How she made $1,000 an hour while she was OFFLINE—from a $9 membership! (With Liz Wilcox)

My last episode with Liz Wilcox was the *most downloaded* episode of 2023! Liz is an email strategist who shows small businesses how to build online relationships and make real money with emails. Her incredible $9 membership has yielded multiple six figures all whilst maintaining her “simple is my superpower” ethos. In today's episode, we dive into how she made $1000 an hour while she was offline.

– The importance of life-work balance, especially when managing your business during your time off.
– Why hiring more staff brings up fears around trust and letting go of control.
– How creating a valuable and easy-to-implement offer becomes a gateway for key growth strategies.
– How learning from failed initiatives emphasises the importance of future growth.

 

 
Liz Wilcox was on this show last year when we did an awesome interview about how she turned her $9 a month email marketing template membership into a six figure business.
You guys loved it. Like that episode got more downloads than literally any other episode that we did all year long. So I'm bringing Liz back today to talk about a couple of things around freedom, scaling her business, including how she scaled it to half a million dollars in revenue last year and how she was able to take 90 days offline, completely offline.
We're also talking about how she made a thousand dollars an hour while she was on vacation. I know this is wild. So you're going to love today's chat with Liz. We are diving deep into freedom and business and scaling. And I left this interview feeling so motivated, so inspired. I have a great feeling that you will as well.
So let's jump into the chat with Liz.

Liz, welcome back to Imperfect Action. It's been a little while since you were last on here, but your last episode was such a big hit with my listeners. And so much has happened in your business since the last time that you were on this show. So I'm really excited to have you back. And I would love to kick it off with just a really simple question.

What has happened in your business since the last time we spoke? 

Yeah, so the last time we spoke we talked a lot about my $9 a month membership, how I was focused on growth. And, you know, normally people come on and they talk about all their wins, so I'm going to share like a win and a little bit, I don't want to say failure, but a missed expectation, I will say. So, since Steph and I talked last, the membership has been growing.

We hit about 4, 200 members at the time of this recording, January 2024. Uh, so we are actively growing and that feels amazing. We had my very first half-a-million-dollar year. And guys, when I tell you the nine dollar thing, that's the main thing. That's a whole heck of a lot of transactions, um, and that feels so awesome, but full disclosure, my goal for 2023 was 10, 000 members, and as you can tell, 4, 000 is nowhere close, but it still feels amazing.
I mean, half a million bucks, I'm serving over 4, 000 people every single week, I feel like Wonder Woman, to be honest.

Wild to think a 10 membership is delivering half a million in revenue every year. 

It's absolutely insane, and I think the cherry on top was that, I took 90 consecutive days off in 2023. I just said, you know what, I need a break. And also my personal definition of success is to be an example of what's possible. I think Steph and I talked a little bit about that last time, and I just thought, you know, I wanted more than I want because I want to hit 10, 000 members to show people it's possible. You can have a million-dollar low ticket offer without running ads, but more than that.
I just want people to know that you can have a balance too. And you should be able to walk away from your business and rest if you need to so I'm a bit of an extremist, and so I said nope. I'm going to take the entire summer off, and I actually took 90 consecutive days off.

Wow. Okay. So many different things I want to talk about here and the 90 days off. That is incredible. And that's so in line with what I started my business for. So I could take that time away from my desk and not be constantly having to still check emails and do all of the things. So I'm curious a little bit about your 90 days off, were you still in the business at all, or were you completely offline for 90 days? 

I was completely offline for about half of it, for about 45 days. Uh, I spent the first, let's say the first half of the year almost, from January to end of May, prepping. I hired a director of operations to come in and basically upload everything from my brain. And download it into Notion.  I brought in my sister to work for me part time as my assistant.
She started full time June 1st. So it was about half of the time I literally didn't log in once. And the second half of the 45 days, I logged in maybe twice. Um, and I tell you, after 90 days, ─ I never wanted to log in again. I was completely detoxed.

