Transcript
Sigrun:
You're listening to The Sigrun Show, episode number 416. In this episode, I want to talk about why you should join SOMBA Kickstart.
Welcome to The Sigrun Show, I'm your host Sigrun, Creator of SOMBA the MBA program for online entrepreneurs. With each episode, I'll share with you inspiring case studies and interviews to help you achieve your dreams and turn your passion into profits. Thank you for spending time with me today.
Building an online business takes time. I share with you proven strategies to help you get there faster. You'll also learn how to master your mindset, up level your marketing and succeed with masterminds.
I'm in the middle of launching SOMBA Kickstart one more time. It's my 10 week group coaching program that helps you figure out your ideal client, the right message for your ideal client, build your email list, create your first or next online course and learn to launch, all in 10 weeks. In this episode, I would love to share the story behind SOMBA Kickstart, how the program works and why you should join us. In the show notes, you'll find a link to SOMBA Kickstart. If the doors are still open, you can join us. If doors are closed, you can get on our VIP notification list. You will find the show notes at sigrun.com/416.
I started my online business seven years ago. Before I officially started, I had wasted 18 months overthinking my business idea before I finally realized that I was meant to be a business coach. I had, after all, a decade of experience as a CEO, been a business consultant and had an MBA from a top business school, plus I had been trained to become a certified Dale Carnegie trainer, I just didn't see it myself. I felt like the boy in the Alchemist that goes looking for a treasure around the world only to find it in his backyard. My business idea was always there, I just was looking in the wrong place.
It was January 2014 when I finally started my online business. I had 30 people on my email list, mostly friends and family, and a basic website with a few blog posts. I didn't make any money in the first three months of my business, because I was doing all the things that don't bring in any money. I was updating my website, trying out new tools, writing blog posts, creating freebies. Finally, end of March, I put a link on my website. One hour business coaching, $480.
On March 26, 2014 someone bought. She had seen me online and clicked through my profile to my Facebook page to my website and found the link to buy. I basically had made it super difficult to work with me and pay me money. Not consciously, of course, but subconsciously I was probably worried about not being ready. But you're never ready. You always have to start before you're ready. 12 months after that first sale, I had made six figures, but it wasn't as easy as it sounds, because I was trying to do it all on my own. I thought I knew how online business worked. I had done a couple of online courses and thought I could just figure it out the rest.
I was creating freebie after freebie, trying tool after tool, signing up for one free training after the other, basically I was throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping that something would stick. Of course, if you do a bunch of stuff, something will stick and work. I started doing weekly webinars and my email list grew fast, especially when I started to do Facebook ads, but the sales were not coming in as fast as the email signups. I wasn't even making an offer. I had a total imposter syndrome. Thought I didn't know enough to ask for a sale or maybe I was just scared asking, maybe worried about rejection. Thought maybe I needed to learn more and add more emails to my list and just more, more, more. After nine months in business, which was more like an expensive hobby than business if we want to be honest here and only 17,000 in sales, I had to admit to myself that I didn't really know what I was doing and that I needed help.
I decided to sign up for a program and paid $5,000 upfront. I was scared of not having a return on investment, but at the same time I knew this was the right thing to do, because the other thing, doing it on my own, was definitely not working out. Within 24 hours I had made $1,500 before I even started the program that I had just signed up for. It was as if I had made a declaration to the universe that I finally believed in myself. I learned to launch over the next six to eight weeks and started to make sales. But half of my success come from investing in myself. That's when my mindset shifted and had my first 10K month. It had taken me 27 months to get there. So why am I telling you this story? Because I have created a step by step process where you can skip all of the mistakes that I made and create your success in 10 weeks.
