The Transparent Pricing Page That Doubled Sales [Endless Customers Podcast Ep. 120]

This transcript has been generated by AI and not checked for accuracy. 

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:01:23
Alex
All right. Andrea, welcome to the show.

00:00:01:23 - 00:00:02:23
Andrea
Hi, there. How are you.

00:00:02:23 - 00:00:03:12
Alex
Today?

00:00:03:12 - 00:00:05:08
Alex
I'm doing really well. How are you?

00:00:05:10 - 00:00:06:13
Andrea
We're doing great here.

00:00:06:13 - 00:00:13:06
Alex
I'm so excited to have you on the show today, and to talk to you and to hear all about everything that's going on with your business. But I don't want to give too much away yet. I want to set the stage.

00:00:13:06 - 00:00:16:01
Alex
Okay. Audience for our viewers, our listeners, can you just tell people

00:00:16:01 - 00:00:18:17
Alex
who you are and a little bit about your company and what you guys do?

00:00:18:17 - 00:00:25:18
Andrea
Yeah. My name is Andrea Andrea Funk at two cool t shirt quilts, and I've been making t shirt quilt since 1992.

00:00:25:18 - 00:00:28:04
Andrea
So for a very long time right now.

00:00:28:04 - 00:00:30:16
Andrea
Wow. In 1992, when my daughter was a baby

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Andrea
at first, we just got business, you know, referrals, basically. A friend told a friend who told a friend.

00:00:35:13 - 00:00:41:06
Andrea
Sure. 2003 I got my first website, and so I have a very old website as websites go.

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Andrea
Which always helps. And in 2012, I went to HubSpot and started learning inbound marketing.

00:00:49:03 - 00:00:51:14
Andrea
And the last two years life has changed.

00:00:51:14 - 00:00:53:21
Alex
Yeah, life has changed.

00:00:53:21 - 00:00:58:07
Alex
I can't wait for everyone to hear how much has changed. And it's really the story is really fascinating and

00:00:58:07 - 00:01:03:05
Alex
we love hearing success stories. And I think that's a big part of understanding how

00:01:03:05 - 00:01:09:14
Alex
when you implement the system, the results that you can have and how much it can affect your business and just everything that goes with it.

00:01:09:15 - 00:01:09:22
Alex
So

00:01:09:22 - 00:01:12:03
Alex
without further ado, yeah, let's talk about

00:01:12:03 - 00:01:17:10
Alex
how did you discover you were in the HubSpot, you know, landscape you were doing HubSpot? We love HubSpot here.

00:01:17:10 - 00:01:23:00
Alex
How did you hear about endless customers? Probably back then it was they ask, you answer now, I guess customers. Yeah.

00:01:23:03 - 00:01:23:10
Andrea
But

00:01:23:10 - 00:01:26:22
Andrea
even before then, I heard, Marcus talk about Sales Lion at.

00:01:26:22 - 00:01:27:20
Alex
The sales online. Right.

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Andrea
Oh, that was a really long time ago. Yeah. And so I think that was in 2013 at the HubSpot inbound.

00:01:34:06 - 00:01:47:19
Andrea
I think there were only about 4000 people there that year. And so I got to hear Marcus and started just going, yeah, I can do that. Yeah, I can do that. Yeah, I can do that. And really have been following him religiously because

00:01:47:19 - 00:01:49:01
Andrea
it's easy to do.

00:01:49:06 - 00:01:51:11
Andrea
I mean, people think it's so hard. No it's easy. It's

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Andrea
the easiest system out there. And so the more I did it the better things went. So I am a big, big supporter of invoice customers.

00:02:01:19 - 00:02:05:02
Alex
Yeah. Thank you for the product placement too. We love it.

00:02:05:02 - 00:02:12:07
Alex
We love it. We're a big fan of you too. And it is easy. In theory. It really is. I remember reading the book for the first time and had so many like,

00:02:12:07 - 00:02:16:09
Alex
I agree. Oh my gosh, this is so well-written and it's an easy read and it makes sense.

00:02:16:09 - 00:02:19:22
Alex
it was like click after click after click a like, yes, I want to do this. So

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Alex
heard Marcus speak. You read the book.

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Alex
How did you implement it? Or like, how did that journey start for you

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Alex
when you, you made the decision, you were bought in, like, what was that initial kick off of, like getting it going in your business,

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Andrea
Well, I was lucky. I had people asking me questions about t shirt quilts for probably 15 years before that.

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Andrea
I knew what people were asking and I knew what I needed to tell them. So I just started writing

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Andrea
blog after blog after blog, answering little bitty questions. So I'd break down these big questions into little questions.

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Andrea
and over the years I've rewritten, I've made them better.

00:02:51:08 - 00:02:59:15
Andrea
it works. It works just one step at a time. One question at a time. What am I going to write about this week? Pull out the book. What questions do I need to answer?

