My BTMSinsiders training site has changed dramatically…
And I want to give you a transparent look into my thoughts and feelings behind this change and what it means for you.
Plus, I’m sure if you read between the lines you’ll get a few direct and indirect lessons in marketing and business.
Shall we?
My ultimate goal: Every training you take delivers 100X value…
This is the biggest thing for me. I believe in the power of a quality product.
Gary Bencivenga once taught, “A gifted product is mightier than a gifted pen.”
That is, if you have an incredible product to sell, the copywriting part is far easier, and perhaps even less important. And this is coming from one of the world’s greatest copywriters.
And so in every training I produce, I aim to make the training itself so valuable that your payoff for taking it would be 100-times what you paid for it.
Here’s a metric that attests to the success of this approach: Literally every single review I’ve gotten for every training course since the launch of BTMSinsiders two years ago is 5 stars. I kind of don’t like that, because it seems less credible than if at least one were less. But it’s true.
So overall I believe the quality of the content — my #1 priority — has delivered on that promise.
That said, I ran into an issue where I felt like I was letting my members down…
The balance of life, client work, and running a training business…
I’m far from perfect.
On my best days, I have everything together and can knock out my to-do list like nobody’s business. But those best days don’t always happen, and I often set my ambitions far higher than what I accomplish for the day.
(I could blame it on my ADHD and maybe have a point, but I’m not making excuses or looking for sympathy here — I’m simply stating what’s going on.)
I’ve been going through the process of getting ultra-realistic about that.
And while I believe I could become a workaholic and just do more, and more, and more — that’s not the life I want for myself.
When I became a freelance copywriter in 2010, one of my big motivations was to be around for my kids while they were growing up.
I haven’t worked a normal 40-hour work week since. I regularly take my kids to and from school. In the summer, my wife (she’s also an entrepreneur) and I manage our work schedules so one of us is always home with the kids.
We have created our businesses in a way where we can choose family time when so many others are stuck at work. There are ups and downs to any choice, including this one, but it’s what we’ve chosen.
It’s our choice of lifestyle…
Plus, I’ve prioritized still doing client work…
So I’m not just running a “how to make money online” business that teaches others “how to make money online” based on my “how to make money online” business.
I’m out there, in the trenches, with a handful of financial publishers, working alongside a small team of my own copywriters and the agency I work through, and I’m doing client work and making sales. Walking the walk.
Even as BTMSinsiders has become a substantial source of income, my work with clients has remained my primary income and where I continue to hone the skills I write about and create training on.
That’s how I want it, at least for now. That’s where my integrity comes from in writing about and teaching these concepts.
But this has also created a problem…
When I offered BTMSinsiders as a monthly subscription, I created an obligation (real or imagined) that I would actually deliver training on a monthly basis.
And while I believe the daily rhythm of Breakthrough Marketing Secrets helps with my writing, the monthly rhythm of BTMSinsiders wasn’t working for me. I found it difficult to balance the creation of training content at the quality I wanted, at the quantity of one per month.
And so, I fell off. The back catalog’s value remained. And most members haven’t watched the entire catalog yet. But I found it difficult in the light of all my other priorities to continue offering the training on a monthly basis.
When I think about this, I feel shame…
Just calling it like it is here, and being transparent. While I knew the value of the content was great, I felt terrible about it coming out as irregularly as it has.
That was part of my choice to shut it down at the end of 2018.
I wanted to do more. I wanted to make it a monthly thing. But I also realized that something had to change to make it so.
At first, I just thought that meant raising the price. Perhaps if I raised it to $67 or $97 per month, that would do it. I could make more per member per month, and justify spending more time on that.
But at the same time, my client business shifted and I went from writing one promo at a time to working on 3-4 as the senior copywriter, working with junior copywriters.
And so that side of my business is keeping me as busy as ever.
But at the same time, I was literally having people asking to send me money, for a product that already existed but that I wouldn’t sell to them.
Again, I felt bad. But I knew I couldn’t just launch the subscription the way it was…
And so I chose patience. Not knowing the right course of action, and not needing to pull more money out of BTMSinsiders, I simply let it sit, knowing I could relaunch it when I was ready.
And still, at least once a week, I got another inquiry, “When are you going to let me buy your training?!”
So the thought was constantly turning over in my mind.
What could I do to provide that same valuable content — without it feeling like a burden to me?
How could I pivot, re-create, and re-launch the business in a way where it felt positive all around?
I saw one clear path…
The change from subscription to one-time purchase…
I’m fully confident that when I sit down and crank out a training title, giving it the space it needs, I can deliver on my goal of 100X value.
But I don’t want to force myself into doing that on a monthly basis.
In part, because of my commitments to client work and to family.
But also, because the more training topics I teach on, the more it forces me to stretch outside of my core expertise. And the more likely it is that I’m going to slip and just start making stuff up for the sake of creating content, rather than actually delivering actionable value based on real-world experience.
So I’d rather focus on making less training titles, but making them even better.
And while I could relaunch the library membership at $37 or $47 or $67 or $97 or even $197 per month, I don’t want to do that, and repeat the emotional turmoil it created in the past.