Oh, I can imagine. It must've been so hard coming back to it as well after being away for that long. So with your membership, ─ there's a live component though, right? Like they can jump in and ask you questions sometimes. How did you manage that while you were offline?

Yeah, I love this question. So, I do a once-a-month Q& A, and I knew I wanted to take the summer off, and so I moved to ─━ So I took June, July, and August off, basically. And so in May, I moved up the Q& A about, I think, a week or two. Um, and so I could take the tail end of May off. Um, in June, I hired someone that, uh, very, like, trusted copywriter who's also been in the membership since day one.
And then in July, one of two times I logged in. was to do, uh, the end of the month Q& A and I tell you it was it was fun to log back in and see everybody and oh, yeah, I do know I do have a job ─ Okay Um, but it was it was nice to take the next 30 days off and I didn't come back until the next Q& A
Was there ever a moment where you were like, Oh, my business doesn't even need me anymore. Like, did you ever feel almost redundant in your own business? ─
Yeah, well I realized And we might have talked about this. I don't remember I suffered a concussion in the summer of, uh, 2022. And that's when I really realized, Oh wow, my business doesn't need me the way that maybe I need my business. Uh, you know, cause the business kept growing, members kept coming in.
That's the beauty of, you know, a recurring revenue model, right? And ─ So that's when I really started to think about, Oh, well, it doesn't need me as much. Maybe I could get that Director of Operations and, you know, take time off when I'm not sick. When I'm, you know, my brain is properly functioning. That was another reason I wanted to take time off in 2023.
And so, to Steph's question, Yeah, I was, I was just sort of proving to myself, like, How much of Liz Wilcox ─ Does the Liz Wilcox brand need? And turns out, ─ not really that much. Um, and you know I've really I've built a very intentional business, uh, a mutual friend that Steph and I have, Tarzan Kay, uh, anytime I talk to her, she always asks me, is it really, is your business really the model that it looks like, um, you know, on the front end, and I'm like, I think so, I think, I think so, and this summer really proved that, uh, yeah, it's just a very simple, low responsibility, not low expectation because I expect a lot out of myself, but um, you know, low responsibility, high quality type of business and yeah, I, I love my business so much and even taking time off, you know, I joked, Oh, it's hard to come back.
But once I was back, I said, Ooh, I've got a lot of ideas.
So let's talk a little bit, cause I know we talked about it last time we spoke about building that low responsibility business, and that's why you chose the 9 membership instead of other offers out there. But when you, uh, I guess right at the start designing that business model from scratch, how did, what were some of those steps that you took to ensure that the business would support?
Your life outside of the business. And, um, I guess, how did you have to change that? Did you have to make any shifts in the business model to be able to take 90 days off? No.
shift was getting everything out of my brain first, right? That's something that's really hard. Uh, nearly, I don't, I don't know a lot of other people. I don't know anyone that's taken 90 days off. But I don't know a lot of other entrepreneurs that, you know, take more than a month off at a time. ─
And so the biggest shift was just letting go and saying, okay, yep, here's my brain. I'm going to trust Patricia, my assistant. I'm going to trust so and so. I'm going to trust this person and I'm just going to trust that, you know, I'm not the delicate genius. I, I think I am in my business. That's a Seinfeld reference.
If you don't, if you don't watch Seinfeld, I'm a big nineties fan. Um, but you know, it was something. Uh, that a, an operations manager said to me, she said, Yeah, you know Liz, you're really good. Like, you're really, really good. But that doesn't mean no one else is really, really good. And if you're gonna take this time off, you have to understand, like, what's good enough. And so that was another mindset shift of, okay, I gotta get this on paper, and it's just gonna be good enough. Is it going to be, you know, as perfect as Liz Wilcox would do it? Eh, probably not, but I really had to let go of that. And y'all, I'm like 8 years into business at this point. So, if you're not there, don't stress.
Like a lot of I mean, we spent about six months, uh, prepping for the summer off and it was a lot of, Okay Liz, this is just going to have to be good enough. If you really want what Steph is talking about, that lifestyle business where you can literally step away and go do whatever you want and not have your phone on you, um, you know, what is good enough?
And so that's something that I had to grapple with and something I had to, I had to learn how to trust. I know a lot of us, we've got our issues with trust. Um, I think that was the biggest, biggest thing. And the last thing I'll say about that is, right now you might be at a point in your business where you have to trust yourself.
Hey, I'm smart enough to do this. I know this is gonna work out. We talked about that a lot in the last episode of, you know, I just trusted that I could find a thousand people within two years and now at this next stage, the scaling stage, I guess you could say, I had to learn how to take that trust outside of myself and trust that other people were gonna care enough that the business didn't implode.

