¶ Transforming a Travel Blogging Business
I felt burnt out . I felt you know , there are so many times I just wanted to throw the towel in . But then I would get an email from a student saying , hey , I just joined Mediavine . Or hey , I just 10xed my affiliate income in four months . And I'm like , oh my gosh , this is so cool and I show Mike .
Every time I get one of those emails and most of the time I start crying because I just love that and it wouldn't have it . I wouldn't continue with the business if I wasn't in the right headspace and that was the biggest problem . The business was my life .
All right , what's up , my friend , welcome to episode number 612 here in the Art of Online Business podcast . I'm Rick , your host , and I've been getting a lot of requests recently for more case studies here in the show and from a lot of people and I was like , wait a minute . I always do case studies here in the podcast .
And then I went back and looked at past episodes and I was like , oh , it's been a little while and that's not been intentional . I love sharing case studies with you , so I have a whole bunch of case studies lined up for you over the next few months here , well and beyond . But I want to start off today with Laura Peters .
She and her husband , mike , run a business from the website called Mike and Laura travel dot com and they have an online course called scale your travel blog . So , as you might imagine from that name , they help travel bloggers create and grow a thriving business from travel blogging and they launched this course scale your travel blog in January of 2021 .
And they're doing extremely well with it . They've done several hundred thousand dollars from this course and they sell this course through weekly webinars , weekly live webinars . It's a 1997 , I think it's $2,000 course and cold traffic , cold traffic . Check this out . Laura converts on those webinars at about 18% cold traffic to a $2,000 offer weekly webinars .
She's done a lot of webinars and so we're going to dive into all that here today . Basically , I want you to listen to the conversation around how many hours and what the business was doing to Laura not too long ago . I remember my first conversation with Laura a few months ago before she joined accelerator .
She said Rick , I'm doing 80 hours a week in my business as the CEO . I'm working 80 hours a week , basically have no personal life . The laptop's always open or I'm getting notifications or what have you . And I could just see the pain and frustration or eyes and like that's why I do what I do .
And when she and Mike joined us in Las Vegas for our accelerator retreat a few weeks ago , she said Rick , I'm down to 50 hours a week . I've already cut 30 hours a week off of my work week .
May was our biggest month that we've ever had in terms of revenue high five figures and it was a month that she worked the least amount of hours that she has in forever . So you're going to hear Laura's story here today . So , without further ado , let's go hang out with Laura Peters . Welcome to the show .
I am so excited to have you on and chat about yours and Mike's business , and I know quite a few of the details of the business , being that you're an accelerator , and I really want to have you and I want you to share what your business is and the lifestyle that you all have created for yourselves , and I think that some of the early struggles that you've
had in the business are very , very relatable to so many people , and we'll get into that here in just a minute . So why don't we start there ? Why don't you tell us what you and Mike do in the business and sort of what is the lifestyle that you've created for yourselves ?
Yeah , absolutely Well , first , thank you for having us again Super excited to be here .
¶ Laura's Travel Blog and Coaching Program
But , yeah , my name is Laura . I'm the owner and author , along with Mike , of Mike and Laura Travel , which is our travel blog . We started and grew that in 2014 .
I didn't know him then , but I started it and it went really poorly for a long time until I realized that I could just use SEO to grow our website , and so we saw our travel blog grow really quickly and we started earning money through ads and affiliate marketing and I thought , wow , I feel like more people should know about this and fewer people should have
to go through what I had to go through to get to where we were , and so I created Skill , your Travel Blog , and it's a consultant program that helps where we help other people , other travel bloggers , grow and make money from their websites by using SEO , affiliate marketing and email marketing .
That's so cool , and you said something there that is it's a good example of and I'm going to toot my own horn for a second , but it's a good example of the type of people that I tend to attract .
As you said , I was seeing a lot of success here with SEO and driving and growing my blog and creating revenue from ads and affiliate , and you were like holy cow . I feel like other people should know how to do this . You very easily could have said I found something really good here . I'm just going to keep doing more of it .
I'm not going to tell anybody . So you came from this abundance of mindsets like holy cow . This is really working and it's I've kind of I'm onto something here . I want to show others how to do the same .
Yeah .
Yeah .
It was hard to find the information out there . It really really was , and a lot of it's bad advice , and so I remember telling myself I'm going to figure this out , and when I do I'll tell everyone I know . So here's Skill , your Travel Blog .
So it was . When did you create the course itself ? Skill your Travel Blog .
I launched it in January of 2021 . Was the very first time we sold it to anybody and we had like maybe seven people or maybe no , it was less than that . Like no , it was about seven people because at the time we were charging a lot . It was just the course .
We didn't realize how important the coaching part was , and so at the time we we sold it to like seven or seven to 10 people and it was it's crazy . It was weird Like people bought it . Of course , it's all incredibly valuable information , so I had no reason not to feel secure in selling it , but it was just a weird thing Like people want to know this .
This is great .
Now was there . You started it in 2014, . Right , that was the . That was when you started and you didn't know , right , the blog and didn't know what was the . What was the name of the business ? Yeah , We'll call it . I almost said BM Before Mike . Before Mike yeah , what was the name of it ? What was the name of the business before Mike ?
So it was just it's actually really bad and it's so embarrassing to talk about . But it was called Bella's Brews , bon Bayage because I thought , oh , alliteration , super cool , and I thought people are going to love that . I'm a girl , I like beer and I like to travel . None of what I wrote was actually related to that name .
It was really silly and I tried so hard . I mean , every day I would wake up , I would look at , like , my Google analytics to see like , are people coming to my website ? This is so cool . And no one did for a very long time and I thought it was because I was oh , I'm not writing the right stuff , and it was just the strategies were off , so far off .
And yeah , there's actual strategy behind it and it took a while to figure it out , but it was . It was . It's cool to show other people like I see what you're doing . I did that for a very long time . Let me show you the easier way . This is actually how you do it .
So you launch it in January of a year and a half ago not too long ago when recording this , recording this in June of 2022 . You got , we say , seven or eight people in that first . Yeah .
Yeah , I remember actually one of the students she's still in our course and she's still active on . She ended up upgrading to like the coaching portion of it too . But I remember I was .
