Kim Nishida (@kimnishida) is a marketing and launch expert, and the founder of Ready to Evolve.
In this episode, Bobby speaks with Kim about how her journey from running marketing for some of the biggest names in the personal development space, to now growing her own coaching business. They explore the lessons and frameworks Kim has taken with her into this new chapter, as well as how she’s dealt with the challenging transition from doing marketing for clients to now marketing herself and her business.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podcast Addict, and Pocket Casts.
Click here to read the transcript.
Show Notes:
(01:00) – Introduction
(01:30) – Lessons From Being a Marketer
(03:00) – Personal Development vs. Business Marketing
(04:45) – Messaging in the Personal Development Niche
(06:15) – Making Sure a Launch is Successful
(9:00) – Tips to Get a Launch to Convert
(10:00) – Reducing Refunds & Supporting Customers After the Sale
(12:30) – Surprising Launch Lessons
(15:00) – How Kim is Approaching Her New Business
(18:00) – Business Brainstorming
(22:00) – Adjusting Messaging to Your Ideal Client
(25:00) – The Ideal Nurture Sequence Length
Transcript:
Bobby: So please tell the listeners a little bit about you and your company.
Kim: So the name of my company is Ready to Evolve. And it’s been a coaching business that I started back in 2003. And then I went like a sideways journey from life coaching to digital marketing. And now it’s kind of a fusion of that. And it’s actually getting into more of a spiritual space.
Bobby: So I know over the last few years, you’ve been refocusing on the personal development side of your business. What lessons have you taken from all of the work and the genius that you’ve put into the digital marketing side of things? And how have you applied that towards your new business?
Kim: That’s a good question. I mean, I think it’s been the journey, starting with business coaching and then getting into, how do you market that kind of a business? And it was a certain style of marketing. This is back in 2008, 2010.
So that’s kind of when digital marketing was becoming a thing. And so the style of marketing was a certain very specific way of marketing. It was pretty hard sell in a lot of ways. And then over time, my clients transitioned from being like the hardcore selling coaching people to more personal development. So that was like the evolution of my business in that the clients who were showing up for me and the ones that I really enjoyed working with. And so their style of marketing is very different. I found it was very similar in many ways as far as like the nuts and bolts but the languaging and maybe sometimes the approach was a little softer or just different.
So now, as I’m, doing my own business, I’m really following the example of my clients who made alignment with themselves the most important part of their business. So that’s really what I’m dedicated to. And I think before I used to shy away from that. Like when I started my business in 2003, I picked business coaching because people said business owners have money, you can sell to them because they have money. And so that’s why I picked it, but it wasn’t what was getting me excited. It wasn’t like, oh my God, I love business owners.
And so that ended up not being a good fit for me. And now I’m very firm about, you know what, I would rather not make very much money and still feel aligned with what I’m doing than compromise and make more money.
Bobby: You started out in the business coaching side of things, but realized you really felt more aligned with the personal coaching and the personal development side, what have you noticed are the big differences between the two styles of marketing your business?
Kim: When I was doing that business, it was definitely just a whole range. I didn’t even niche down at all. It was like anyone who had a small business. I mean, I was working with someone with their own roofing company, catering business, all these things like carpet cleaning, all these different businesses, like people I would meet at a networking event in the real world, right?
Those were my clients. And so to them, they just wanted to know, can you get me results? They don’t want to know about the mindset part for sure. They’re like, what are we going to be doing? How is it going to work? How is it going to get me results? That’s all they want to know. So they’re very clear. It was pretty simple to market to them because it was just like benefit, benefit, benefit. I didn’t have to get into their backstory. I didn’t really have to dig into their pains too much because they knew their pains were first and foremost, I just need to make more money. So that was straightforward.
When I got into more of the coaching world and the online space, that’s when, wow, we really got into really uncovering those pains. And I think a lot of times people would say, this is what’s working to really turn up the volume on the pain, right? Which for some of my clients didn’t feel good, like they would reluctantly do it because that’s what they were told to do.