Were there any moments where you were offline and you were like, Oh, my business could be imploding right now. And I wouldn't even know,
Yes, it was a real struggle, especially the first few weeks. Because that was a real boundary I had to set with myself. Like, nope, this is what I said I was going to do, and I'm going to do it. And I'm going to trust that Patricia's got me. I'm going to trust that the people I hired, uh, you know, everything's working smoothly.
Nobody's an idiot. ─ You know, everybody's smart enough. And that, maybe that was the word of the year last year. Enough. Like, good enough. Smart enough, uh, you know, get enough rest Liz. And so yeah, there was definitely times where, you know, I'd be relaxing, I was on the beach, or I was in the woods, and then I went, oh,my business.
Oh my gosh, that sales going live today or I think today is that webinar that I let them set up for themselves and oh Today's Tuesday. That's the day of the newsletter. Oh gosh. I hope they didn't send it to so and so, you know So yeah, there were definitely moments of panic but then again, it was just coming back and grounding myself and you hired smart people you Made it known what you care about and what you don't care about and you just have to trust List
were there any, I guess, particular systems that you had to bring into place or any particular structures that you had to bring into place to facilitate you taking that time off?
Yeah, well number one it was a, I don't know if this is a system, but there was a giant process of ─ front loading work. So I still wrote almost every newsletter. There were a few that I wanted Patricia, my assistant, ─ to write because I wanted to assimilate her more. I wanted to take next summer off. So we need to get more than Liz Wilcox into the brand, right?
And so that was definitely a process, uh, as well. So number one, making sure, you know, I, I did my work ahead of time. I made sure, you know, newsletters, sales, emails. Cause we also had a gigantic flash sale in July that we can talk about in a second. So making sure that was all good to go. And then, uh, number two, making sure People knew about me taking time off.
Hey, Liz isn't gonna be here. It's just, you know, Patricia. It's just you and me. Liz is gone. And we actually decided to have fun with that. I think that my assistant, they did Some really fun, um, like giveaways. Oh, you know, when the, when the cat's away, the mice will play type of thing. They didn't ask me anything on what we had to do to prep.
It was kind of this summer school, we called it, uh, where they learned from my director of operations and my assistant. And so that was a process even coming up with, okay, well Liz is away, but we need to keep the brand top of mind. What are we gonna do so it's not like, oh, well, Good for her, she has this giant membership and she can just gallivant.
Um, cause especially I work with a lot of beginners. Um, that, you know, while that's aspirational, it seems so far away I didn't want to discourage them. So, ─ that was definitely a big process. And then really hiring that director of operations, I think I hired her like mid February, and I was planning on taking the last week of May off.
That was my last day of work. And so, really just having her integrate into the business very quickly, and say, okay. What do I need to know that I don't even know? And she'd say, Oh, well what about this? What about that? And I'd have to spend hours, you know, making loom videos, writing out processes. And then she would, you know, kill all my darlings.
She's like, Oh, well no wonder you're exhausted. Uh, you're doing this, you're doing this ten times as hard as it has to be. And so, um, it really was a blessing because when I came back, and even now, it's like, Oh, the business is just running a lot more smoothly.
I know this is a question that's probably on my listeners minds right now. How many people do you have in your team and how many hours are they working for you each week?
Yeah, great question. So during my time off, I had my Director of Operations and my assistant. Um, ─ honestly, I don't think that my assistant was working that much. cause I was gone and I had front loaded a ton of work. I think she was working maybe 20 hours a week. Um, same goes for the Director of Operations.
So, two people, you know, 40 hours a week, you know, that seems pretty typical. Once I came back, um, the director of operations was just a contract, so that ended. And it was just me and Patricia. And, nowadays, during a launch, she's working about 40 hours a week, maybe more. Um, ─ but then during off weeks, you know, when we're not launching.