It was after our first webinar and we were sitting there hoping that people would take us up on our offer and one girl was emailing me and she said , okay , this is a really scary move for me , you know , for it was 400 bucks at the time . That's a lot , it is a lot of money for a lot of people .
And she said I want to make sure you're going to go live , I want to make sure you do this for us , this , this , this , this , this this . And I sat there and I just said , yes , yes , yes , yes , I will , I will . I will , because I had so much great info to share with them , but I didn't know how to make them trust me .
I mean , yes , we've done it before , but who am I to be talking about ? That you know . And so I was pretty desperate , like , please take us up on our offer . And now it's definitely not bad . It's more along the lines of hey , if this is a right program for you , I'll tell you . If it's not , I'm , I'm not also telling you .
So you had imposter syndrome , which is we all . We all have it , you know . You said who am I to be ?
Who am I to be teaching this stuff , even though for several years you'd been doing it yourself not well at first , but figuring it out and and like , hey , yeah , I know how to do this , but yet you're still like who might have been teaching this stuff ?
Yeah , we were making six figures from our travel blog and I still and and we had started another site that was also making money . But I still was like who am I , who am I to be doing this ? This sounds so silly .
I remember , um , I obviously binge like your podcast and Amy's podcast , and and she just said , like make sure you go live and just do it , like throw yourself out there . And so I did and I was absolutely terrified .
I remember like I had a drink of beer before I went live to like calm my nerves and like I just felt so silly being on camera , like who , who was I to say anything ? But now our students get the results and it's the same as what we went through and it's like this is so cool , this works .
So when you say go live , do you mean like at the time you're talking like Facebook live , or are you talking about doing a live webinar ?
It was a Facebook live , but the webinars were also terrifying . Like I would get off of a webinar and have to like go change my clothes because I was so sweaty and like freaked out and I was so afraid . And I still get afraid or get nervous about um , going on a webinar and having like someone be mean , like in the comments .
It's still to this day , I'm still terrified of it , but it's a lot less than what it was before .
So I mean you've made it .
Yeah , yeah . I feel , like it yeah .
I remember . I remember uh , I don't remember what a year it was , but it was years ago . I want to say it was like I don't know year one of the maybe a year and a half into my business , back in like 2015 or something like that .
I was in , um , I was in an airport and I want to say I was in I don't know why this is coming to my mind , but maybe in Phoenix or something like like flying through . I was in an airport and I remember getting a troll comment like really nasty and I was like as I was upset for a minute , but then I was like holy cow , I've made it .
Totally . I actually start to feel that too and honestly , a lot of times I see those people and I'll see them doing it To other entrepreneurs and I don't look at the entrepreneur negatively , I just look at that person negatively .
So I feel like maybe more people also feel that way and see those trolls as actual trolls , and it just I think that what really irritates me is because I Know that our program , we , I do literally everything I possibly can to help Every single one of our students succeed . Like that is my top priority .
Yeah , the money is great it really is but if people aren't getting results , then what's the point ? So and I just think about that when I see those other people being mean and I'm like you know what our Student just made 20 grand for in a month from her travel blog .
So I guess I'm not really , I don't really care what you say right , yeah , do you respond to them ?
I ?
Do ? I used to try and ignore them , but now I respond to them .
I Try to explain different things to them , like how we don't use social media and here's why , but they still doesn't really Click because people don't understand , like digital businesses and so yeah yeah , yeah , I try to respond , I do it nicely , but yeah , it's threatening to so many people because they feel like it's too good to be true .
Yeah you know , yeah and yeah , I don't know , just like quick side , like when it comes to trolls , when it comes to People emailing nasty things for like no reason whatsoever .
I have found that number one , the whole thing about waiting until you kind of come off Unless it's in the moment of like you're on a webinar or something like that that that works very well , but you respond and Just like I know one thing I love to do is like , hey , thank you so much for taking time out of your day to leave this comment .
I super appreciate it . Yeah and they're either going to not respond or they will respond and they're like oh my god , this actually gets read , you know . And then their story completely changed at that point .
Totally , yeah , killing him with kindness . It's funny that you said like this is too good to be true , because it literally it was like ding , ding , ding , because we just got a , an email from another student who said , like I Feel like this is too good to be true , where we are getting , you know , over 60,000 people to our site each month .
We're making five grand a month from this and it's just a side hobby . Me and my husband , we can't believe this is actually happening and we're waiting for it to like crumble beneath our feet , but for now , this is awesome and so it's totally reasonable for people to think like this is too good to be true .
But when you really sit down and look at it and you see that SEO is just , it's like it's a game , then it's totally possible . And so , yeah , I think it's reasonable for people to think that it's just not reasonable to like Be mean .
So yeah , exactly .
Yeah .
¶ Launch Strategy for Online Course Sales
So you launch this year and a half ago . Seven to eight people in your first round , was it ? Was it sort of open clothes sort of thing , or was it People ? It was evergreen , people could buy it all the time . What was sort of the , the model at that point ?
Yeah , so I I took DCA in September of 2020 and I launched like our first . We had a first course and it was for , like online ESL teachers . Obviously , they shut that down , so you know , china did and so not really relevant anymore .
So I thought , you know , I could just do this for travel blogging and I basically followed exactly what she told me , exactly what Amy said .
I just did that Open my course for the first time January like 17th 2021 , and then I closed it I think it was like eight days later , but it was an open close and then I launched again in April , july , I believe it was September , and then November was a big one and then it kind of went from there just like big .
So yeah , so at what point Did you realize , like , oh my god , like this program here we really have a big revenue generator on our hands . You just , you just rattled off a whole bunch of launches that you did .
Yeah .
I what point did you realize that ?
um , I think I just kept going because there were so many People saying like , oh , your first launch , you might not make any money . Well , we made seven thousand dollars . And I was like , oh my gosh , like I need to keep doing this because other people have said their first launch is obviously the lowest .
So if I just keep going , people are liking what I'm giving them . They think it is incredibly high quality . So let's just keep going , pour everything into this . I actually kind of stopped blogging . I blog , maybe post one blog post a month , but it got to be where there was so many people who wanted to get in that that I had to .
