A Case Study
Covid transformed my business for the better
With the onset of the Pandemic in 2020 and the saturation of headlines covering rising unemployment and cash strapped Americans, I decided to sit down and formalize a business model I had been practicing on and off for 8 years…
…selling peaches at roadside stands. It sounds crazy, I know, but roadside farm stands are a money maker that has been around since the time of Egyptians and organized agriculture.
I had been playing around with online course creation since the launch of KBB in 2019, but it wasn’t until March 2020 that I knew I had to create a course to teach what I had been informally teaching for years: how to sell peaches from a roadside farm stand for massive profit.
I followed all of the prescriptions set forth in the KBB platform and deployed every strategy I had been learning from Russell Brunson for the previous 2 years to create the Roadside Millions Academy & Coaching program…(later renamedRoadsideRepublicto better reflect an identity and the movement I was creating).
A course is born
I wrote out an 8 module course with everything I knew about buying and selling peaches for massive profit…
…next I used Russell’s Perfect Webinar script to craft my webinar.
And then the ads…I already had 10 years of Facebook ad experience by this time, so I was familiar with targeted ads, lead generation and conversion from my career in software licensing sales for our family business, as well as my time selling residential real estate.
For each Thursday Webinar, I netted 500-700 leads and pushed them into the automated follow up sequences like this one:
RE: When is NOW a good time to open your Roadside Stand?
We know you want to...
Like, really...NOW is a great time to launch your stand.
And here's why:
Finn and I are closing out the Roadside Academy course: Launch Your Roadside Stand...TOMORROW...July 19th at midnight.
But before we do, we want to stack so much value into this offer that it would be crazy NOT to choose NOW to open your roadside stand.
If you join the Roadside Academy before we shut the doors, you are going to receive the Fall and Winter course on Roadside Stands as a BONUS!
Not only do you get the regular course on Launching Your Roadside Stand with summer produce, you also get the fall course on opening and running your very own Pumpkin Patch...
PLUS...
You get the winter course on launching your own Christmas Tree stand!
Um, what?
Yep!
Here's the value...are you ready for it?
Launch Your Roadside Stand...$1997
Pumpkin Patch Profits...$997
Open a Successful Christmas Tree Stand...$997
...and we are giving it away for...
$997...
...that's $5,000 worth of programming for $997
...and it's ONLY available until Sunday July 19th at Midnight.
After then, this offer goes away and so does the Launch Your Own Roadside Stand...this course will not return until March 2021!
If you wait...prices will go up and the courses will all be offered separately. They will not be bundled again under once offer like this.
So, let me ask you that question again:
Is NOW a good time to launch your roadside stand?
Looking forward to welcoming you to the family!
Of the roughly 600 leads each week, approximately 150 would show for the live Webinar, for a show rate of 25%.
Within 30 days, I had enrolled 40 students into my beta course from the live webinars. I spent about $11,500 on ads during the beta launch for a customer acquisition cost of approximately $300 per student.
I had FB pixels running, so I was able to re-target leads with ads like this one:
My profit on the beta launch was $28k.
I generated almost 6,000 leads during the launch.
I taught the course live via Zoom over the course of 2 months and 25% of the students enrolled actually went on to open their own roadside stands.
Developing a movement and an identity
From my own experience owning and operating over 100 roadside stands since 2013, I knew just how amazingly effective the business model was at generating cash. It became clear to me that roadside stands were a low risk business anyone could start and operate…even students.
The movement was born. High school and college students started approaching me about learning the business to pay for college tuition and expenses. And then moms began to ask me to help them get started so they could fund their kids' tuition.
Before I knew it, I had a rally point from which the entire community could support the business, both for our brick and mortar stands and the online course teaching the business blueprint.
I started a press campaign to boost our reputation and authority. I was a guest on podcasts like this one:
Running the business while running the course
My 18 year old son became my business partner and I fully embraced the mission to empower students to pay for college without going into debt.
Finn and I decided to document the following peach season from start to finish and allowed followers on social media to watch as we took a $330 investment and flipped into $125k of produce sales in 3 months.
Roadside Republic - Home | Facebook
We sold over 50,000 lbs of peaches this season and gained a larger following, recruiting new students into our course along the way.
And what has been the most fun?
…Teaching people DRM strategies for selling face-to-face. The students may not know it’s called direct response marketing, but they all learn how to properly sell and handle objections…winning over the customers every time!
We spent time to train every student in the business of selling products, including:
1.The art of storytelling to create value around the product
2.Breaking pricing patterns by refusing to price produce by the pound. We price by the
basket, creating more value and quality, providing permission for the customer to spend
more on our products
3.We create value stacks when putting products together, allowing customers to see each
line item value and the bonus products they receive when buying in bulk
4.The kids LOVE the upswells and downsells! Everyone needs a watermelon when they
buy a basket of peaches?…oh, watermelon too much for just one person?…then let’s go
with the cantaloupe!
5.Another perennial favorite that every student knows is to make the customer feel seen,
heard, and understood. When that’s done, the path is open for sales.
We set up freeshort strategy sessionswith prospectivestudents and began to easily flip leads into converting customers with a short phone call.
Today, we have 3 product offerings:
1.Done for you—High ticket offer for scaling the roadside business to multiple stands. A
$15k 1 year coaching partnership
2.Done with you—A 2-day full immersion seminar where we customize the business
blueprint for students…$5k
3.And the $997 DIY course.
Results
Using direct response marketing strategies has tripled our brick and mortar sales in the last
year, grown our online following, cemented our business in the hearts of the local community, and created a mission that rallies families far and wide.
We went into the studio this year and recorded our online course for the very first time and now have an evergreen product for consumption.
Finn and I continue to teach marketing strategies live for the students in our course and many of them have gone on to start successful businesses for themselves, like Robyn:
What an amazing journey it has been so far!