Allie Casazza Makes Five and Six Figures Per Webinar Talking About Minimalism | PoP 351

Share this content
Allie Casazza Makes Five and Six Figures Per Webinar Talking About Minimalism

Ever thought about hosting a webinar? Not sure how to get started and which platforms to use? Would you like a rough outline of how to get started with webinars?

In this podcast episode, Joe Sanok speaks with Allie Casazza about minimalism, turning her passion into a business and how to make money with webinars.

Podcast Sponsor

Everyone loves payday. But loving a payroll provider? That’s a little weird. Still, small businesses across the country love running payroll with Gusto. Gusto automatically files and pays your taxes, it’s super easy to use, and you can add benefits and HR support to help take care of your team and keep your business safe. Plus, listeners get three months free when they run their first payroll. So if you want better payroll in 2019, now’s the time to start. To get 3 months free once you run your first payroll just go to gusto.com/joe

Meet Allie Casazza

Allie Casazza is from Southern California, married her junior high sweetheart, and is a mom to 4 young children. She inspires and encourages her audience at AllieCasazza.com, is the host of The Purpose Show and is the creator of Your Uncluttered Home – an online decluttering course that earned her national attention for her philosophy of simple motherhood. Her business is built on minimalism and how we can all live a more purposeful life if we cut out all of the stuff to create space for enjoying the life we’re living! She has been featured on The Today Show, Good Morning America, The Huffington Post and even ABC News. Everyone has really taken to her realistic, doable mom-friendly, philosophy of minimalism and simplified living!

Find out more about Allie on Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest and Facebook.

Allie Casazza’s Story

After having her third child, Allie was a stay at home mom, living in a house that was too big and too expensive and feeling stretched really thin. With 3 kids under 3 she was feeling very overwhelmed and found herself struggling with depression. In her search to get it together the answer always seemed to be to get organized but found that this didn’t work. A realization came to mind that she had too much stuff and if she let go of it all she wouldn’t have that much to maintain – and that is what she did.

In This Podcast

Summary

In this podcast episode, Joe Sanok speaks with Allie Casazza about minimalism and how she turned her passion into a business.

Maintaining Minimalism

It’s all about developing rhythms.

  • Have a place for everything
  • Go through the main areas in the house and declutter
  • Get the kids involved and donate the items you no longer need/want

Turning A Big Idea Into A Business

After going through a very difficult time when Allie’s husband lost his job she was fed up with struggling. She decided to start investigating how she could turn her blog into a business. Having stumbled across some courses which would help her, she still couldn’t sign up for them as she could not afford it. Searching on Google then became her teacher and she tried to find how to do a webinar without money. After a lot of trial and error she figured it out and pre-sold a course to her small audience – beating her husband’s monthly income in one day!

Webinars

My webinars make 6 figures every time now. Webinars are the key to email growth and getting those cash injections for your business that you need so badly.

Allie’s process:

  • Brain dump everything about the topic
  • Notice themes and organize the information into sections
  • Put together bullet points and get together slides (slides should add to your content, it shouldn’t read all your content)
  • There should be at least 80 slides in an hour long webinar and you should always be at the pitch at 45 minutes

Creating Your Own Webinar Platform

You can do this by:

  • Creating a leadpage that is branded
  • Embed a YouTube live video onto that page
  • Embed a chat box using Chatango
  • Use ConvertKit for email marketing

Get Allie’s free starter kit to minimalism here.

Books by Allie

Useful Links:

Meet Joe Sanok

private practice consultant

Joe Sanok helps counselors to create thriving practices that are the envy of other counselors. He has helped counselors to grow their businesses by 50-500% and is proud of all the private practice owners that are growing their income, influence, and impact on the world. Click here to explore consulting with Joe.

Thanks For Listening!

Feel free to leave a comment below or share this podcast on social media by clicking on one of the social media links below! Alternatively, leave a review on iTunes and subscribe!