At the time this was silly , but I was like turning people away when our doors were closed , I was like , oh , I don't , I don't think I'm supposed to allow you in , but you can get it in the next one . And that's when it kind of dawned on me like , hey , we have a .
We have people knocking on our door like trying to get into our program because they're hearing such great things , and so that's when I kind of realized like , wow , this is pretty cool . Of course , we've gone through our fair share of roller coaster moments .
I mean truly like panic attacks and like sad crying , like I've told you before , but every time we launch it just surprises me every time .
So so your Launching well , you're , you're , we'll call it your selling schedule . Right now it's pretty intense . Tell people about that .
Yes and no , um , I so right now , I love this answer .
Love that you answered that way . Okay , go on .
So , um , right now we are doing weekly webinars . So I was doing once every three months back in 2021 and then I thought , what , if I just did this every month , then we would be making like 20 grand a month , like , why don't I just do that ? So I tried it once in September of 2021 and I Tried to do it like a weekly webinar .
I did it once and it flopped , and so I was like , ah , I can't do that anymore , didn't work . I mean , my , my people need more time to trust me . They need more time to see what we have to offer , and so I didn't for a while . In January of 2022 , this year , I Did our last like big launch , and it went really well .
We did like 40,000 in January or something like that . But then I was . It might have been you , but maybe not . Maybe I'm thinking of someone else , but you . Someone was talking about how they did a weekly webinar for like an entire year . Mm-hmm , was that you ?
Yeah , I did that back in 2015 .
Okay , that's what it was . I was listening to that episode and I thought my live launches because I did go evergreen in January . After that big launch , I tried to go evergreen and it worked . It just Didn't work as well as the live and so I thought , why would I do a , an automated that converted at 2% , when I could do a live that converts at 18% ?
And so I Thought , what's one hour of my week to do a live ? I love talking about SEO and affiliate marketing . It's literally I'm a geek . But I thought what's the big deal of one hour if it means 5000 extra bucks a week ? And so I just Went for it and we've been doing that since February and we've got our numbers down pretty like .
They're very strong numbers and every time it's almost every week I say to myself this week's gonna be different , no one's gonna buy , and every single week it it . People see the value in it and join us , and so I just have to learn to trust the numbers because they're there .
But the weekly webinars is it's really helping me to hone in on my webinar pitch and make me feel more comfortable . Before I felt so awkward , like I felt great talking about SEO and affiliate marketing . I could do it . I do it in my sleep sometimes , mike's , like you were talking in your sleep last night about SEO .
When I would get on the webinar , that was great . For the first 45 minutes I would teach and it really was great stuff , but as soon as that last 15 minutes , 20 minutes , whatever it was , came to sell , I Felt awkward . I just felt awkward .
Yeah , most people do .
Yeah , and now Especially for like a higher ticket item , I wouldn't say we're like super high ticket , but $2,000 is a lot to ask for and it's still like awkward . Obviously , we we definitely live up to what we are offering , but being able to do that repetitively , week after week after week , is so .
It just helped my confidence level by about a thousand and I realized , like the , the webinars where I do the absolute best , like we get the best results , best conversion rates , and stuff like that are the webinars where I feel completely relaxed and I Can stutter and I can say , um , and I don't have to be this perfect person sitting in front of a camera .
I'm sitting here hanging out with people teaching them about travel blogging . Oh , by the way , if you want to be a travel blogger , I'll just show you the quick way to do it . So it's , it's helped a lot .
So how many webinars have you done ?
It's a good question . I actually was looking earlier today and I believe because we've been back and forth between Demio and webinar jam Um , I can actually look right now . It says since um , let's see , since February , since January , end of January , beginning of February , I've done 28 .
So I used to do two per week and then I cut it down and I thought what if we just did it once per week and then send a replay and it's , we've seen the same numbers .
So so I want to break this down because and I want to unpack that a little bit you said something there because everybody , everybody , who , especially who , applies for accelerator , they all want to evergreen in some way . They want to get off the launch cycle , which I totally get .
And in January you said like , oh yeah , like I want to evergreen this because I've gotten a pretty gotten it down pretty well . Now , in January was it a $2,000 offer .
At that point too , it switched to a $2,000 offer . It was a thousand at the time , um , but we upped it because we added a lot to the coaching program .
Obviously , you've heard it and you're like so to grand , at that point you were gonna , you was like , alright , let's try it , let's try evergreening it , and you were getting about a 2% Conversion , one to two percent one point five . Yeah , most people would be like wait on cold traffic . A $2,000 offer on evergreen at two percent Pretty good .
Yeah , how long did you allow ? How long did you do the evergreen before ? Like you know what , I'm gonna go back to live and why not try this weekly ?
I did it for about a month and again , it did work . And actually we might have been running the evergreen at the same time that we were doing some live webinars as well , just to kind of compare them and see how they were both doing . And I finally , I don't know I was looking at our numbers and I Don't know .
For me it felt more Like Personal , it felt like I could really connect with people if I was live , and I appreciate when people are live and I can ask them Questions and things like that .
I think one of them and this is again another troll , but we had somebody like email us super angry that it wasn't live and how I Deceived them , even though it said recorded , whatever . But it still made me think like , okay , so people do really enjoy like a live Interaction between humans .
What better way to grow trust and that's another thing we talked about in travel blogging is grow your Trust with people . I mean email them , get to talk to them and and what better way to really get to know your audience and see their questions every single week ?
But to do this , this live webinar , and so I saw the you know 1.5 2% conversion rate with our evergreen , but it felt better to do the lives . It felt like I could connect better and again , like that percentage of Convert , like the conversion , it doesn't .
I was like how could I give up that when I know we could be making a lot more and getting more people into our program and helping more people If I were simply just to take one hour out of my week to go live . And everything else is automated and so it doesn't really affect me .
I don't have to go in and send all these emails and and worry about , oh my gosh , this person , me , it's this or that , and they want the replay and all it's . It's all automated and so all I have to do is show up for one an hour and a half max and then yeah .
