00:00:00

Dave Pendle: A bit of background or have you done that already? This meeting is being recorded.

00:00:04

James Redenbaugh: Told Andy about your website in a little bit. But yeah, we'd love to hear from you.

00:00:10

Dave Pendle: Yeah, so I'm a sole owner in the Netherlands. They have a real strong ecosystem for small businesses here and I've struggled actually in person in the Netherlands to carve out any niche. But during COVID I managed to establish a bit of an online presence and write a lot of articles, convene events. I've got my. One of my main offerings is a. A live podcast called Phenomenal Conversations where I interview regenerative change makers and then we get into a collective discussion of the topics they're bringing. And then I also do that as a one one podcast. That's the main thing at the moment. In the past, last year, you'll see on my website, I offered a course co creating Regenerative Cultures. And I featured people like Michelle Holiday from that world, Graham Boyd, Lauren Sell, Curtis Ogden, people that are sort of relative minor celebrities.

00:01:18

Dave Pendle: They're not the superstars, but minor celebrities in that world. And I had a relatively successful course. I tried to do it again in October but only got like three people interested. So it wasn't enough to run it. Even though I had a similar high quality faculty, there wasn't just enough people in my ecosystem to go for it. So I've been repositioning, writing more articles and I actually haven't done the key thing I need to do which is to build the top edges of the funnel to get more people into the bottom. So you know, all those people that came on that course last year, they were like the easy pickings. They knew me, they were just raiding for the right thing. That appealed to them and they dropped in. But since that sort of petered out. So I.

00:02:09

Dave Pendle: The thing that I'm talking to James about is I need to develop a strategy. Well, you know, I've developed a lead magnet that's almost complete and so I wanted to talk to James about that, but also other ways that I can, we can adapt the site so that I can do these sort of micro offerings or free offerings or little courses or whatever so that people could come in, share their email or pay some nominal amount so that I, you know, I build this sort of intermediate level of my kind of funnel, as it were. People that are jet more genuinely engaged and interested and you know, and I can keep building my email list. I've been promoting it a bit, but it goes in fits and starts. Sometimes I get people Coming.

00:03:06

Dave Pendle: But the last few months not so many people have signed up and we had some trouble there and James sorted that out for me.

00:03:13

James Redenbaugh: Okay.

00:03:14

Dave Pendle: I mean, I. I love the website. I think it's great. It doesn't really match the quality of my business yet. I've got to cut my game so that the quality of the website sort of is. I mean, it's not in the quality of what I offer, but it's just in the quality of income and engage. And I mentioned this to Jam earlier this year. Like I've got Nora Bateson in a co interview with Bina Sharma and that should be a bit of a open the funnel quite a lot. But I want to be able to do that strategically. So I drive people to the website and I catch people.

00:03:52

Dave Pendle: So I have to obviously, you know, bundle the podcast and promote it, but I want to kind of and you know, this interface because everything I've got at the Moment is on YouTube and that's free. But then if I want people to pay for it or pay for something or I get their email, then that creates a kind of in between step, you know, where it's easy to lose people. So I just wanted to have a general conversation about, you know, some easy to win pointers that can get me on that journey and then as it picks up momentum, then we can invest in it or grow from that, you know. And also since I invested on the website, I've had very, you know, not that much more income to invest in bells and whistles or to make it fancier.

00:04:52

Dave Pendle: But I think that I do need to invest in this to capture emails, to make it more email capture friendly or have specific pages or links that kind of drives more traffic to the website. So that's my overview anyway of why we're meeting.

00:05:11

James Redenbaugh: Wonderful. So I'm hearing, you know, it's been a couple years since we built this and we've made some acupunctural adjustments along the way.

00:05:24

Dave Pendle: Yeah, yeah. You've added the event pages and interfaced with stripe, which I didn't have before. We did that for the big course last year and I've been using it since because. Was it Iva? Ivo?

00:05:39

James Redenbaugh: Yvonne. Sorry, Yvonne.

00:05:42

Dave Pendle: Yvonne. He adapted the. The co creating regeneratives page and then you've also created a podcast page for me which has been super. That's gone really well.

00:05:55

James Redenbaugh: Yeah. And so I think it's a good impulse and time to kind of take a step back and look at things from a wider angle lens.