Podcast Transcription

Joe Sanok: Everyone loves payday, but loving a payroll provider? That’s a little weird. Still, private practices across the country love running payroll with Gusto. Gusto automatically files and pays your taxes. It’s super easy to use and you can add benefits and HR support to help you take care of your team and make your private practice safe. It’s loyal, it’s modern. You might fall in love yourself. Listeners get three months free when they run their first payroll. Try a demo and test it out over at gusto.com/Joe. That’s gusto.com/Joe. This is the Practice of the Practice podcast with Joe Sanok, session number 351. I am Joe Sanok, your host, and I am so glad that you’re hanging out today with me. This podcast is just so fun because I get to find people like Allie Casazza who we’re going to talk to today and invite her on to the podcast. She came on my radar just a couple months ago, actually through my wife Christina. And I’ll tell a little bit of that story in the interview. But it’s so fun to meet an author or someone that does websites or webinars like Allie does, and really connect with them. And we actually have been corresponding afterwards and we have so much in common in regards to kind of where we’re headed. And you know, you wouldn’t have these chances if I didn’t have a podcast. Like I wouldn’t just reach out to some random person and be like, “Hey, can I talk to you? Can I pick your brain?” No, they’re going to want to charge me for that. But by having a podcast, I’m able to reach out to these amazing people and have conversations that genuinely help me with my business, help me learn, but then also get to help you as well. So, it’s just so cool. Thanks again for all of you that voted with the Best of Therapist Resources Awards. We won best podcast, best blog and best consultant. So, if you’re looking for a consultant, reach out to us. We have myself, we also have Kasey, we have Alison, and now Jeremy where we can help you with all sorts of things with your practice. You can apply over at practiceofthepractice.com/apply. Also, tickets have opened up for Killin’It Camp. They are going fast. Killin’It Camp is the private practice conference. We’re having it at the YMCA of the Rockies because for one the Rocky Mountains are just gorgeous, but also, we can get the event venue really cheap and really high quality. This isn’t camping, this isn’t sitting in tents. It’s actual hotel style rooms, two queen beds. You can have your own room, you can share with somebody that you want to come with. You can have us find you a roommate. All of that is included in the price. The food is included in the price and the price is $650 for the entire thing, for everything, unless you want more drink tickets or some extra swag. So, we would love for you to come hang out with us at killin’itcamp.com. You can read more about it. You can look at pictures of the venue. We really want to bring together hundreds of private practice owners. We’ve got some amazing guests, speakers signed up. There are going to be teaching you about every aspect of private practice. It’s going to be an amazing event. We just can’t wait. It’s going to three days in October. Can’t wait to tell you more about that. But today we have Allie Casazza. Allie Casazza is amazing. She does webinars about minimalism and I’m going to read her bio in a second here. But she’s genuinely helped us change our lives, but then also to hear behind the business of this and how she’s been able to rock it out financially with something that she’s just so passionate about. It’s just super cool. So, without any further ado, I give you Allie Casazza. Well, today on the Practice of the Practice podcast, we have Allie Casazza. She’s from southern California, married her junior high sweetheart, and is a mom to four young children. She inspires and encourages her audience at alliecasazza.com, is the host of The Purpose Show, and is the creator of Your Uncluttered Home. She’s been featured on Good Morning America, The Today Show, Huffington Post, and ABC News. Allie, welcome to the Practice of the Practice podcast. Allie Casazza: Yes, thank you so much for inviting me. I’m super excited to talk about business today. Joe: Yeah, well and we both married people from like our teen years or childhood. My wife and I, we used to snowboard together in high school, and then went our separate ways and then reconnected. So, that’s awesome when I meet other people. How did you and your partner meet in, was it middle school? Allie: Yeah, we had assigned seats and we went to a private school and we had assigned seats in seventh grade Algebra and, I really didn’t like him, at all. He was, he’s a drummer and he would like tap on his chair all class and be super annoying. And I was just like, this guy is like the worst. But then through junior high and high school, we were like in the same friend circle? And we actually didn’t get together until the very end of senior year. Like right before it was like too late. So, — Joe: You know when you’re all heading off to college and it’s like, “Oh, who wants to have a long-distance relationship?” Allie: Right. Yeah, totally. And then we ended up just like disappointing our parents and just throwing everything away and getting married. Joe: Oh Man. Oh, it’s funny. I remember when Christina’s mom and my mom both worked in the school system and Barb, my mother-in-law said to my mom, something along the lines of, “Oh, Joe is like the best person that Christina’s dated and I hope they’d get married someday.” And my mom told me that, and I’m like, “You tell Barb Hutchins, that’s not going to happen.” Little did I know. Allie: It’s so funny how, I mean, I haven’t heard so many stories of that. Like, I actually really kind of hated my husband before he was my husband. And then I was like, actually, never mind. Let’s just have a thousand babies and be married forever. Joe: Absolutely. Well, so what I love about like coming into interview is there’s two sides that I just am so excited about. So, minimalism just in general, I love that idea. I love the idea of decluttering and having just things that you love in your life. And I definitely want to talk about that. But then you’ve taken this whole thing and you’ve made a business out of your passion, which a lot of our listeners are just like, “I have this great idea, but what do I do with it? How do I actually make money off of it? How do I know what’s going to work with my audience?” So, I love that we can kind of talk about both sides of that. So, take us through how you got into minimalism. Like what was life like before you started this journey? Allie: Yeah, so, at this point in my life, that I’ll talk about, we have four kids now. They’re nine, seven, six, and four. And at this point in my life, it was like six years ago. So, I had just had my third and we were just kind of doing the American family theme that everybody does. We were living in a house that was too big and too expensive for us because that’s just what you do. And we were just stretched really thin in every way. My husband was working, I was a stay-at-home mom and we kind of had just landed on, that was where we felt good about. Neither of us had any complaints about our roles at the time, but it just wasn’t working. And we were just really broke and stretched really thin financially. And we had this big house just full of stuff, because you know, the more space you have, you’re going to fill it with something unless you’re like super disciplined and intentionally doing that. And I wasn’t. I was super overwhelmed. I had three kids under three, and at one point even they were all [crosstalk] Joe: Which that just alone blows my mind. Like I have a four-year-old and a seven-year-old. And so, like when you add a six-year-old and a nine-year-old in there too, I’m like, “What does your world look like? Or like, “Holy cow … Allie: It’s like a lot of noise, and boogers, and screaming. Joe: She had three kids