#119: Answering Your Biggest Webinar Questions

Hello, health coaches. Listen, for the past few weeks, we have been focusing on how to succeed with an online business in a quarantine world. We're still there. You guys, it's still going on for better or for worse. And we have to learn how our businesses can thrive within that system structure constraints that we're under lately. Well, guess what? This is our final episode in the series. In fact, next week, there will not be a podcast episode because we're going to be in the middle of my free five day challenge called grow your health coaching practice online with webinars. And that's because webinars, like when we're talking about building an online business, these are a super, super important tool to have in your toolbox. So I'm going to show you how to create one and make it effective for you. Like actually help you sign new clients this way, without feeling like a used car salesman.

It's tricky, but I got it all worked out for you. So that starts really soon. And you can still sign up to join us. If you haven't already it's free. And registration is that health coach power.com/challenge, and feel free to share that URL with any of your health coach, friends and networks and whatnot. It's like a big old community event. And we are going to have a blast. Now since announcing this event just a little bit ago, we've got like, I don't know, over a thousand coaches already enrolled and starting to ask questions inside our Facebook group about webinars. So I thought, all right, let's hit some of those common questions today to just really get our brains like marinating in this idea of holding a successful webinar. I love it. It's all like back to school time, get your pencils sharpened, get your webinar stuff ready.

Like, I'm in the zone. I don't know about, you know, if you're here live, you can tell me in the chat, where do you get hung up? When you're thinking about holding a webinar? Like just the concept of it. If it's scary and if you've actually done it, like what sort of things trip you up? What questions do you have for me? Just type them in. And I'll get to those in a little while. One topic we are definitely, definitely going to cover next week is about the tools and technology that's needed to run a webinar. And this is a question that came from Merly. She said, Hey, I have a webinar that I'm going to be running in September. Yay. But what did she say? However, I'm looking up how to use zoom and I don't want to upgrade for the whole year. Can someone confirm that I can just upgrade for the month?

I love little like cost saving tips and tricks like this. Cause I don't know about you guys, but I built my business. Bootstrapping it. I did not have any start-up capital and anything you can do to do it like the right way. You don't want to do it like that sheep and like, you know, real cheap way, but the right way, but not spending silly amounts of money. Yeah. I am so onboard with that. So this is first of all, the tool that I use for all my live webinars, I'm on it right now. I use zoom. And, and I think, you know, that's what most people are using. It's awesome. As you know, it's inexpensive and you can like, you can technically use it. It's the free version if you want to, but there's that 45 minute time limit. And your webinar's likely going to go longer than 45 minutes.

And if you're like, well, maybe it's going to be like 30 minutes. I mean, if people have questions or if something happens in the beginning of the webinar and you get a late start, you don't want to get cut off. So I do recommend that you upgrade to the pro package, which is only $14.99 a month. It's like hardly anything. It's amazing. And yes, you can upgrade just for the one month and then you can go back to the free version. So if you are going to be holding webinars, like all the time, like I do, then you might as well just pay for the annual package. But if it's like a onetime thing and you're just testing, think it out. Yeah. Upgrade for the month and then downgrade again, no harm, no foul. So that's amazing. Actually, when I was thinking about this, I'm like, it really please only like $15 a month, crazy because years ago, like zoom didn't exist and you would have to pay at least $99 a month if you wanted to host webinars.

And I was like, there's no way I'm paying that amount of money, you know, in the early years of my business, but zoom has really been a game changer. And of course, as you know, you can use zoom for client meetings. You can even use it to record yourself. Like if you're going to be making videos for your clients or for your online courses or whatever. So to me, it's like a very worthwhile tool. Now, if you want to get like super fancy with it, definitely don't have to do this, but you can pay for the zoom webinar package, which is a little bit different. And I think it's like an extra $40 a month. Don't quote me on that. But I think it's about $40 a month. And what that will do is it gives you a webinar room instead of a meeting room.