I’d much rather offer individual training titles, where you buy what’s already there, you get what you bought, and the value delivery happens real-time.
And so from now going forward, the primary way you’ll get access to all BTMSinsiders training titles is by purchasing the individual training title.
This gets you instant streaming access, just like with the subscription. But you’re actually getting lifetime access to the training. You’ll pay once and never have to pay again.
A large majority of the previous BTMSinsiders training has already been made available for individual purchase.
Here are links to 10 of the most popular training titles you can get today:
— The Story Selling Master Class
— The Copywriter’s Roadmap to Building a Core Offer
— Proof, Credibility, and Believability
— Emotional Direct Response Copywriting
— The Value-First Funnel Strategy
— Think Like an A-List Copywriter
— The Most Valuable Customer Strategy
— Copywriting Royalties and Pay for Performance
And here’s a link to the entire catalog.
For the training titles that haven’t yet been made available for individual sale, they will be after I do some behind-the-scenes work on a per-title basis.
For those of you who want it all…
I do know that some of you are seriously invested in your careers, and want to get your hands on ALL the training I offer.
And so I’ve brought back the BTMSinsiders All-Access Pass as a single-purchase lifetime access pass.
That means, you pay one fee today, and you get permanent access to the entire BTMSinsiders training catalog, including all new training added in the future.
(And for now, this also includes the products not currently available as individual training.)
I am a little hesitant about this. I may be shooting myself in the foot, as I will still have monthly hosting costs. But I’d rather err on the side of generosity and figure it out as I go.
So at least for now, you can pay $997 for access to the entire catalog, and never be billed again.
As more training is added, that price will certainly go up. And at some point in the future, I may also add an annual maintenance fee — on top of the one-time fee — for NEW members. Though anyone who locks in the current price will not have to pay any more.
An offer to all past and current subscribers…
I will always do right by my current and past clients and customers.
When I launched BTMSinsiders and wanted to give access to the Story Selling Master Class, I knew others had paid $499 for what I was suddenly giving access to for $37 per month. So made an offer that would essentially give them full credit for what they’d already spent, toward this membership. And they got all the new training.
I’d like to make a similarly-generous offer — although I’ll note this could create a lot of work for me so your patience will be appreciated.
If you have a current subscription to BTMSinsiders, or have had one at any time in the past, I will apply 100% of what you’ve paid toward the lifetime access pass, up to its full price.
To do this, I need to create an individual coupon code for you and you only, which is manual work.
Please send your request to [email protected], and include the email address you use for your BTMSinsiders account. I’ll send you a coupon code good for you only, with instructions on how to convert to lifetime access.
And if you’d like to continue your access at your current monthly rate, you can do so. I will not cut off any subscriptions, and you can continue under your previous deal, for as long as you’d like to remain a member.
BONUS: A lesson in pricing, scalability, and pivots…
One thing I’ll note here that is a happy byproduct of this change, but not the determining factor…
Selling the training this way should make it easier for me to scale BTMSinsiders through paid advertising. Justifying more investment in delivering quality content.
The previous monthly model was capped in initial revenue. There was no immediate upsell available, because I’d built the subscription in a way that preempted that. I could make $37 immediately, and had to wait another 30 days to make $37 from a new customer.
This worked great for Breakthrough Marketing Secrets readers and organic traffic.
But when I was buying traffic, I’d typically have to spend around $50 to get a new customer.
Which meant I wasn’t breaking even until the second payment. And actually, I wasn’t really profiting until the third payment, 60 days in.
And yes, that’s great — I’m happy to do that. And that can be a great way to grow. And I knew the lifetime value was there, and my retention was high enough, that I could reliably spend today to get tomorrow.
But it’s much easier to invest in growth when you can immediately recoup your paid advertising expenses. When you can spend $1 today and get that $1 back today, with a customer, and perhaps a few extra cents or dollars, you can effectively spend until the market runs out.
When you have to wait 30 or 60 days, you’re always hamstrung by that delay when aiming to reinvest profits.
Math is a HUGE part of direct marketing. Which most copywriters (and most marketers and entrepreneurs, for that matter) don’t want to hear.
My previous model worked, in terms of the math. This new model works better.
Again, I didn’t make this change exclusively for this reason. But the reality is that it will probably be the most positively impactful change to BTMSinsiders, as part of this bigger transition. Because it will generate more immediate revenue to reinvest back into the business and training offerings.
And for you, understanding the importance of math in your marketing is one of the most valuable lessons I could ever give you.
One final note…
Change is often a messy process. There are still quite a few little changes that are happening in Breakthrough Marketing Secrets and BTMSinsiders to complete the changes I’ve laid out here.
I have more energy and enthusiasm than I’ve had in a long time to make these happen.
But while I’m making them happen, you may still find the occasional mention of the old subscription model, or descriptions that need to be updated. That’s all coming. But in the short term, if you’ve been chomping at the bit to go through much of my training, it’s now available.
Not only that, I’m excited again for creating new training. And with this weight off my shoulders, I’m overflowing with ideas of training that will be massively valuable for you.
More news on that front is coming soon…
Yours for bigger breakthroughs,
Roy Furr