Yes, 10 weeks instead of 27 months. I want to tell you about SOMBA Kickstart. I had been running my online business for three years, doing one-on-one coaching and group coaching and masterminds before I created my signature program, SOMBA. SOMBA stands for Sigrun's Online MBA. It was in January 2017 that I started with the SOMBA program. I wanted to create a 12 month MBA program for online entrepreneurs. I had done an MBA myself and had not learned anything about online business and not much about entrepreneurship either and I wanted to combine these two things and teach women in business, how to really build a successful, profitable and sustainable online business. And I knew you couldn't do it in six or eight weeks, I had done those courses myself and those had not helped me. So I was determined to do it differently and therefore adamant about the program being 12 months. For the next two years, I was creating the content for SOMBA.
I really wanted this to be the best program out there for online business. But then I made a discovery. I was one and a half years into the program, I had loads of students in the program, hundreds of students and many were having success, but something was bothering me. I didn't feel enough of my students were having success. And that's when I figured out the statistics in online courses. In a typical online course, only 10% of people complete the online course, the other 90% don't. And I realized that this 10% will always be successful, almost no matter what you do. You can put anything in front of these people and they will find success. And there will always be 10% that do not do anything no matter what you do, you could have the best program ever, the most support and still there will be 10% that do nothing, literally nothing. But what about the 80% in the middle?
That's where I felt I was not doing good enough job in my original SOMBA program. Something was missing. I needed to kick their butt basically. So I got increasingly frustrated as I realized this. I had created, what I thought, was an amazing program, but it wasn't the right one for those 80%, the people that I really wanted to help. I got more and more frustrated and by summer of 2018, I realized I had to do something about it. I wanted more of my students to have success. I announced a challenge within my program, a course within a course, absolutely free for my SOMBA students. I called it SOMBA Summer School. I told them few weeks before that it was coming, but they didn't really know what it was. And then I said, “We're starting today. You have one week to come up with a course idea. I want your submission by the end of the week.”
I put up a type form and they had to submit their course ideas and then I was going to advertise it with them and I was going to teach them how to create their first or next online course over the next four weeks. Overall, the challenge, or this course in a course, was eight weeks long, because we took one week to figure out the course idea, one week to promote the course, four weeks to run the course and then two weeks, it was actually a brand new idea that I suddenly had at the end, to do an upsell. To actually launch another program. It was a bit crazy, the whole thing, but 124 people participated and their success was massive. It blew my mind. I would never have imagined that this was exactly what my students needed.
I was able to get the 80% out. I was getting them out to do the work in the middle of the summer, where many people were on holiday and were not really in the mood to create a course. And I got them to do it, because I made it fun. I made it like a challenge and I cheered them on and I had an accountability. They had to stick to the process. So the following year, 2019, I was starting to get emails already in spring of 2019 if I was doing SOMBA Summer School again? And I thought to myself, “Well, since the word has gotten out and people know about the success, I guess I have to do it again.” This time I asked for volunteers to help me because 2018 had been quite exhausting for me. It was quite hard to do this all on my own and this time I wanted some help.
I got 40 volunteers. SOMBA students who wanted to help me for free to help others succeed. Wow, that just was so crazy, so good. I felt so good about my own students wanting to help so much. So 2019 we did it again, this time 240 or 50 students participated and again, amazing success and even more success than the year before. And then it was fall 2019 and I realized I couldn't go on running SOMBA the way I had run it before, without SOMBA Summer School. I decided to make SOMBA Summer School integral part of my programs. It was renamed to SOMBA Kickstart. Now I have taken it a step further in 2021 and it's two separate programs. SOMBA, the old SOMBA, is now a SOMBA membership. Still fantastic content, amazing support, but it's only for people who have gone through other programs with me before. It is what we call a back-end membership.
It is perfect for someone who already knows something and has created something upfront and they are more self motivated to go and get the content they need to move forward. SOMBA Kickstart is the original SOMBA Summer School. It is now 10 weeks long, because I realized I need to give people a little bit more time to figure out the course idea, so we have two weeks for that. We also have another two weeks to promote the course with our students. Then they run the course for four weeks and then they learn to launch. The process has now been perfected. We have been running this multiple times. This is probably the sixth time right now that we're starting soon. And I couldn't be more proud of what we have created, me and my team and all the wonderful mentors that have helped us.