I know it doesn't seem like it's a big difference. Really the difference is that, from what I noticed health coaches like to use it for is you can turn off the participant count when you're in a zoom webinar room, right? So when someone joins, if you're in a meeting, they're going to see, Oh, there are 25 other people in this meeting, or, Oh, there are two other people in this meeting or whatever it is. But if you have that number turned off, which you can do with webinars, then they'll join and they will have no idea if they're the only person or if they're one of 12,000 people. And sometimes that feels good if you're starting out and you're worried about how many people are going to attend. So, there is that the webinar package also allows you to broadcast in practice mode, which is kind of nice.

It allows you to kind of go live without going live to everybody, especially if you are going to be live with another presenter. And I do things like this all the time. You guys can probably think of episodes. We've done where I have a guest on, right. We just had a guest from Fullscript a couple episodes ago. And so we both get together on zoom and then I can go live in practice mode together so that we can talk and get our ducks in a row before we hit go live to everybody, all of the attendees. So again, the webinar room starts to get a little bit more pricey. And I think for most health coaches, the $14.99 a month zoom pro meeting is going to be just fine. Just get it for the month that you need. It Merley. Absolutely.

Hello to everybody. Who's here live by the way, candy saying hello in the comments. Nice to see you all hope you're having a good day. You know what, today, just as an aside, my kids finally had some school, Oh my God, it's been so many months of waiting for this. And today it happened. That was only a half day and it was remote. It was from home. But my goodness, the two of them sat there. They did their remote learning and I was a very happy mother. And next week, one of them is even going to go into school for real. It's a big day around here. I hope you're all having a good one too.

Okay. Here is another question from Lisa and, and so far, by the way, when I was answering Merley's question, we've been talking about hosting a live webinar like that. That's when we just say webinar, typically the understanding is we were talking about a live in real time webinars that you might host, but at least asks about something a little bit different.

She said for those of you that are doing webinars, what platform do you use? I don't want something that has to be live and I'm looking for something reasonably priced. So at least I'm going to talk more about this during our five day bet coming up, because I think it's a really good question. And I think a lot of people, myself included a couple of years ago, like we see a pre-recorded webinar and we think that's awesome. Like, why can't I just do that? I don't even have to show up for my own webinar. That's amazing. I can like prerecord it on a day when my hair's looking all good and I'm in a good mood and I can get it just right. Instead of having to be live and like risking messing up in the middle of like a live broadcast. Right? So, it sounds appealing for a number of reasons.

So I want to answer your question just like straight at first, and then I'm going to give you a couple caveats. There are several different evergreen webinar tools out there. I use one that's called ever webinar. I don't love it, but it's a really all of these things. They're really complicated tools. Like a lot more has to go into building an evergreen webinar. So there's a lot more settings and things that you have to set up and they're, they're pretty complicated. It's the kind of thing that like, once I got it set up, I was like, Oh my God, I never want to have to do that again. So there may be better services out there for your evergreen webinar, but I haven't really wanted to go through the hassle of setting up with a different company. So again, I'm using Ever Webinar when I do mine.

And for all of these tools, all of these evergreen webinars tools, like they're a little bit pricey, I think it's like $500 a year. And I'm sure it only goes up from there. So, you're looking at like, you know, a significant investment and if you're not sure how it's going to do, or this is going to really work for you, you know, like I would caution you against throwing down like hundreds and hundreds of dollars. But what I really want to say about evergreen webinars is this, and this is really important to know across the board, not just like in my business, but like anyone I've ever you know, receive business advice from or learned about, you know, their business or anything I've learned as a professional in this field, they don't work as well. Like they just don't. So, a live webinar is going to help you sign more clients, right?

I can't say that about an evergreen webinar necessarily, even a really good one is always going to be less effective than if you, as the presenter actually held it live and in real time. So the best advice that I ever got when I was like, kind of going down this road myself, was create a kick ass webinar and then run it live and then run it live again and again, and work out the kinks. You know, if you're like, Oh, that part was a little bit awkward. You can change it. If you're like, Oh, like that part where I made my offer like that didn't go over very well, change it, like work out all the kinks, make sure that you are actually making sales, signing clients, achieving whatever you want to achieve with this webinar. And that it's really working. And then once, you know, it works and it works consistently for you.

