of time in a dancer’s year where they might be auditioning so I center some workshops time wise around auditions.
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And then like the topics that can kind of be any time. I’ll do like nutrition and body image focused stuff, just like at the start of a dance season, which is often August or September because like that’s a lot of times when people are starting to have more of those concerns again about like, “Oh, what should I be eating,” or if they’re struggling from a body image perspective, like that might be fresher on their mind as they’re getting back into the studio after having some time off.
Alison: Yeah, I love that. So you’re taking into account the season of the dancer or what might be relative to them in terms of when you’re teaching the workshop and its topic which I think is so important. Otherwise, the workshop can kind of feel like tone deaf to the audience, like, “I don’t really need this right now.”
Question to Jess: So when you teach the workshop, how many consults on average do you typically receive from a workshop and what is your strategy to have a higher conversion? From free or paid workshop to consultation for your own.
Jess: Yeah. You know, I think that it varies and sometimes, it’s interesting because, I’ll talk about it and aim to provide some level of urgency, but I also want to be very like honest in what I’m saying, if I have openings for clients and there’s not really a reason why they can’t book a consult like a month later. I’m not going to pretend. Sometimes I’ll do something like a bonus or like something to create some level of urgency, but for the most part, it’s like somewhat open-ended.
So in terms of like immediate consults, it’s much more often like maybe between one and five. Like, again, depending on the size of the audience and who’s shown up and all of that. But I’ve also had people who have been in my audience for like, I just had a new client sign on, who has been in my audience for eight years.
Alison: Oh, wow. Congratulations! Nice! Finally ready!
Jess: Yeah! It’s my cheat! And that’s like pretty almost when I started my business in 2015.
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Alison: So that just goes to show you just keep going. You never know who’s watching.
Jess: That’s what I’ve really learned is like just to be consistent and like continue to believe in what you’re doing and it really can just continue to grow.
And then, we had talked about this too where, for a very long time, I was calling my consultations free coaching calls which almost like I would get more people would sign up for that, but that was because of the way I was communicating about them and it was like, it’s just this free opportunity to talk with me and like get advice and like get feedback, which is cool. I see value in that and I do still sometimes give that as an option and have a reason for me why I’m doing it and what they can get building those relationships or sometimes it’s a matter of market research for me of those consultations, free coaching calls.
But having made the change to calling it what I really wanted it to be which was like a coaching consultation call for people who are truly interested in potentially signing up for a coaching program, that has had an impact in how I communicate about it, and also then the numbers of people who sign up.
Alison: Yeah! So I think that takeaway there is huge, is that you can still offer free coaching calls. It’s just knowing your intention, being conscious and intentional behind it, like you’re going to offer these free coaching calls not so much for the conversion to your one-to-one program or any program but more for market research like you said, or building relationships or reestablishing momentum in your business.
And yes, some of those people might convert but that’s not the true intention behind it whereas when you have it labeled as, “This is a consultation call for my coaching program,” you might get less people who actually book a call, but you have higher conversions with people who are ready.
So it’s also knowing like, okay, how much time do you have, because if you have less time then you want to be aware of what you’re calling them?
Jess: Yeah! And right now I have less time.
Alison: But congratulations on the improved conversions. I think once you made that change, didn’t you get like three or four yeses in a row?
Jess: Yeah!
Alison: That was amazing!
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Question to Jess: So with this whole process because now you have a repeatable system in place in terms of utilizing the workshops and using the workshops to grow your audience and then converting them to consultations and then from consultations to your program, how has this whole process really helped your business?
Jess: I mean, it gives me a way that to stay really connected to my audience which I like. In social media, I find it can feel more like you’re just kind of like putting stuff out there and you know, like there’s feedback, but it’s not in the moment and so like, sometimes it’s just like, “Does anyone hear this?”
But with the live workshop, I really love when people are actually on the workshop with you and interacting in the chat. That’s something I’ve learned too over my years of presenting workshops is that you want to make it interactive. So you want to have slides in your presentation that encourage concoction, and so, it gives me a way to stay feeling very connected and they will come up with questions and insights that are, I’m not always super fresh in my mind and even just that can give new ways or new ideas for additional content or other resources and things like that and it also helps me feel like I am always taking action.
Because I think again, I can sometimes get overdone in this respect but the idea of needing to always put out content, but this is pretty, it’s very action oriented and you can see most often like a pretty, the return feels relatively obvious and so quick.
Alison: Yeah! I feel the same. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing all these words of wisdom. I’m sure you inspired a lot of people with different ideas for workshops, how to maybe generate topics for their workshops, how to strategize whether it’s a collaboration where you’re getting paid for an audience that’s not yours versus getting consultations for your own free or paid workshops.
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Question to Jess: Any other parting words of wisdom or advice?
Jess: I like what we said just in keeping at it and part of the reason my workshop enrollments might fluctuate is because sometimes I just try things and I do think about it, but it’s not like part of the process of figuring out if it’s a good topic or a helpful topic is to just put it out there and see what the response is like.
And also sometimes, the smaller workshops, 40 people, the people who show up are super engaged. So it’s even, the numbers necessarily have to make you say, “Oh I can never do a topic like that before,” but you can learn. You learn from every single step that you take and I don’t think there have to be missteps. I think it’s just a matter of saying like, “Well what can I take away from that workshop? And is there language that changing slightly would increase enrollments?” And looking at those opportunities as well.
Alison: Yeah! I love that! That the small refinements over time will lead to the growth of getting 40 people in in a workshop because I have a client, one of her first workshops, she had three people show up, but she got two conversions. Two out of three converted. So it doesn’t matter if you have three or ten. She was able to really interact with those three people who showed up and got huge results! So sometimes, the numbers don’t matter! But you don’t want to use them against yourself too because then if you just take the data it can really inform how to grow bigger workshops and get better conversions.
Jess: Absolutely. Yeah!
Alison: I love this. Well, thank you so much for sharing your time and your wisdom!
Question to Jess: Can you tell them again the name of your website and Instagram so they can follow?
Jess: Yeah! It’s thewholedancer.com and add around Instagram.
Alison: Awesome. I love it. Thank you so much!
Jess: Thank you Alison, and this was awesome!
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