00:02:59:15 - 00:03:04:23
Andrea
And of course, pricing was definitely one of the first questions I worked on and started talking about a lot

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Andrea
I was really, really expensive compared to the rest of the world. And I needed to explain why the heck am I so expensive and everybody's not so expensive. And that's been kind of one of the

00:03:14:22 - 00:03:19:22
Andrea
problems I've had to solve as a business owner, explaining, hey, you get something different with me.

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Andrea
And so

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Andrea
going with Marcus's, framework, it was really easy way to do it.

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Alex
I love hearing that because I think a lot of business people are afraid to talk about price, or

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Alex
they keep it close to the vest, as we say. You

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Alex
they want to get you on a sales car. They want to talk to you and have a conversation. And the price becomes like

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Alex
the linchpin. Right.

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Alex
And

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Alex
What made you realize that you needed to put that out front, and you needed to explain and define why you cost more and what the value was. And like,

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Alex
how did that work for you as far as, like being the owner of this business and putting yourself, I.

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Andrea
Always had the pricing

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Andrea
on the website. You have to have pricing when you're

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Andrea
B2C. Right? So they need to know what that's going to be. But then

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Andrea
I had to get people not to go, and walk away.

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Andrea
And that was my

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Andrea
big push was to figure out how do I explain what they're getting compared to what other people were giving for

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Andrea
a quarter of what I was doing.

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Andrea
And so I really had no choice but to explain it. And the more I explained it, the more people were going, yeah, I see what the difference is and

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Andrea
definitely want to use you.

00:04:18:09 - 00:04:19:02
Alex
that makes a lot of sense.

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Alex
I've said this time and time again on the show and privately and in conversations at events and things like that. But

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Alex
as a consumer, I'd rather spend a little bit more money to have peace of mind and know that I'm getting good product or good service, then trying to save a buck.

00:04:31:15 - 00:04:33:14
Alex
Because the few times that I have tried to save a buck,

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Alex
it didn't really end up saving me a buck. It was way more of a headache

00:04:36:04 - 00:04:36:18
Alex
than anything.

00:04:36:18 - 00:04:43:21
Andrea
Exactly. And I luckily was able to see that happen when people would come to me with a competitor's quilt and say,

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Andrea
remake it for me, because this is a piece of junk. And

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Andrea
so I had experience one remaking bad quilts and being able to talk about

00:04:50:20 - 00:04:54:18
Andrea
yeah, this is what you're going to get. And this is, you know, some of the problems that people have.

00:04:54:18 - 00:04:55:02
Alex
Yeah.

00:04:55:02 - 00:05:03:00
Alex
before you adopted this system, because it sounds like you have embraced it big time and you're talking about price, and we're going to get into more of the cool things that you're doing.

00:05:03:00 - 00:05:08:07
Alex
But what was it like before you started working this system? Can you just paint that picture for our audience?

00:05:08:07 - 00:05:11:05
Andrea
My website was my brochure.

00:05:11:05 - 00:05:18:23
Andrea
I don't know if you remember you're too young to remember. But back in 2003, when I started my website, I had gone from a paper brochure to a website.

00:05:18:23 - 00:05:27:02
Andrea
that's all I had was a web. It was a brochure that I transferred, and slowly but surely I started blogging and really growing that.

00:05:27:02 - 00:05:31:06
Andrea
But really, it started with HubSpot in 2012. Before that, it was just a brochure.

00:05:31:06 - 00:05:36:03
Alex
Wow. So it was really like, you know, like a physical brochure that you would give to people and word of mouth.

00:05:36:03 - 00:05:41:07
Andrea
Exactly. And so then I just put that onto the website and, you know, more photographs obviously. But

00:05:41:07 - 00:05:54:02
Andrea
early on there was not a lot of the inbound marketing going on. And so once that happened, I jumped on very early compared to probably most of the people in my industry. I have a very weird industry.

00:05:54:02 - 00:05:55:05
Andrea
There's about 7 or 8

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Andrea
major competitors, and then I have about a million grandmothers I'm competing against. And

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Andrea
the problem with those guys is they give their

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Andrea
work away for free. And how do you compete against free?

00:06:06:22 - 00:06:10:22
Andrea
you know, to say, this is the difference between a grandmother doing a,

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Andrea
homemade thing and me making a handmade thing.

00:06:13:14 - 00:06:16:16
Alex
Right. So it really it sounds like it started out as very referral based.

00:06:16:16 - 00:06:20:08
Alex
Shaking hands, kissing babies, doing that kind of. Yeah, kind of hard work.

00:06:20:09 - 00:06:21:08
Andrea
Yeah, I

00:06:21:08 - 00:06:25:23
Andrea
saw one who saw one who saw one. And that's kind of how we developed. And then when the website started,

00:06:25:23 - 00:06:26:02
Andrea
we

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Andrea
kept getting business just directly from the website. People found us because

00:06:29:13 - 00:06:38:07
Andrea
at that point we were number one on Google, and that lasted for about a year. And of course, I went out and had dinner and celebrated the minute I became number one.

00:06:38:07 - 00:06:38:22
Alex
That's a big deal

00:06:38:22 - 00:06:40:19
Alex
when you're number one on Google. I remember those days.