I mean, you do need to touch on kind of their urgency. Because the things they’re wanting are less material. Like I want to feel happier, it’s not like make more money. I think the one that we could get into, I wouldn’t call it a pain point. It was the urgency part, like if another year goes by and another year goes by and another year goes by and nothing changes, that seemed to be the most meaningful or what legacy do you want to leave that you’re not doing right now. It was really going more for the heart, like, where do they feel regret in their heart. Which is very different than, hey, if you’re not taking action, you’re not making money, you know what I mean? Like, it’s just a very different thing.
Bobby: Absolutely. Yeah. So you’ve worked for broad range of high level personal development clients. How do they think about marketing and messaging? What is that process like for them?
Kim: For the people in the personal development space, they are very devoted to their mission. They are so clear that they’re here on the planet to do something specific and that this platform that they’re gifted with is their way to transform the lives of others. So they’re very passionate about what they do.
The money is a nice side benefit. And I won’t say that they’re not focused on making money. They definitely are. But it’s definitely that mission and really at the core of like helping people. So they’re very clear that they want their marketing materials to sound like them. The voice has to be authentic.
It can’t be too jargony. If it sounds like something they wouldn’t say, then they don’t want it in the copy. They don’t want it on an opt in page. So they’re more hands on as far as making sure the voice and the vibe fits who they are. Which makes sense, right? I mean, we should all be doing that.
Bobby: Yeah. And I think there’s definitely the scammier sides of the online space that are comfortable saying whatever to get a quick buck. But it’s reassuring that your clients were very concerned about it has to sound like me, has to sound legitimate in the service of my clients.
Kim: I remember back in the day. I mean, this is probably like, ’05, ’06. And I bought somebody’s templates, I think it might’ve been this guy named Yannick Silver. And I still sometimes see, it just cracks me up, this one phrase. You can buy it even if it’s two o’clock in the morning. Like you can sign up for this thing and buy it and start making money. And I’ll see that on a sales page every once in a while, the reference to, even if it’s two o’clock in the morning and it just cracks me up.
Bobby: You’ve been behind some really successful, big launches in that space. When it comes to creating a launch and getting everything together, what are you doing? What are the things that you’re looking at the different elements to make sure that it’s going to be as successful as possible?
Kim: Well, and I really want to say that for those big launches that I’m thinking about, thank God you were behind the scenes as well. So that I would say the first thing I did was I make sure I hired Bobby Kegley to be back there and do all the pages and monitor all the stuff because there’s so many moving pieces.
And you get one shot in a launch. It’s a finite period of time. You’re getting all the goodwill from your partners to mail for you this one time. And if you don’t have things running, if something breaks or whatever, then it’s all going to be a waste. So just making sure systems are in place way in advance.
Making sure if you’re going to do a launch, you’ve got great partners who are aligned, but then making sure your side of the fence is taken care of immaculately. Right. You’ve done so much that you can to test and make sure that it’s going to convert as well as possible for partners.
Because you want to make them money too. They’re showing you the love. You want to show them the love with money. Then once the sale happens, you really got to take care of those people, who said yes and put their money down. You got to take care of them. And that’s where I’ve seen a lot of people fall short.
Like the customer service isn’t there. And even in businesses, clients that I’ve worked for, like everything was in shambles behind the scenes. And then people will just start asking for their money back and then they’re never coming back. You just have to do as much as you can to prepare in advance. You can’t do so much fly by the seat of your pants, as much as that can be appealing sometimes and sound like it’s fun. It’s just not fun for the team. And that just wears on morale. I don’t think people think so much about the toll they take on the morale of the team, I’m a crazy genius. you know, like I come up with these ideas and I get them when I get them and it’s just what I’m given. But it takes a toll sometimes and that can be hard to come back from.
Bobby: Yeah, absolutely. I think, we’ve both had experience on crazy launches in the past where you get to the end and you’re just –worn out and you need a vacation. I think this space is so interesting because it’s the combination of business. You need to make money. You need to have the foundations in place there, but also personal development, you’re all about the client and getting them a result and having them get a transformation.
And so you get a lot of people who are, I want the people in front of me to transform, to have a better life, but I also need this business thing to work. This little machine on the side to continue to make that possible over time.