under three at the time. You’re in too big of a house, and then what? Allie: Yeah. So, I basically found myself, I’m just summarizing here, but I basically found myself really struggling with depression. I had always wanted this, like I had known my husband for a long time and we had been dating for a long time and then we wanted to have a family and here we were kind of living our dream life and I just was super unfulfilled and stressed out. It kind of felt like, I always compare it to, you know, you make a casserole and you’re going to put through and wrap over it to put it in the fridge and you stretch that saran wrap super tight and thin over the casserole. And if like one little sharp object pokes it, it’ll poke a hole in the saran wrap and it’ll all fall apart and stop covering the casserole. And that’s kind of how I felt mentally. Like I was just stretched so tight and thin. One thing would go wrong in my day and I would just be the mom that I never wanted to be yelling at my kids, losing it, just nagging all the time. I was super, super dissatisfied. And the thing is, is that the answer on Pinterest and Real Simple magazine and like everywhere for women is you need to just like get organized and just get your -ish together. Joe: You can say whatever you want to say here. Allie: But basically, that’s the message. Like get it together and get organized and you know, just do it. And so, I was like always just trying to get organized, trying to figure it out, and everything would just come on done right away because I was a mom and I had little kids and now I know that organization is not a solution. It’s basically just rearranging crap you don’t need. And it kind of ends up being this like little SpongeBob band aid over a gaping bullet wound. Like it doesn’t work. And basically, I had this epiphany day where I had just like lost it. I was having the worst day. I had heard this sermon at church. I like how I almost said shit and now I’m in church and the same [crosstalk] me. So, I had heard the sermon about what I always knew. I’ve always heard this verse, but it was about John 10 10 where it talks about abundant life and how Jesus came to give us abundant life so we can live well and full and joyfully. And I just had this feeling like our moms an exclusion from that because this is a total suck hole. Like I hate this and I don’t know what I’m doing wrong and what’s wrong? What can I change? And I had this moment where it just kind of hit me like a lightning bolt. Like literally all you do is clean up all day. Like is what is it? Is this supposed to take over your whole day? Like what are you cleaning up exactly. And I realized that it was just stuff and I didn’t even know if we needed that stuff. And I kind of said that sentence out loud and was like, “Oh my gosh. Like I know exactly what to do. There’s just too much stuff. And if I let go of it all, I won’t have so much to maintain and I could maybe not be running around like a tornado all day.” And I did it. I got rid of pretty much all my kids’ toys. I got rid of a lot of dishes, clothes, excess. I cleared out the closets. Like I just went in with this hope that this would work because I had already tried everything else and instead of organizing it all, I would just hack it all in like half at least. And I did. And it changed my entire life. And I took that into my health, into my calendar and to the toxic relationships in my life. I took it into everything and it completely transformed my life. And at that time, I had a little hobby blog that I was just kind of sharing my process on and I had had no growth until I started to share that part of my journey. And people just flocked to me. These women needed that story. They resonated with it and they needed this solution in their lives. And from there it unfolded into kind of this, I mean, really, it’s like an empire now. There’re millions of women reading and listening and watching now. It’s crazy. Joe: Why do you think it really took off when you started blogging about that? Like what was it about that that lined up with culture and what women were dealing with and families were dealing with? Like what was the magic behind that do you think? Allie: Well, at the time minimalism wasn’t the fad that it is now. There was no documentary on Netflix about it. There were really no books about it that were at least, you know, on the best seller list. It was kind of this new idea and I didn’t call it minimalism. I didn’t know to do that just was calling it, “Simplify, — Joe: Get rid of crap.” Allie: Yeah. It’s just like, “Throw your crap away.” And I think I’m a writer at heart and I definitely know how to write and I love writing. And so, I think I was able to be really descriptive and really communicate well how I felt and people saw the difference in me and they saw it in my writing and I was writing more often and I was showing up every week and they just saw that. And I think the people that were there, and there’s still some of them among my audience today and I see their names pop up sometimes and I’m like, “You’re one of the OGs”. But you know, they saw that change me and they watched me go through that process and I think there was a lot of power in that. And those are the people who spread the word and gave me what I have today. Joe: Yeah. So, I’m just thinking about when we first discovered you, it was actually my wife, and I remember this. It was a Saturday morning and we go back and forth as to who gets to sleep in on the weekends. And so, like I’ll sleep in on a Saturday and she’ll sleep in on a Sunday. And like you got to feed the kids and like you’re on it when it’s your day and like if you want to sleep in and you wake up at 11, like you can wake up at 11. And so, it’s amazing cause you just like don’t have to deal with being a parent for one morning a week. And so, I come down at like, I don’t know, 10, 10, 10, maybe like, or so, and I hear this voice and I’m like, she’s watching this webinar and Christina is not a webinar person. And so, that alone was like, what is happening here? What did she click on? And she’s like sucked into this thing. And so, I sit down and I’m watching it with her, because I love, from kind of a business standpoint, hearing how people frame out their passion, what they’re selling, all of that. So, I’m like taking notes on this webinar that you’re hosting and she’s taking notes on the minimalism side, taking pictures of the screen. And I know we’re kind of jumping ahead, but that line that you said about like ‘the less you have the kind of less you have to take care of.’ And I know that’s not an exact quote, but that idea that if you just have less stuff, it’s way less to take care of. And, you know, we moved like, it’s about a year ago into a new house, but we kept our old house for an Airbnb and I said, “I don’t want to take anything out of this house that we don’t really want.” And so, we brought our favorite spatula, we brought our favorite pan. Those pans that we didn’t like, we either left there or we donated. And just, and now the people have to buy a second house to just like move their stuff. But that process of saying, “What’s our favorite furniture and is this the stuff we actually want to take with us?” It’s amazing how it feels so much different when you have just the things that you really want versus this stuff that you somehow acquire over time. Allie: Right. And that’s the thing, is that it just happens. I mean, even now, this is my job. This is what I do. I’m in this kind of idea of simplifying and minimalism, I guess, all the time and it’s still, it just happens. Like kids bring stuff home from wherever they go. If they go to school or you know, friend’s house and people bring that, give them stuff and birthdays and holidays and it’s just all the time. And so, it really has to become something that you breathe, something that you just do and that you’re regularly maintaining. Joe: Yeah. And I know you’re going to give away at the end