Giving a Shit About Yourself

My blog title comes straight out of Dan Harris' 10% Happier membership phone app.  It's a membership site promoting meditation.. It runs on your iPhone and the name of one of its meditations is point blank - Giving a Shit About Yourself.

Click here to learn about Dan and the panic attack he had on live TV delivering the news on Good Morning, America.  That started him on a journey that led him become an author and membership program builder promoting meditation for overcoming emotional conditions like he has.

Let's explore Dan's sales funnel and membership program closely.  We can ignore that Dan has access to TV time.  With  less expensive online methods (i.e., Facebook ads, email promotion, JV relationships, etc.) any business owner can do the same thing.   It's just a matter of scale.

Funnel Step 1 - The Initial Offer

Dan promotes his book, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics." He doesn't mention his membership program.  He talks about freaking out on TV and plays a video of him cutting a newscast short because on his panic attack.

I'm watching him on TV and right away search on YouTube for the video of him freaking out.  That, of course, gets me to videos of him explaining how his freaking out got him to meditation.

He exposes an ugly side of himself.  He's a TV anchor fessing up to having PTSD from war coverage, using hard drugs and a lifestyle that led to this TV freak out.  I watch this guy all the time and I didn't know that side of him.

It's counter intuitive, but showing a very real side of yourself builds credibility.  It gets me the listener thinking, "He's not some high almighty news anchor.  He's a regular person with problems and he's got a way to overcome it."  That's a key message for any sale funnel.

Tell people why you are the credible expert that I can help with an issue.

Funnel Step 2 - Free Lead Magnet

Dan's promoting his book so next I go over to my Kindle phone app and download a free copy.  Amazon downloads it immediately and I'm quickly  scanning his book.  The book is OK is saying stuff like I heard Dan saying on TV and then it tells me there's a phone app.

This is where it gets interesting.  The phone app is offered with a 7 day free trial.  Then you pay $9.99 a month or $70 for the year.   I now have full access to all his material and there is tons of it.  I immediately learn this no Mickey Mouse trivial  program.  This is a program that can teach me meditation.

It does a good job of keeping me from getting overwhelmed by promoting the first mini-course.  It's Meditation for Skeptics and it does all the right stuff.  All the videos are 3 to 5 minutes long and they address all the objections people have for failing at meditation.  It addresses objections like,

• I'm too busy.
• I'm too ADD.  I can't do this.
• The lesson Giving a Shit About Yourself  promotes self-care to people who spent a lot of time caring for others and burning out because they don't take care of themselves.

The videos are entertaining followed by a timed meditation session where a speaker talks you through short meditations.  It starts with short 5 minute  meditations.  It's very nicely done.

Funnel Step 3 - Making the Sale

So on day 7, I purposely change my card so it won't charge me $70.  I'm the marketer here experimenting with their system.  The app seems to keep working, but when I select another course, whoa!! I get a popup, "Upgrade to Premium."

The $9.99 and $70 a year is now $11.99 a month or $6.67 monthly if commit to the year.  It now $10 a year more expensive, but now I'm his captive audience.  Price isn't what's going to keep me from buying.

This is the same approach used by phone game apps like "Angry Birds."  If you've ever played it, you'll see it lets you into two levels.  Then after you're addicted to the game, they hit you up for $.99.  Who's not going to pay it.  You have sampled the program. You know what you're getting. You want more.

I'll soon finish with Dan's free content so it's only a matter of time before I'm a paying customer.

Lesson Learned

You have to first focus on establishing yourself as the expert.  Dan wrote the book because authors get that recognition.  It's similar to me writing these blog articles.  (A book is coming.)  You're not selling anything.  You're showing yourself as the expert.

You then make a free offer.  That lets people sample your content in your membership platform.  Dan uses a phone app.  It makes sense for him.  A website based membership sites could be built to work the same at a lower cost.  Give the customer a free but limited experience and make it good.

At a minimum, you now have someone willing to promote you.  I'm here blogging about it, right?  You definitely have opportunities to get buyers and then more purchases for what you have that follows.