So , what does that automation Look like ? And so that's why I said I love that you answered yes and no , because I said you know you've got a pretty elaborate way of yours of selling and because you're doing it weekly . Yeah and you're like yeah , it is elaborate , but at the same time it's the way you have it , you know set up and systematized .
Right now it just you , just like you just said , you just show up and you know Deliver and and answer questions or so for about 90 minutes or so . So what does that automation look like ?
Yeah , do you mean like the emails that go out and what , how people sign up and all that ?
yeah , because , people , because when I , when I was doing weekly webinars this was seven years ago , it was I was able to set it up fairly automated , where all I had to do was going , you know , and we were running traffic to it , running ads to it . All I had to do is go in there and change the date on the landing page . Yep , and that was it .
How , how are you , like , what is what is set up in terms of automation ? You know , when do you , like , do you make a change on landing page ? Let's you know ? I'd love to kind of break that down .
Yeah , so we run ads . We spend about 1200 bucks a week on ads . Okay yeah , and they almost I'm pretty sure all of them right now go directly to our webinar , to further registration page . I think maybe a small portion is Allocated to our freebie opt-in , but we see better conversions from just the Right to the master class .
So they sign up and they will receive I believe it's three emails and one is like the day before and then to the day of the webinar . They also get some notifications from our webinar service , so they might get like five notifications hey , don't miss this , don't miss this , don't miss this .
And honestly , that's a place where I do want to maybe look into a bit more . Just because our Showup rate isn't you've said it's okay , it's not bad at all , but for me I'm used to like 35% show up rate for for at least our warm audience . So for the cold audience , sure , show up rate . It's hard for me to what is your show up rate again ?
It's like 19 or 20% or something like that . Okay , sometimes 15 yeah , so they get those emails if they show up . We have about , again , 2015 to 20% show up rate .
We have all of our I mean almost all of the people that attend the webinar will stay to the end , because we offer a freebie at the end if they stay , which almost everyone wants and then , after the webinar , I share with them a link that they can join our program .
I also share with them a calendar link where , if they want to hop on a call with me for two days and ask me a few questions about our program , then we do that and we convert a like 95% for anyone who signs up for a call with us , and so that's why I continue to do it and , honestly , like $2,000 is a lot , and so just having that peace of mind
and getting that one-on-one time with somebody , it makes people feel a lot better . I've had people say I went to purchase if I didn't have this call , so let me just clarify that real quick , laura . So you on your webinar .
You say , hey , here's the link to go join the program and , pretty much in the same breath , in on the same slide . If you will , you're letting people know , or you can Go to this link here and schedule a call . So I I put up the sales page where they can go read everything by .
¶ Webinar Strategies and Conversion Rates
And then I talk about the price point . I talk about it being $2,000 because a lot of people they shy away from it because they're not going to be able to get that . A lot of people they shy away from it because it's $2,000 , obviously .
But I explain like this is an investment that is going to teach you skills that will make you ten times what you're investing into it . If not , I mean obviously a lot more than ten times . But the power of SEO is crazy . So I explain how , through story , just like how I invested in myself and how it worked .
And because we did , we bought tons and tons of courses and and coaches and things like that to get to where we are now . But then , maybe two slides later , I say if you're still on the fence , I get it . I get it is expensive . So let's hop on a call together , let's talk about if this is the right program for you .
I'll just sit and answer your questions . No pressure , yeah , and so yeah , that's how they do it . And then they can sorry .
No , go ahead , finish that , finish that I was just gonna say so .
Then they can schedule a call with me that weekend , because I do a live webinar , usually Thursday night , sometimes Friday morning , depends on my schedule .
I just need to know a week ahead of time , because we don't allow people to sign up for the weeks outside of the current one , obviously , and so yeah , so sometimes I change it from Thursday night to Friday morning , but then I allow people to schedule like a 10 minute chat with me over the weekend .
It's just a couple , you know , it's usually like five , and from there Then they can they feel more comfortable purchasing . So that's part of the webinar . And Then after they get an email immediately just explaining a bit more about , like the program , thanks for showing up .
And then total , we do , I believe , saturday , sunday , six emails after and the cart is open . So again , I do the webinar Thursday . The cart stays open for that cohort until Monday night . So they have what does that ? Four or five , four days to decide and During the the four or five days then we send them six emails just to remind them .
Your conversion rate , you said is about 18% . Is this primarily you're running ads ? Is primarily coal traffic ?
It's crazy .
What's the secret ? You're selling a $2,000 program to coal traffic at an 18% conversion . I Would wanna know .
Majority of the people who purchase say the exact same thing we purchased because you have a coaching portion .
Almost no other courses , at least for travel bloggers , do they have a coaching portion of it , and I think bridging the gap between information and skill is where a lot of people go wrong , and so the coaching really does help them believe they can do it because they can . And so , yeah , we just we also guarantee results .
If you do the work and you use our strategies , you will see results , whether that's traffic , income , anything I mean it's all there you can absolutely grow your yeah . So I think I think that the high conversion rate also Ties back to doing it every single week . It wasn't always that I converted at 18% .
It definitely took time to get to where we are right now .
Now All right , so then then it just starts all over again . At what point do you go in and change the landing page ?
Actually today , so Tuesdays . So they are finished with the sales sequence on Monday night , that they're finished and then they'll be added to our general email list . They're not going to be invited to Skill your Travel Blog , for I would . You know , I do a big launch , maybe every five months , six months , and so they can come back and join .
But Tuesdays I go in and all I do . I don't even change the . I do change the landing page , like the URL , but I don't change anything other than In ConvertKit . Maybe you have a better solution for this , but In ConvertKit I have an automation going and I just change the dates for the automation and that's it . It takes maybe two minutes .
Wait , you changed the URL of the landing page .
No , like the link , so four .
Oh , yes , yes , yes , got you . So what is ? Do you happen to know , kind of like , what your average cost per lead is ? I do , yeah , actually .
I got that all together because I knew you were going to ask me you knew I was going to ask this . And I was like I'm going to look silly if I don't know . But yes , I do know , which is great . So our average cost per lead is about $4 .