00:06:12

Dave Pendle: Yeah.

00:06:13

James Redenbaugh: And a strategic perspective. And I think it's great that we have Andy here who can bring in the outside perspective. Andy's a generalist like me. He does design development, branding, strategy, everything. So, yeah, Andy, I'm glad you're. You're a part of this conversation. And we can start to see what, you know, we're not talking about an overhaul. We're not talking about a redesign or a rebuild.

00:06:47

Dave Pendle: No.

00:06:49

James Redenbaugh: But what key interventions can we make here to help you capture more opportunities and convert. Convert leads and make it easier for you to put your own stuff out there and manage things?

00:07:13

Dave Pendle: And also, you know, if it's materials that somehow whatever we create, it gives me the poss. I don't have to go through you like, you know, like I'm doing on the back end of the site now with things I'm apart from when they go wrong. But, you know, do the, you know, upload a new material myself, a new audio or upload a new paper or, you know, here's an archive of things. These things are for sale. These things are free. So it's a kind of a little bit more of a shopping mall on there, if you want to call it that, or a shopping. Bit more shopping friendly, because I will, you know, I can create a lot of materials, but at the moment, the interface isn't quite ready for it.

00:07:59

James Redenbaugh: Yeah.

00:08:00

Dave Pendle: And we'll use this lead magnet to test out. And I've had the designers use some of the iconography and the shapes, the colors and the font from the site. So my previous workbook was nothing like that. So this is really kind of more on brand that way.

00:08:23

James Redenbaugh: Great. Andy, do you have any questions off the bat?

00:08:32

Andy Bittner: Yeah. So, first of all, what is the thing you make money like, with? What do you make the money like, is it just a course or do you have other, like, products or, like, services? And how did you get clients for now? And how can we. Like, that's just to get to know what you. You're doing and then we can, like, think about how we can get more people onto the newsletter and like, how can we, like, create maybe something different and, like, different, like entry points and stuff like that?

00:09:02

Dave Pendle: I mean, that's a good question, I think. I. I'm struggling actually with. I've got tons of fans, but not too many ideal clients that pay. So I've done tons of, like, held Ulab hubs. I've got people come through ULAP Hub. They've participated me. I've done tons of free events, partnerships, different things that I've got A broad ecosystem of people, but not many of them with good relationships, but not many of them are buying. So this is sort of. I need to create a more monetized thing. And the most successful thing was this program last year, which people paid like 200. No. Yeah, €250 for nearly €300 for. For six weeks. That's been. That's been the most successful product. And the other thing is the people subscribe for and pay a bit of money is the live podcast where they don't pay.

00:10:06

Dave Pendle: They don't pay for the one on one podcast, but they pay to come in and have a live conversation. But that's like €15 each time and it's once a month. And it's a wide range, to be honest. A wide range of people. Sorry, andy.

00:10:23

Andy Bittner: Yeah, the €15 podcast thing is hard to scale, I'd say. So we have to focus more on the events and see how we can make the events work. How can we get people for the events? And these are in person events, right? Or are they online?

00:10:39

Dave Pendle: Mostly I do online because in the Netherlands I'm doing something in my own home that I'm trying to build that might be another page that's needed. It gets some momentum, a kind of local offering, but almost everything else is online.

00:10:54

Andy Bittner: Okay, perfect. So, yeah, we should focus on that and see what different entry points we have for people. Like if somebody's coming and doesn't know you at all, some people who like, are from your ecosystem or know you somehow, some people know you better. And then we have to create like a strategy how we can like make you more popular for people who don't know you yet? Like. Yeah, how can we get them signed up for a newsletter? How can we like create a nice customer journey for them so they can build trust with you and everything and then they start buying your course or like your events or whatever.

00:11:35

Dave Pendle: I think that the idea of these sort of micro offerings is that I don't have enough in between. Like there's the podcast at very small money, and then the courses are much more money. I don't have anything in between. So there isn't a kind of enough breadcrumbs or enough ways to engage with me. And that's what I, I need to diversify that.

00:12:07

Andy Bittner: Yeah, that's a good point. Could create something in between and also like optimize the stuff you have already.

00:12:16

Dave Pendle: Yeah, yeah.

