I Shut Down a $50k YouTube Funnel - here's why

How did I build a $50K YouTube funnel around a $147 course... without ads, webinars, or launches... and why did I shut it down? In this video, I share the real story behind my "backstage YouTube funnel," the pivotal moment that changed my business, and why I chose to go all-in on community and connection through Video Brand Academy. If you’re a course creator or business owner, this is for you!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Couple years ago I built a YouTube funnel around a $147 course and it went on to generate $50K in revenue without really having to do much. Like no ads, no live launches, no webinars. I just showed up and made my regular YouTube videos every week. And the way that the YouTube ecosystem works meant that my backstage YouTube funnel made sales for me. And then I shut it down. I shut it off. I turned my backstage YouTube funnel off. And I want to talk about it here in this video because I think there's an important kind of pivotal thing that happened for me. So if you're new here, my name is Meredith and I'm here to help you infuse the best video marketing strategies into your business and to help you look good, sound good, and feel good on camera. And I think there's never been a better time or a more important time as a business owner to build your personal brand, to build your video brand, and to simply show up as a human on camera, on YouTube. But as a business owner, you also need to generate revenue. And if you have a course, a membership, a program, even a service of some kind, that means generating sales, making offers that people want to buy. What I really want to dig into is why I shut my very effective, very profitable funnel down and what I'm doing next. So I'm editing this video and I just realized there's something kind of cool and really cringy that I could interject into the edit at this point. So let me just preface this. Last December I was invited on stage at Business by Design Live, BBD Live with James Woodmore. And I told a little bit about this story in like four minutes. So if you want to see me being really awkward and uncomfortable on stage in front of a thousand of my peers, um watch this and we can be uncomfortable and awkward together.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

All right, let's give it up for Meredith Marsh.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

Okay, so BBG Live 2018 is where I started in this room. It was only like maybe a third of the size. And I sat in the way back, the way, way, way back.

unknown 2:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Hi, I see you. I sat as far away from the stage as I could possibly get. And I was really insecure about my business. I didn't like it was barely business. It was more like a side hustle. And I was afraid of anyone talking to me because I thought everyone here has it figured out except for me. And my kids were little. I had started a YouTube channel making how-to videos for strangers on the internet. I love language. And uh but it wasn't really making any money. I mean, my kids thought I was cool because I was a YouTuber, but I wasn't really making any money. And you know, my husband was very supportive, but I could tell he was like, is this gonna become a thing? Like that makes money. So I came to BB BBD Live seeking the secret sauce, you know? Like what's the right path? And I I left with new friends and new ideas. I went home, I turned my YouTube course into a membership. I threw together an offer and a webinar. I did the math and needed 30 members to uh like make ends meet and have some take-home pay. And I got nine. And I remember thinking, why did I think I could do this? Obviously, I can't. It was uh you know, I saw it as a failure. Um but it kept going. And I started looking at what everyone else was doing and uh what what are they launching and reading through their debriefs and what is their revenue and uh what are their courses? And I think I did just about every one of James's launch execution guides. Like even the weird ones. Like the ninja survey pre-release. Don't laugh. It actually works. It's actually very effective. But business was still growing so slow. And I applied for a job at one point, thinking maybe this is just a side hustle. And then I didn't even get the job. So I had really no choice but to just trust myself, trust the vision that I had in the back corner of that room in 2018. I stopped trying to focus on what is the revenue and the result that I need to get out of the business, and started asking and focusing what is the business I want to build? How do I want to show up in the business every day? Because I want calm, I want chill. I want to just enjoy showing up. And for me, that was YouTube and the membership. So I just stopped doing all the other crap that I saw everyone else doing, even though it's effective, and just started building the business I wanted to build. So I went back through BBD, um, irresistible offers. I did sales page by design every single one of the 16 sections of sales page by design. And I really did it. I did the work. I went through million-dollar messaging, which took a long time. But I did the work, and that's when things started to speed up. Last year I had 27 members in Video Brand Academy, and now I have 150. But it's fun. It's business is fun. 15k months are the new normal. And the breakthrough that I submitted for this was this year I worked less but still made more money, which is a common thing you've heard up here today. For me, though, the biggest win when I think about 2018 Meredith in the back of the