So look , and I didn't I actually , I honestly didn't know this , and or I maybe I knew and I forgot . I didn't know what you were going to say . But what I'm hearing you say , laura , is that Facebook and Instagram ads are not dead , especially for webinars , and webinars actually work , because everybody always says webinars are dead .
No one , no one , likes webinars anymore .
Even with cold traffic . It works . Even with cold traffic , it does . It really does .
So you're and you said you're spending about 1200 on ads per week .
Yep .
Yep , okay , so , roughly , my quick math is about 300 people are registering for the webinar . So you're you're averaging , you're also growing your list , like you mentioned , and so , at those kind of numbers after they go through the launch , I'm curious how you feel about , because most people are like , well , wait a minute , like I only had .
You know , quote , unquote . Not , most people are not doing 18% conversion , but they're like wait , my conversion rate was just so so and I made a little bit of money , so my ads weren't really worth it .
¶ ROI and Scaling in Business
And this is something I'm seeing more and more is that the conversation is around what was my immediate ROI ? Right , seo is a perfect example . Seo is the long game .
It is Right , very long game .
And most people aren't patient , whereas you , you all , are bringing in , you know , 1200 ish leads per month for the and not all of them are buying .
But you said but we do a launch every , a big launch every five months or so , and you have to take into account all those people that buy during the large , the big launch , and you know , every five months or so . That came in , yeah , came in via ads three months earlier . Well , there was still a big ROI on that , but it came all these months later .
I'm curious how you all look at that in your business .
Yeah . So ultimately , I would say 90% of our leads have come from Facebook ads . The other 10% is just through SEO on our website .
We just haven't often , but the majority of people who join our program have been around for a while , they've been on our email list , they know who we are , they know what we provide as as far as SEO strategies and affiliate marketing and all that , and it's cool because they will come back . We just did that in June , actually , or no , may ?
May was our absolute biggest month we've ever had and we had our big launch , and so the way I look at it is how much have we made overall from our program ? Deduct maybe 10% of that and then the rest left over is what we've made from Facebook ads .
I think we've put maybe $40,000 into Facebook ads at this point over the past year and a half , but we've made over $300,000 from our program , so I think that's pretty good .
That's really really good . I'm so glad you're bringing this up , because everyone always is all especially . It's like here . This every day is like ads aren't working . Ads aren't working . Well , yeah , ads aren't working like they . They were a year ago or , you know , even several months ago . But you got to know how .
You have to be patient , you have to stay up on what's going on like what's working . You got to be willing to test . What have you found that works so well for you all with your ads ?
I actually have a really great answer for this . Biggest advice don't reinvent the wheel . Look at what other people are doing and do something similar . Don't copy obviously it's unethical but do something similar to what they're doing . So I saw a few people posting Facebook ads and everyone gets them .
So it's not like we can hide from them , but I look at what other people are doing in their Facebook ads and then I test it out . Some people call that failure , but I call it testing .
In the Accelerator program we call it testing and so I just test what they've done with our niche , because a lot of times the Facebook ads I get are not related to travel blogging . There's really not a lot of that out there in general . But I do look at other people's ads , so B2B businesses . What are they doing and can I try that ?
And I've tried that and honestly , I just used like a I guess I'll describe the ad that worked really well and it's still working really well . After four months . It's still going strong . I just use a blank white canvas and then I put writing on there like hey , you don't need social media .
Hey , you don't need a digital product , you don't need this If you're struggling as a travel blogger . Here are the three . You know , join us for the three secrets or whatever . And it's super blank , it's super white , it's like just bolded black letters , and then I have a couple small travel pictures . But it's really well , I don't know , it just works .
So yeah , but look at what other people do .
Yeah , and don't reinvent the wheel . Yeah , there's no reason to .
Why would you do that when somebody already figured it out , right ? That's why we're part of the Accelerator program . You don't have to reinvent the wheel .
So another big reason that you joined Accelerator . I don't want to put words in your mouth , but you work a lot of hours . Are you willing to talk ? You know a little bit about that . I know this is like . This is a big subject and it is my like .
You know , one of our promises in Accelerator is to , you know , help people like yourself scale their business more simply , bigger impact , 25 hours a week or less , and I know for you it sounds like this , like that's like utopia , right Cause you're working so much . So can you talk a little bit about that ?
Like , when I first talked to you at this point , it wasn't that long ago . What , six , eight weeks ago , something like that . How many hours were you working ?
I was doing a grand total of 80 hours a week , to the point where I stopped doing things that I really liked . I really love running , I love hiking and I wasn't doing that . And obviously I'm married .
So Mike , the other half of our business , he also works a lot , but when we would try to spend time together , the sinking feeling that I still had so much left to do was such a burden that we would go like on a date night and I would . I mean , we'd even be watching a movie in bed and I'm still on my computer like doing stuff for students .
And it was hard . I mean , truly it is not great . Don't ever work 80 hours a week . Join Accelerator before that point because honestly it really was hard and , like I had mentioned to you , there were so many times where I've , like ugly cried about it and it just it's so overwhelming .
And so what we've learned , especially because we just went on a retreat to Vegas with the rest of the Accelerator program we learned that in order to scale your business , you can't be the bottleneck of your business . And for the longest time I've been the bottleneck . Everything goes through me , every single thing .
I do everything , and I mean obviously up until a certain point . Then we met you and you're like you need to stop doing that . You need to do the things you actually enjoy . So before we have done our call today , I went running . I thought you'd be proud of that .
Yeah , I'm proud of it .
I know , and now it's been not even eight weeks since we've joined and we're at least down to 50 hours a week . I'm doing more things . It is huge and some people normally work 50 hours a week Like that's pretty normal for people , so it definitely felt good to get a lot of that off of my plate .
I still want the same results for our students and it's still like I still get a little anxiety .
That's why I still check things over , but everything is being systemized right now and automated , which again really thanking you and the rest of the accelerator program for that , because in my mind it was a huge mental block to give up the control of my business and to let other people have their hands in it and do the same tasks that in my mind I could do
better . But now , giving away the tasks , it's nice . And our team they do it like I tell them to and so why not ? Just they follow instructions . So it's really nice to be able to delegate those tasks and instead of doing all of the work , I'm doing 50% of the work .
