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Case Study: Vanessa Van Edwards

So in the last segment, we talked about how to find an idea how to make sure it's profitable, how to test it. I thought it would be fun if we bring in one of my students who's actually implemented this and taken an idea, failed and then gone back, reuse some of the material and turned it into a hugely successful online business. So I'm totally thrilled to introduce Vanessa Van Edwards. Vanessa, I OK, so tell us a little bit about your business. I'm so excited to hear what it is, what you've done. Sure. So I run a human behavior research lab and we teach body language and social skills and online courses. Amazing. And before we get to how you did it, what happened in the whole process? Let's just cut to the chase. Sure. What are the results of your online business? So at the last year has been crazy. We sold a $1,000, with, of course, is and increased our newsletter subscribers to about 20 K So is in the last year last year yet Okay, so we want to know how you did it. And we want to kno...

w what is the secret, even though obviously there's so many subtle things you did. Um, let's start at the beginning. How did you get interested in this And what happened when you first started pursuing this path? Sure. So I'd always sort of been fascinated by people. I'm a creepy people watcher. Um, and I wanted Teoh use the science. You know, I love self help. And I was like, Where is the science? Back to research for self help. So I was like, Let's take sexy science and combine it with self help and make this magical combination. But when I first started, actually wasn't all rainbows and roses and puppies. And what do you mean you don't just hitting. You don't just put something online and then a $1,000,000 later, it just works. No, it's amazing watch, which is? I mean, that's actually what I thought I figured, Why did you think that? There's sort of this myth that if you love something and you put it online, everyone will just show up and buy it, and I really, truly believe that. And so for the first years of my business and writing blog's and do all the things you should do right and writing blog's. I'm on Twitter. I might every social, I mean every social work ever stumble upon Twitter, Facebook. And like, maybe I had, like, three followers. One was my mom, you know, my grandma would be on there, but she doesn't use the internet. And I was like, What is happening? And this is when we start to say it's not working, I'm doing everything they told us. I'm just gonna I need to try harder. And sometimes you realize you're just playing entirely the wrong game. You have to change. So what did you do that? So what happened was is what I thought that was the pinnacle of my career is after a lot of work. We got a deal with the traditional publisher, So I was able to I had self published a few books and it was like my dream Teoh get a publishing deal on a big fancy shmancy publishing house. I was like, This is gonna change my life. What was the vision? The book comes out and then what's going on today? Show called, Actually, one of the today show. That was very fun. So she did get on the today show. Okay, Go not don't go that way. So yes. So I Division Waas a book deal would happen and everything would magically be solved. I would have all these customers. I don't know what my business plan would strategy would be. But a book would make me a lot of money, and that would be it. So we hired a PR firm. You know, this book was a labor of love, as you as you talk about. You know, it's like put all my effort into it and it launches and nothing happened. So it's in every bookstore. It's on Amazon and what I know about it, like no one bought it. And, like, I haven't talked about it in public. So you'll forgive me if it's not super smooth, but it was like a part of me was out there and no one wanted it. I mean, even now, like I talked about him like, Oh, because I'd put so much into it, and it shocked me because I had been told. But if you do something you love and you put it out there, people will buy it. And so when I had it out there. It felt like someone rejected me, even though I knew it wasn't me. I knew it was my book. It felt like a rejection of me. And so I was like, Done, What was that process like while the book is out there? When I wrote my book, I was getting, you know, my friends, like Congratulations. I saw it in Barnes and Noble and like, That's cool. But there was this expectation that life would tectonic Lee ship for me. And meanwhile, like if the book isn't selling like, what's the experience in those first couple of months where you start to realize it's not as you thought it would be? Yeah, And it was the first couple of weeks, actually that I, you know, we knew that nothing was really happening. You contract some of your numbers on Amazon. It was exactly that. People were so happy for me. My friends were like, what's happening with the book, and they were trying to be so supportive, and I was like, It's going okay and I actually couldn't do it. I like Herm. It'd, you know, like I went into, like, my hermit mode, and I was like creatives Notice, right? Like I can't put anything else out there. I'm too vulnerable and I just stopped. It's really hurtful when you Well, for me, I know I started off. I will teach you, be rich, actually teaching a one hour class to my friends in college for free. Just a very informal like people in the dorms would be complaining about whatever overdraft fees. And I would be like, Oh, come take my cause. It's free And they would say, Yeah, that sounds awesome. And then nobody would show up And I did this for a year and 1/2 and it was actually incredibly hurtful because in my I had spent so much time investing myself in it and like I knew I could help them. I knew it, but they wouldn't even show