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Alex
that was a huge.

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Andrea
Big achievement today. Whatever. It doesn't matter anymore what number you are on Google

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Andrea
hopefully if you can be on the first page, but I try to get people to my other website otherwise and just through Google.

00:06:52:21 - 00:06:59:02
Alex
So can we talk a little bit about what other tactics that you use? Because you've been doing this for almost a decade now, using the system, using

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Alex
HubSpot as your CMS, and really trying to

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Alex
create this like inbound flow of leads and traffic. So what are the tools you're using? And can you just share a little bit about like behind the curtain, what's going on?

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Alex
maybe even some of your content too, like you were talked about how you were blogging

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Alex
ten years in, in the digital space is like

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Alex
100 years in any other space.

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Alex
Things happen so fast, especially with AI

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Alex
I guess what I'm asking is what type of content and like, how did you continually

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Alex
change your website and update it?

00:07:22:14 - 00:07:27:03
Alex
And like, what other types of content have you been using to just help further push the endless customer system?

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Andrea
I'm

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Andrea
I'm very bad at the video and

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Andrea
I know that right up front. And

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Andrea
as a small company, I can't afford a video editor and I

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Andrea
I don't have time to learn. I've got enough going on.

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Andrea
I do a lot of video short videos on the 1 minute to 3 minute videos on YouTube.

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Andrea
Put those on Facebook, put those on,

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Andrea
all the other social media. And,

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Andrea
I have videos on the website. But basically I kept refining the questions based on, you know, you ask, you answer. Any time anybody came up with a question, oh, I go write a blog. Anytime I had a problem, go write a blog.

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Andrea
For example, we had a lady who came in, and she had all her husband stuff.

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Andrea
He had passed away. And it's like, oh, when did your husband die? Two weeks ago. So like that.

00:08:08:12 - 00:08:09:10
Alex
Oh goodness.

00:08:09:12 - 00:08:15:01
Andrea
That's too soon, too soon, too soon. And we found out it was too soon. We should have turned her away right then and there.

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Andrea
But that created a new blog. The blog is

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Andrea
When's the right time to have a memorial quilt made?

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Andrea
my first line was, if you have to ask, it's too soon.

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Andrea
But then I explain why, you know, you need to give it time, you know, not just because I don't want to make it right now, but it's because, you know, you need to. How much money? And I went into the whole thing about and was able to use that

00:08:34:13 - 00:08:37:13
Andrea
customer as my example. Of course, I changed her name to Karen

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Alex
Yeah, for anybody purposes. Yeah.

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Andrea
Yeah. Nobody. Yeah. And

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Andrea
every time I have a customer interaction that something that's a surprise which rarely happens anymore.

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Andrea
I always took that information that thoughts,

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Andrea
those questions and put it into a blog every single time.

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Andrea
that's the best place to get

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Andrea
really good content, because these are problems that real customers are having and

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Andrea
we're trying to solve for them.

00:09:00:16 - 00:09:03:12
Andrea
And so it's a great way to write a blog about that.

00:09:03:12 - 00:09:06:13
Andrea
I haven't written a blog probably two years now.

00:09:06:13 - 00:09:10:23
Alex
I that's what's what shifted because blogging was very important and it still is important. And

00:09:10:23 - 00:09:14:04
Alex
written content is important. But there's definitely a shift happening with AI, right?

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Andrea
Yeah. My, website's been used differently. It used to be

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Andrea
I would get people to come to my website and I would convince them on my website why we're the best, and I'd give them information, and they spent time reading and looking

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Andrea
nobody's coming to your website anymore. You know, you go from 30,000 views a month to, you know,

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Andrea
a thousand.

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Andrea
And

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Andrea
this is like I it's a big scary moment.

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Andrea
my customers are not using the website the same way, but I is using my website that way. They've gone in and they've just sucked all my information in

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Andrea
and they're feeding that to people. And then hopefully, you know, telling them this is where you go

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Andrea
giving people information, my information and hopefully bringing them to me.

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Andrea
And I see this in the fact that people have written on their order. From where did you hear us? Hear about us? I it's like,

00:10:02:16 - 00:10:04:04
Andrea
that's wonderful.

00:10:04:04 - 00:10:12:09
Andrea
that is knowing where they hear about you. And, you know, I can't get them just to say I googled it or the computer internet. I wish I could just say,

00:10:12:09 - 00:10:13:10
Andrea
did you hear me from I.

00:10:13:11 - 00:10:13:17
Andrea
But

00:10:13:17 - 00:10:20:04
Andrea
we watch carefully. Yeah. And so when I saw people starting to say that I recommended me, I knew,

00:10:20:04 - 00:10:27:02
Andrea
okay, we're turning the corner here, and I don't need to be quite as panicked about how my website was used. And,

00:10:27:02 - 00:10:31:08
Andrea
I think over the next five, ten years, we're going to see websites change.

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Andrea
It's more bottom of the funnel rather than the top of the funnel.