Obviously , we're gonna keep going back , but ultimately I can teach everyone to think like I do and again , I've learned that through the accelerator program . Truly .
What was the big mindset shift that you needed to experience in order to have that happen for you ? Because we like I'm a control freak too I always have been but I did learn early on also exactly what you're going through now . It's like if I want to have a bigger impact , if I wanna scale my business , this has to be about simplicity .
It can't be more like complexity is not going to allow me to scale , to make it so much harder , and part of that a huge part of it is giving up control and trusting people on our team to do what they're owning in the business . But that giving up control is really really hard . So , what needed to shift ?
And it's not like you snap finger and it's all oh , okay , cool , I'm great with this and it is an ongoing thing . It's not like , okay , you're seven weeks into it , it's like I'm all better now , if you will Like . What was that ? What did you need to consider , to think about , to work through , in order to be able to believe that ?
Yeah , I actually got it from your podcast again . Rick did not tell me to say this at all .
I did not .
Anybody who's listening . He did not , but it was back in April , before we joined . I turned on an episode and I think it was Jamie . Maybe it wasn't Jamie , it was somebody who was talking about how many hours they worked .
It was Karen Carr , that's who it was .
Yes , it was Karen Carr , and she was talking about how many hours she worked in her business before Accelerator and how many she's working now . And she said the words I was the bottleneck of my business . And in that moment it clicked and I thought I'm the bottleneck of our business . Literally everything goes through me .
And then I really started to visualize a bottleneck and I thought if we can't expand that , how will we reach more people ? We have two options .
Number one we can increase our prices , and personally I really wanna help more people and sure like , obviously I think that our advice is worth tens of thousands of dollars , but I think a lot of travel bloggers here are living very modestly so that they can travel and so they don't have a ton of money to just throw out .
And so I wanted to help more people while still keeping it affordable . And if I wanted to do that , then I couldn't be the bottleneck anymore and I needed to grow the team and help other people understand how my brain works so that we can all do this together . And when I thought about it that way , I knew immediately .
Number one I had to join Accelerator because I needed what Karen Carr was doing like . Whatever she was doing , I needed to do that and I would rather pay somebody to help me do it faster than again , like I didn't invest in my travel blog or my travel blogging skills for four or five years and look how that went . It went so poorly .
So I thought , obviously , bypass all this , invest in somebody that can help me to reduce my hours . But that was the big aha moment was when she said that phrase I'm the bottleneck of my business , or I was the bottleneck of my business , and then I started to picture a bottleneck and I was like , oh , it's science . That's crazy . It really does .
It really is about being able to reach more people and help more people , but you need a team to do it .
And in seven weeks or so , since you've been in and a lot of this stuff was already in play . I'm not taking credit for it . You told me in Vegas . You told me in Vegas that you had your and you just mentioned it earlier . You had your biggest month .
You and Mike had your biggest month in May and you said you worked the least amount of hours that you worked in a long time . But wait , isn't that counterintuitive to what most people think , like wait , I have to work more hours to make more money ? Right , yeah , like , how did that dynamic work for you ? Like , what were you doing to reduce the hours ?
I know you're talking about , okay , delegating and talking to your team and getting that sort of thing . What other shifts happened during that time to be , like you cut off like 30 hours ?
that's a lot . I think it was just a big mindset shift too . I think that there was such a block because I thought the harder I worked , the more money I was gonna make . And I think that goes back to like the travel blogging thing too .
I used to add affiliate links in everywhere in my blog post because the more affiliate links , the more money I was gonna make . And that's just not true at all , like at all , and so it was a huge mindset shift .
I started listening to the videos inside of Accelerator pretty much right away , especially the Neil videos of like the mindset and like getting in the right space to be a business owner . And then you told me you said your assignment is to get out every single day and go run or go hike or go outside for an hour and that is part of your work routine .
And I took that because why hire a coach and not listen to them ?
So I did that and I literally block off an hour a day to do that and my mentality and just my attitude has completely changed because I'm able to do the things I love too , which is supposed to be the whole point of the business being able to have that freedom and do the things you want , but I made that a point to be part of my work routine and it
has helped tremendously with my mental health and understanding that I need to be human too . I need to live life and help other people , but still live my own life .
So you can't have a bigger impact if you're not like in a position yourself to be able to do that
¶ Delegating and Working With a Spouse+
.
Yeah , exactly , I felt burnt out . I felt you know there are so many times I just wanted to throw the towel in . But then I would get an email from a student saying , hey , I just joined Mediavine . Or hey , I just 10Xed my affiliate income in four months . And I'm like , oh my gosh , this is so cool , and I show Mike .
Every time I get one of those emails and most of the time I start crying because I just love that . But it wouldn't have , I wouldn't continue with the business if I wasn't in the right headspace , and that was the biggest problem .
The business was my life . Most people , as it is for so many people right and most people would get off a coaching call like that and be like that's . One of the biggest takeaways in my call right now is I need to get out , for you know , I need to commit to an hour a day to go out for a run or a walk or whatever the activity is .
Most people are like what have I got myself into ? What am I paying ?
for yeah , yeah , right yeah .
But it really is . It's just , that's just like step one , that's like micro step one that can have huge ripple effect throughout the entire business and , obviously , your life . Yeah , absolutely . And I wanna wrap up here in just a minute and I wanna talk about two more things In just a second .
I wanna talk about what it's like to work with your husband , because we have that's a big topic that a lot of people are always curious about . I could never do that , amy , and I would just like I'm like for those of you listening and not watching the video and like ramming my fists together . We would totally bump it . That wouldn't work .
We would butt heads on that . But what would you say to somebody who is considering accelerator ? Looking at you know what ? I'm working too much in the business .
I need an extra set of eyes on my business to see the things that I can't see , because I'm too close to it and for the precisely the things that you were looking for is like I wanna have a bigger impact but , holy cow , I'm caught up in what we've created here , this amazingness that we've created .
But it's also kind of like I can't expand because I'm working 80 hours a week . What would you say to that person ?
Yeah , I get the strain there . I mean , there's so much strain when it comes to working that many hours in your business and it affects your entire business .