Uh, both of us are working maybe 20 hours a week.
I love that. Now you mentioned while you were offline, you had a massive sale. A lot of people will take the time offline and that's kind of like their business goes almost into hibernation where it's not really making any sales. It might still be putting out content and delivering offers to their students and their clients.
But it's not really actively selling. So talk me through a little bit about what you had to put into place to still be making sales while you were offline.
Yeah, so, part of my 9 membership, I have an offer, uh, that I use to launch 3 times a year, where you buy a full year, you get access to all my other products. It's 108. And normally we do a sort of Christmas in July flash sale. 48 or 72 hours depending on my mood. And I knew that I didn't want to give that up.
That's usually a good quick cash injection during the summer. Uh, you know, summer in the northern hemisphere is usually kind of slow. That's when, you know, a lot of schools are out for, you know, the three months that I'm out,
That's us right now.
Right, exactly. So, I knew that I wanted to keep that because I needed to hire this, or I needed to, you know, pay for this director of operations.
I needed to pay for this now full time person. Um, I needed to pay for all the vacations I was taking. And, um, so I knew I wanted to keep that sale. And again, it was something kind of like, I know I can do this. I want to prove to people that it can be done. Like, one lady and a couple helpers can figure this thing out.
And so With Privilege, I already had a lot of the systems in place. I already knew a July sale would go pretty well. I already had some of these emails. And so I just scheduled, you know, I rewrote, zhuzhed them up, and scheduled them in May to go out in July. And this is where I was coming back, um, into kind of like the internet.
Like I had deleted all my social media apps. For like six weeks and my sister my assistant. She's like hey Liz that flash sales coming up. I'm really nervous I said, I'm not nervous. I did everything I triple checked it months ago. Just let it go well Maybe you could just trip no
Mm-Hmm.
no, I'm at the beach today.
Well, eh, eh, no, no. We're good. Like, let's just trust. It's gonna be good enough. Whatever happens, happens. And we ended up, uh, we made 48, 000 in 48 hours. So about 1, 000 an hour. It's so crazy, guys. Um, and I, I only logged in, I think, yeah, I think that was the second time I logged in. Or the first time I logged in was during the sale.
to answer questions in my Facebook group for a few hours. And then the second time was the Q and A the next week. Uh, and then I took another 30 days off. So I did, you know, quote unquote, have to come into work that week, but really my assistant, my director of operations, they could have answered all of those, uh, emails.
I was just, my assistant's also my biological sister. So I was trying to put her, uh, Mind at ease and so I said, okay, I'll log in I'll look in the Facebook group But she could have answered every one of those questions at that point
I love that. Were there any things that happened while you were offline that were, you know, like a, a failure or they didn't go as well as hoped or anything unexpected? Any curve balls that threw, that came up while you were offline that you had to deal with? Either offline or when you came back.
Yeah, I think that's a better question for my assistant. She knows more I I really came back and I was like, I don't want to hear anything negative. I just what went well and What do we need to do next? But I will say I did hire someone a contractor ─ Right before I left to work with these two, uh, people on cleaning up my ConvertKit account.
You know, I've had it for years, I mean if you've had an ESP for more than a few months you understand tags, segments, rules, visual automations, they sometimes, they get cluttered, right? Yeah, Steph said it best. And so I hired someone. ─ to come in while I was away and just work with my assistant, work with the operations manager to you know, clean it up.
And when Liz comes back, it's gonna, you know, it's like when you leave and the housekeeper comes while you're on vacation. That's what, that was my, that was my dream. Well, it didn't work that way. Apparently who we hired just, um, you know, we had higher expectations than what happened and my director of operations ended up spending a lot of her hours on that project.
