If you're an entrepreneur or business owner looking to grow your audience, establish your expertise, and generate leads, then this episode is a must-listen. Our guest, Alina Vincent, shares her proven formula for running successful and profitable online challenges.
Alina is a business strategist, speaker, and international best-selling author. She's known globally as the creator of the profitable online challenges formula, which helped her grow her business from zero to over a million dollars in just four years.
In this episode, you'll learn:
👉 The Backstory: Discover how Alina's struggles with getting coaching clients led her to create her first online challenge, which became the foundation of her multi-million-dollar business.
👉 The Five-Day Sweet Spot: Alina explains why five days is the ideal length for an online challenge and how it creates a winning streak that keeps participants engaged and craving more.
👉 The 10-Minute Content Rule: Learn why Alina advocates for delivering bite-sized, 10-minute content during challenges, making it easy for participants to consume and implement.
👉 The Art of Leading to Your Offer: Uncover Alina's ninja tactics for crafting a challenge that builds desire for your paid offer without feeling salesy.
👉 The Power of Community: Explore how challenges foster a sense of community and create a space for participants to connect, support, and inspire one another.
👉 Paid vs. Free Challenges: Alina shares her insights on when to run a paid challenge versus a free challenge, and the benefits of each approach.
Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting out, Alina's profitable online challenges formula provides a simple, step-by-step approach to creating successful and engaging challenges that drive results.
Don't miss this opportunity to learn from one of the world's leading experts in this field. Tune in and get ready to take your business to new heights with the power of online challenges.
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Don’t miss this episode and let me know your thoughts after you listen. I always love hearing from you. If you have any questions about this episode, comment below or DM me on Instagram @jen_lehner
Gary Vaynerchuk (00:00) Hey, guys. It's Gary Vaynerchuk. You're listening to the Front Row, entrepreneur podcast with our girl, Jen.
Jen Lehner (00:10) Hey, I'm Jen Lehner, and our guest today is a business strategist, speaker, and international best-selling author of Teach Your Expertise, Leverage Your Expertise, Own Your Expertise, and Monetize Your Expertise books. She's known globally as the creator of the profitable online challenges formula, which helped her grow her business from zero to over a million dollars in just four years. She's passionate about helping entrepreneurs package and monetize their knowledge and expertise to create a leveraged and scalable business. Experts hire her for strategic advice and simple step-by-step approaches to creating successful online programs, engage Facebook communities, and profitable five-day challenges. Welcome to the show, Alina Vincent.
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Alina Vincent (01:03) Thank you so much for having me.
Jen Lehner (01:05) Okay, so I want to tell the listeners and viewers how you came across my radar. You and I were together at a conference not too long ago in San Antonio, and we were at dinner. At these conferences, it's one of the best things about it is you sit with people you don't know and you get to know. Alina started talking about someone was already peppering her with questions I'm peppering you with questions about challenges. I perked up because I had a launch coming up. And pretty soon, everyone at the table, all heads were turned towards Alina because no one wanted to miss a single reversal of this very detailed, generous information you were sharing with us. And that really, really made a huge impression on me because not everybody is so generous with their information. And we could talk about this a little later. But just from what I learned from you at the table and on the back of a cocktail napkin, I was able to get massive results on the challenge that I ended up hosting soon after meeting you. So I was like, you got to come on my podcast. And thankfully, you agreed.
Alina Vincent (02:20) Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much for sharing that story. I love hearing how amazing the results can be if you do the challenge the easy way or what I think the easy way.
Jen Lehner (02:29) Yeah. And Here's the thing. There were several seasoned marketers at the table, several seasoned business owners, online business owners at this table. And sometimes I think we tend to feel like we learn one way, We learn how to do a thing, and that's the way you do the thing. Then we get set in our ways, and we just think we know it all. I'll admit to being a part of the know it all club sometimes. Challenges, they've been around for a long time. But what you said excited me. I want to speak to that. First, let's start at the beginning. You started doing challenges before people even knew what the heck a challenge was, correct?
Alina Vincent (03:13) Pretty much. It was about 10 years ago. I remember standing on stage and I was talking about challenges, and I asked people, there were about 100 people in the audience, and I asked them, How many of you know how to run a challenge for business? Or even heard of running a challenge as one of the marketing strategies? Three hands went up. Right now, we are getting emails almost every single day. Somebody's inviting you a challenge, somebody's running a challenge. But back in the day, I had to really educate people on what this voluntary concept of challenges. We've seen challenges before. It's not like it's a brand new concept. Challenges existed since prehistoric times. Somebody challenged somebody to do something. They were way more popular in a fitness arena where it would be seven days of smoothies or 30 days to flatter abs. But nobody was really using it in this online educational expertise business arena.
Jen Lehner (04:07) All right. How did you get started in it?
Alina Vincent (04:10) Well, to be honest, I was really struggling to get clients. It was right on that casp of me switching between two businesses. Before that, I had a photography studio, and I soon realized that everything was one-on-one. It was completely unscalable. I got it to six figures, but I couldn't grow it anymore because everything depended on my time. I was right in that area where I was looking to do something that would allow me to serve one to many, that would allow me to not just work with people locally, but go globally and really leverage my time and expertise. I thought coaching world would be a really great place to start. For about four months, after I let go of my photography business and I was trying to get coaching clients, I really struggled.