Kim: For sure. Yeah, and I think also, the business owners that I’ve worked with that have been doing what I think a really great job are mindful of their team. They’re taking care of their team. Like they’re saying, okay, here, I want transformation for all our clients and customers. But they also want the transformation for the people who work for them. And so they’re mindful of that as well, which I think is super cool. And I assume the big tech companies do that as well, try to invest in those employees, try to keep them from leaving. I think that goes a long way.
Bobby: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You had mentioned, talking about launches and promotions that you do everything you can to make sure it’s going to convert as highly as possible. What are some of the things that you do to make sure that happens?
Kim: Well, everything has got to work at a base level. Because I’ve seen also,when you’re working for a client and you’re helping them with their promotions and it goes both ways. You’re getting people to promote you and then you’re promoting them back.
And it just hurts my heart. Like sometimes when you’d see another great business owner and they don’t have the infrastructure or the team in place. And their funnel is terrible. Like, it’s just terrible. Like, the opt in page is really bad. And when they sign up, they don’t get the email or whatever. So, having the copy tested, having more than just one person look at it. At a bare minimum have a couple people look at it and just test it out and see, is it working for me? Is it working for me on different devices?
These small steps add up because if you can keep chipping away, you’ll find the weakness. Because sometimes there’s this weakness you didn’t know. It only happened on an iPhone. So it’s just that level of testing.
Bobby: Absolutely. You had mentioned after someone makes a purchase, you can’t just forget about them. You have to make sure that you are continuing to deliver on that promise to them. What are some of the things that you’ve seen clients do really well to make sure that people are happy with their purchase? Don’t refund and have a good experience with the company.
Kim: Well, Bobby, I think I learned something from you actually, because I know in the launch, you worked on all the pages in the launch. And I know you came up with the idea of putting on the thank you page, like once they had signed up for a program, a questionnaire, like a form they could fill out on that page and ask them very specific questions. Which definitely helped reinforce the reason why they purchased in the first place. It confirmed what they most wanted, which was valuable information and it made them feel seen and heard like that was step one. Very good.
I’ll share one story with you, Bobby.
There was one time in a launch where there was a certain refund period. It might’ve been 30 days, probably something like that. And the refund requests started rolling in and it was a slightly alarming rate. And so we thought, well, why do we think they’re doing this? What are they saying?
And a lot of them said, well, I don’t feel like I fit in or I don’t know, I haven’t gotten into the content or haven’t even started. I feel like I’m going to fall behind all the stuff. So we came up with this infamous idea to write this email we sent from our system to all the members.
And this this launch happened to be thousands of people who bought. This email that sounded like it was coming from one person who just said, Hey, how are you doing? I just want to check in with you. I know it can be overwhelming. I’m your friend. I’ve been in the program for a few years. It’s a wonderful program and I can help you. I want to hear from you. So just reply back to this email. Let me know you got it because sometimes I know emails don’t land in the inbox.
This is our fatal mistake. We got hundreds and hundreds of responses, but it stopped the refund. And people literally said, I was going to ask for a refund and now I’m not going to, like it stopped the flow. And we replied. It was me and a couple other high level team members. We were just typing until our fingers were raw, replying back to every single person. And that stopped it and it saved a lot of losses. So now that person has made that part of their whole campaign that it drips out to the people who are joining. So that this email is still going out. It doesn’t say just reply back anymore. But it has some other way of them getting in touch and they still feel seen and heard. And it doesn’t do it in a mass crazy thing.
Bobby: I love that story. Accidentally a crazy response, having to respond to all those emails, but it sounds like you saved a bunch of sales. And found a better way to do it long term
Kim: Right. Yeah, it was an infamous moment for us, but we felt good, right? You don’t know what’s going to happen. You come up with an idea. You don’t know if it’s going to be crickets or what, so we were happy to get that response, even though it meant a lot of work.
Bobby: For sure. Were there any other unexpected moments or lessons that you learned in the craziness of a launch?
Kim: I mean, you’ve been behind so many launches as well you know you just don’t know what can happen. I think it’s worth coming up with plans. Or come up with an idea and say, Hey, we’re going to try this thing. I know for that same client, this client has launched the same program year after year, after year clients enroll year after year, after year, it’s not like a one and done.