Um, I think she felt some type of way because she had recommended this person and it didn't work out the way they thought. Which was totally, you know, I'm, I'm a very easy going person, you know, if you can't do the job, you know, thanks for doing your best, we'll figure it out, no big deal. Uh, but I think because I wasn't there and I told them not to call me under, you know, Really, I said, don't call me unless, you know, someone's dead. Uh, I don't, I don't want to hear it. Like, I really wanted to take the time off. ─ And so, I, um, you know, I heard about that after. And so, some other things that the operations manager, I think, was supposed to be working with Patricia on, didn't get done because they were, You know, managing this project they had promised me to get done.
But honestly, on a scale of like 1 to 10 of big deal, that was like a 3. You know, that was like a nice to have. Oh, I'll come back and the house will be clean. Oh, the house is just as dirty as I left it. No big deal. Right.
I can totally relate to that. Like the, the mess that pops up in your email marketing. Oof. Oof. Uh, I'm curious also though, like, was there anything that you learned about yourself? From this whole process, obviously you learned that you weren't as indispensable to your business as you'd assumed you were.
Uh, but was there anything else that you learned about yourself during the process of preparing to be offline, being offline and coming back to the business? Love
Well, I think that I learned that my ideas are indispensable. Not my body, not my labor. ─ Like, I truly am a visionary. And you know, people always tell you, Oh, you're the visionary, you shouldn't be doing this or that, right? I mean, even if you've been in business six months, I'm sure somebody's told you that.
But, You know, like I said, I'm good at this. I'm, I've never met anyone better at customer service than Liz Wilcox. I've never met anybody better. Dot, dot, dot. You know, like, we all have that sense of pride once we get into our groove, that, no, this is the thing I'm good at. I like to do it. But really, when I was able to, you know, kind of download my brain,  I was like, really?
Now I have so much more room for my ideas.  And now I can really see ─ what scaling actually means. I mean, I knew, you know, like, you picture a house with scaffolding, you know, you're scaling up, uh, you know, a high rise condo. Okay, I get that, but really, what Steph was talking about, the process of getting there to take the time off, really made me see and feel what that meant.
So I realized, oh, it's just my ideas that are indispensable. I can figure out the money thing to hire the people to do the labor of it, but really if I don't take care of myself ─ my ideas aren't going to be there. And that's something that I knew firsthand, having suffered a concussion because of malnutrition.
I knew really, really well that I had to take care of myself and taking that time off, I was like, Oh, things do run. We made 48, 000 and I was on Lake Michigan camping in a Bronco. Like, you know, what? That's crazy. It's really just my brain. And that, that on top of the trust we talked about earlier, you know, really learning to trust other people and trust yourself in hiring other people, those were the two real  I took away from the summer.
that. I want to pivot slightly and talk about your membership because you've grown it significantly. Since the last time we spoke, like I'm pretty sure you've almost quadrupled it since the last time we spoke in terms of the number of members in there, how did you grow it so quickly? I know some people find the first.
The initial growth, the easiest part, and then it's hard once you hit that plateau. How did you go so quickly from being already at a pretty good size membership to now being at a wildly good size membership?
Yeah, so I think Steph is using hyperbole. I think the last time we spoke, I probably had about 3, 000 members
Really?
I have 4, 000.
I'm sure.
we talked a lot about Well, I've had, I Okay, so here's the progression, I'll say. So, just as a recap. So, in the first year I hit 1, 000 ─ And then the next year, I tripled and I hit 3, 000.
So we're almost another year later, and I've, I've gained about 1, 200. So full disclosure, it has, the train has slowed. But I also took 90 days off, so like, is that really a big deal? Uh, you know, like, it's actually just fine. But in gr to Steph's question about how am I grow I mean, still, in the grand scheme, that's growing pretty quickly, especially when you consider I've never run an ad.