00:12:21

Andy Bittner: Just look into the podcast as well. Do we have like some kind of metrics or stuff about your podcast? How many people are listening to it? How many, like, subscribe to it?

00:12:38

Dave Pendle: Yeah, I mean, somebody asked me that today. So I originally put it on YouTube and I've convert. Only started converting it to a podcast from the summer last year, but the top YouTube video was like 300. The better ones are like a hundred views on YouTube and the metrics are quite low on Spotify. I haven't. I can look it up right now, but.

00:13:12

Andy Bittner: Okay, but that's giving us like an A direction already. So we know it's like thousand or ten.

00:13:22

Dave Pendle: Yeah, sort of. It's in the foul line, basically in the base.

00:13:29

Andy Bittner: That's a nice comparison. Yeah, I think that's like one of the entry points you have for people who probably don't know you and people that know you. So there should be like, you have to look at that. How can people like, join your list? Or can they.

00:13:45

James Redenbaugh: I mean, I.

00:13:46

Andy Bittner: Or how can we optimize it?

00:13:48

Dave Pendle: Yeah, I put calls to action. The main way I, I promote all of this is on LinkedIn. I find that I don't have any other pages proved fruitful. And I'm always putting calls to action to connect and stuff like that on there. That's my latest course, but I'm doing that with someone else. It's on his website. That's. That's a partnership offering. Oh. Or was that just the back end of that? You.

00:14:22

James Redenbaugh: I just clicked on Spotify.

00:14:26

Dave Pendle: Right.

00:14:29

Andy Bittner: Spotify on my device.

00:14:32

James Redenbaugh: And when you do a podcast interview with somebody else, I imagine that it goes out to their list as well.

00:14:42

Dave Pendle: Actually, I, I think they do, but I don't actually. I should be a bit more explicit in encouraging them to do that. I mean, sometimes they're asking for it to be shared for their newsletter, but I could be a bit more explicit on that because the actual podcast itself doesn't bring much. Mostly brings my audience in. Not this. So.

00:15:07

James Redenbaugh: And if you're promoting a course, there's. There's always opportunity to do some affiliate marketing, especially with the people on your podcast, where you can say, you know, share this podcast, but also a link to this course, which also will track any sales coming from your audience.

00:15:29

Dave Pendle: I tried to do that with both those courses. The first one, all the co presenters were really behind it. The second one, I got kind of weak response, or oh, oh, I didn't realize. I didn't realize. So that probably didn't help the success of the course. But even though, you know, I made it very quite explicit in the beginning, one of them called it Pyramid marketing, which is a little bit.

00:16:00

Andy Bittner: It's just an affiliate link. Calm down.

00:16:06

Dave Pendle: I didn't want to do the work. She was too busy.

00:16:08

Andy Bittner: Probably was a German. They're. They're super serious about stuff like that and like, very cautious. Come up with flings and stuff. Yeah, that's something I see. Like if I look your episode description, for example, on Spotify.

00:16:32

Dave Pendle: Yeah.

00:16:33

Andy Bittner: I mean, there is a link to your website, but it's like on the bottom. It's not really telling anybody what. Yeah, it's like just three lines. Maybe you can improve on that. The affiliate thing is also really important or like a really good idea, especially for people that are connected with you already.

00:16:52

Dave Pendle: Yeah, I just. Yeah. What do you think if it's a stronger. A stronger message or bigger font or what? What do you think?

00:17:03

James Redenbaugh: We can't control the font in Spotify, but we can definitely control the language and the position of the link.

00:17:11

Dave Pendle: Always small in Spotify.

00:17:14

James Redenbaugh: And I think that we. It might be time to evolve the. The album art.

00:17:21

Dave Pendle: Yeah.

00:17:22

James Redenbaugh: I mean, I love the spiral, but would be great for it to be something that matches the brand and feel of the website.

00:17:29

Dave Pendle: Okay. Yeah, yeah.

00:17:31

James Redenbaugh: More continuity.

00:17:35

Dave Pendle: Well, there is a snail form somewhere, but it's not the one that's on the website.

00:17:42

James Redenbaugh: Yeah. And yeah, I think we. We can bring money in. Who did most of the designs on this? She's great with little. Little details like that. And you have so many awesome icons around the site.

00:18:02

Dave Pendle: Yeah.