Jen Lehner (04:55) Were you coaching other photographers?
Alina Vincent (04:57) No, I was just coaching. By then, a lot of people saw me as very visible on Facebook. I got them really good about getting clients on Facebook. People would come to me for marketing advice. People that I worked with in photography, they were all business owners because I was doing marketing head shots. Then they would ask them all about, who's your audience? What's the message you're trying to portray? We had all of those conversations. People would come to me for business advice. But as soon as I officially said, Okay, now I'm just going to sell business advice. Now I'm going to do consulting and coaching. Everybody dried out, and it became like, why would I get business advice from a photographer? I struggled to explain my value. I struggled to do something very specific. Honestly, I did not know really what I was doing in terms of marketing, because I would say, I can help everybody. Just tell me what your question is, and they'll take you to the next level, which basically doesn't mean anything. So it wasn't specific enough. And then I started hearing these ideas.
Jen Lehner (06:00) Wait, can Can I ask you to pause one second? Can we all stop saying, take your business to the next level? Can we all just raise our hands right now and just say... It's rolled out of my mouth a time or two, but really, we can do better people. Okay, continue, please.
Alina Vincent (06:14) And that's It's so general and it's so abstract. It doesn't resonate with anybody. Nobody wants to take their business to the next level. They want specific results, specific solutions, specific outcomes. Right at that time, I started hearing that, Oh, maybe I I should create an online program. Maybe I should create a training. So it's a little bit more specific. But even that felt like, Oh, my gosh, how long is it going to take me to do it? So I was looking for something that I could put together very easily, that was easy to implement and I got fast because I needed to start making some money. So I put together my very first challenge, and it was actually in a 21-day challenge format, which I don't do anymore. But my very first clients, I got 43 people paying me $57 to in that very first challenge. So it was a 21-day challenge, and that's what put me on the map because it was specific, it was tangible, it was practical. And at the end of that challenge, I started getting high-end clients. I started getting people hired me for coaching and paying me thousands of dollars.
Alina Vincent (07:15) So that was the beginning of me offering the challenge, which was every single day, I'll show up and I'll give you about 10 minutes of information, and I'm going to tell you exactly what you need to do. And people were getting results left and right. And people started talking about me, and people started wanting me to talk about this topic more and more. And that was the beginning of my whole entire business. And then over the years, I've offered 30-day challenges, 10-day challenges, five-day challenges, seven-day challenges. And I realized that the best golden spot for doing challenges that put you on the map, position you, grow your audience, and allow you to invite people to your next offer is five-day challenges. And that's what I've been teaching for the last eight years or Okay, so one thing that really impressed me about you, is that someone at the table said, what's the ideal time to do a challenge?
Jen Lehner (08:08) You said five days. You didn't hesitate. You didn't take a breath. You just said five days with all the authority of someone who knows exactly how long the challenge to be. So that's when I really started to listen up. I'm like, Okay, there's no... It is five days.
Alina Vincent (08:24) There's no doubt.
Jen Lehner (08:24) And that is what it must be. I leaned in and you went to tell us why five days versus three days. Actually, I don't remember why it is five days versus three days.
Alina Vincent (08:37) Do you want to hear that?
Jen Lehner (08:38) Please, yeah. Let's just start there.
Alina Vincent (08:40) Sure. Okay. Well, it's obvious that the longer you go, the more information you have to put the more... I'll want to talk about the longer ones first. A lot of people say, Oh, it takes 21 days to create a habit, or I want people to really fall in love with me and be around me and really learn from me, so I'm going to do 10 days or 30 days. The problem was that, especially if you're doing free challenges, and I'm a huge advocate for doing free challenges, especially if you're just starting out, especially if you are trying to build your audience, build the momentum, grow your list. Even though you started with the paid challenges and had such success with it? Yeah, we can talk about the difference between paid and free. Absolutely. There's so much to talk about, right?
Jen Lehner (09:23) There is so much to talk about.
Alina Vincent (09:24) Basically, if you do longer challenges, people tune out. If you're doing it for free for that many days, you Start resenting it because there's work involved and you're giving away a lot of information. People start tuning you out because it's really easy to lose track, miss one day, feel like you're behind, and never come back. Most people who do free challenges that are longer than five days Because by the end of the challenge, they pretty much have nobody participating. So whatever your intention was for the next offer, you basically have nobody to even interest in it because people already moved on to something else. Now, the opposite to that is a three-day challenge. When you're doing a five-day challenge, the key and one of the secrets is you want people to experience three wins in a row. That's what hits the dopamine button. That's what activates this winning streak, and we want more, and we want to... We get attached to the person who is helping us achieve those wins. In a three-day challenge, if you miss even one day, you don't get that three wins in a row effect. And very often, when you have three days and you're requiring and asking people to commit to these three days and show up, very often, they might only show up for a day or two.
Alina Vincent (10:33) In a five-day challenge, you still have more time to catch up. You still have a few more days. So three days, most of the time is not enough to build the trust that you want to build with people to help them achieve a result where they can actually see in these three days or in these five days, look at me, I'm actually seeing the results. I'm experiencing the transformation. So three days, most of the time is not long enough. Five days is just absolutely perfect. Okay.