I mean not just you but everyone on your team , even if it's like , regardless of how big or small your team is , however many hours you work each week is gonna directly affect the other people in your business , and the more hours you work again not necessarily a good thing , and so delegating is so incredibly important .
But I guess I would say that if you want to scale , it's not about you , it's more about just the business in general and the moving the business forward , as long as you keep your eyes and your mind in the right place . As far as number one I wanna help people . I actually care . That's the biggest issue .
And number two , I want to obviously kind of goes along the same lines but provide the highest quality information to our clients , then you need to take yourself out of it . The emotion there . We need to take it out . You can't focus on oh well , I could do this better , or maybe they don't know exactly how I like it to be done .
Sure , they're not gonna do it exactly the same way , but you're gonna see . As long as you see the same results for your clients , then it's important to delegate , it's important to grow that team because , again , if you're the bottleneck , that bottleneck is so strained and there's not a lot of places you can go there .
So as soon as you can get into that mindset and start to realize I need to grow a team , kind of from not directly at the start , but pretty soon after then you will scale your business a lot faster . And that's what I learned almost immediately in the Accelerator program .
You sat at a table at our Vegas retreat with a couple of other members , and it was no seats were assigned , it just happened that way , and I said the first thing the first morning is you could not be at a better table . One of them multi seven figure business works about 10 to 15 hours a week .
The other person , full-time job has created a multiple , multiple six figures business works about five to 10 hours a week .
You know Now , granted , they weren't like that , like you know , all of a sudden , it's taken time to get there , but what is it like being in the room , both literally and figuratively , on our calls and so forth , with other people who are doing similar things that you're doing in terms of an online business and looking at to , like I said , like scale more ,
simply have a bigger impact , but not doing it at the expense of adding more hours ?
Right , yeah , that was actually really cool . We I wanted to sit in the front because if I sit in the back I don't pay attention , and so I wanted to sit in the front . So I sat down and it was with Halle and Jamie and yeah , like you said , both massive businesses .
And it was so interesting to hear them talk because they would whisper to each other or like to us while people were saying stuff and they would say you need to delegate that , you need to delegate that , like not Jamie and Halle , but the person speaking would say that . And then they would look at each other and they're like do you do that ?
And they would both go , no , I don't do that , no way , I don't do that in my business . And they were like no , and they'd happened a lot . And then I was like , oh my gosh , like they really have a great organized , systemized team that just works . It's like a well-oiled machine .
And it again really just showed me how much I needed to delegate and to not work 80 hours a week . Because again they were working like Jamie works 10 hours a week , multiple seven figure business . Halle , five hours a week , does almost a million dollar business , like crazy .
And they were just like they would look at each other and they're like , oh , I don't do that . Oh , I don't do that Again . It was like it really felt like I can get there and I wanna get there .
I still wanna help the same people , I still wanna have the same impact on people , but I also want to do other things and enjoy life and have more control over my personal life and less control over the business life . But yeah , that was so mind boggling to hear them .
But then I did say like , wow , I can't believe that you're working 10 hours a week and you're doing this well . And she said don't worry , three years ago my business was a mess . So , yeah , don't worry about it , you're gonna get there and it really . Yeah , put my mind to it .
Yeah , it's not an overnight success . I remember very distinctly some conversations that I had with both of them a few years ago where we were putting the things in place to get to the point where they are now . And it's not all because of me by any means , but they've done a lot of work to get to that point .
I wanna wrap up with what I mentioned before . A lot of people are thinking about it . A lot of people . I hear from a lot of people . They're like I wanna retire my spouse , I wanna bring them into the business , or retire my partner or whatever it might be . What is it like working with your spouse ?
Yeah . So some people may think that it would be crazy because it would be .
¶ Travel Blogging and Working Together
However , mike and I we are constantly traveling , so we're travel bloggers and we actually do travel . So we are like abroad , I would say seven months of the year , and then we're back in the United States about five months of the year , and so we are literally always together , I would say probably 23 hours a day .
We are together in the same room and we've had to learn how to get along and love each other even when we are living in such close quarters , and a lot of it was through COVID too . So we actually went down to Ecuador during COVID so that we could afford to live down there .
This was obviously during COVID and we stay in small places typically , and so , again , we have to learn how to work together , and we've really honed that in and working together . It's still not easy .
It's hard to figure out who does what , but I mean the Vegas retreat actually helped Mike see our business so much more clearly , like I've always had the entrepreneur mindset . I mean , when I was a little girl , I used to sell bracelets , I mowed lawns .
I actually used to make Crown Royal quilts and sell them on Etsy , like I have that entrepreneur brain and he doesn't have as much . He has a very creative brain . He's a musician , he's fantastic . But meshing those together , how do you do that ? Who does what ? And so it's been difficult . But we usually will agree that Mike does a lot of the creative .
So he does a lot of the videos for our YouTube , which we're still growing , and then he's also gotten to SEO and absolutely loves it . But we've also hired his brother to help us and we have a cool team . But he helps organize the team .
He helps make sure everyone understands things , because when they reach out to me I don't know if anyone else is like this , but if someone reaches out to me , I get overwhelmed and so I'm like can't talk guys , I have other things I have to finish right now , and so he is that moderator . He is that person that our team goes to to get direction .
He is the one people can talk to , and I'm kind of the one hiding , like we'll talk later .
Just doing your thing .
Yeah , we'll talk later . I'm busy , but yeah , so he does a lot of the creative side , I do a lot of the analytical side . I'm a numbers person . Again , he's art and we mesh well , and so it's a great team . But it did take a while to understand what's his role in it , what's my role in it , how do we work together .
But I think , again , living together and for every single moment of our lives has really helped .
So I mean , granted , 80 hours a week , you were there . How do you separate , or do you separate , how do you turn it off ? Basically , business versus OK , personal life here together ?
So I actually did this after joining Accelerator because it was so prevalent that I needed to take my personal life back instead of meshing it so much with my business life . And so what I did ?
I turned off my email notifications , and that has helped , incredibly , because it doesn't ding me every five seconds , and when it used to ding me , I would look at it and think , oh my gosh , I have to answer this , otherwise I'm overwhelmed and people are going to be waiting for me and our students .