of the show your starter kit for people that really want to dive into this. So, we don’t have to go into the elements of kind of getting started, but I’d be interested in what do you do to maintain, once you kind of get through it all, what are just the, maybe three to five bullet points of how you maintain that. Because with kids, you’re right, like they come home with schoolwork that they’re emotionally attached to and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, where’s this going to go? Allie: Yeah. So, for us, we’re homeschooling right now, but my kids have been in school and I will just say, like that is constant. The paperwork is just constantly flowing. And that was a huge, I didn’t realize. And then we put them in and I’m like, “Oh my gosh,” like, “I have to sign all of these things and they want me to actually sit down and have to spend time looking at each of these.” Like there’s just constant. So, for us with that like regular, like I’m talking about like daily, weekly things have a place for that stuff. And then just, it’s all about developing like rhythms where it’s just a rhythmic, like every Friday I go through the paperwork from school week, I say I look at it, I take pictures of what I need to save, I throw away the original, I sign it and put it in their backpack or whatever it is or if that’s, you know, twice a week, whatever you need to do. Just setting up those rhythms where like we put everything here and then on this day or these days, I go through it and I look at it. If you have to set a reminder in your phone, it seems so silly. It seems so dumb, but it matters. You’ve got to look at that stuff. And this is how you keep your space intentional by going through and getting it out. And then in terms of like actual clutter and not so much paperwork, we kind of go with the seasons, which is hard to do in southern California because there are none. Joe: Whereas in Michigan, winter is half of the year, you know, and it snowing in October. Allie: Right. Totally. I, yeah, opposites. But here I just kind of tried to go with the seasons and every like quarter, every season, we just kind of revisit the main areas in our home. We have this downstairs closet that just no matter what seems to kind of be the catch all of clutter and we’ll go through that, the kids’ toys, the kids’ rooms. And my kids had been raised in this, so they just know how to do it. I’ll say, go upstairs and let’s declutter your toys. I don’t even need to be there anymore. And they’ll come down with a bag full of stuff that they are ready and they know it’s about empathy for them. They know that it’s not just going in the trash. They’re giving it to other kids who are less fortunate than them. And I’ve made them a part of that. So, if you have kids and you’re listening to this, like that’s a huge, huge thing. It’s just teaching them like there’s a world outside of yours and you can, if you’re not playing with this stuff, why not give it to a little girl or a little boy who doesn’t have that? You know, this old news toy to you is brand new to them. It’s in great working condition. Like, let’s make use of this. — Joe: When you say you brought them into that process, like they go with you to goodwill or they go with you wherever you take it? Allie: Yes. So, we have a couple of churches in our area that we give our stuff to. I find that it just actually gets put where it needs to go if we take it to places like that versus, you know, the big guys because they don’t really, I mean, often they just burn piles of trash. They don’t actually donate it. I found that out a couple of years ago and it kind of pisses me off because it was like, great, — Joe: Your toys are going to an incinerator. Allie: Yeah. So, but yeah, you could find what works for you. You know, if it doesn’t bother you, then just take, just to get it out of your house, you know, but if you care and you know that matters to you, then find someone that will do something good with it. But yeah, the kids are a part of that and they, they realize I’ve done a lot to get them deeply embedded in that world, particularly for our story. We were very, very, very poor and now we’re very far the opposite of that. And so, it’s important to me that my kids help out in soup kitchens, that they’re involved in charity, that they don’t grow up thinking, because they don’t remember. They were too little to remember our past. And so, for them to realize like there’s another world outside of that and that for sure contributes to them being so willing to just like, “Yeah, actually I haven’t played with this in a few weeks. I don’t really care. Grandma gave it to me for my birthday and I didn’t really like it in the first place. I’m just going to give it to somebody else.” So, it’s kind of all in our family culture. Joe: I love that idea of really involving them because, you know, as we grow our businesses and hopefully have kind of heart and meaning behind it, kids just see that they have, you know, economic opportunity and a sense of entitlement can really creep in. And so, I love that you’re intentionally pushing back on that. And, you know, as we all grow our businesses, we want to do that with our kids and ourselves to just push back on that sense of entitlement. It’s a gift to be where we’re at and to do the kind of work that we really love. So, that’s a great point. So, when did you start to realize that you had something that could actually be a business? So, you clean things out, everything’s, you know, more minimalists, you’d have less of that stress. How then do you say, “I’ve got this big idea and maybe this actually has some legs behind it?” Allie: Yeah, I think that really came from our family’s story. And like I mentioned, we were just super broke. And, I mean, like we had cars repossessed, we had to, like, there’s this episode of Malcolm in the Middle about a super old show. And he, the parents, like there’s this scene where they’re like, “Okay, well this bill is yellow, but it has red letters that say urgent. This bill is red and this one is pink, which one should we pay?” And it’s like really funny. But it kind of like, that was our life and we just basically, my husband’s job had been really great and the company just went downhill and things were cut and we felt that. And of course, like they didn’t care about their employees because it was a massive global internet company. And so, we felt that and things just took a turn for the worst. And then that was like six years of our life. And so, it was super hard. So, I at the time was just happy to share on my blog. I really liked blogging. It gave me an outlet to be a writer without having to, you know, write articles of deadlines and all that. And so, I was happy with that. But we ended up moving to the Midwest for my husband’s job, which was a promise to have life, get better and make more money. And we moved from southern California to Northwest Arkansas, which is culture shock status. And we get there and I remember it was like the middle of winter and I was like, “Arkansas doesn’t get that cold, but it did to us because we just are Californians — Joe: Ideally like a t-shirt and shorts. And you’d be like, “Why [crosstalk] Allie: I was looking around like, “What is wrong with these people? They’re psychopaths. They’re like jogging in flip flops and I’m freezing.” I just remember being like, “It is so freaking cold.” And the company had completely been dishonest. Their little pay was a lie, the hours were a lie. Not only did things not get better, they got worse and we had no friends and family. So, I was raised by entrepreneurs. I’ve always kind of had that in me, but I never really, I just didn’t feel the pull or the clarity on what to do with it. And it came then. I mean, I just was like, “I’m done. This sucks. These people in my audience are asking me to put something together, to show them how to do exactly what I’ve done all in one place, but we’re not sifting through the blog to find it and