Jen Lehner (11:02) The other thing... Now, if you want me to save this, I can save it. But I did think this was so interesting, and that is I was like, But my webinar, when we... Because typically, the normal format that I think a lot of us are used to is, let's say you do a three-day challenge. Day four is going to be open cart and the webinar. For us, it might be Monday through Wednesday would be the challenge. Then Thursday is... You still pretend it's part of the challenge, but it's really and truly it's a sales piece. It's a webinar. Then the cart's open. Then you go through the weekend, maybe your cart is open through Sunday night or Monday, maybe even as late as Tuesday. That's the traditional way. And you were like, Yeah, no, you don't make any offer. I was like, Wait, what?
Alina Vincent (11:53) It's a different model. So if you find a model that works for you, do it. I'm not here to say it doesn't work for me.
Jen Lehner (11:59) No, your model works for me.
Alina Vincent (12:00) Yeah. So here's what I do. Again, when I created this model, I was at the very beginning of my journey. So it was in the first couple of years of my business. And one of the things I hated the most was selling. I was like, If I can show you that I can help you get the result, if I can show you my expertise, if I can prove to you that I can deliver on everything that I promise, then you're going to fall in love with me and work with me. And that's most of the time how it works. So for me, this five-day challenge format, one of the I've created it, and one of the reasons I still love it, and I have thousands of clients who love it, is it doesn't feel salesy at all. We all love sharing. We all love teaching. We all want to get paid for it. We want to get clients, but we absolutely enjoy giving value. This five-day challenge format, you basically teach for the whole entire week. There's no selling, there's no offers in the middle. It doesn't feel salesy. People say that it's like a breath of fresh air.
Alina Vincent (12:59) It's not like one of those webinars, you think you're going to get value, and then from the first moment, you're starting, but they're selling to you and people say, Oh, it just doesn't feel good. My challenge is they feel really good. Because it's unusual and because there's no pressure There's no selling. We do, of course, make an invitation right at the end, but not within those five days. Because of that, you have that pent-up demand, you have that desire that got created. Anything you offer to people after the five days, they are ready to jump into it. Most of the time, they start even asking, Hey, do you also teach this? Or what's the next step? Can you also show us how to do whatever I am leading them to? That's how I know that the challenge is done well. But for me, I Enjoy spending those five days building the trust, building the relationships, and basically showing people that if you follow me, if you do what I say, you're going to start seeing results immediately. That's, to me, the goal of the challenge.
Jen Lehner (13:58) Yeah, and it's so good. I have to say, when you say it's a breath of fresh air, it's not just a breath of fresh air for the people who are a part of the challenge. I think it's a breath of fresh air for those of us, the content creators, to be given permission from you that it is okay. We can teach and we don't have to sell. It is really and truly, it was the most fun that I have had, and I don't know how long, because my business, like so many started back in the day of just jumping on a webinar, jumping on a live stream, and just teaching. I never made an offer. That's how I got my name out there, was just showing people how to do stuff. But then at some point, your business grows, and then you just don't have as much time for all of that. It brought me back. It really shifted things for us, I have to tell you. The other thing that you advised that night at the table was you were like, Yeah, 10 minutes, 10 minutes only. I was like, Man, you're shaking things up over here for me, Alina.
Jen Lehner (14:57) What do you mean? Because I had done a PLL LF video format, for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, it's a product launch formula with Jeff Walker. It's been around for 100 years, not really, but a long time.
Alina Vincent (15:10) Yeah, it's a more traditional launch type of- Yeah, it's a more traditional launch format.
Jen Lehner (15:14) And my videos in this, I had professionally produced beautiful videos. They were 25, 30 minutes long each. And those did work for a while. I don't know if they'd work again. I don't think anybody has that attention span to watch a 40-minute video. And honestly, half of it was transitions and cool effects. And then there was a short teaching part. So when you said 10 minutes, pre-recorded videos, I was like, All right, I don't know. It was honestly so counter everything I knew that that's what intrigued me. I was like, let's try this. So what What is your thinking behind? I mean, it obviously works. It worked for me. But why does it work? Why 10 minutes only?
Alina Vincent (16:05) So many different reasons. Number one, the thing that you already said, most people don't have time and they cannot commit to listening to an hour, 45 minutes, 30 minutes presentations every single day, even if it's just for three days. But if we take five days, imagine if somebody says, Hey, I have this free training, show up every day and watch this 30 minutes video. Most people will We will not commit to that because it's too much, especially if we're signing up for something with maybe a week's notice, maybe a few days notice. We just don't have that much time on our calendar, especially if it's at a specific time. I know some people do challenges where they just go live in a Facebook group for an hour every day and they expect people to show up. Most of us don't have that much open, flexible time on our calendars, which means the participation drops quite a bit. It works well for people who already have a million people following them because you always have the critical mass there. But if you're just starting out, if you're at a more normal level, maybe you have 5,000, 10,000, 20,000 people on your list, you might not get that many people following you and listening to those things every single day.