So how do you keep those people active? And I came up with an idea. I’m like, Hey, well, what about if we reach out to those people, the alumni who haven’t signed up and we give them this really great offer, it was like some super low payment plan. And everyone was unanimous. That’s a genius idea. Let’s go do it. So we put all the pieces in place, we sent it out like, no, that was total crickets. That was just like, was so sad. We’re like, okay, well, but you don’t know until you try it. So just being flexible is one thing that you that you have to be especially with webinars if you’re doing live webinars.
You don’t know who’s going to come on a webinar and ask some crazy question. You just have to be ready to roll with it. You have to be ready to roll with whatever happens and not let it get you in a panic.
I think business owners, the clients, and I totally understand it when something goes wrong, they can get hyper focused on whose fault is it. Whose fault is it? How did this happen? And my mind always goes to how do we fix it? We need to fix it now. You can’t get into blaming mode, it’s just not going to serve the launch. Maybe later on, we can kind of really look back into, Oh, wow. That’s what broke down. But it’s just a tiny mindset shift.
Bobby: Yeah, I agree with you there. I think launches are so complex and any complex system is going to have breaking points somewhere and no one, no matter how good they are at their job or at how skilled they are, is going to catch everything. So I completely agree. No blame game.
Kim: And things happen that are beyond your control as well. And you have to have people who are solution oriented.
I remember one launch it was like, cart close week and the system that they were using wouldn’t send emails out. Like it just, for some reason, I forget exactly why this happened, but the system got bogged down. The emails were going out, but so ridiculously slowly. And the worst part, it was like a program start day. So they needed to get the emails out, not to just the people that were still on the fence. But also the people who had already paid for it and needed information like get to this session.
So between me and the team, we came up with like all these different ways because, well, one of them has to work, right? So, yeah, but it feels good if you’ve got multiple people thinking in that way, then it’s not as exhausting because something will go wrong. Andagain, it’s not like anyone’s fault. It’s just tech stuff.
Bobby: Gotta love tech
Kim: Yeah, exactly.
Bobby: I would love to shift just a little bit. So you went through a transition, you were doing a lot of launch management, marketing management for some big names. And then you had this opportunity to do your own thing. And I think it’s such a unique opportunity when you start a business and start a new initiative where you get to take what you liked from the other things, maybe put in your own spin on things.
So when you thought about transitioning and doing your own thing, what did you take away, what did you want to make sure that you included as part of your business, what things did you maybe shy away from?
Kim: I knew I definitely wanted to build into my own business like a community aspect. Like a membership site, that’s something that I’ve always been drawn to groups of people.
That’s something I built that that’s always been very appealing to me. And the part that I wasn’t sure I wanted to take on is the the whole complex affiliate launch.
Like it is something to grow into. It’s not something necessarily to start with. So I’m happy not to be doing that. And I’m happy to just do one off partnerships. Just like scaling back and knowing I haven’t taken it off the table, but when I’m ready for it, when it sounds like it’s something fun, that’s when I’ll do it.
Bobby: Absolutely. When you put together your first offer in your first program, what was that process like? How did you take the lessons you’ve learned over the years from other clients and bring them into your business?
Kim: I gotta say, it’s a lot easier to do it for other people than it is to do for yourself. Isn’t that right? That’s why we, that’s why people hire us because it’s hard for them to do it for themselves. So I struggled quite a bit. I’ll be honest. I struggle with finding my voice. I was so used to writing copy for other people.
I didn’t really know what it was like to write for myself. So that’s kind of been a process. I’ve had conversations with past clients and I’m like, Oh my God, it’s so hard to put yourself out there. And they’re like, yeah, yeah, you get it now.
So, you know, one sense, it’s a great opportunity. This is a mindset that I know I can get into is right versus wrong. I will get into, I got to get it right.
If I don’t get it right, then it’s wrong. And I don’t know why I get in that mindset for myself, but not for clients. But it’s something I’ve definitely noticed. So it makes me put the brakes on a lot of times. Like, well, I don’t know if that’s the right offer. Should I build that funnel? It might not be the right offer.
I would tell a client, just try it. Let’s try this one offer and see what happens. So I think I slowed myself down quite a bit. I put up a lot of blocks just to put that first funnel up for sure. Because I had to get it right, and I felt like the pressure was on, like I’ve worked for clients and done it for them. So they’re like, well, surely, your funnel is going to be the most awesome funnel ever.