00:10:34:07 - 00:10:39:19
Andrea
definitely, we used to be top of the funnel especially. We were a number one. We, you know, give them all the information. And now we're just at

00:10:39:19 - 00:10:52:00
Andrea
actual websites, bottom of the funnel. And at some point I think we're going to start we as an a collective, we are going to redesign our websites and how people approach our websites more for a bottom of the funnel, experience.

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Alex
Yeah, I love that. And

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Alex
you said something that really stood out to me.

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Alex
I think a lot of business owners can relate to this, that your website traffic dipped substantially. You went from 30,000 to like a thousand,

00:11:01:00 - 00:11:11:03
Alex
that's scary because if that's where most of your leads and business is coming from. But I think you made a good point that what's happening is people are not visiting the site as much because they're using AI tools like GPT

00:11:11:03 - 00:11:19:08
Alex
to do the search, and then those tools are pulling all this awesome content and info that's based in endless customers from your website to give them what they want.

00:11:19:08 - 00:11:19:16
Alex
So

00:11:19:16 - 00:11:23:23
Alex
it's not like the website isn't working, it's just shifting how people interact with the site.

00:11:23:23 - 00:11:24:09
Andrea
Is

00:11:24:09 - 00:11:26:05
Andrea
down that bottom of the funnel. They're just not.

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Andrea
And I still, you know, definitely use all my blogs and all that information out there, right. When customers have questions, I say, here's a great article that I explain that. And I'm always every time anybody comes and has a question, I always have an article to refer them to.

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Andrea
I think it makes the customer realize, oh, she knows everything. It's got all that information and realizes that,

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Andrea
you know, I am the expert.

00:11:47:11 - 00:11:50:12
Alex
Yeah, that makes total sense. So I have a note here about your pricing page and

00:11:50:12 - 00:11:58:15
Alex
it's honestly one of the most effective pricing pages we've ever seen. And we talk about a lot here at impact. But for people who don't know about it, can you just walk us through

00:11:58:15 - 00:12:02:20
Alex
why you built it the way you did, why it's kind of set up the way it is and how it's helped your business and help you sell

00:12:02:20 - 00:12:03:02
Alex
well.

00:12:03:03 - 00:12:06:02
Andrea
It was a pretty decent pricing page all along.

00:12:06:02 - 00:12:09:17
Andrea
Impact helped me set it up. Basic information. But then at

00:12:09:17 - 00:12:11:08
Andrea
Impact Live this summer,

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Andrea
Marcus was showing us the custom GPT and says, you know, nobody's going to get 16 out of 16 points.

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Andrea
I came home and ran it, and I had like, 11. It's like, I'm really close. Wonder what it take to do, 16.

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Andrea
I sat down and talked to George.

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Andrea
He's my GPT dude. And I said, okay, I, I was right on that page that, Marcus set up. It's like, all right, let's go through each of these that I don't have. Let's talk about what I need, where I need to put it, what it is. And so we went point by point by point.

00:12:45:02 - 00:12:49:08
Andrea
Now it wasn't hard. It just asked GPT two,

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Andrea
what are you looking for? Basically what, you know, when you come out to my website, you're the one who's using it.

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Andrea
Where are you going to look? What do you want me to.

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Andrea
Where do you want me to put this? And so,

00:12:58:00 - 00:13:07:05
Andrea
you know, it's still definitely for customers, but it also works for ChatGPT. And so we got all 16 of them. And it's like,

00:13:07:05 - 00:13:10:07
Andrea
the big point is it what

00:13:10:07 - 00:13:13:20
Andrea
I had two horrible months in July and August. I was just dying

00:13:13:20 - 00:13:17:16
Andrea
and it came back and early September and I put this up and

00:13:17:16 - 00:13:22:19
Andrea
I don't wanna say instantly, but very quickly things started picking back up.

00:13:23:01 - 00:13:24:18
Andrea
And this is the only thing I can

00:13:24:18 - 00:13:26:00
Andrea
put that to is that

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Andrea
I've got all the information that

00:13:27:18 - 00:13:31:17
Andrea
I want to serve to other people. Right. So,

00:13:31:17 - 00:13:38:01
Andrea
if your business is down or you've got half a day, just do every single one of them. I have a stupid, stupid video. I mean,

00:13:38:01 - 00:13:39:11
Andrea
I went out and put a

00:13:39:11 - 00:13:43:15
Andrea
company t shirt on, stood in front of a quilt, made a 32nd video

00:13:43:15 - 00:13:44:15
Andrea
and put it up there.

00:13:44:15 - 00:13:45:10
Andrea
And,

00:13:45:10 - 00:13:48:15
Andrea
click one of those marks and for some reason it's working right now.

00:13:48:15 - 00:13:58:12
Andrea
my next goal is to go, page by page on my website. You know, ask chat. What are the top five pages I need to really work on to make more friendly for AI?

00:13:58:12 - 00:14:03:01
Andrea
each single page I have, I'm going to go through and put every single thing they want on it.