Alina Vincent (17:14) That's number one. Number two, have you ever been frustrated with... You got... Somebody promised you something, and they said, Come to this call and I'm going to tell you the biggest secret. It takes them 45 minutes to get that one little A little gem, right? Yes. Okay, I'm waiting. I still haven't learned it. You promised to give it to us. So 10 minutes. Again, it's one of those breath of fresh air because in 10 minutes, I can pack a lot if I'm very, very focused. So I don't talk about myself. We don't share all of these amazing stories about what's possible. I'm telling you, you want me to teach you, let's say, how to get more visible on Facebook? Okay, step number one, we're going to do this. Step number two, we're going to do this. So in just 10 minutes, people They'll get so much tangible, practical information that they go, Oh, my gosh, this was amazing. It only took me 10 minutes to consume it and implement it, maybe another 10 minutes to implement it. It's different. It breaks up these three-hour long webinars. It breaks out those long PLF videos and so forth.
Alina Vincent (18:19) It's that whole idea of the micro learning. Micro learning just means breaking all of your content into the bite size, easy to digest, easy to create learning videos. And that's when we consume the information the easiest and remember and retain it and implement it much easier. Because if you tell me, listen to this an hour long video and then go do something, I already spend an hour with you. I don't know if I'll have more time. If I tell you it's only going to take you 10 minutes to watch the video and maybe another 10, 15 minutes to take the action on that, you're a lot more likely to get into that action. So again, lots of different reasons for doing it. And one of them is when I work with a lot of people who are just starting out, we have people at all sorts of levels, but a big part of them, that is their first foray into online marketing. That's their first way of sharing content online and potentially might be the very first digital product they create. If I tell them you have to come up with an hour of content for every day, they go crazy.
Alina Vincent (19:19) They're like, I don't know that many words. If I tell them it's only 10 minutes, it's such an easier way of showing up and knowing that you can share the exact, precise laser-focused steps for people to take so they can experience that transformation that you're promising.
Jen Lehner (19:36) When does this say... Well, I have so many questions. Let me back up because I know I think people's burning question right now is like, Yeah, but what do I teach? How do I know what to teach in the five days?
Alina Vincent (19:50) Great. And that's the wrong question. The right question to ask is, what do I want to lead people to? We already talked a little bit what the goal of the challenge is, and then you actually have two goals for every challenge. The first one is you want to deliver on your promise whatever that promise is. I'll help you set up your dating profile. I'll help you get more visible on Facebook. I'll help you find the right VA, whatever the promise is. You're delivering on your promise. The second thing is to create the desire for the offer that's coming up next. It's very, very Ninja. We're doing it. We're not selling it, but we want We want to create a new paradigm. We want to open people's eyes to what's next. You want to explain that, yes, you might find the right VA, but you still don't know how to delegate stuff. You still don't know what to give them. It's two different things. You're opening the door to the next problem that they will probably face, and that should be your offer. So yes, you can always create a standalone challenge just for the sake of creating challenge.
Alina Vincent (20:55) I wouldn't do it. I always start my first question that I tell people to ask me is, what are you leading people to? What is your offer? Once you know what your offer is, it's really easy to go one step back and say, what do these people need to realize in order for them to say, yes, I have to have your program. I need to sign up for that. If you don't create your challenge because, oh, this is a fun topic to create a challenge on. If you start always with the end result, what do you want to lead people to? Then it could become a prerequisite. It could be addressing one of the It could be the very, very first step people need to realize before they're ready for the next thing. I can give you some examples. It's easier to talk about it on the examples. But whatever you're creating in your challenge, at the end of your challenge, every single person needs to realize how much they need what you're selling. That is the second goal of the challenge.
Jen Lehner (21:51) So please, examples, please. I love examples.
Alina Vincent (21:54) So give me an example of something that you want to sell or one of your clients wants to sell.
Jen Lehner (22:01) Okay. I have a client who is a personal stylist.
Alina Vincent (22:05) Okay.
Jen Lehner (22:07) So she offers consults with women who want to appear more put together in the world and on their Zoom calls.
Alina Vincent (22:15) Okay. Is that all clothing related or is it inside and outside?
Jen Lehner (22:22) It's mostly clothing, shopping, how to wear your shirt so your neck looks longer. Is that a hard one? I could pick a different one.
Alina Vincent (22:32) No, it's not a hard one. I feel like I need to ask more questions to give a good advice. We're going to make a whole bunch of assumptions, but I'll tell you the idea, how I think about it. If your goal is to sell a consultation where you're going to give a full advice on how to style, how to show up on stage, how to walk into the room, what to wear. There's several different ways you can look at the challenge. First of all, if all you are addressing is styling and closing, your challenge could be about the mindset of what makes you look confident. Because it becomes the supportive thing. It's like, first, let's say you're enough, you look wonderful, you look beautiful, you're going to attract the right people, you're going to position yourself in the right way. It doesn't matter what you're wearing, you need to be confident from the inside. You can have five days of a confidence booster for speakers, for example. Then you can say, and it also really matters what you wear. Once you're confident on the inside, let's make it match on the outside. Have a consultation with me.