They matter , and I want to make sure that they don't hate me . I just had all these irrational fears that if I don't answer right away I'm going to be punished in some way , and so I turned off email notifications on my phone .
Has been amazing , but I also I leave my phone at home a lot , and so that's the biggest way that I've been able to turn off the business Just put my phone away and if my mom wants to reach out to me she'll just call Mike . So she's like is Laura there ?
I know she doesn't have her phone on her , but yeah , so that's kind of how we do it , and mainly just shutting my computer . It is hard for me to shut my computer , but putting it away and saying I'm not touching it for the rest of the day has been the biggest thing for me . I love it For my mentality yeah .
I already want to have you back on the show to do another check in for where you're at , Because these sound like such little things , like , oh , I turned my notifications off on the phone , by the way . When you said that , I was like , oh , my , like , I have so much anxiety thinking about if I had notifications on .
I'd be like , oh , I can't handle this , it's such a little thing . And leaving your phone at home to whatever go for a walk or whatever it might be sound like little things , but that mental shift that needs to happen in order to do that is huge and the impact that it can have is huge .
And , like you said , for so many people closing the laptop and like , okay , I'm shifting into whatever mode , that's hard for so many people . So is like what you're teaching in scale , your travel blog . What I was thinking is it just like could this benefit your teaching SEO , your teaching affiliate marketing ?
I know that you focus on travel bloggers , but could it be for other bloggers ?
Oh yeah , seo can be used for anything , especially like it's especially wonderful for small businesses that wanna grow their organic leads online . I mean , there are things that you could go to Google and search and we are still number two on Google after seven years , so it works .
But yeah , it doesn't need to be a travel blogger to benefit from your course .
Not at all . In fact , we have a lot of people that will reach out and say , hey , can I take this if I have like a calligraphy business ? We have like a calligraphy artist in there . We have teachers in there that wanna do more like teacher paid teachers , but more of their own , like selling their own products .
Yeah , we just anything can be used , or you can use SEO for anything . We have websites about kids toys . We have a website about bed bugs . We have a website about Wait , website about bed bugs .
Yeah , we had a really bad experience .
Oh yeah , and it's so . It is incredibly profitable because there's no competition out there . So we just write about we had a really bad experience in an Airbnb not here and I Googled something about bed bugs and I couldn't find any information about it and I was like ding , ding , ding . This is a great opportunity for us .
We've had one solid experience with bed bugs . We can totally talk about this . But , yeah , so we , you can use SEO for anything , anything . And it is incredibly important to know because Google sure , facebook , instagram , they're great , but Google is king and Google matters , I think , the most . So it's pretty good to put that on autopilot .
You put it up , it ranks , it stays there for years and years , rather than Pinterest . You put it up once and then it goes away after a week .
So , yeah , and you teach people . Yes , it's for travel bloggers , but regardless if I'm blogging about something else or what have you and I wanna learn how to do SEO properly , affiliate marketing , et cetera , this course is for you .
Yeah . So I typically I'm very specific . I say , like this is SEO for travel blogs , this is SEO or affiliate marketing for travel blogs . But again , if you take out the word travel blog , it's literally for everyone it's the exact same strategies .
But what I don't really mention , like , hey , this is great for other blogs , I do tell them we have other blogs outside of travel and . But a lot of people will say , hey , this resonated so much with me , but I'm not a travel blogger . Will this still work ? And the answer is absolutely 100% yes , and so I don't really broadcast it .
Maybe I should , but I don't really broadcast it .
You are here , by the way . A lot of people listen to this podcast , yeah that's true , that's true .
Yeah , so it is for anyone .
Yeah yeah totally Love it . So how can people , how can they register for your webinar , how can they get in your world ?
Yeah , so they can go to micandloretravelcom that's our blog if they want to join our webinar . I actually have to pull up that link . I believe it's micandloretravelcom . Slash .
I love it . I love that you don't know .
It's a really great question , rick . It's something but I can . We can maybe leave in the show notes or something . But I know it's like micandloretravelcom slash three secrets or three geez . It's because I don't usually give it to people . They usually just come from ads and then Can somebody go to your website micandloretravelcom .
join your email list . Yes , yes and they'll get invited to your webinar .
They will ? Yes , definitely , and , like I said , I'll send you the link . You can put it in the show notes . It's pretty simple to know . I'm just it's . I was like I need my cost per lead , I need my earnings per lead , I need this , I need this . And then , of course , I'm like webinar sign up . What is it ? I don't know .
I will definitely link it up in the show notes for the episode here today .
But , laura , thank you for being so open and honest and taking us through the business and the struggles and the wins that you've already had and , like I said , I am so excited to continue seeing the success and the growth and scaling of your business on like simplistically yes , simply , simplistically , simply .
I like it and again , I'm gonna have you back on with another update because I know that people are gonna wanna hear how things are going .
Yeah , that sounds awesome . Thank you , I appreciate it . Thank you so much for having us again . This is like pretty surreal for us . My , as soon as , like Jamie reached out to be on the podcast , mike called everybody and was like this is the moment we've been waiting for , like it really is cool .
It's just so cool to see other people succeed and then be in that exact same position .
Yeah , so yeah , Full circle .
Thank you . Thank you so much , I really appreciate it .
All right , hope you enjoyed this conversation here today with Laura Peters . Again , laura and Mike's website . It's Mike and LauraTravelcom . Laura's program is called Scale your Travel Blog and , yes , I have put the link to sign up for her webinar .
If you wanna see how she does her webinar funnel , that can basically converts at about 18% to cold traffic on a $2,000 offer , which is pretty darn good . I put that in the show notes for today's episode over at my website , rickmullreadycom . Click on the podcast section and you will see the show notes for Laura's episode right there .
Thank you as always , my friend , for tuning in today and subscribing to the show . If you haven't clicked that subscribe button , make sure that you do so that you don't miss any of the episodes . I'm doing two episodes per week , have , then , for years and have no plans of slowing down , my friend . So thank you as always .
Until next time , be well , and I'll talk to you soon .