up for one hour and it was free. And I was organizing it by, you know, and it was like, First of all, I hate doing anything alone. So I hate eating alone and going to movies alone, and I certainly hate showing up in a room alone where they're supposed to be there. They dont come. It's like the elementary school kids Worst nightmare threw a birthday party and they don't show up, so I couldn't do it. And that's why I started a blawg. So you do this two weeks later. You know it's not happening. Yeah, So I decided I need to go in a harm it Mother, I need to go into learning mode. So I started asking people, What are the blog's? I should be reading? What? Of course I should be taking. That's how I discovered your blawg. Originally, it was one of those few blog's if someone said this advice actually works. So I was reading your stuff and I noticed there was a big difference between what you do, what other people do, what other people do. Is they speaking sort of these broad generalizations there, like you should do your passion. Just just find your passion. And I'd be like, What does that even mean? Like, what is How do I find my passion? And they'd be like, Now, monetize your passion. Just just make some money on your passion and I would read these blobs or take these courses end. I had no idea how to do it. There was this huge delicious and made me feel dumb. It's like it's like intellectual snack. Yeah, you eat it, You feel good for a minute. And then you look back in your like what? What did I do that and what was that anymore? Like cotton candy? It's, like, actually empty, like there's no nutritional value there and like, you think you're eating a lot but like actually just a complete waste of calories. Anyway, I could go. I love analysis. Go on forever. So we I discovered your your site and then you had a creative life course, and it was the strategies that you provide are not just find your passion or find a career the like. You have segments that air specifically on finding your idea, finding a profitable business idea, validating a profitable business idea, and then scripts actual scripts to be able to do that. So it wasn't just a theoretical thing. I had real action steps I was able to dio. I think that was the big shift from learning and hermit mode into. Okay, I'm gonna start trying things right. Love that. That makes me so happy. And I'm so glad that the creative life class helped you. Let's talk about validation because it's one thing to have an idea and most ideas at a surface level There, There fine. Help people with their money. Help him find a job. Help them improve their body language. It's not particularly novel, but how did you go about validating it to know that it would actually. So I was suffering from the II technique three II syndrome, where I wanted to teach body language. I wanted to create passive income. I thought that it would work. And so I took it for the first time. It started asking people what they wanted. So one of the techniques you teaching the course is the straitjacket technique. Um, where you really go in with someone, You're perfect client, and you ask them all different, very specific questions about their pain points in their needs. That was a totally different way for me to think about making a product. What was the before and after so before. It's like I want to make passive income and people want to know how to improve their body. Yeah, Yeah. Before it was like people should know body language, and I see bad body language, so I should just teach good body language afterwards, it was okay. Who is my ideal client? And this is when I learned the pay certainty technique was a huge differentiator because I realized the people who were reading my block before another wasn't many of them. But they did not have the willingness to pay and they did not have the ability to pay. They were going to read my free blawg forever. They were never going to actually buy anything. So sitting down and saying, OK, who's my ideal client, who has the willingness and ability to pay and then asking them very specific questions And these air scripts that you use that are Okay, what do you struggle with on a daily basis and one of things that I heard waas. I wanna walk into a room and have people want to know me. Now that's not body language, specifically, but the power of presence, power, body language, confident body language is the same thing. So my original opt in which I had on average of four subscribers a week, that was my average on newsletter subscribers. I changed my newsletter used to say, uh, learn people skills and sign up alot. I changed it. Teoh how to be the most memorable person in the room Now we have 87 subscribers a day. Amazing. Let's pause. We gotta we gotta dig into this. So this is so subtle. Yeah. All right. We talk about the research, we talk about mastering the craft and really getting in your customers heads, and it seems like a lot of work, and it is It should be. But the way it manifests itself are in really subtle things that make huge impacts. So while other people in your market we'll be writing things like get fit, lose weight or improve your people skills. If you're trained in this zero tow launch, I will teach you to be rich type style. You will know exactly what they're saying sometimes even things they've never articulated out loud. And the difference in part from 4 to 87 a day. I mean, that's worth for a week for a week. Sorry and crazy to 87 a day. That's amazing. That's astonishing, right? And so that little those little tests, those with a little test I started to do really just slow stuff changing wording on my often look even, for example, on my website, I usedto have, like, courses and book and product, the same tabs that you see on every single website. And so I changed them, one of them says, Awesome. One of them says, Play. One of them says