Alina Vincent (23:32) We'll do whatever you need to do with the style. Makes sense? I'm not jeopardizing my offer, but I am giving people something that they're probably struggling with anyway. Because people who don't think that they're showing up and dressing up properly, there's probably some confidence issues. So you're giving them something that they're already thinking about and then leading them to what you want to sell. That's one way of doing it. Another way is taking a really small part of what offer is. If your offer for the consultation is the full body, you can have how to style your sofa Zoom. Then you have a very small fraction of what she does. I'm assuming that she's different. You can say, here's the right neck line. Here's the right accessories. Here's how you do whatever you do with your makeup to show up correctly on Zoom. Then the bridge between your challenge and your offer becomes like, yeah, we don't just exist neck up. You have the rest of your How do you dress from the head to your toes? Come and have this consultation. Now you know how to look good on Zoom. What about the rest of you?
Alina Vincent (24:38) Makes sense?
Jen Lehner (24:39) Yeah, love it. Okay, what about someone who teaches people how to podcast? They have a podcasting course.
Alina Vincent (24:46) That one is easy. I mean, everything is easy, right? If you know how to approach it. Again, lots of different ways. You can have a challenge on find your ideal audience, who's your ideal client, and do a really deep dive into, figure out who your ideal client is, what their struggles, what their desires, what are they interested in, what do they do? And then the bridge becomes, and now you might be wondering how to find a lot of them, how to get in front of them. Well, one of that, so that would be your day five, where we're doing that paradigm shift and opening the door to the next thing. The best way I know how to get in front of those people is run a podcast. I have a course on how to create a podcast. That would be the invitation. Makes sense?
Jen Lehner (25:27) Yeah. I think sometimes the really the Ninja stuff that I've seen you do is sometimes what the challenge is, someone from the outside looking in is never going to know that it's leading to this thing. The Bridge is just so cool. I would even say, even in the challenge that I did, I didn't really say anything about hiring a virtual assistant. It was more like, what do you need before you need a virtual assistant? Well, first of all, you need to believe that you need a virtual assistant, but also you need systems. You were like, well, why don't you do something like getting them to Inbox Zero or Inbox Management? I was like, yeah, I already do a training on that. Perfect. It was like every day was some 10 minute cool tactic, and they did get tangible wins. Just like you said, that was so important. I never said anything about VAs, but at the very end, it was like, great. Now you've learned all this cool stuff. You shouldn't be doing any of it. Somebody else I should be doing this. Because as cool as that was, you don't have time for it.
Jen Lehner (26:34) But yeah, it absolutely works. I think it's brilliant.
Alina Vincent (26:39) And honestly, that's one of my favorite way of doing challenges is coming up with the topic that's a secondary concern for your ideal clients. It's a secondary thing they might be wondering and leading to whatever the first concern is. I need to have more time. I'm not managing everything I need to do. I need to VA, but starting with a small task because it allows you to share as much as you want on that topic, give them the value, give them the results, and not jeopardize your offer. Because one of the big mistakes people make with challenges is they make the topic of their challenge way too close to the promise of their program. And this is what happens. Let's say you're selling a course on podcasting. If you do a challenge on how to start a podcast and give people everything you know about it because you have Q&A calls, you have people asking questions, it's really hard to hold back. And in the back of your mind, you're like, But that's what I teach in my course. I don't want to give it to you all for free because I want you to buy my program.
Alina Vincent (27:37) And if you give a lot, at the end of the challenge, people will go like, I don't need to pay $2,000 for your program or $1,000 for your program because I already got enough to get started with that. And if you hold it back, then you don't feel good and people don't feel good because it becomes like, Well, I can't tell you this because you have to buy my program first. And that's a really not a good feeling. Not for you not for your audience. When your topic is that close, very often you might have a good challenge and people will say, I love it. Thank you for giving us so much information. That's exactly what I needed. But when it comes time to make the offer, people say, No, I don't need more of what I perceive as more of the same. And now you just want me to pay for it. I already got enough to get started. I love doing these challenges that start with one topic, and then on day five, you do a bigger reveal and say, This is what I'm actually thinking about, or this is only one part of the whole big thing, or this was the mindset, now you need the strategy, or here's your how to, but you still need the mindset, depending on what you're selling.
Alina Vincent (28:40) It's one of the best, most converting challenges where you start with a different problem, and then you tell them how it attaches or aligns with what they actually really want.
Jen Lehner (28:50) Yeah. I mean, and the other thing is, is like you're creating your exact perfect people you want to work with because you've educated them in some way. You have given them a prerequisite, right? So they're like, you've just gotten them all set up nicely to really enter your program or your services and to be really on the same page. Everybody's on the same page, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.
Alina Vincent (29:15) Well, the interesting... Sorry. No, please. Numbers-wise, numbers show that if you have, let's say, just a webinar and you invite people to a program, or if you do a challenge followed by exactly same webinar, you're going to have three times more conversions if you started with a challenge. Because exactly what you just said happens. You're getting everybody on the same page. They all have this realization, Oh, this is what I really need. So we have people People who've done numbers on statistics, who went through my program and followed this format, who say, I'm converting three times or higher if I put a challenge in front of any offer I ever make.
Jen Lehner (29:55) Yeah. I mean, it's a beautiful thing. Okay, one thing I forgot circle back to is the whole paid versus free. What are your thoughts on that?