00:18:05

James Redenbaugh: You can get more use of those.

00:18:08

Dave Pendle: Okay. I've just found the metric is 127, all platform plays and 24 followers. So despite all my effort.

00:18:20

James Redenbaugh: Okay.

00:18:21

Dave Pendle: Spotify followers.

00:18:25

James Redenbaugh: Only. 127 listens across all the podcasts.

00:18:30

Dave Pendle: Yeah, well, yeah, across all platforms and the podcasts.

00:18:34

James Redenbaugh: Oh, wow.

00:18:37

Dave Pendle: So it's like tiny.

00:18:45

James Redenbaugh: I should listen more often. Bump those numbers up.

00:18:51

Dave Pendle: And I've got only, well, 387 views in total on YouTube. And there's a number of subscribers there. I don't know where they list that.

00:19:08

Andy Bittner: I mean, but your blog posts look pretty. They have good numbers. The ones you publish on medium. There's like 16 cheers, 54 claps, it's called. Or like 262, like 1 3K. Like, some guys are like, totally crazy and some are like averaging 60 to 100. But again, your website is at the bottom. Bottom. You need like forever to find your website.

00:19:40

Dave Pendle: Yeah.

00:19:42

Andy Bittner: I haven't worked with Medium that much yet, but maybe it's possible instead of just putting an image somewhere in your content, to also put in, like, a call to action or, like, I'm not sure if you can put in a newsletter. Opt in. In me in Medium, probably.

00:19:56

Dave Pendle: Yeah. Medium has their own.

00:19:58

Andy Bittner: Yeah, they don't want to.

00:19:59

Dave Pendle: Medium has their own newsletter, which you. They people sign up for. And then they get the article direct into their mailbox, and I can extract those subscribers and add them to my newsletter. There's only nine or ten on here, I think.

00:20:25

Andy Bittner: I'm curious if you can, like, create some kind of call to action that leads people to the website, like, to stuff that might be interesting for them, or we build a landing page for a newsletter, for example, for people that are interested, and then they opt in. And then you can, like, create a hit, like a. Like a story or like a customer journey in your newsletter tool where, like, drip your content, like, for first signups. They get, like, I don't know, six mails over the time of, like, two weeks or three weeks with, like, really important stuff. And then they only get updates if you send, like, new stuff or, like, something like that.

00:21:04

Dave Pendle: Yeah, that's. I mean, I've got this lead magnet, so that's the first thing that I quite like to. It's nearly ready to go. I need to work out a strategy to promote it, but that would be the first, you know, the thing that's most recent up to date and in, you know, matches the standard of the website. So I'd in. We worked on that as the promotion tool and then started with that.

00:21:38

Andy Bittner: Yeah, I think that's a good idea. So you have a lead magnet. You can create a landing page around the lead magnet. You can get people to sign up to your newsletter. You can create a call to action that leads people from Medium, from your podcast, from wherever to this page. If the lead magnet. Magnet is really relevant for all these people. That's the only question right now. I don't know what lead magnet it is, and if it's general enough to, like, be interesting for everybody or if it's just a niche thing.

00:22:06

Dave Pendle: It's. I've called it five Routes to Regenerative Worlding, and I've just written an article that sort of uses that wordage, so that's something I will reference when I'm promoting it.

00:22:27

Andy Bittner: But that sounds good to me. I think we can use that for, like, everybody.

00:22:33

Dave Pendle: And it's got. It's a little workbook with some reflective questions and some journaling.

00:22:41

Andy Bittner: It's perfect, like, for that, like, target audience. That sounds perfect.

00:22:45

Dave Pendle: Yeah. Yeah.

00:22:51

Andy Bittner: Is it this one or Is this something else? Because also workbook.

00:22:57

Dave Pendle: Say that again, Andy. Sorry.

00:22:59

Andy Bittner: Is this another like, lead magnet or that like James is showing right now?

00:23:05

Dave Pendle: Yeah, that was the old lead magnet. That was a leadership workbook. And I promoted it a bit in the beginning and then I lost. I didn't really have a good strategy of where and how to promote it. And I, I wasn't. You know, what I tend to do is post things once on social media and that's it. But something like a need magnet needs a kind of hamster wheel of like, you know, four times a day for six weeks or something. You know, four times a day for 6 weeks or it needs. Needs.