I’m going to do it.” And I googled, I sat on our couch with my husband and it was so cold outside and I was so miserable and we were just like googling, “How can you turn a blog into a business?” And we found this girl named Mariah Coz. She runs to Femtrepeneur and she talked about courses and creating, writing blog posts that lead to your courses and creating something that’s a high-priced item that changes people’s lives and is based on your passion. And it was just speaking right to me. And I couldn’t afford her courses. I couldn’t afford anything. So, I just had to, like, the Google search bar was my teacher and I just tried to hack life and find like a way to learn how to do a webinar with no money and without buying a course and all this stuff. And after a lot of trial and error, I figured it out and I put this course together and I pre-sold it to my tiny little audience of like 300 people. And even just with that one webinar and with a ton of tech issues and with just a few people there, I had sold enough courses that I hadn’t even created yet and I beat my husband’s monthly income that day and that I knew like this is something that’s viable. And it gave me a fire that, because I’m like really competitive, I’m a go getter, I won’t stop for anything, but I have to have a reason and I have to have a knowing that it will work. And that gave me that. And these women were like, thank you so much. I can’t wait for it to come out. It was like $40, now my course is $300, and there’s like professional videos done by a camera crew where I show my house and it’s like really legit now. But back then it didn’t even exist and I sold it for $40, and I sold so many, almost everybody on the webinar bought. It had like a crazy conversion rate. I was blown away and so I started working on the course and I just kept selling it and kept growing and kept doing what I was doing. I learned a lot about marketing, and yeah, that was kind of a start. Joe: Yeah. I feel like it’s amazing how when we reflect back on when we were first starting, how there’s these little elements that you do, right, that you just don’t realize how smart it is. That whole preselling idea. I remember when Kelly Higdon, a friend of mine, she was like, “Don’t spend all that time creating it and then selling it.” Like, “Sell it first then you can get feedback from people as to what they really want.” And that whole preselling idea and having those Beta testers that are just so invested, that’s one of the biggest takeaways that I’ve had in regards to the courses or membership communities or kind of any of the work I do because early on, unfortunately I didn’t have that mindset and wasted so much dang time. Allie: Yeah, it’s easy to do. And it was a crazy idea to me. I definitely struggled with, I don’t know if like it was really that fraud or imposter syndrome exactly. But I kind of felt a little tinge of something because it just kind of felt weird to sell something that didn’t exist yet. And I had never created anything like that, so it was like, “What if I don’t?” Like what, you know. But I made that money and I took a portion of it and I flew myself back home to California and I stayed there for a week, purging people’s houses with them and studying them. I went to a widow’s house that was a friend of my mom’s and I helped her declutter her husband’s stuff. Joe: Wow. Allie: And she sobbed on my shoulder and I like studied her, I helped her, I sat with her, I asked her like, “Why is this part so difficult?” Like, “Why is this, you know, piece of trash more difficult for you than his clothes?” I went to a friend’s house and we purged her kids’ toys and with them and I studied like what ages seemed to have a harder time letting go than others because my biggest fear was that I would be this, you know, quote expert that was a total fraud that had no idea what I was talking about. I knew that I had to be honest and I wouldn’t be able to create a business and sell something unless I knew you are not going to find anybody out there who’s better at this than I am. That trip to California was like money that we really didn’t have to spend and I made it happen and that was the best thing I ever did because I came home and I was like, I was just on fire. I had wept with a widow and helped a friend, you know, and her kids simplify. I was getting text messages like, “My whole house feels different. Oh my gosh, thank you for doing that for free. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much.” Like it changed my life and now I still know that. I know confidently there’s other voices, there’s other people, there’s even more popular influencers that do what I do now. And I know I’m just quietly confident because I am the best at this for mothers and there’s nothing that can shake that. So, it makes me confidently sell. Joe: Well, so, I’m hearing that really that kind of phase one for you was just experiencing your own passion. So, your own transformation through mental mentalism. Then when you had the audience, you presold to them and just gave it your best guess and then you reinvested that money into just really diving deep into your audience to know your customer beyond just your own experiences. Allie: Yes. Joe: So, then take us like kind of deeper into the Webinar flow that you’re in now because it just was so good. And there’s so many elements that I really appreciated in your webinar. How did you format that? Like how did you learn that technique? Maybe walk us through some of the techniques and tools that you use. Allie: Yeah, for sure. So, for me I think it just depends on who you are and what your process is. But for me, I like to have every single thing written now in a Google Doc, like, it’s basically like a script. And it’s funny because I do this every single time and I have for years, but I don’t really follow it super well. Like I’m kind of winging it when I’m actually doing webinars. But it’s there if, you know, cause sometimes like somebody in the chat, we’ll be like super rude and just throw you off or you know, there’s a tech glitch and I forgot where I was going because I get in the flow and it got broken. So, I like having that script open in one window on my monitor, so that I can reference it if I need to. And it also has cues in it for when I need to go to the next slide because I do do slides. It helps my visual learners. It can feel really corporate when my niche is not that way at all. But I don’t know if you have seen my slides, but they’re really [crosstalk] branded and yeah, I kind of tried to make it lighter and. So, I have the slides and I’ve got my script. And when I am going to start writing a new Webinar, my webinars take me days and days to figure out when they’re from scratch. But it’s worth it because just to encourage your listeners, at this point, I’ve got about 122,000 highly activated and engaged moms on my email list. I clean my list out every three months. I don’t want dead subscribers on there for a high number. And my webinars make like six figures every single time now, and an hour and a half I make our dream income, you know, six years, three years ago, whatever. And it’s insanity and I didn’t pay for Facebook ads until like really recently. Like all of this was organic and it had to be because I refused to pay money that I didn’t have to grow. So, you can absolutely, like webinars are the key to everything and I don’t care what anyone else says or people are starting to say like they’re dead or whatever. They are just not go-getters and they’re not trying hard enough and doing it the right way because this is like webinars or the kitty email growth and massive chunks of money to keep your business, getting those cash injections that you need so badly. So, when I start a new webinar, I get my Google Doc out and I just, I picked my topic. I don’t care if the title’s perfect yet. But for example, I’m doing one after this interview that’s all about minimalism and Christmas because this is a really