Alina Vincent (30:04) Okay, great question. I'm glad we remember to address that as well. When you're seeing somebody running a paid challenge, it sounds enticing. It's like, why not do this thing but get paid for it? But people who do it successfully already have a pretty large list. You can choose whatever you want to do. You can do a free challenge or a paid challenge. But free challenge gets you new leads. It's a very low barrier to entry. People want to check you out, get that taste, and figure out if they want to take the next step, if they like the way you teach, if they're getting results from you. Because we have to get to know people before we say yes to investing with them. So free challenge gives you that casting a really wide net, gathering a lot of people who are complete strangers to you, and giving you the five days to build that trust, build that know, like, and trust factor. If you're doing a Pay Challenge, the only it works if you already have a built-in audience, if you have 20,000 people on your list or 50,000 people on your list. And your main goal is to pop the people who are ready to invest with you right now and monetize your audience.
Alina Vincent (31:13) It's a quick way of doing some cash infusion to run a challenge, but it doesn't work if you're just starting out. If it's hard for you to sell your programs right now, start with challenges because you have to keep growing your audience. You have to bring new people into your world. So free Pay is great for any level of business. Paid only works if you already have, let's say, a couple of thousand people on your list or more. And think about it this way. If you're doing it as a free challenge, it's basically a very Very, very amazing supercharge leadback. You're asking people to give you emails so you can build your list. When you are running a paid challenge, you're selling a product. Whether it's $7 or $77 or $100, now you basically selling a product, so you're selling it differently. And not everybody is willing to pull out their wallet right away if they don't know you. So that's the basic distinction. That's why you see a lot of paid challenges being run because they're usually done by people with already bigger visibility. So you hear about them more. But you have to be at a certain level in your business for it to make sense.
Jen Lehner (32:22) Great, great information. Thank you for that. One more question. On your opt-in pages, whether it's for free or paid, I don't know if they would be different. What information do you ask for? Do you ask for name, email, and phone number, and maybe a qualifying question, or just name and email?
Alina Vincent (32:39) We want, again, it's a free lead magnet. It's very exciting, very entertaining, very inclusive and engaging, but it's still a lead magnet. We ask the minimum amount of information. It's usually first name and the email to enter. However, if it's a paid one, you have to get all of the information and credit card details and so forth. For a free challenge, your page could be incredibly simple. It just could be like, Hey, do you want to achieve this result? Click here and join our free five-day challenge. That's it. Simple. If you're selling, even if it's for $7, you want to work on it as a sales page. You want to tell a little bit of a story. You definitely want to have testimonials. You want to have like now because you are selling a product. It's a harder one, not harder, but takes more effort to put together because anytime you're asking people for an investment, even if it's $10 or so, you still have to do more work in convincing them to part with their money. So very different pages. In one case, you have a very simple, straight to the point opt-in page with zero distractions.
Alina Vincent (33:44) Just you want this result, click here, it's free. What do you have to lose? And if you're selling it, if it's a paid challenge, you have to do more of the... It becomes a sales page.
Jen Lehner (33:55) Yeah, absolutely. Okay, great. Thank you for that. You mentioned like, Oh, there's Q&A's in there. So I know you do a supplemental Facebook group to your challenges.
Alina Vincent (34:07) We do not.
Jen Lehner (34:08) Oh, you don't? I thought they go in there for Q&A's. Okay. Prizes. Okay.
Alina Vincent (34:14) So first of all, it's not a pop-up Facebook group. So it's not a supplemental Facebook group. It is a Facebook group where we run the challenges, but it is my normal big community group. So we do not create something new because I think that's the First thing, if you create a pop-up group and you get people all eager and excited and it's a warm audience and they're talking and you're gaging, challenge is over and you're going to throw all of them away. That's just the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. What we have is we have one big community Facebook group that anybody can join who's interested in this topic. It's a closed Facebook group. You need to have permission to join. Every single challenge we've ever run, we always run inside of that Facebook group. That's what allows us to grow the Facebook group. We're close to 37,000 people in it. That's what brings up the engagement up. We do run the challenges inside of the Facebook group, and that's where people post their homework assignments, and that's where they can win the prizes. Every once in a while, I might do a Facebook live if I want to do a critique or if I want to do a Q&A or if I wanted to just course-correct and say, Okay, you know what?
Alina Vincent (35:22) I noticed a lot of you are making this mistake. So let me explain this better. Let me explain why this is a mistake. Let me tell you how do it the right way. But our official Q&A call, which we always have during the challenge on Thursday because it picks up the energy right before the big end, is we do it on Zoom so people can actually interact with you. To me, when I was putting together the challenge, to me, it's also a simpler of how you run your programs. If I in my programs, every single video I have in my programs is broken down to a 5 to 10 minutes video, that's why I'm them exactly the same format in a challenge so they can experience that. If I do my calls inside of my group programs on Zoom, I want to give people a taste of it in a challenge so they know what it's like to be in a coaching call with me and how we run them and how I answer questions and how much value they're going to get. So official format for my challenge is five prerecorded videos Monday through Friday, and a Q&A call on Zoom on Thursday.
Jen Lehner (36:27) And then when do you actually When is it on sale?
Alina Vincent (36:31) Monday. So what we have, like continuation on that format. So Monday through Friday, they get a link to a prerecorded video in their emails. So it teaches them to open the emails every single day, which is a big thing. We don't post Any of the content in the Facebook group, they can go through it.
Jen Lehner (36:48) Say that again. That's very important, please.