Being a mentor in SOMBA Kickstart is no longer volunteering, it is actually a paid position. We have both coaches and mentors to support our students, but the process is as good as it gets. The 10 weeks are life changing. It is everything that I needed myself to save 27 months of my life. So if you had the choice 27 months to your first 10K month, or 10 weeks, which one would you choose? Now, of course, I cannot promise that you will make $10,000 at the end of 10 weeks, that would be irresponsible. But the SOMBA Kickstart process gives you everything you need to make it happen.
First of all, you get to know your ideal client. A lot of people don't realize how much work they need to invest into getting to know their ideal client. It's not enough to have a website or create a course and start some marketing out there. Actually, you don't need a website even. But marketing a program without knowing your ideal client is probably the reason so many people are not making enough sales. Many of the people signing up for Kickstart actually know a lot about online business already. They have a course, they have an email list, but something is not working and that something is probably the ideal client.
They didn't spend enough time researching their ideal client, before they even started to create all the assets that they have in their business. So, that's what we start with in SOMBA Kickstart. You really get to know your ideal client, even if you have no clue who this person is right now. We have a process for you to figure out who this ideal client is, where you can find them and how you can actually talk to them. You do a survey and you do a couple of interviews and then after two weeks, you know exactly what kind of course you need to create for these people. Basically, your ideal client tells you, this is no guesswork. It's exactly the guesswork that keeps so many stuck and is the reason people don't have enough sales. When you take the guesswork out of the game and just do proper research, the fun way, then your ideal client will tell you what they want and then you go and create it and then they want to sign up for it. That's really that simple, but most people don't don't do that and that's why they're not successful.
So after you have figured that out, that's the first two weeks of Kickstart, we go into the promotion phase. We create a sales page with all the courses that our SOMBA Kickstart students create. It doesn't matter in which language the course is created. We have people from Croatia, [Lithuania 00:00:17:00], Latvia, Denmark, Finland, Norway, all over the world. New Zealand, Australia, USA, Denmark, Iceland. I probably said Denmark twice, I get so excited. We have people from 25 countries in SOMBA Kickstart and on our sales page, people can come and pick a course in all kinds of different languages and all different niches.
Let's say someone is looking for a copywriting course in Czech, they can find that. Or if they want to see all the courses that are offered in Icelandic, or if they want to find a business course in English, that's how the page works. It's basically a search engine and you can find whatever you're looking for. But you are creating your course in Kickstart, so you have time to participate in other people's free program, but we help promote. And of course, as a kickstart student, you have to promote as well. And we give you a list with 30 to 50 ideas how you can promote your course so that you get as many participants as you want.
A lot of people think they don't want many, but actually the more the merrier. You want as many people to sign up as possible, because this is essentially building your email list. That's another great thing as a byproduct of SOMBA Kickstart, you build your email list. As you are getting people to sign up for your course, you run the course, it's a free course, it's four weeks, and we have put this criteria in place based on my experience of working with thousands of women in the last seven years. Everyone can have a four week online course and you can change it later. You can make it longer if you want. In most cases, you do not want to make it shorter.
And this four week course is a wonderful course you can sell later for 197, 297, 497. I see all these different prices working for my SOMBA students after they finished SOMBA Kickstart. But during SOMBA Kickstart, the course is free, because if the course is paid, I wouldn't want to advertise it for you, but because it's free, I'm happy to help you. It's also free because you want a lot of people to sign up. And as soon as you start to charge, people are hesitating to sign up. And so, you have a choice. Do you want 200 signups or do you want two signups? I would prefer the 200 signups when you're creating something new. It's a win-win situation and you attract the perfect people to your email list that actually want something from you. They will participate in your free course and then afterwards, that magic happens with the upsell.