Then you can think about creating an evergreen version of it, which again, it will not be quite as effective, but if you start with something that you've proven to work live, does this make sense? Like you want to prove it first and then even if you take it evergreen, it will probably continue to work for you a little bit less, but of course you'll have the convenience of it being evergreen. So overall, I guess I'm saying is don't start there. Like, don't start saying, I'm going to build an evergreen webinar. I think it's kind of a recipe for frustration. And that's why in our five day event, I'm going to be focused on helping you build a really, really effective live webinar. And then once you practice that baby, a bunch of times, then you may want to convert it to evergreen as your next step.

Also, once you like practice a bunch of times and you've made those sales and you've signed those clients, you know, you might feel like you have the extra income to then invest in a tool like ever webinar. And also maybe like an assistant to help you get set up because it's a little bit of a beast. Did I mention that? Okay. here is another question that came in. I like this one, she said, I'm curious for those who do webinars, how do you like to present? Do you do video and then slides and then back to video or doing video with no slides or doing slides and a photo of you. So you can do it any way you want. There's absolutely no rules here. I think you should present in a way that you're going to be most comfortable. Makes sense. Right. So, in the beginning of my webinar journey, I just use slides.

Like it was a straight up slide show from start to finish. I did not want my face anywhere on camera. It was way too scary. And it just was like too much for me to worry about because when you're presenting a webinar, you know, you've got a couple of things going on. You know, you probably have a slide show at some point, you've got like a script or an outline, which by the way, during the five day back coming up, I'm going to give you a formula for that outline or script is going to make it much easier, super helpful for you. But anyway, you're going to have that up on your screen. Plus, you're going to have like people chatting and asking questions. So early on, I like could not deal with also having my face on camera and having to remember to like smile a little bit, or like not pick my nose.

Sorry. Now, whatever it is, it was just overwhelming for me. So I went straight slideshow and that's cool. You can do that then, like, as I got more comfortable, I would start my webinars with my face on camera. Like what I'm doing right now, if you're watching live right, like this is called face to camera. So I would start face to camera and I would welcome everybody. And just maybe speak for a minute or two, like this to the camera, just to connect a little bit more with my audience, at least for the people that showed up, like on time and were there at the start, I guess. And then I would switch to the slide show that way when I was doing like the heavy lifting, my face would not be on camera. And that was like, Oh, she was relief. Okay.

Okay. So that was like the next step for me. And these days when I do a webinar, I just keep the camera on the whole darn time. Right. I'm so much more comfortable just operating the whole system. It's no big deal. I have more practice. And ultimately I think that slideshows run the risk of feeling impersonal. So the more human you can be the better. And when you're present someone, I usually have my slideshow, it takes up the whole screen. And then my video stays on in the corner. So you can still see me, you know, and then you can see, like if I make a mistake and I make a funny face, or if I'm like reaching for my glass of water and I'm drinking water, taking a couple of steps, I'm not trying to hide that from my audience anymore. Like when we can see someone in their true humanity and like their mistakes and their imperfections and whatever, you know, I've had webinars where like I had a cough the whole time these things happen, but that can actually improve like the know like, and trust factor for your audience. And that really comes from people like witnessing you, I think as much as possible. So I just keep my camera on the whole darn time. And if I have something stuck in my teeth, maybe someone will tell me at some point during the presentation, please do that for me. If I ever have kale in my teeth, you must let me know that's our deal.

Okay. So just work your way up, whatever amount of face to camera, you're comfortable with. One thing that I don't particularly recommend though, would be doing an entire webinar, especially where you're really like teaching. Maybe you're talking, I don't know, numbers or things that would be better served with some sort of graphic, a graph chart bulleted, you know, a couple of bullets on a slide. Like sometimes it is actually easier for people to understand the information when they're seeing it. And they're not just seeing you talk and also like for a whole hour, sometimes webinars run more than an hour. Do you really want someone like, just staring at somebody like a talking head for that long? Yeah. You know, maybe, but I think slides make it more interesting and useful. So again, during our five day event, I'm going to be giving you some tips and tricks for designing slides that just make for a more enjoyable dynamic presentation. Not that your face isn't enjoyable, but just even a few slides for those key points can help your audience understand your material better and, and view you as a little bit more of a professional. Like you, if you have some professional looking slides. Okay. Here's a question from Casey.