room, scared to talk to anybody, is that my little girls are teenagers now and they're gonna tell me this is cringy as f to say. Okay. But the thing is, they watched me do it the whole time. For me, that's the biggest win I could ask for. Like, why does it feel so cringy now to watch it back? I don't know. It just feels weird to me because I was so uncomfortable on stage and because I had to fit like a a breakthrough, a business breakthrough into like four and a half minutes. And since I wasn't planning on injecting that snippet um into this video, I want to give you all just a tiny bit of context before I go back to the whole thing about shutting down this 50k funnel. Because when I started my business, I had some courses on like GoPro stuff, and then I had a YouTube course, and then I turned that into a membership, and then I created another YouTube course, and that's the one that I turned into a funnel and then ended up shutting down. So let's just go back to what I had originally planned. So let's back up to like four-ish years ago, I think. At this point, I had a course called 30 Days to a Thriving YouTube channel. And it was a like a self-study at your own pace, um, like a traditional online course where I didn't have to show up live. All of the videos were pre-recorded. There weren't like live Zoom coaching calls or anything like that. And so I kind of sat here going, well, if I'm getting like views on my YouTube videos consistently, because that's how YouTube works, and I'm just simply like consistently publishing my content and I'm consistently growing my email list. Why shouldn't I also be just consistently making sales of that course, right? And that's when I came up with this, what I call a backstage YouTube funnel. Let me explain how it works because I still teach this inside of Video Brand Academy. You have a pinned video on your YouTube channel. So it's live on your channel, pinned, meaning it stays at the top of your channel as a trailer, as a featured video, or as the first video in the playlist at the top of your channel. It stays there. That video is like a billboard, I call it a billboard video, and it's pointed specifically to your target client. So you could have a YouTube channel where you have a target audience, you have target viewers, you have a community, right? But this one particular offer, you have a target client or a target student or a target customer, right? And this billboard video is specifically targeted towards that person. For me, 30 Days to a Thriving YouTube channel was targeted toward anyone who is starting a YouTube channel or had a YouTube channel, but it wasn't really working. And that billboard video is connected to a lead magnet that I call a backstage bonus video. So it's not like a free PDF, it's not a webinar, not a live training that's happening. It's a bonus video training that you have inside of your program that you give access to for free as a lead magnet. And that bonus video could be 20 minutes long, 25, 26 minutes long, I think was the length of mine. It's actually very specifically scripted to follow the what works for um for a typical YouTube video that then leads to pitching your offer. In in my case, 30 Days to Thrive in YouTube channel, $147 offer. It's very specifically effective for a long form YouTube creator, video podcast creator, you know, how-to tutorial style video creator, long-form videos like the one you're watching now. So why did I shut it down? There was nothing wrong with the course. Like this actually, the strategies that I taught in 30 Days to a Thriving YouTube channel are still the same exact foundational strategies that I teach in Video Brand Academy and in the Fast Way to 1K boot camp inside of Video Brand Academy. Um, the strategies haven't changed. YouTube looks different, the internet looks different, so yeah, it could have been updated just for the sake of the looks. But the real reason I shut it down was because deep down I felt like I was being pulled towards something bigger. Something bigger than just a course about YouTube, you know, bigger than just YouTube strategy. And for me, that was Video Brand Academy. That was my membership. And it started to become really difficult in my brain, just like compartmentalization-wise, to have a course on 30 Days to a Thrive in YouTube channel, how to start your YouTube channel, how to grow your audience on YouTube, and a membership, Video Brand Academy, which was how to grow your audience on YouTube. It started to be like, what exactly is the difference? Why would I buy one over the other? And when I when I sat down and thought about what I am building as a business, like what is the ultimate vision? The answer is Video Brand Academy. The answer is the membership because the membership is where I get to have conversations. It's where I get to build relationships and talk with people and have group coaching calls and work one-on-one with people who select that option. The membership feels like, and this is gonna sound really bonkers, okay? Video Brand Academy membership feels to me like something fun that I get to show up for and play with in my business rather than this thing that I created that lives in a box called a course that I get to sell. Now, I'm not making this video to try and like tell you, like, oh, don't go make courses, go do a membership. Instead, that it's not at all what this is about. Having a membership as like your business model is actually I think it's one of the more complicated things. I think it's one of the more difficult um to get up and running and going and kind of like keep going. It takes a different mindset than creating and