That’s intimidating. Yeah, exactly.
Bobby: I really resonate with that. I’ve never really put it that way to myself, but now that I’ve been doing more for my own business and my own efforts, it’s so true. It’s like, is this right? Is this going to be the correct way to do it? Is this perfect? And it’s so funny because that’s not how marketing works at all ever.
Kim: Right. I know.
It’s so much pressure. And that’s one of the things that I actually enjoy about marketing, to be honest. It’s like split testing. It’s really fun. And you know it’s not going to be perfect.
You’re just going to try to beat that variation and beat the next one and beat the next one. So it’s so funny that we get in our own way because it feels like a lot’s at stake. It feels like it’s me putting myself out there. That’s scary. So now I have a lot more compassion for those other people who maybe their funnels weren’t the most beautiful funnels but they were doing the best they could.
Absolutely. I had said we could do some brainstorming about your marketing if you want. Yeah, I’m happy to talk to you about where I’m at right now with my offer. And if you have ideas, I would love to hear them for sure.
Bobby: So talk me through what you’ve got going on.
Kim: I’m doing a little bit of a rebrand, which is more of a course correction than a total rebrand. So I work with clients. In the past, my current web page doesn’t really define those clients very well. I do coaching for clients. I make sure that they’re getting into action and transformation. All this good stuff, right? A lot of touchy feely stuff in there, but I never really said who those people were. And now I’m very clear thatmy opportunity is I do enjoy working with entrepreneurs. I do. There are a certain breed of people that they have a certain mindset and a certain outlook at life. And I love that energy. But I also want to work specifically with what I call spiritual entrepreneurs. It’s more the people who might identify as healers, right? Or energy workers, things like that. That’s the world I want to work with because I believe in that type of work.
And I know that they are the most heart centered, sweetest people. They just want to help other people heal. Like they just want to make the world a better place.So I know that if I’m helping them be more visible, that’s their biggest Achilles heel is being visible.
If I can help them be more visible, then they’re going to get more clients. And they’re going to help more people and it’s all going to ripple out. I’ve gotten very clear thatthat’s the path I want to walk and that they have their own little hero’s journey and that they’re the person on that path and we’re going to work together to do it.
Bobby: I love that you’ve gotten more focused. That’s one of the hardest things, right? When you start a business. Who do I want to work for?
Kim: Right. I’ll work for anybody. Yeah.
Bobby: Actually there’s a lot of people
Kim: Yeah.
Bobby: work for. Okay, interesting. So with your rebrand, what are you doing or what do you think you want to be doing to go where those people are and bring them into your world?
Kim: I do have clients and actually easiest way to get them is actually to do, which isn’t to me sustainable and see, this is where I start to hear the voices in my head. The voices will tell you that’s not going to work. That’s not sustainable. You can’t leverage that.
So I just heard it. My mind just said, yeah, you can’t sustain that, is doing actual reach out. Like personal outreach to certain people in social media, like sending them a direct message, things like that. So identifying those people and then reaching out to them. That’s actually worked and it’s worked very well, even though it’s a little scary, you know, it’s kind of a scary thing to do.
But this market of mine, they often do feel like they’re not understood or seen and heard. So this is why I think it’s working right now. If somebody actually reaches out to them and has that same language, they do feel seen and heard and it makes them feel instant rapport. But yeah, my brain does say, how are you going to sustain that? Because I’ve had affiliates do some mailings and stuff, and that just hasn’t worked as well. My languaging probably wasn’t on par, so I’ll take responsibility for that.
Bobby: I totally hear that like, well, if I can’t do this forever, should I do it today? It’s like, whoa, whoa,
Kim: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Bobby: Let’s worry about that later.
Kim: At how many ways you could put the brakes on your own business. Right. So many ways,
Bobby: It’s so true. So I’m no mindset expert by any means, but I wonder if there’s a way where you could fulfill the part that needs you to make it scalable, that needs you to make it sustainable. Where for like, okay, for X amount of time, I’m going to do the reach out thing.