Casey said, I'm running my second webinar to convert clients.

Nice, Casey.

Should I share my one-on-one program price at the end of the webinar? I prefer to keep it private, but I don't know if that's a good idea and I would love to get some opinions. That's a good question, Casey. And it really reminds me of the question. People ask a lot, like, should I put the price of my coaching program on my website? So basically we're saying like, should I announce my pricing upfront? Or should that be something that I keep just for those that I'm actually talking to in a one-on-one fashion, in a consultation. So I'll tell you from experience that what happens is if you're on a webinar and you don't share your price, somebody is going to ask, and then it's awkward because you don't want to like, ignore their question. It's just like sitting there and everybody can see it. Right? So, you have to have some sort of way of talking about your pricing.

I do feel... So I would agree with you, Casey. I like to keep pricing private. I feel it is best discussed within the context of a phone consultation. And when I say best discuss, I mean, it results in more people signing up that way. If you, you know, if you tested it both ways, you might see that if you just tell people your price upfront, it will turn people away quickly and they don't listen to anything else. But if you have, if you have like a more personal conversation with them and you do it the right way, by the time you get to your price, they're more likely to say yes. Okay. So it's just a, it's a way of, of structuring how you pitch your offer. That can make all the difference. So anyway, people will have different opinions about that, but that's how it has always worked best for me, the same dollar amount can feel very expensive and like a no go to somebody.

If you just put it on the screen and your webinars, they're just going to be like, okay, bye. But if you invite someone to then apply, I always have my attendees apply to work with me. And there's some sort of application process they have to go through. And then if it looks like a match and we actually get on the phone, I mean, at that point, my closing rate tends to be around 90%. So take it or leave it. That's my advice for you. I do not share pricing during a webinar. Especially, especially what I'm really talking about here is when you are selling something in like the multiple thousand dollar range, if you're selling something less expensive, cause you could be holding a webinar for you know, as like a preview and to get people excited about like, let's say a $99 detox program that you have coming up, like yeah, sure.
Share the price and send folks to a page where they can enroll because it's 99 bucks, right. That's not going to like make anybody go, Oh God, that's so much money. Right. So, but higher ticket programs. That's what I'm really talking about here. I do not show the price. So when they ask, like, what would you do? What would you do if you're like, Hey, if you would like to work with me, here's where you can go fill out an application. And someone's like, how much does it cost that can really throw you? So, I want you to have an answer prepared for that, or even better pre-empt the question by, you know, building this into your webinar in the first place. I like to say, okay, two ways I like to handle this one would be, let's say that you have tiers to your coaching program.

Cause I know many of you do you have like your, I don’t know like your one-month package or three-month package and your six-month package or however you have it structured. So one thing that you can say is like working with me, start at, and then you could give the amount of your lowest, your smallest package. And then you're hinting at the fact that it goes up from there. So that kind of gives people a general sense of what they're getting into without you like laying out all the dollar signs for them. So that's one way to handle it. Another thing you can do is express. I mean, this is just being honest, like, Hey, investing in your health for the long haul it's like, and then compare it to something that they would understand. So, for my audience of women, I will usually compare this to buying a designer bag because I know my women and I know that they drop quite a bit of money on designer bags because designer bags last, they are good quality.

They make them look good. You know, there's all these reasons that they're willing to spend money on that designer bag. Right. So I will compare coaching with me to their designer bag and then in their brain they're like, Oh yeah, I spend money on that. Right. I'll say just like your health, you want it to last. And the investment is going to be similar to an all flash, like a high end, like Louis Vuitton bag on the screen or something like that. And they get the message that working with me is high end and it's desirable and it's not like a bargain basement thing. It's not the kind of thing that they want to shop around for, or go to target or get for half off, you know? Cause that's not the kind of women that they are. I'm implying that there are women with good taste who spend money on things that are important.