00:14:03:01 - 00:14:05:06
Andrea
So that'll be yeah, I take

00:14:05:06 - 00:14:05:21
Andrea
this winter when

00:14:05:21 - 00:14:07:07
Andrea
life settles down a little bit.

00:14:07:09 - 00:14:12:13
Alex
It sounds like you're so busy from everything working so well that you don't have the time right now, which is a that's a good problem to have.

00:14:12:13 - 00:14:15:13
Andrea
really good problem to have. My employees appreciate it too.

00:14:15:15 - 00:14:16:10
Alex
That's amazing.

00:14:16:10 - 00:14:18:02
Alex
I have to ask this, right. This is a good segue.

00:14:18:02 - 00:14:21:02
Alex
you come to almost all the events. I feel like I see you at every event.

00:14:21:04 - 00:14:22:23
Andrea
Ever been since 2017.

00:14:22:23 - 00:14:25:05
Alex
Can I ask why? What makes you keep coming back?

00:14:25:05 - 00:14:30:14
Andrea
have employees and stuff, but I'm kind of in my own little silo here. Industry wise,

00:14:30:14 - 00:14:36:04
Andrea
I'm not a big town. I'm out in the country and I need input. And I used to go to

00:14:36:04 - 00:14:39:18
Andrea
inbound and the first inbound, I said, you know, had 4000 people is great.

00:14:39:18 - 00:14:58:01
Andrea
That's when I went to is 50,000 people I miss. It was enormous. I felt totally lost. It's like, I can't do this again. I just wasn't connecting with people. I did everything, but it was just it was not right. And at the same time, Bob set up, you know, impact. And the first one,

00:14:58:01 - 00:14:59:11
Andrea
Stephanie and I were sitting both,

00:14:59:11 - 00:15:02:23
Andrea
hanging out in the front row having a blast and amazing.

00:15:03:01 - 00:15:08:17
Andrea
Yeah. And it's just like, I'm doing this again and again and again because I got more from

00:15:08:17 - 00:15:10:19
Andrea
two and a half days than I did

00:15:10:19 - 00:15:11:05
Alex
From in the.

00:15:11:07 - 00:15:14:05
Andrea
Ground. Yeah. And so definitely

00:15:14:05 - 00:15:24:20
Andrea
it was worth it. And I come back and I learn something every time. And right now change is accelerating so fast that if I don't go do something and I don't keep up on this,

00:15:24:20 - 00:15:30:00
Andrea
I could read and do videos and all that stuff, but it's something about being around real people and getting out of

00:15:30:00 - 00:15:30:22
Andrea
my own space here.

00:15:30:22 - 00:15:40:16
Andrea
That really makes a difference. And, you know, doing this chat here with the pricing page made the whole price of going there definitely worth it.

00:15:40:16 - 00:15:43:13
Andrea
Yeah. So you'll see me again I know they get tired, see me.

00:15:43:13 - 00:15:45:12
Alex
But that is not true.

00:15:45:12 - 00:15:55:00
Andrea
Every single time I come out with a whole page of things I want to do, I don't always get them done. But at least I have some guidelines about, you know, okay, you need to work on this.

00:15:55:00 - 00:16:01:13
Alex
I love hearing that. I love that you have action items that you can take away immediately and start working on your business, just like this last event

00:16:01:13 - 00:16:02:17
Alex
that we saw you a few months ago.

00:16:02:17 - 00:16:05:05
Alex
it's already working for your business with what you've done off.

00:16:05:05 - 00:16:05:14
Andrea
Oh.

00:16:05:16 - 00:16:07:13
Alex
That's pretty amazing to hear. And for everybody

00:16:07:13 - 00:16:14:08
Alex
after shameless plug now. So for everybody out there watching and listening and let's Customers Live is happening in the spring in Chicago. So you got to go check out the website.

00:16:14:08 - 00:16:15:09
Alex
Definitely tickets.

00:16:15:09 - 00:16:16:04
Andrea
It's so much fun.

00:16:16:04 - 00:16:17:17
Alex
Yeah. And you can meet cool people like Andrea there.

00:16:17:17 - 00:16:18:07
Andrea
So we got to

00:16:18:07 - 00:16:20:17
Andrea
take the train there and. Yeah, that'll be fun. Yeah.

00:16:20:17 - 00:16:27:20
Andrea
it's really worth it. And the more I go, I'm able to really keep applying the concept to my website over and over again.

00:16:27:20 - 00:16:31:06
Andrea
you think I have it, but it's like, oh yeah, I forgot about that.

00:16:31:06 - 00:16:41:18
Andrea
You can't just you can't get it all. And so by going each time I have contact people, I meet their people I know I get out of town and it works. So there's my plug.

00:16:41:18 - 00:16:42:20
Andrea
I'll see you in Chicago.

00:16:42:20 - 00:16:47:16
Alex
Sounds good. No. Sounds good. Well, we'll definitely have some great new content because I still

00:16:47:16 - 00:16:54:03
Alex
rapidly changing. And we've been doing a lot of behind the scenes working to impact, like we always do, to try to stay ahead of the curve and give our community

00:16:54:03 - 00:16:55:14
Alex
the leading edge on all this stuff.