difficult part of the process for moms. They feel like it’s going to undo all their hard work and they’re going to get all this crap in their house and they’re overwhelmed. So, I am going to do well about minimalism and Christmas. So, I put the title on there and I just kind of brain dump everything that I know about this topic. And it’s not organized, it’s just word junk and it’s just all out on the paper. And then I kind of go through and notice any themes and kind of organize it into sections. Like okay, so it looks like first they need to prep their kids’ rooms to kind of take the influx of stuff. Then they need to deal with boundaries and other people and explaining their lifestyle to grandparents and all of that. And then they need to figure out like, are they able to do kind of an out of the box Christmas and just like not do gifts or do they want to do gifts and they want to just have a traditional Christmas? They just don’t want it to be out of control. And so, I kind of like organize it into bullet points and then it becomes like, “Okay, this would be a slide, this would be a slide.” The slides should add to your content. They shouldn’t read all your content. It should be like the bullet points and you’re talking through that slide. There should be at least 80 slides in an hour-long webinar because you should be clicking regularly through to keep their attention. And you should always be at the pitch by 45 minutes because the average watch time is 53 minutes. I can keep going, but I don’t want to — Joe: No, please do, if only for me. Allie: Okay. So, basically when I’m doing a Webinar live, I’ve got the live window kind of up just so I can see the chat box that’s embedded underneath my video or to the right if I’m using a webinar platform; there’s kind of different ways you can do that. Joe: So, do you have two screens going or do you just have like one computer going? Like, what’s just like the technical makeup of when you’re running the Webinar? Allie: Yeah. So, I just have, I don’t know which, how many inches, but I have like the biggest Mac Monitor. Joe: Okay. Allie: So, if I didn’t, I would have to have two monitors for sure. So, I know some people use their laptop and their monitor, so whatever you have to do, but I’ve got a big monitor and then I’ve got kind of on the left side I’ve got, I shrink the windows down to where it’s just showing what I need to see. So, I’ve got my Google Doc with my script and my little like cues to, you know, go to the next slide and have my script. And then on the right side I’ve got the chat box. But I actually don’t really look at that too much because I have admins in there now help me. Once you reach a certain level and you start to get people that are like, I don’t know, just butthurt about nothing and they come on your webinar and start like, “You’re the worst,” or like, “I can’t stand your voice.” And it’s like, it’s super distracting. So, in the beginning, I looked at the chat a lot, but now I really don’t [crosstalk] Joe: If that’s the best use of their time, that just shows that they’re living a sad, sad life. Allie: I just, really quick to, like my favorite thing, and this will probably happen today, it happens every time, is I get women that come in and they start to troll the chat box and say like, “This is such a waste of time.” Like, “This is so dumb.” Like, “Oh, here comes the pitch,” and like, “Here we go.” What? I don’t have time for this. And it’s like, you’re sitting on your butt and you’re typing troll comments to me for an hour. I you have more time than you might realize. Like it’s so funny. Joe: Maybe your life doesn’t need to be minimalized. It needs to be maximized because you have nothing going on. Allie: Yeah, I feel like you will just go to target and buy a bunch of crap so you have something to clean up or something because they’re like freaking out. Anyway, so, yes, I kind of have those windows up. And then I also have, this is just a hack that’s helped me so much once you get a substantial amount of people at your webinars. I have my admins there, I’ve got two people that I just pay by the hour and they’re on my team already so they know me, they know my content, they know my prices and they’re familiar with everything. They’re in the chat box, just making everybody feel really welcome and loved and being really patient with the people that are kind of being rude. And we have a shared Google Doc that’s open on the right side of my monitor and they put the best questions for the Q & A part in that document so that I can just get to the point and I don’t have to scroll through the entire chat box. Joe: That’s brilliant. Allie: Yes. Because if I’ve got 53 minutes of average watch time and my class is about 40 minutes and then I want to get to the pitch, that’s not that long. That’s 13 minutes. And that’s how long my pitches … So, I don’t want to waste that time. I want to maximize, like what can I do to make this the most enjoyable for the mom who is overwhelmed, who’s struggling with depression, who just needs my message. Because I know that that pitch is not only going to provide my business with a major cash injection, but it’s going to give her her natural next step to her best life. So, I’ve got to do whatever I can do to streamline and not be mindlessly scrolling and like, okay, it’s a worse on the Webinar and I see like big, big, big people doing this and I’m like, guys, no. They’re like — Joe: Yeah, use their time wisely. Now, your admins, do they have admin privileges to like meet people and things like that? Allie: Yes, they do. We’ve only had to do that like twice I think ever. But it is there and it gives me the peace of mind to know that like I don’t have to worry about it. Like the chat box is open for the beginning when I’m like, “Hey, where’s everyone watching from?” All that. After that I’m pretty much zoned out. I’m focused on my slides, which also is the other window that’s open. So, I can use the arrow on my keypad to switch to the next slide when my script gives me the clue to do that. And I have my notes in case I lose my train of thought and I’m just like, I always have like a post-it note on my monitor that just reminds me to breathe, go slow and smooth, explain things, smile. And then I also put my revenue goal on there at the bottom. Joe: Nice. Oh, I feel like I had a couple of other questions about the flow, but I don’t remember what they were. I was just listening so intently. I know that we talked before we started rolling that you might be switching webinar platforms or you know, kind of exploring new ones. Are there certain features you look for in new platforms that you’re like, “These are essential components of a webinar platform?” Allie: So, where I’m at right now, and just being super honest, I’ve tried so many different platforms. WebinarJam, Crowdcast, Zoom, GoTo Webinar, all of these things. And you know, certain influencers always recommend them, but of course they’re affiliates. Joe: Yeah. Allie: So, it’s like, well, if it’s $500 a month, of course you’re going to recommend it. I just, it’s been really hard and I’ve had to like cancel or weigh out the contract or ask for a refund for so many. And I’m really finding that the thing about webinar platforms is that they are software and they’re so prone to bugs and I have way more tech glitches and issues than I do when I’m just using like YouTube Live. And so, what I’m doing, like today I’m doing a Webinar and a couple of hours, and for today’s Webinar I’m going back to that way, which is like a bonus because it’s super cheap if you’re new. But it’s basically like, do you know what Leadpages is? Joe: Yeah, we have Leadpages. Allie: Okay, cool. So, I just create a lead page that’s branded and pretty and it looks great. And then I embed a YouTube live video onto that page and I use Chatango to embed a chat box to the page as well. And you’re basically creating your own webinar platform. What’s great about this is that YouTube Live