Three months, six months, whatever. But then you have a thing where you’re also gathering their language from those conversations and you’re putting it in a master document. And so you go, okay, I am making it sustainable because I’m getting all that language that I will then use on all of my pages.
Kim: Right. Yes. I love that. I think that’s exactly right. And
Bobby:
Kim: on the side, I am building a new funnel. So I’m building what I call the spiritual entrepreneurs blueprint. That’s going to be a funnel on my web page that they can sign up for that blueprint.
And then in that follow up sequence, the call to action is going to be to get on a free call. Let’s go over your blueprint together and then from there enroll them into whatever I’m doing. Right now I’m doing one on ones, but I’m going to start groups because I love working with groups.
That’s where I’m going to scale, I guess, so maybe doing things simultaneously and I think you’re right, do this now, like it’s working, why would you stop doing that. And then you’re building this funnel on the side and once this one’s converting well then you can maybe turn off this faucet and turn up this one right.
Bobby: Absolutely. Like it’s so smart that you have both going at the same time so that you can shift over to one that’s a little bit more leveraged. For the spiritual entrepreneurs blueprint. One thing that you had mentioned, that’s really interesting. You noticed that spiritual entrepreneurs in particular, what resonates with them is visibility. Do they use that word?
Kim: They don’t speak it. I don’t think. But I think they understand. It strikes a chord with them. Especially if they kind of skate along the lines of being hobbyists. They’re really not making enough money from their business to say it’s a full time thing. Maybe they’ve got a side job. They think that it’s because they’re not visible. Like people don’t see them. So they’re trying to do TikTok or whatever. And they’re not getting enough views
and just thinking the algorithms will send them people, people will find them.They’re just like, well, I just need more people to see my videos. I just need more people to like my stuff or I need more stuff. That’s kind of what they’re thinking. A lot of them, they don’t even understand about growing a list. They just try to get people from social media to an enrollment call and book it.
That’s why I feel like, yeah, I can help them because to me, it’s easy. It’s easy and fun to build funnels for other people.
Bobby: So your ideal clients is the hobbyist level of spiritual entrepreneurs.
Kim: That’s kind of where they’re at. Yeah.
Bobby: So they probably don’t view themselves quite as business owners like a business coach would.
Kim: I would say correct. I think they’re kind of aspirational business owners.
Bobby: Okay. So my first thought when you said spiritual entrepreneurs blueprint was I wonder if you could just dial it in one layer more specific. So it’s a visibility blueprint. Because if that’s the one thing that they really focusing on, it’s like, I just need visibility. Everything else will take care of itself.
Kim: Yeah, I like that.
Bobby: Because if they don’t see themselves as a business owner, like if that messaging doesn’t connect, then just having a blueprint for being an entrepreneur might not be as appealing as I really just need the visibility piece.
Kim: Yeah. No, you’re right. You’re totally right. And I think even for some of them, they don’t identify as entrepreneurs, like you said, and a blueprint might sound scary, like a blueprint might be like, wait a minute. What am I building? Maybe I’m not ready for that. I think they need to start small for sure. Maybe a visibility checklist, even I think would be, would be not intimidating, like appealing and not scary.
Bobby: Yeah, absolutely.
So yeah, I definitely think there are things that you could do to tweak the specific words and languaging and things like that. But I think you’re definitely onto something where it’s close. It’s just like, how could we get it just a little bit closer to what they’re looking for? And now that you know the specific words they use to describe themselves, like healer or whatever. Actually bringing that in. So if it’s a visibility checklist for healers, blank and blank.
Kim: Yeah, I like that. Yeah, see, it’s so funny. It’s so damn hard to do it for yourself.
Bobby: It really is. It really is.
Kim: I think we get too attached for some reason, like there’s some weird attachment. And again, for me, it’s the right or wrong thing. Because I do think about like, What would I say to a client, you know, like, I’d be like needs to be more specific.
That’s genius though. I really love that. I’m glad I haven’t created it yet.
Bobby: Was there anything else around your funnel or anything you wanted to brainstorm?
Kim: What are you seeing as far as followup sequences? Like, what is the length of the more effective follow up sequences. I know some get crazy long. Are you seeing that short ones are more effective or I guess it just depends.