00:16:55:14 - 00:16:59:12
Andrea
you got to be ahead of it. That's my goal is to always be ahead of the curve.

00:16:59:12 - 00:17:00:09
Alex
So can I ask

00:17:00:09 - 00:17:05:12
Alex
You did the pricing page. You're having some great success with that. You come to the events and love hearing that.

00:17:05:12 - 00:17:09:04
Alex
how is that impacted, like how you sell and how you build trust with your clients and how you

00:17:09:04 - 00:17:13:16
Alex
basically position your business in the marketplace to make sure you're attracting more of your best customers.

00:17:13:16 - 00:17:17:08
Andrea
I think a lot of it's always been kind of, instinctual.

00:17:17:08 - 00:17:19:03
Andrea
You know, even before,

00:17:19:03 - 00:17:24:13
Andrea
I got into all this, I still had this thought of always putting that customer first and always trying to,

00:17:24:13 - 00:17:26:16
Andrea
respond to the customer. That was kind of just,

00:17:26:16 - 00:17:30:02
Andrea
my background in you got to always take care of that customer.

00:17:30:02 - 00:17:32:18
Andrea
Otherwise, you know, you're not going to get referrals and all that stuff. So

00:17:32:18 - 00:17:35:13
Andrea
I always knew

00:17:35:13 - 00:17:43:10
Andrea
instinctively that I was trying to take care of that customer, trying to give them education, because my background as an educator and,

00:17:43:10 - 00:17:47:02
Andrea
this gave me more of a framework to actually plug and play.

00:17:47:02 - 00:17:50:07
Andrea
you know, I knew I was doing things right, but it's kind of fuzzy over here.

00:17:50:07 - 00:18:05:08
Andrea
But this is touch. And let me really, go on it. And I know that, it's made me probably one of the most imitated, websites in the teacher quilt world out there. People come over and steal my stuff all the time.

00:18:05:08 - 00:18:20:20
Andrea
No kidding. It's like they just can't come up with it on their own. So they, you know, they just come steal, you know, my thoughts and content and ask ChatGPT to rewrite my stuff for them. And, you know, there's no you can't do anything about it these days. It's frustrating.

00:18:20:20 - 00:18:24:08
Alex
but you're the trendsetter. You're disrupting your industry and everyone else is following suit, which.

00:18:24:08 - 00:18:24:12
Andrea
Is

00:18:24:12 - 00:18:27:13
Andrea
continuously disrupting it. I've disrupted it so bad

00:18:27:13 - 00:18:33:03
Andrea
this summer that I got kicked out of a Facebook group about t shirt quilts because I scared the heck out of them.

00:18:34:09 - 00:18:35:19
Alex
Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

00:18:35:19 - 00:18:43:07
Alex
how are you disrupting? Because building trust is so important. But then you also need to stand out from the noise. How do you set yourself apart from your competition?

00:18:43:07 - 00:18:43:20
Andrea
So in

00:18:43:20 - 00:18:48:20
Andrea
1992 and I made my first quilt, the internet was, you know, a million miles wide, about one inch thick,

00:18:48:20 - 00:18:57:08
Andrea
and nobody was using it. And so I didn't know how to make a t shirt quilt. So I just made it how I thought it should be. And I

00:18:57:08 - 00:19:02:15
Andrea
broke all the industry rules, and I'm still told to this day that you can't do it that way.

00:19:02:20 - 00:19:13:18
Andrea
And it's like, yeah, right. Okay. It's so I had a whole new style of quilt. And because of that, I was able to capture quite a bit of audience because people want something

00:19:13:18 - 00:19:14:22
Andrea
new and different.

00:19:14:22 - 00:19:15:23
Andrea
And then,

00:19:15:23 - 00:19:25:08
Andrea
2017, I think I created another style of t shirt quilt and that again disrupted the market a little bit.

00:19:25:09 - 00:19:34:14
Andrea
And then this year I came up with a totally new type of t shirt quilt, and I'm calling them the ultramodern quilts. And I've got

00:19:34:14 - 00:19:44:11
Andrea
eight, ten different styles of new styles, a t shirt, quilts I've made, and it's just driving quilt makers crazy one, because I can't figure out what I did and how to do it,

00:19:44:11 - 00:19:45:17
Andrea
which is the best.

00:19:45:19 - 00:19:53:09
Andrea
And it's just scaring the people who are still making the traditional ones they made back in 1992.

00:19:53:09 - 00:20:00:02
Andrea
they don't want to hear about me. They don't want me disrupting their nice, cozy little life. And so,

00:20:00:02 - 00:20:07:19
Andrea
I've disrupted this industry more times. And my next disruption will be retirements.

00:20:07:19 - 00:20:11:06
Andrea
Getting into your 60s. What do you do. You get ready to retire.