00:23:44

Andy Bittner: You have to kind of integrate it in all of your strategy, all of your content everywhere.

00:23:49

Dave Pendle: Yes.

00:23:50

Andy Bittner: And it weaved into everything.

00:23:52

Dave Pendle: Yeah. And it also needed a little bit of, you know, investment on Instagram or something to. To get it before new people. So that's going to be my strategy with this workbook.

00:24:13

James Redenbaugh: Dave, you want to share the workbook with.

00:24:16

Dave Pendle: I've got. I haven't got the final version, but I can share you the current.

00:24:20

James Redenbaugh: Cool. Yeah. And whenever it's ready.

00:24:22

Dave Pendle: No, I just got to get it up.

00:24:31

James Redenbaugh: And so, yeah, I'm thinking that first of all, it'd be good. I'm not sure what kind of analytics we have on the website, but we should look at that and make sure that we're tracking visitors and, you know, the current state of things to see how people are actually using the website when. When we get there, how many are reaching it. Andy, I think it's a great idea to look at Medium and Spotify and think about how we can make it easier for people to find the actual website. But I think that Andy and I can begin by taking a step back and putting some strategic ideas to down on. On paper and yeah. Pro proposing some things to you.

00:25:30

Dave Pendle: Yeah.

00:25:32

James Redenbaugh: We h. Have also started working with a really wonderful social media person who is very. Oh my. My camera overheated. Right. Who is very familiar with the current states of social media and algorithms and, you know, what works and what doesn't around paid advertising.

00:25:59

Dave Pendle: And I think I'm an expert in doing and what doesn't work.

00:26:04

James Redenbaugh: That's great. We can pick your brain on that.

00:26:08

Dave Pendle: Well, now I get engagement, but it's all from more peers than from people that want to buy. It's sort of like people are in a similar echelon or that are doing similar work to me. So I get a lot of fat kind of peer appreciation, but I haven't grown. You know, a market where people want to buy stuff from me.

00:26:31

James Redenbaugh: Yeah. And I think we have to think about what, how to bridge. How to create more bridges to people that are new to these worlds. You know, people that have been. Go into integral conferences for 20 years. But people, you know, young people, retired people, middle aged people who have started hearing about regeneration or starting to think about maybe something more is going on than I was told in school, or maybe something more is possible in.

00:27:14

Dave Pendle: Well, in some ways you're onto something there because the three or four of the people that came, I mean, they weren't young but they were new and they wanted to find out about the regenerative world and they came on the course because they trusted me and they knew the people that were there.

00:27:33

James Redenbaugh: Mm.

00:27:36

Dave Pendle: So this is the book or guide I'm asking to change some of the images. They're not quite. Oh, there's the spiral. It's not a snail, it's a spiral. All these red splotches are my comments on how I want them to change it, but they've sort of taken design cues off the site.

00:28:03

James Redenbaugh: Yeah.

00:28:05

Dave Pendle: And use shapes and forms. That it there?

00:28:19

James Redenbaugh: Nice.

00:28:22

Andy Bittner: Looks great.

00:28:27

Dave Pendle: Yeah, I'm pleased with it. I'm much more pleased with it than the other one.

00:28:32

James Redenbaugh: Awesome. Yeah, very good. That'll be great to have. So, yeah, we can bring some more juice. More juice in here. Do you have any sense of a budget that you want us to work within?

00:28:56

Dave Pendle: Yeah, I don't have a large budget. What's the most you can do for the least money?

00:29:05

James Redenbaugh: That's a good question. I mean, that's a bad question.

00:29:09

Dave Pendle: Bad question. Well, what, what about a thousand euros?

00:29:16

James Redenbaugh: Yeah. So we have a new model that's based on a monthly rhythm and it. I can send you more information on that.

00:29:30

Dave Pendle: What's the subscription model, you mean?

00:29:32

James Redenbaugh: It's, it's kind of a subscription model, but it's not the kind of thing that you subscribe to and then forget that you're paying for. And then you sent us a bunch of money. It's more about fitting all our projects together, making sure we have time for you and kind of aligning everyone around the same rhythm. And so we have a lot of clients right now that are at about a two thousand dollar a month level. And for them we're doing like one big push of things per week and we have two or three people working on a project at a time and getting a ton done for them every month. And we Also have a thousand dollar level which is like basically two big pushes in a month where, and the push can be you know, like bringing concerted attention to the website.