Bobby: Yeah, the classic marketer response of it depends.
What are the goals of the business,and your market.Some markets are more responsive to a quick offer where other markets, you can’t go in too intensely.
Obviously like the B2B space, it’s much easier to have a seven day sequence where you make an offer at the end versus others where you have to be a lot more cognizant of what are they seeing in their inbox. I’m subscribed to, you know, 20 different business emails. So I’m used to offers, offers, offers, offers, but people in the consumer space aren’t necessarily, or they, they see that as spam.
Kim: True. True. Well, I’ll share a crazy story with you for another business. For some reason, this client thought their audience needed more nurture. We don’t want to sell to them too soon. They need more nurture. And I’m like, I disagree. I think we need to put the offer in front of them earlier.
Okay. Let’s split test it. So we built the two campaigns and split tested. And I think we did something crazy. I’m fairly certain we nurtured them for six months. Six months before putting an offer out. I think they’ve got an initial sequence, but then if they didn’t buy from there, we did a six month nurture sequence until we put another offer in front of them. And then we had the other one that was much shorter and then we were putting offers in front of them on a more regular basis. And the people who had the nurture their open rates were fairly good because the content was good. But when it came time to finally buy, they never bought anything. I mean, we train them not to buy, we train them not to expect offers.
And the people who are trained to see offers on a more regular basis, they were the ones who would buy.So, if you can help them and you can explain it very well, why they should get this thing. They want it. It’s not like they don’t want it. It’s more on us, and our messaging. It’s really making it clear what they should do.
Bobby: For the record, I will say don’t wait six months.
Kim: Right. I’m pretty sure it was six months. I mean, that sounds crazy to me, but I’m fairly certain that’s what we did. And that client was so, so sure, like, oh, we’re going to see after six months, this is totally going to rock it out of the park. And I’m like, okay.
Bobby: Yeah. And I think there is a distinction to be made between we are content creators who are nonprofit, and it seems like we don’t have anything for sale and having content that alludes to the things that you do have for sale. So you’re both educating them on a topic, but also educating them and that you are a business with value that you can offer to them. So you don’t have to constantly be pitching, but people should be aware that you’re a business with offers that they can buy and get a value from.
Kim: Yeah. That’s a huge distinction. I mean, you’re in a relationship with them. If they’re going to stick around for six months, or longer, you’re in some kind of relationship with them and they need to know all the different things, like why they want to be in your world. And part of that might be, Hey, you know what? Someday I want to go to that live event or whatever. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I’ve been on people’s lists for years. I remember the first mentor I hired at a high level, like a mastermind level. I was on that guy’s list for years and it took years before I got to that point. But I knew it was there. I knew that offer was there and maybe someday I would do it. Sometimes it takes us longer. That’s why I think it’s hard with the whole list hygiene, because I for sure didn’t open all of the emails from that business. There’s probably months where I didn’t open emails at all. So then I was cut off the list that I wouldn’t have been able to get back in there. So it’s tough. It’s really hard.
Bobby: Absolutely.
Kim: We don’t need to get into a list hygiene conversation.
Bobby: All good. Yeah. Where can people find you online and where can they go to learn more about you and get on your list and things like that.
Kim: So my website is KimNishida.com. That’s my name. And like I’m in social all the different platforms. Luckily, right now, there’s mostly only me with my name. So that makes it kind of easy.
Bobby: And then is there any final notes or any messages you want to leave with the listener?
Kim: I hope this has been beneficial. Like, even for me, it’s been beneficial. Like, just the eye opening, Oh, yeah, I’m the one putting the brakes on and having compassion for myself and being like, Oh, yeah, I’m doing that thing. I think it’s so common to do. So if it’s something you’re doing in your business, have compassion for yourself. And know you can move on past that it’s, I do feel that connection.It’s interesting being in this position for sure, having worked for other people and doing marketing for them. And then now in the position of marketing for myself. Doing it all yourself is hard. You can’t put yourself in this little bubble and then hope I put myself out there in the outside world someday when it’s fully formed and ready. Get other eyeballs on it, get in a mastermind group or whatever, get other people, hire them on, have them look at your stuff because that’s the most valuable thing.
Such a great episode!