selling courses. So when anyone does ask me about like, should I make a course or should I do a membership or I'm thinking about starting a membership, I'm like, are you sure? Are you really sure about that? Um, just because it's tricky. It's tricky, it's difficult, and I think it doesn't look as difficult from the outside as it is really on the inside. However, it's so much fun because you get to work with people over the long term, you get to build relationships and you get to show up and have this community where you're all kind of working towards a similar goal and supporting each other. So that's not the point of this video. And I'm already going down that tangent. The point is at some point last year I had to go, okay, these two products are competing with each other, overlapping with each other to cause confusion for myself and for my audience. Which one do I actually like showing up for? Which one do I actually like creating new content for? And the real kind of catalyst for me was asking myself, how do I want to show up in my business day in and day out? Is it creating new courses, updating courses, or is it showing up for the people that you have in the membership already and bringing more people in so that you can help even more people? And so for me, the answer was very clear, very obvious, that what I really wanted to build was something where I could go all in on the membership, all in on Video Brand Academy and build something bigger than just like how to do YouTube, you know? But you know what they say, um, you come for the content and you stay for the community. And for me, as like the creator of the community, I stay for the connection and the ripple effects that helping people create and build a YouTube channel and create and build an audience and a personal brand, it's the ripple effects that take place when that happens. That is fascinating to me. And I love it. So last year I ended up working fewer hours in the business and ended up making more money because I went all in on the thing that really lit me up, on the thing that I really wanted to build in my business. And this whole way of thinking about business from the standpoint of what does light you up? What does bring you energy versus draining your energy? How do you want to show up in your business and your life day in and day out? Now it's not like I just woke up one day and I had all the answers, right? It's some people online might make it seem like that, is the way that things work. Maybe it does work that way for some people. I don't know. I have had to have a ton of help. I have had to have a ton of coaching and a ton of consulting, and I've had to do a lot of trial and error to even get to the point where I have the mindset to even ask myself, what is the business that I want to build? How do I want to show up day in and day out? That way of thinking, that mindset of thinking is what I learned from my business coach, James Webmore. And if you if you're new here, maybe you haven't heard me talk about this, but if you've been around for a long time, I always come around to this time of year when James is doing his business breakthrough experience free training. It used to be called the rise of the digital CEO. The rise of the digital CEO. Hence, hence the study. And it's called Business Breakthrough Experience. It's a completely free training that I always do every year. And I have, as a client of James, as a student of James, I have his whole course and program. I'm in one of his higher up group coaching programs, and I have access to like, I don't even know, dozens of his paid stuff. Um, but I still do the free thing. I still do the business breakthrough experience because it's that good. So when I sent an email out earlier this week about how I had this YouTube funnel that generated 50 grand and then I shut it down, I got a lot of responses from that that made me think, oh, maybe I should talk about this in an actual YouTube video. And it's not like I'm never gonna do another backstage YouTube funnel again. I actually have one planned, I have one in mind. Um it's it's on my to-do list. It's on my to-do list. And digital CEO Meredith will make sure that it happens at some point. The the strategy and the system works. I mean, I I've proven that it works. And walking away from a profitable, effective 50K YouTube funnel might sound like the dumbest thing in the world, but I trust myself and I trust my vision and what I'm building with Video Brand Academy. And because I have the business processes and the business mindsets to make my vision happen, I have all the confidence in the world that it's gonna happen. My message to you, my thoughts to you, if I could leave you with one thing, if I could extract one thing from my brain, from my heart even, and give it to you, it's that if you have a vision, if you have ideas or even a direction, or even an inkling that you have something inside of you that you want to get out there into the world to create a business out of or turn a hobby into a business that actually generates some like consistent income for yourself. James Business Breakthrough Experience might just be the catalyst to kind of like cracking that open and giving you the confidence to move forward with it. I'll put a link down in the description below this video to the business breakthrough experience. As an affiliate for James, I will be there. I'll be doing the work right along with you. I always do every year. And I always uncover and unlock new insights about myself, about my vision for my business, and new uh tactics and strategies and ideas for growing the business. So I hope to see you there.