00:30:29

James Redenbaugh: You know, could be diving in with strategy on Andy. You know, I'm not sure about Andy's strategy packages or what he has in mind but you know, it could be us spending some time looking at the high level, maybe having a conversation with Audrey about social media strategies and then, and designing some key interventions and then the second bush would be, you know, pushing those key interventions and making those updates targeting the lowest hanging fruit. You know, we can do a new podcast cover that's, that's pretty easy using the assets that you have. Updating your medium profile to direct more traffic from there. Outlining a simple affiliate strategy for when you are ready to promote the next course with your peers. Updating that lead generation with the new book.

00:31:42

James Redenbaugh: But it's not going to be a ton of, you know, it's not a huge budget for doing like new pages or things like that. Definitely cleaning up some stuff around the site. But yeah. Does that give you a sense of things?

00:32:02

Dave Pendle: Yeah, I mean I'm not really in the position to earn that amount of income a month. I'm still like, I'm an amateur. Amateur. So I think I'm thinking of paying a one off fee rather than monthly amount.

00:32:17

James Redenbaugh: Yeah, yeah, no, the levels are just to give you a sense of.

00:32:23

Dave Pendle: Yeah.

00:32:23

James Redenbaugh: What we're doing and what costs are and it can be spread out over what any amount of time and it can be confined to any amount of time.

00:32:30

Dave Pendle: Oh, okay.

00:32:32

James Redenbaugh: Yeah. So I'm not saying, you know.

00:32:35

Dave Pendle: You're not saying a thousand a month.

00:32:37

James Redenbaugh: No.

00:32:38

Dave Pendle: Okay.

00:32:39

James Redenbaugh: No, no. I'm saying I, I am saying one month of a thousand dollars. We could do, we could do those two pushes.

00:32:46

Dave Pendle: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well what. Yeah, why don't you draw up a spec of what you could and would do and then we can discuss that.

00:32:57

James Redenbaugh: Cool, sounds good.

00:32:59

Dave Pendle: And once I get a closer to final version, I think the next one's going to be pretty close. I'll send you that. I mean this next one's got too many post its and comments and corrections on it. But the next one should be much closer. I'll send you a version of that so you've got that this is going to be close to what will be going out there.

00:33:25

James Redenbaugh: Cool.

00:33:25

Dave Pendle: Well, yeah, I, yeah, let, I'm. What's the word? Yeah, I'm called cautiously optimistic that we can. This is the gap, you know, because I'm good at producing content, writing articles, doing all the things, but I'm not very good at converting any of that to something that earns money. So if we can work on that together, maybe I can start to earn some of my investment back, you know?

00:33:56

James Redenbaugh: Yeah, wonderful. Sounds good. We'll. We'll confer and I can send you a note on that and share a bit more about the model and. Yeah, is there anything else we should touch on while we're all here together?

00:34:23

Dave Pendle: Not from my end.

00:34:28

James Redenbaugh: All right. Okie dokie. And any last thoughts, Andy?

00:34:35

Andy Bittner: Yeah, we work something out.

00:34:40

Dave Pendle: You thought about, you know, positioning the email or whatever? I think I've already assumed. Oh, they're interested enough to watch. You know, they'll read this and then they'll get the email. So maybe there's tips like that could help. So.

00:34:58

Andy Bittner: Yeah, yeah, we will figure something out how we can, like, promote it and you can work it or weave it into every bit of content you produce.

00:35:05

Dave Pendle: Yeah, great.

00:35:06

Andy Bittner: I think that's the most important thing right now.

00:35:08

Dave Pendle: Yeah. Yeah.

00:35:12

James Redenbaugh: Okay.

00:35:13

Dave Pendle: Yeah. James.

00:35:15

James Redenbaugh: No, that sounds great, Andy, thank you so much for hopping on here.

00:35:20

Dave Pendle: Yeah, thanks, Andy.

00:35:22

James Redenbaugh: Good to see you, Dave. I'm going to give your podcast some more listens and we'll be in touch.

00:35:29

Dave Pendle: Okay, take care. Thank you.

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