00:20:11:06 - 00:20:20:12
Andrea
it's a whole nother thought. I tried carefully not to build, a cult of personality for my company. A lot of, quilt companies are built on a cult of,

00:20:20:12 - 00:20:23:08
Andrea
little old lady running the company, and I'm trying to make it.

00:20:23:12 - 00:20:27:08
Andrea
Not that so that it can continue well, without me.

00:20:27:08 - 00:20:33:10
Andrea
that's a hard thing to want to do. Is it very small or any family owned company? It, that's.

00:20:33:10 - 00:20:37:12
Alex
Going to keep it going. Yeah. No, that that's a whole nother podcast episode.

00:20:37:12 - 00:20:39:12
Andrea
Another podcast, a whole nother industry.

00:20:39:12 - 00:20:42:11
Alex
But that I want to hear about. We going to talk about that for sure.

00:20:42:11 - 00:20:46:02
Alex
But so for disruptive content because I love hearing that you do this

00:20:46:02 - 00:20:50:14
Alex
it's refreshing to hear it from you how much you've embraced it, because I find more times than not,

00:20:50:14 - 00:20:56:17
Alex
people tend to shy away from disruption. They tend to shy away from sharing their pricing because they're more expensive than their competition or whatever you

00:20:56:17 - 00:21:00:01
Alex
you've done the opposite, and it's clearly worked out extremely well for you.

00:21:00:06 - 00:21:02:03
Alex
Can you paint the picture a little bit of like,

00:21:02:03 - 00:21:05:12
Alex
you don't have to give me exact numbers, but like maybe where you were and

00:21:05:12 - 00:21:11:02
Alex
how endless customers has taken to you to where you are now as far as like customer base or like sales numbers or something along those lines.

00:21:11:02 - 00:21:23:12
Andrea
At the height before the pandemic, of course, everything changed then you're making probably 1200 T-shirt quilts a year, and that's a lot. I know it doesn't sound like a lot, but that's a lot of t shirt quilts.

00:21:23:12 - 00:21:30:07
Andrea
And so that really let me build that up. Pandemic, of course, changed everything. People don't have money anymore.

00:21:30:07 - 00:21:33:08
Andrea
every single industry right now is a mess. And,

00:21:33:08 - 00:21:39:19
Andrea
lot of people go, what did I do wrong? What do I do wrong? It's like you did nothing wrong. Things are changing faster than you can keep up.

00:21:39:19 - 00:21:46:05
Andrea
so the only thing I would think I would, would have done wrong is not keeping up. And I'm keeping up as best I can. And that is,

00:21:46:05 - 00:21:53:10
Andrea
It's a pretty good feeling to know that things are slow. So we'll probably make about 650 this year, so quite a few less.

00:21:53:10 - 00:21:58:18
Andrea
I have less employees, but in the last month and a half we're starting to creep back up.

00:21:58:18 - 00:22:01:22
Andrea
So I have hope and we'll just have to,

00:22:01:22 - 00:22:03:03
Andrea
I can't plan anymore.

00:22:03:03 - 00:22:06:21
Andrea
Nobody can plan. You can't plan. So you just have to kind of go with it. And

00:22:06:21 - 00:22:10:03
Andrea
have a good base and a good fundamentals and

00:22:10:03 - 00:22:11:00
Andrea
hope for the best.

00:22:11:04 - 00:22:11:08
Alex
The

00:22:11:08 - 00:22:12:14
Alex
fundamentals are key.

00:22:12:19 - 00:22:16:22
Andrea
Is what they ask you answer is is really my marketing fundamentals.

00:22:16:22 - 00:22:20:15
Alex
Yeah. Yeah. So this is a follow up question just because I'm curious. So

00:22:20:15 - 00:22:31:03
Alex
before you did this pricing calculator you came to you came to the event and afterwards you implemented and you had 16 out of 16. You got everything set up like maybe the month or two before that. I think you said July and August.

00:22:31:03 - 00:22:35:02
Alex
What were your numbers like that those months versus now that you've implemented this calculator?

00:22:35:02 - 00:22:41:20
Andrea
I think, July was like 34 quilts. August was maybe 35 or 36. And I think we're already about,

00:22:41:20 - 00:22:48:04
Andrea
close to 50 in September was more and I think we're going to be close to 50 to 60 in October.

00:22:48:04 - 00:22:49:10
Alex
Wow. So you're almost doubling.

00:22:49:16 - 00:23:07:19
Andrea
So we're really getting back to where we were before. Yeah. You know any I've got to do better because those last August and July and August were just the worst month I've had in probably 15 years. Yeah. And that's scary. You know, it's like, okay, well, is it retirement time now? And I'm so glad I went and saw you guys.

00:23:07:19 - 00:23:14:17
Andrea
And really did that step by step. You know, I had a lot of the things already had a lot of the pieces and

00:23:14:17 - 00:23:18:04
Andrea
the rest really kind of rounded it out. And I think that's what chat wanted.

00:23:18:04 - 00:23:21:16
Alex
Well, I really I appreciate you being transparent and open about that because.