And So, you can do the same. It doesn't have to be a designer bag. It can be anything that, you know, your target market is willing to invest in for themselves and then draw that correlation for them. That's a, that's always been very successful for me. Okay. What questions do you guys have for me? I know that one comes up a lot like this. Why do webinars have to be so long? And why does the presenter have to spend so much time telling me their story in the beginning? And like, why like basically, why do webinars have to be set up the way that they're set up? So I'll let you know this. Through the years I have learned something. I've learned something about myself. Sometimes what I like, like I like a shorter webinar. Of course, I like when people just give them the information and don't try to sell me anything or I like whatever, you know, things that I like as a consumer can be very, very different from what works in your business.

Like again, we probably would all like to sign up for a webinar that was full of everything we needed to know. And it was only 15 minutes long. Awesome. Like get the goods, get out of there. But what if every time you as a business owner held a webinar like that, nobody signed up for coaching with you. You'd be like, all right, well, I don't know. Should I keep doing these things like this? Isn't really working, but then if you held a longer webinar and boom, you signed clients, you would be like, Oh, well this works. So, I'm going to do this. And so when you're wondering, like why do webinars have to be the way that they are? A lot of it has to do with like what helps you see the results that you want to see? Right. And so, in that case, like you would start holding those longer webinars because they are working for you.

And another way of thinking about it is if I if I am a, a potential buyer, I am someone who really is interested in working with you. Then I am someone who is going to want to hear your backstory. I'm going to want to hear about your client's successes. I mean, I may not want you to drone on for 90 minutes, two hours about it, but I am the type of person who wants to actually spend money to work with you. I need that stuff. I need that stuff in order to be able to make a decision. Whereas somebody who's like has no intention of working with you. They don't want to hear it. They don't want to know about it. They just want to get whatever they came for free and they want to get out of there. So, we're not trying to convert those people into clients.

We're going to do the thing that helps the people who really are interested in what we offer as coaches to decide that they want to work with us. So that is, and I'm just using length of the webinar as an example, but there are lots of things that you may have seen people do within webinars. And whether you like it or not, that shouldn't be how you determine how you structure yours. You should structure your webinar so that it works. I'm just saying, and you should always test, right? So I have done years of testing and trying different formats because I'll see people do things or I'll learn like, Oh, here's another way to do a webinar. And so, I'm always like, what's going to work the best, what is going to get me the results that I'm looking for and still feel good, like, not feel icky and like gross.

Like I could never actually say this to somebody, you know, did you ever see a sales script? You're like literally the fact that there are sales scripts. It's crazy. Sometimes when I first graduated as a health coach from IIN, this is like 11 years ago, I had like a sales script and I tried reading it once. And I was like, I can't, I'm going to throw up like, this is so bad. So anyway, when you test you're testing, what can I deliver in a way that is comfortable for me? And at the same time as getting the results that I want to get. So I have found like a compromise between the super selly super gimmicky type webinars. And I've sort of whittled away at it until it feels comfortable. It feels much less fake and salesy and it delivers results, right? And that's what you want.

You want to feel comfortable and you want to be getting results in your business. And that structure that I've sort of landed on after all these years, that's what I'm going to be sharing with you during our five day event together. And again, that's called grow your health coaching practice online with registration is open and it's free and you can join us at healthcoachpower.com/challenge. And we're actually getting started this Saturday, September the 12th. But if you're hearing this a little bit later, you're watching this later. You can join any time up until September 16th and when it's over. Okay. So if you're a little bit late, don't worry, still hop on. You can get everything that you've missed, but go for it. You guys, now's your chance. Healthcoachpower.Com/Challenge. And I will see you there next week. And then I'll be back here in two weeks for our next podcast episode. We'll be taking your questions as always out of our Facebook group and answering them live, take care, everybody I'll see you soon.