Alina Vincent (36:49) We do not post any content in a Facebook group because our goal is always bring your audience from Facebook into your email because email is the asset you have. We could have a blackout on Facebook. Yes, like yesterday. They could start charging us. You always want to work on how do you get people from your email list to engage with you in a group and people from your group to engage with you in the email. We want to send the content through email so people are used to being on your email list and opening emails from you pretty much every single day. For five days, you're going to get the video, you're going to get your assignment, you can watch it at any time. It should take you about 10 minutes to watch the video, about 10, 15 minutes to implement the assignment for the day. Then we ask them by a cut off, let's say 10 PM in the evening, post their assignment in the group, and that's how we give away daily prizes. We randomly choose a winner, and then that's the five days. Then the next two days is the wrap up.
Alina Vincent (37:50) We do a grand prize drawing on Sunday, and one of the conditions is they have to post homework on all the five days because I don't want people to just sign up for my I want them to go through it, consume it, watch it. It's really we're talking about under an hour worth of material for the whole week, so it's easy to catch up. We have some people who join even on Thursday or Friday, still go through everything and can qualify for the grand prize. However, starting on Friday, I'm going to be promoting whatever is happening on Monday. On Monday, I'll do a webinar or we'll do a Facebook Live or however I'm making that invitation. We have some people who start inviting people to strategy sessions. It could be just email follow-up, but you start telling them, Here's the next thing. We're using the grand price as a draw, so we keep sending them email and saying, Hey, don't forget, we're going to have a grand price drawing. You only have so many hours to enter the drawing, and that gets people to complete the challenge because I need them to, I want them to consume the material, and I want them to see how much value they can get out of this.
Alina Vincent (38:57) At the same time, I keep saying, And Don't forget, on Monday, we're having this webinar, or on Monday, we have this master class, and then everybody shows up on Monday, and that's when we have our highest conversions from the whole entire challenge.
Jen Lehner (39:11) That's when you invite them and introduce them into the next step. What things do you offer as your grand prize? I'm super curious about that.
Alina Vincent (39:19) It really depends on what the challenge is. We usually have a combination of two or three things. There's usually a cash price. It could be anywhere from $50 to a couple of or Amazon gift certificate. There might be a little bit of time with me or time with one of my coaches, depending on, again, what the topic of the challenge is. Sometimes we give a ticket to an event. Sometimes it is we have one challenge that we run every year called Visibility Kickstarter. In there, one of the grand prizes, because we're talking about visibility, is I'm interviewing the grand prize winner inside of our Facebook group in front of 37,000 people. That's a big because that's what they want. They want to be more visible. I never offer what I'm selling as the grand prize because I find that sometimes if people feel like you're giving it away, it devalues it. People who didn't win, and they're like, Oh, I really wanted, I really wanted. Oh, I didn't win it, I guess, wasn't meant to be. I never offer as a grand price whatever I'm selling. But it's always something that's... We usually make it valued between three to to $7,000.
Alina Vincent (40:31) It's a big draw for people to finish.
Jen Lehner (40:34) Do you think there's a point at which it's too early for a business owner to do this in their business? Or when is the right time for someone to do a challenge?
Alina Vincent (40:43) For me, that was the very first thing that I did at my business. Before, I had people on my list, before I had... I didn't even know what my topic was, how I was going to position myself with this whole entire business. For me, that was the very first step I did that actually worked in my business. Business because, again, it's super low technology, it's super low cost, it's super low commitment. So you can definitely get started with that. And I have a lot of people who do their challenge, and it's the very first time they get an online client. That's the very first time they've created a digital product. Here's another reason for doing those 10 minutes videos and having them prerecorded. By the time you're done, you have a digital product. You can actually sell it now. You can do it as a bonus, you can sell it as separate. We used to make lots of money on selling these recordings from the challenges.
Jen Lehner (41:32) Yeah, I did that.
Alina Vincent (41:33) And I know you've done that, too.
Jen Lehner (41:34) Yes. I mean, just from your challenge, because everybody was giving us such great feedback and they wanted to know if they could buy the recording. So we were like, Yeah. Yeah, it really is a wonderful thing. And this is just my opinion, but I'm sure you'll agree that I've been thinking a lot about how fast we're moving. We're just moving lightning fast. There's so many cool things out there, so many amazing applications and tools and all this with AI and everything, which I love. But this is one of those things that actually people are going to want more of as we continue to get more robotic, more AI content, to have this human who is engaged with us in delivering this content. I think it's going to continue to really rise up to the top of our favorite things in marketing. I think this might even be a renaissance, not that it went anywhere, but honestly, a renaissance of the challenge. If I have anything to do with it, I'm sending everybody your way, Alina, because it's really rare that It's just not too often that you run into something that is just exactly what it says it is.
Jen Lehner (42:54) For you to just be able to tell me at dinner and for me to just jot down a few notes on a cocktail napkin, and it worked, I'm like, Yeah, it's a wonderful thing. It's very refreshing to know that you're out there in the world doing this stuff and helping people with this. Thank you. Are there any benefits, though, that I've missed with challenges?