00:23:21:19 - 00:23:31:07
Alex
It. Well, here's the thing. Every business doesn't matter what industry has highs and lows and certain months that are better than others and has tough times and good times. And you have to learn from those

00:23:31:07 - 00:23:34:10
Alex
moments and you have to do what you said. I think you just have to like,

00:23:34:10 - 00:23:39:16
Alex
trust the framework or trust the systems you have in place and just keep doing your best and pushing for it.

00:23:39:16 - 00:24:00:05
Andrea
Yeah, yeah, it's it's a scary time right now and I think anybody out there who's listening knows that it's a scary time right now and give yourself grace because that is, so important when you can't control anything and you've done everything right, you just have to say, this is out of my hands, and I've done everything. I've got everything.

00:24:00:05 - 00:24:00:20
Andrea
And,

00:24:00:20 - 00:24:01:12
Andrea
go do that,

00:24:01:12 - 00:24:12:12
Andrea
and see if you can get 16 out of 16. It was not hard. If this quilt maker can do it, shoot somebody who, you know, does marketing every day, all the time, should be able to do it in a heartbeat.

00:24:12:16 - 00:24:19:09
Alex
Yes we can. We have the we have the custom GT. We can we can hook everybody up. That's watching you listening. So just drop a comment or

00:24:19:09 - 00:24:22:12
Alex
Talk to us here. We'll we'll get you set up with the GT because it really does.

00:24:22:12 - 00:24:23:07
Alex
really does work.

00:24:23:07 - 00:24:24:18
Andrea
And if you need a T shirt quilt made

00:24:24:18 - 00:24:29:02
Andrea
with your t shirts, we could do that for you at two cool t shirt quilts.com.

00:24:29:03 - 00:24:31:19
Alex
I love it and I love the backdrop by the way too. This is great.

00:24:31:22 - 00:24:32:09
Andrea
Yeah,

00:24:32:09 - 00:24:40:20
Andrea
and actual quilt. So yes, all the blocks are different sizes and it's very it's a beautiful quilt. All my clothes are beautiful. I don't make ugly quilts.

00:24:41:14 - 00:24:42:21
Alex
I equality quilts. That's right.

00:24:42:22 - 00:24:44:14
Andrea
They're really quality. Yeah, yeah.

00:24:44:14 - 00:24:50:06
Alex
No, I appreciate you taking the time. Andrea. Thank you so much for your insights. This is my favorite part of the show. The last question okay. So

00:24:50:06 - 00:24:55:11
Alex
we cover a lot of ground. We talked about pricing calculators. We talked about transparency and trust. We talked about a lot of things.

00:24:55:11 - 00:24:58:14
Alex
What's the one thing you'd want people to take away from our conversation today.

00:24:58:14 - 00:25:03:20
Alex
So for people listening and watching, what's the one thing you think that they should really be walking away from this conversation with?

00:25:03:20 - 00:25:24:00
Andrea
I think you should take that to the coke, the chat, gpt thing that they've got that Marcus set up with the pricing and get all 16 of those and see if it makes a difference. It didn't take me much more than six hours and it made a huge difference. So I challenge you to go do that and see if it makes a difference.

00:25:24:00 - 00:25:42:07
Andrea
It was so easy. It really was just like, you need to have this, okay, where do I put it? Okay, I'll go put it in. Okay. I mean, it's that it's not that hard. I made a stupid little video. That was probably the most scary part was the video, but it was a one take video. And me here by myself in front of a quilt with a tripod.

00:25:42:07 - 00:25:46:06
Andrea
And so if I can do that, anybody else can do it. Definitely.

00:25:46:09 - 00:25:55:00
Alex
I love that I, I totally respect that. If Andrea can do it, everyone can do it. It's exactly. Yeah, don't overthink it. And also if you don't have a pricing page you got to get one.

00:25:55:01 - 00:26:13:06
Andrea
Oh my God, you don't have a pricing page. You might as well just hang it up now. And you know, when we started the pricing pages it was you know, give them generalities and you can you can give them ranges. You can give them here's what's going to change some of the pricing. And people just need to know where it's going to start.

00:26:13:08 - 00:26:26:04
Andrea
Because then once you know where it's like, okay, they can weed themselves out too high for me, I'm gone. It's like, good bye. And, you know, you never just you never know who can afford you. People can afford you. There's people out there with money.

00:26:26:06 - 00:26:30:21
Alex
Yeah, it actually is way less about price and way more about building trust.

00:26:30:23 - 00:26:31:16
Andrea
And knowledge and.

00:26:31:16 - 00:26:39:10
Alex
Just keeping it real. Yeah. So Well-Said Andrea, thank you so much for your time. Thanks for being on the show. Yeah.

00:26:39:12 - 00:26:40:21
Andrea
It's great having you. Thanks.

00:26:40:22 - 00:26:47:07
Alex
Yeah. All right. From out there watching and listening, this is endless customers. I'm your host, Alex Winter. We will catch you on the next episode.