has come a long way since three years ago when I was starting to do webinars. Google hangouts was purchased by YouTube Live because Google and YouTube and all that and they are like a powerhouse now. And honestly, I think that’s the best way you can go. I’ve been doing that lately. I still have my automated webinar and WebinarJam, but I’m going to be moving that over to ClickFunnels and doing YouTube Live for all live ones because I’ve had like one tech glitch the entire time. It’s seamless and it’s easy and I mean it’s frigging YouTube. Like they know what they’re doing. It’s good. Joe: A lot of the platforms, someone will register and they get the automated email like, “It starting in 10 minutes.” “It’s starting in five minutes.” So, before you get to that lead page, do you have a lead page that people register on that goes into your email list and then how do you automate that so each webinar you don’t have to like recreate that email sequence. Allie: Yes. So, I have all my pre-webinar emails written in Google Docs and I basically just go in and change the title and the time, every single webinar and I use Leadpages to register them. And then that syncs with ConvertKit really well. ConvertKit is what I use for my email list. And so, I just set up, actually I don’t, my team does now, but you would set up a new form to get people sign up. And then I just make a new sequence so, when they register they automatically get an email that says like, “Here’s your webinar details.” By the way, that subject line has increased my open rates of that first email that they get when they sign up by like 30%. So, say like, “Here are your webinar details,” because it makes them think that if they don’t open this, they’re missing something. Instead of saying like, “Congrats, you’re in.” Like, don’t say anything. Say like here, “Open this up or you’re missing something basically.” And then just so you know too when you would do that, especially if it’s a new subscriber, that’s the first email they’re ever going to get from you. When you get them to open that initial email from you, you’re telling the email system this is a highly engaged subscriber and you’re way less likely to ever go to their spam folder, which is awesome. So, that email is super important. So, then I just tell them like, “I’m so glad you’re going to come. It’s going to be awesome.” I make it really friendly and connect with them. Like, “Bring coffee, we’re going to hang out together. I love this. I’m going to be alive.” And then I tell them like, “Here’s the life page and the date and time,” and all that. And then that life page is of course a lead page with an embedded YouTube video that won’t work until the time is there. So, until it’s start time. Joe: Wow, I want to learn YouTube Live a little bit better. That’s awesome. Allie: It’s really easy. I mean, of course the first time you do it, it’s always scary. Like what if I did something wrong? What if it’s not going to work? And if it would help, I mean for you too. But if you wanted to share, I can send you like screenshots of what my registration pages look like. I could even send you a link to the script of one of my webinars on the slides so you guys can see kind of how I match it up and how it all works and basically just make a copy of it and do it for yourself. Joe: Yeah, that’d be awesome. Thanks. Allie: Yeah, it’s hard. It’s a lot [crosstalk] Joe: Well and, for Chatango, is that just like kind of like a plugin type thing or is that something else you just embed into that lead page? Allie: Yeah, it’s basically, it’s really interesting. And I like now that you can, like, because I care about the aesthetic, so much of my brand. So, now you can kind of like make it, you know, put a hex code and make the chat box match your brand or whatever. But it’s a free online platform where you can basically like make an account and then you can say, I want to create a new chat group. So, I’ll call it like, you know, Minimalism and Christmas webinar. And then they give you, you tell it what you want to look like and how big you want the chat box to be. I usually make mine 750 by 650 because it fits the lead page really beautifully. And then it gives you the embed code and you just put it in in Leadpages and the chat box is there and everyone can talk and they can make their own username. And it’s really cool. Joe: Wow. So, we’ve got Leadpages, Chatango, YouTube Live, you’re using ConvertKit. We use Aweber so we could just have that set up within Aweber, I’m sure to do the same sort of thing. Allie: Yeah. Joe: Wow. Any other kind of tech sides of things for people or myself that we should consider with the actual setup side? Allie: Well, I think, I mean I just want to say that I think it can be really overwhelming this way for new people because you’re using a lot of different things that all work together. But I’ve been doing webinars for, I think over three years now and it is better than having one software that claims to do everything because they are just prone to bugs. I’ve had so many issues, people don’t get the emails, the emails don’t look good. They’re all like messed up and the letters turning to symbols, and WebinarJam was like calling people the wrong name. Like it was calling, my COO does all the testing and she was doing a test emails and she was like, her name’s Hailey, and it was like, “Hey Anna,” and like, “Hey Cindy,” like random names. Like it just, it, I think that it’s great that you could do that and that they claim to all do everything for you, but it’s almost like you put in what you get and if you just put it at the time to have all these different things like ConvertKit is so good at what they do and that’s all they do. Leadpages is good at what they do and that’s all they do. So, these other platforms are focused on one thing and they all work together. So, just take the time to get familiar with how to make them work together and create your own base of your own webinar instead of using somebody else’s software that claims to make it easier when it’s actually, yeah, it’s easier to set up but it’s not even going to work. Joe: That’s so refreshing for me to hear because like last January when we launched the next level of practice, our membership community with our Beta group, we went through I think four webinar platforms in a month and like there were some of them that didn’t work with an iPad. It’s like, are you kidding me? Like, and their answer was just like, “Oh, we haven’t developed that yet.” I’m like, “What is wrong with you?” Allie: Yeah, it’s on their sales page before they take $300 a year [crosstalk] Joe: So, it’s nice to hear someone else that’s doing it well. Say I’m frustrated with this as well and I’m just going to like kind of bootstrap it and put together the ideal platform for yourself. Now, the last component of at least a sales webinar is I loved how it popped up every time someone bought something and said, “So and so just sign up for the course,” like their first name. Is there a way to do that through Leadpages with the model that you’re talking about now? Allie: So, not that I know of. I’m sure one day there will be, but I’ve hacked it by saying, “Tell me in the chat when you enroll so we can celebrate you.” Okay. And people, first of all, one huge thing that has helped me and just marketing in general is telling people what to do is so powerful. Like people want to be told what to do. So, I mean it’s really funny. It’s almost like, it’s kind of weird because you’re just like a stranger and there’s all these strangers there but you tell them to do something and they do it. And it’s weird. But I’ll say like, I want to like this is going to, I always say in my pitch like this is not nothing, this is going to change your life. It’s not a matter of if, if you do the work, like it’s a matter of when, because how fast are you going to go through this? Like it will change your life. So, I want to celebrate that with you. Tell me in the chat when you