Alina Vincent (43:15) Well, one of the things I wanted to piggyback on, something you just said, and with the whole renaissance and being more computerized and more AI-ized, is we're missing the community. People still want to belong somewhere. People still want to feel like they're not alone and there's like-minded people around them. So challenge brings those people together. So you're not just giving people the value and building the desire for your offer. All of those things are great. But the reason we do them live, and I mean, live it's still pre-recorded videos, but we have the start point, we have the end point. There's a lot of interaction and engagement while we're running the challenge is because it brings the community together. I have so many people who said, I asked them, What did you like the most about the challenge? And The answer is the people that I met, all of the interactions that I've had, all of the conversations that I've had. Because when you surround yourself by like-minded people who are in about the same stage of their journey, and now they're realizing they're not the only one struggling with this. They're not the only one who had these questions.
Alina Vincent (44:17) They're not the only one want to achieve that as a goal. They start having conversations and supporting each other and inspiring each other. There's amazing things happening inside of the Facebook group. Honestly, a lot of value in a challenge is not just you positioning yourself as an expert, but in how you're bringing your followers together and getting them engaged with each other. There's so many other marketing tools where you just passively absorbing information, even coming to a webinar. I have nothing against webinars. I love them and I do them in my business. But if I'm teaching on a webinar, there's no community factor happening. People are just sitting there. Well, there's also not much application happening, but nobody else knows who else is on that webinar unless you have the chat going or unless it's in a place where they can see each other's faces. But most of the time there's no camaraderie, there's no social proof, there's no conversations that are happening between the people. And challenge gives you that. And that's a very unique marketing tool, one of the only marketing tools, I think, besides doing like live events or something, where you have both you're learning from somebody and you are getting the results and you're doing it in a group of people where you aging on everyday basis.
Alina Vincent (45:31) So the community element is a huge reason why I love it. And that's how you get loyalty, and that's how you get trust, and that's how you build your followers who will... We have people who finish our challenges and say, I did not know that you even existed five days ago, and now I'm going to follow you, and I love the people you're bringing together. So it's all of those elements coming together.
Jen Lehner (45:52) Yeah, that's a wonderful thing. And you're right, that is a huge part of this. Okay, so I I know someone is listening and they're saying, Yeah, but... Yeah, but... I'm a dentist. Yeah, but my business is special or unique, or I have a unicorn business. It's not like your guys' business. Is there a business that this really isn't right for?
Alina Vincent (46:17) Yes. Yeah, I'm not one of those that like, It's absolutely right for everybody. There's definitely not even the business, but the level of your clientele, depending on who your audience is, sometimes that might not be appropriate. If you're working with, let's say, seven-figure business owners, they're not going to spend time going, checking into the Facebook group every day to watch the 10-minute video. They're going to be like, Here's $10,000. Tell me what I need to know. Let's implement it right away. They go straight to the top. They're not into freebies and let me piecemeal the information. The same thing if your audience is high-level CEOs, again, they have people to do that for. They're not going to be attracted to a three, five day thing that's going to take too long for them to get to the point. Again, they would be like, Let me hire you. Consult me. Let's do this as a workshop. Let's do it as a consultation, and that's what I need. So they would go straight to the top. Those are the biggest exceptions. Basically, people who it's below their pay grade level of doing the minutiae stuff, those are not the right people for the challenges.
Alina Vincent (47:25) But then if you look at everything else, we have our program, the Fast, Easy, and Profitable Online Challenges program. People always come on our calls or webinars when we are promoting it, and they're saying, But will this work for me? Honestly, out of years and years and years of running this program, I think I only turned away two or three people, and I said, You know what? For you, I just can't come up with a challenge. Everybody else, there's a creative way of doing it. Whether they're selling a product, whether they're selling software, or they're launching a book, or they want to get one-on-one clients, or they're just starting out, they don't have anything at all. They have no idea who they are and what they can create. We still can help them with that. I would say 99% of people, I can always come up with the idea for the challenge. It's one of my genius things that I can do pretty easily after helping so many people over the years.
Jen Lehner (48:18) Yeah, well, I believe it. I put you on the spot here and you didn't even take a breath. You just knew exactly what the challenge needed to be. All right, well, I want to send people over to you for sure. I think you said you had a goody for us, like a checklist.
Alina Vincent (48:33) I do. I have a really cool challenge checklist, which is basically something I took straight out of my program. And it's the checklist of all of the elements you need to put together to run the challenge. And how that checklist came about is my team and I created it. So anytime we would create a challenge, we would have to go like, Okay, this has been created. We did this. So it's all of the little pieces that you need to have before your challenge, during the challenge, and after the challenge to ensure your success.
Jen Lehner (49:02) Oh, amazing. I can't wait to dig into that. And then your Facebook group that you mentioned. I'll make sure. Is it okay if I link that in the show notes so everybody can join?
Alina Vincent (49:12) Sure. Yeah. So it's called business owners who think big. You can just search for it and join it. And that's where we run all of the challenges. So if you join the group, most likely in the next two months or so, if not tomorrow, we're going to be running a challenge there.
Jen Lehner (49:27) Yeah. So I mean, you guys, just go into the group and you'll just see Alina. It'll be very meta, well, literally meta, but you'll see Alina doing her thing and seeing everything in action. So, wow. Thank you so much for coming. I learned so much more, even, and I really appreciate it. And thank you.
Alina Vincent (49:50) Thank you so much for having me.
Jen Lehner (49:51) Everybody, that's Alina vincent. Look her up.