heroes, because I was like, Why should I used tabs already there? I want to use words that I know my ideal client would use themselves they would want to click on. So it was a lot of testing with just the words, getting people to understand that I wanted to create products and blog's that were speaking to them because I was them. I am them. I'm a recovering introvert, crabbing, awkward person. I'm learned extra Bert, and so I really wanted to be able to have words that spoke to them. I love that, and when you do this, there are a lot of other people that teach body language on there. But just like in any industry, in any market, most of them don't know what they're doing. Most people who are teaching fitness or crafts or anything they have never learned how to do marketing they just came up with an idea and put it online. So we stop worrying about our competition because most of the time they're irrelevant to us. Don't even honestly don't even think about your competition. Don't even look at your competitions website because what they're doing is probably not working as well, something that you could do. The only people you should be looking at and talking to are your customers because they're the ones we're gonna give you the words you need to use. Beautiful. So let's let's move forward. You start creating these courses and what are the names of some of these courses? So my first course, I did a really simple. I didn't want to put a bunch of money like the book like I put a bunch of money into a bunch of time into and it failed. So what's the simplest test? Aiken Dio. So I took my IPhone and I filmed on my IPhone, and I didn't even have a tripod ease my cookbooks as a tripod, and I drug over every lamp in my apartment. They did not even have professional Lance and I borrow double hints for my neighbors and I surrounded myself all my lamps, and I just filmed a two hour course on my IPhone. Call the Secrets of body language. Little tiny course. I was like I can sell 30 courses with 49 $1949 was like That's it. I was so happy. So we put it out. I put up on online platform. I'm like, OK, 30 Here we go. And it took a few hours to get it into the marketplace, and 54 hours later we had over 400 sales, which is like, I mean from what had happened before, where I was not getting any sales ever. It was like magic. I mean, it wasn't magic. There's a lot of work that went into it. But seeing the difference of when you can speak people, my content didn't change, right. My my creative juices didn't change. But the way that I positioned it that spoke to people. It was I remember that day to brush my life. It was amazing. I love that. It's the difference between trying to push a stone right up this huge incline versus doing a little bit of work up front and then just kicking a soccer ball along that goes without you. Having you have there is you know, there is something where, like, you know, that your product fits the market, right. And, like, Bennett easy and so keep I had to learn. And I still do this to keep tinkering until I find where it needs to fit because every product is slightly different. Right? So I have ah, dating body language course That is slightly different than my business body language course. Right. Different pain point, different needs. And so I kept tweaking my newsletters, my landing pages, my sales pages to figure out what words What was the pain point? How was it? Slightly different from course to course. So it never stops that tinkering. I like it, But I have an experimental mindsets, like I can help it. I love that. What? What you say quickly, Because everyone wants to know a $1,000,000. Yeah. How How did you do that? You have How many courses? Right. So now we have four courses are 5th 1 is coming out in two weeks. And what? The price points of these courses. So our lowest courses, $49. That one that I just mentioned. My M V p my minimum buyable product and my most expensive courses 1 Okay, so this is amazing. So at one, even with just that limited range of prices, you have a $1,000, in revenue in about a year, and you already know as you go up market as you make a for 97 or 97 or even 29 $97 product, those numbers will sky rocket coming up way. Eso What does it mean now for you to generate a $1,000,000 toe have over 22,000 subscribers in the last 13 months? You know, I I think that there's a freedom. Um, I think that maybe creatives will understand this. There's a financial freedom for sure, right. Being able to be like I can make my bills right. I don't have to worry about paying the bills at the end of the month. There's also a creative freedom that happens when you find your people after I feel like, you know, I I I have the most amazing students. I mean, they reach out to me sending pictures there. They're incredible. I feel like I found my tribe. And so the creative freedom that comes from that once you can hit those pain points to speak to them, it gives you tremendously way to be able to try things like I'm a big experimenter. I run a lab, right? So any idea that I have, I have. We have a team of four interns and researchers, and I'll send an email with, like, I have an idea and they're like, Oh, that's as an idea because I'm able to take some of those risks risks I was too afraid to take before. I think I was starving before, and now I'm hungry, right? It's always good to be a hungry artist like That's good, but you never really want to be a starving artist. I think the people watching this, I'm really glad to bring you in because it's one thing to talk about principles and frameworks. It's another thing to see someone who's done it, and I especially love that you did it. You did everything right and it didn't work. You did the book, you did what they told you and it didn't work, and then you went into learning mode see, there's two options we could. When something doesn't