buy it and they do and then the chat will fill with these. Like, “I did it. Oh my gosh, I’m freaking out, so nervous. But I totally did it.” And My admins, well like tell me on the Q & A doc like, “Cindy just bought, Kenna just bought, Haley just bought.” And I will like call them out by name and just like I sometimes will get truly emotional and start to cry and I just let that happen because I know these women just changed their entire life and I got to give them the shortcut that I didn’t have. And so, I think that authenticity and that celebration really shows through. And every time we do that, there’s always a massive spike in live sales while I’m reading their names. Joe: Oh, it’s so awesome. And then just one last bit of the tech side. When you’re doing the, “Hey, let’s sign up,” do you have a button that goes live at a certain point in the webinar? Or is it just you give a URL to people. How do you actually do that? Because I know in like WebinarJam or other things, like they have a button that can pop up. How do you have them actually make that sale? Allie: Yeah. So, this has been a process for me too. And that’s a great question. In the past, you know, everyone was kind of saying you want the button to not pop up until you’ve gone through your whole piece and you know, you do the whole pitch, you do it. And in WebinarJam, that’s how it’s set up. And that’s worked fine. But I was watching a Marie Forleo webinar once in the last, I think it was like a year ago, and she just like, I mean, you know who Marie Forleo is, right? Joe: Yeah. Allie: Okay. She’s like, I mean, basically Oprah and she just has the button there the whole time. And I was like fascinated by that. Like, wait, Marie Forleo doesn’t have the button pop up. Like, should I be doing this? And so, I started to just research it a little bit. And apparently like now that webinars are going and online businesses just really becoming a thing, people are doing studies on things and they found that people get so frustrated that they have to wait for you to keep saying your piece to get the buy button, then it’s not better to just have it. So, I started testing that, of course. I usually do my webinars twice, so I’ll do one one way with one offer and then the next week I’ll do it again with a different way or a different offer, different bonuses or whatever. And I tried it with the buttons being different. And the one with the button there, the entire class converted like 2% higher. So, yeah. Joe: Well, 2%, that’s significant. Allie: For sure. It was like, the first one was 6% and the other one was 8 1/2%. And the only difference was the button. The offer and the bonuses were the same. Joe: Well, I hope listeners you’re underlining that in your mind because we’ve talked about Ab testing with marketing and everything and every element. If you can get a couple extra percent, that adds up over time. If you have, you know, 2% more opt in, 2% more open rate, 2% more purchases, you know, that adds up really quickly. Allie, the last question that I ask guests is, if every private practice listener in the world were listening right now, what would you want them to know? What would you want their big takeaway to be? Allie: I think just that what you’re doing matters. Like if you’re in any type of private practice, like you’re obviously changing lives and helping people overcome something. And I think that it’s just really empowering and enlightening to know that not only are you doing good work and you’re helping people and changing lives, but you can build substantial wealth doing that. And my biggest thing, and like one of the things that was on my heart from the beginning was that I wanted to change the world and I wanted to change the world twice, once with my message to help women lighten their loads and live intentionally with last. And then again with the money that I made from doing that, and I don’t want you guys to shy away from the fact that this online business that you’re trying to build with your practice can be incredibly lucrative and beneficial to the world. And again, through the money that you build and the wealth that you build from creating this business, like it can be so much more amazing than you think. I know it’s hard to see those numbers. Like influencers will say, I made $75,000 in two minutes and it’s kind of feels like it’s ridiculous, but I lived it and that’s my story. And it’s real. And that can be you. Like why can’t that be you? Joe: Absolutely. And it’s like the skillset that therapists in particular have, I often say that that we have very small egos and very large skill sets. Like we know statistically only 8% of the U.S. has a master’s degree and then of that 8%, like how many people have focused in on mental health type Masters degrees. And so, just from an educational standpoint, the listeners are probably the smartest person in the room around their particular specialty. And so, really owning that and saying, you know what, I’m going to change the world for the positive, but I’m also going to increase my income. We often talk about the four ‘s with Practice of the Practice of income, innovation, influence, and impact. And those are all things that you captured here and they don’t have to be up against each other. You can be innovating and making money and influencing the world and impacting it. So, Ellie, this has been an amazing interview. You are doing such important work and even within my family, Christina has listened to your podcast and she’s not usually a podcast listener. She’s taking your course, she signed up for your course right away and you know, our life is genuinely being improved kind of through that lens. So, thank you for that. Just for my own family’s side. And then Ellie, you also have a starter kit that you’re giving away from people that really want to kind of dive into this minimalism stuff. Could you tell them a little bit about that? Allie: Yeah. So, it’s kind of just step one. If you’re a little overwhelmed in your life and you want or a lot overwhelmed and you want to just start to simplify and you realize that you know what takes up your space takes up your time. So, this thing that seems kind of insignificant of, you know, just clutter, it really matters and it’s been proven to more clutter, higher cortisol levels, and women especially. So, it matters. So, you go to alliecasazza.com/starterkit and you can download that. It’s totally free and it kind of walks you through like figuring out your foundation and your wife for simplifying and kind of giving you that backbone that you need to get started. And then like the first steps of actually getting started. Joe: Oh, that’s so awesome. And we’ll have all those technical tips as well in the show notes. Ellie, thank you so much for being on the Practice of the Practice podcast. Allie: Thank you for having me. Joe: Well, thank you so much for tuning in. We’re so excited about all the stuff that we have coming up. In the next episode we’re going to be talking a little bit more about Killin’It Camp. We’re also going to be answering some Q & A questions from people that they’ve submitted. Also, if you are looking for someone or something to help you with payroll, with sending out checks, with paying your team in your private practice, gusto.com/Joe, you can try it out for three months totally free. Gusto is one of our newest sponsors. If you’re looking for payroll, we would love for you to go check them out, talk with them, see if they’re a fit. They’re amazing. Again, that’s gusto.com/Joe. Thanks for letting me into your ears and into your brain will be talking to you soon. Bye. Special thanks to the band Silence is Sexy for your intro music. We like it a lot and this podcast is designed to provide accurate, authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the guests, or the publisher are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or other professional information. You want a professional, you should find one.