An upsell is when you sell someone something that person has already bought something from you. Now, in this case, they haven't actually bought from you, because the course it's free, but we'd still call it an upsell. Basically, I teach you how to launch. So on Kickstart you're getting to know your ideal client, you're figuring out what kind of message resonates with your ideal client, you're learning to promote a course, in this case a free course, but promotion methods are very similar for a paid course. You are running your course and creating it at the same time. Yes, that works and that's the only way you should ever do it. You should never create a course and then try to get people to sign up. You should create your course with your ideal clients. You get feedback and you'll get testimonials.
You need testimonials to sell. One of the reasons people are not selling enough is that they don't have powerful testimonials. And that's what you have in SOMBA Kickstart, after your course is finished. That's one of the criteria. People have to promise to give you feedback and testimonial. That's a part of joining a free course, so it's like a pact you have together. After the four weeks of running your course, people are going to be so excited to work with you. We have had the examples that even in the first week of running your free course, people might be reaching out to you and ask how they can work with you. We've had those cases, but it's better to finish your course and then make an offer. And what kind of offer? Now, that depends on how many signups you have, but also, what are you hearing in the feedback from your clients? What are they telling you?
Here's the thing, they will tell you again and we'll teach you how to figure it out, because you're not going to ask them, “Oh, what else can I sell you?” No, we're going to ask different questions. We're going to pull it out of your ideal clients even without them knowing that they're being asked, what is the next step? You're going to launch another program and that's where SOMBA Kickstart comes to an end, but now you know how to run a program. You've learned that already, but this time you're running a paid program.
So in 10 weeks, you've gotten your ideal client, you've figured out the message, you've built your email list, you've learned how to promote a course, you've created a course. You created a course you can sell again and again. You've learned how to launch, you made sales. It took me 27 months to figure all this out, because I was trying to do it on my own. I want to save you time and money, because you can figure this out in 10 weeks with SOMBA Kickstart.
You will actually have an online business and I know it's a weird promise, because I could not believe you could do this in 10 weeks myself, but you can. After 10 weeks in SOMBA Kickstart, you actually can call yourself an online business owner. That's how far you have come in only 10 weeks. Now, I get a lot of questions about SOMBA Kickstart, but the most important question is, how many people are successful? And I'm happy to report that I have a 90% completion rate in SOMBA Kickstart. And this was exactly my goal when I started on this journey, I wanted to help all the people who actually want to be helped.
As I told you earlier, there's always going to be 10% that are going to be successful no matter what. There's always going to be 10% that do nothing, or I don't know, don't want to follow the process and give up. But it's about helping the 80% in the middle and that's exactly what I've been able to achieve with SOMBA Kickstart. So, if you are at the start of your online business, you don't even have an online business idea or maybe you have an online business idea, but you don't have an idea for an online course, Kickstart is for you.
At the same time, if you're further on online business, you have a course, one or two, you have an email list, but something is not working, you're not having a lot of sales, you don't have raving fans that are buying from you again and again, then it's worth going through the Kickstart process. Those who are further in business will have massive success. One example, Marilyn joined us in one of the Kickstart processes and she had been in online business for a couple of years, but something was not working right. So she decided to trust the process, go through SOMBA Kickstart. She made 31,000 after 10 weeks.
So the difference between someone who is at the very beginning and someone who is further, Kickstart is the same process, but they will probably have more success, those who are further, just because they have a few things in place already, but the beginners will get all the support they need to go also to that first 10K month. I hope you join me in SOMBA Kickstart. I would love to change your life.
I would love to see you in SOMBA Kickstart. Go to the show notes at sigrun.com/416 and join us if doors are still open, otherwise get on the VIP notification list so you can join us next time. You'll find the show notes at sigrun.com/416. Thank you for listening to The Sigrun Show. Let me know that you listened to this episode by tagging me on Insta Story or Instagram post. I'll see you in the next episode and in SOMBA Kickstart.