work for us, we can give up and say, Oh, this, this thing is Bs or we can say, What did I do wrong? What could I improve? And I really admire that you went the learning around. It's also fun to hear the transition from being a starving artist to being hungry. As you said, I love that to being financially comfortable and knowing that you don't have to make bad decisions because of money, that you can actually be strategic and you can think long term. What would you tell everyone here? You know, a lot of us. A lot of people here were It's like having a few ideas. They're not sure. There's a lot of people online talking about starting a business, overwhelmed with too many choices. You've been through it, you've been from one side to the other. What would you tell them? Don't try to do it all. That's actually really easy. When you actually talk about this in the course, there's a whole section on mental barriers and being an expert, and I think that I was trying to do it all before I was trying to please everyone I'm like, Sure, they could learn body language. Sure, they could learn social skills. And so what happened was is my blawg posts my newsletters, my small little e books. So I was putting out We're, like, the most watered down versions of principles because I'd be, like, use it in romance and dating and social life. And when I was like, You know what? I'm not gonna appeal to everyone. Uh, that was actually very freeing. It brought a lot of relief. There was I did it one of my early course, and I was in a, like, a button down and, like, kind like a vest. And someone emailed me and they said, You know, I really think that you should be wearing a business suit. Business People love to critique clothes, clothes and hair white because they can't critique your, you know, conversion optimization. They take our segmentation funnels, don't even know what that is so like. I don't like your headshot. I don't like this. I'm like goto Hell, I didn't say that, but he emails me, and he's like, I knew him as a reader. Like he's been on my newsletter. I think you should have worn a business suit and your course. That was a really big moment for me because I was Rina email and, like my stomach dropped right. Any time you're criticized and I was like, Sure, I've worn a business suit like, Oh, my God, am I not professional? Oh, my God, My course is gonna fail, right? Like I went through that horrible line of thinking and I was like, Wait a minute. Like if this guy, that's what he's paying attention to in this course, if he's not gonna watch me because I'm not wearing a business suit, I don't want him. I don't want He's not my tribe. He's not my student. And so I said, Thanks so much for the advice, but I'm very comfortable what I wore on screen, right? And like I'm sure he has described, I have no idea. But that was a big moment. And so I say to you, Who is your tribe? Who do you want to reach? Don't try to reach everyone. It just waters you down and the people who really resonate with you We'll stick, stick with you. They'll be so oil to you and you learn as much from them is as they learn from you. Hopefully. All right, I'm gonna brag for you because there's some amazing things that a lot of us here don't know. You have one of the best selling courses on creative life. Tell us the name of that course. Power of body language. Beautiful. Okay, so that I mean it, really, It's It's great. Also, you have a new course coming up. Master your people skills. I want to make sure everyone gets a chance to take a look at that. days excited. Congratulations. And thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. So what do we learned? This is a great example of applying some of the stuff we've taken away today. And I think it's fun to see someone who's used the principles and put it into practice. What surprised people about that? I mean, for me, as as we passed that mike around, one of the things that surprised me was like Venice. It did everything right. She wrote a book with a New York publisher. It got She went on the Today show. She did all this stuff and it still didn't produce what everyone tells us is gonna happen. Who's got a surprise how quickly she bounced back from failure. Yeah, it's so easy to get mired in failure and say like, I'm a bad person, it's me. And instead, she said, I'm gonna learn what went wrong. Um, something over here? Yeah. Um, still in the $100 price range. Not trying to jump to after failing the book. Yes. So many people want to start sprinting in the Olympics before they can even jog one lap. And she's taking her time methodically. If you remember back to that chart we showed earlier, it was years before we started creating multiple courses. Here's so taking the time to really learn the intricacies is important. Yeah, uh, just the numbers on Lee 22, subscribers. $1,000,000 in revenue. That's incredible. It's amazing. I remember sitting in a, uh, uh, talk area. This is like years ago here in the mission, and my friend found out that I had 50,000 people on my email list at that time, and I didn't I didn't really know this marketing stuff. I wasn't too into it. and she said, Are you serious? If I had a list of 50,000 people, I would be making over a $1,000, a year. It was like That's crazy what you mean? And it turned out that she knew more than I did. And you don't need to have a gigantic list. 50 K's actually huge. I have students who are making tens and tens of thousands of dollars, like multiple six figures with small lists off. I'm talking small like a few 1000 people, so really managing our expectations. We don't need to have 100,000. Before we have a real business, you can have a real business with 500 or 1000 subscribers. The fact that she looked at this a subscribers is her tribe, and that she learned as much from them is they were learning from her. Absolutely, that's a great one.