Um, you know, Zuckerberg has enough money. So really the main thing, well two main things, is number one, I do have that yearly um, rate that I open a few times a year. I actually changed that at the end of 2023. It's now only going to be available one time a year. Uh, you know, stay tuned whether that's a, you know, a great success or Uh, Lesson Learned.
And so, that really helps build up a lot of buzz, of, oh yeah, you know, just wait a couple months, you're going to be able to get in with all her products for free 108.  And that's really helped me gain a lot of members. The second thing is affiliates. I have a lot of affiliates. Really honestly, it's a great offer.
Maybe that's the third thing. It really just is a great offer It's something that I don't mind talking about I could talk about all day and apparently so can my affiliates If you go into my Facebook group even right now I was just in there answering questions before we hit record and oh, I love your membership.
Oh Liz I just sent out a template. I got 50 signups to my event  I've never had more than a dozen, something like that. You know, it's just kind of a,  I don't know, it's like lightning in a bottle or whatever they call it, um, type of membership where it's, it's this real gap in the market. Weekly newsletters, everybody, most email marketers want to sell you sales emails cause sales emails make you money, right?
So I saw a big giant gap in the market of, well, People aren't going to buy your stuff if you're not connecting with them at least once a week. I'll write those emails for you. Nine bucks. Sure. Whatever. Come on in. And so, you know, that coupled with having an affiliate program, I think really helps it soar.
I would say in, in 2023, I believe 30 percent of my sales came from affiliates.
yeah. Wow. And I want to, I want to step back to what you were saying about having a really good offer because after your last interview went live, I had a lot of people saying, Oh, I've been wanting to launch a low price membership and this has been a really great confirmation that it's possible to scale one, but it's the reason your membership scaled so well.
It isn't because it's 9 a month. I mean, obviously that's a factor in it, but it's not just because it was cheap. It's because it's a really good offer. It's really good value for that 9 a month. It's not you overloading people with education and masterclasses and all of the stuff, you're just giving them a really simple template once a week.
Go and do this. And it's like, where my team and I are in there, like my, um, copywriter who writes my emails each week, cause we're sending out three a week. When she runs out of ideas, I'm like, just jump into Liz's membership and get some ideas in there. ─ And it makes such a difference. So it's having that really awesome offer coupled with the price point and just how easy it is to implement.
I think that's, what's been such a difference for your membership compared with so many others.
Amen, and I'll get on my soapbox here a little bit. I feel like 2023 was the year of the low ticket offer, especially the low ticket membership. And actually, one of the first things I said when I came back, because it seemed like over the summer I came back and everybody had a 9 membership. It like, exploded, and I was like, what the heck?
started the trend.
Yeah, I'm like, what in the Netflix is going on over here? Everybody's got a streaming platform now. And I was doing a Q& A and somebody asked me, Oh, what's your advice on, you know, starting this 9 membership? And I said, well, you know, do you want it to be 9? Do you want to have to go out and find 4, 000 people?
That's a lot of work! It's not for everyone. And I think For me, it was just, again, to what Steph said, I love writing newsletters, and that's a real gap in the market. So, thinking about, you know, how do I get to know my subscribers and my audience? And in getting to know them, What is missing that I can complete for them?
And that's where the magic of email marketing membership, is the name of it, comes in. It was like, okay, I know this is missing, and oh, snap, I'm actually really good at that. Right? And so, if you're thinking of any kind of membership, any kind of offer, it really has to be something that you're really good at.
That, uh, you know, like, I think it's Robert Kiyosaki, the rich dad, poor dad guy. He says, you know, your job isn't to make money. Your job is just to find a problem that needs solving. And so that's what I've done. And if you, you know, want to, your next offer you're creating or looking at the offers you have now, like, does this solve a problem for my ideal audience?
And then selling it from that point. Hey, I know. For me, and I'm pretty blunt and kind of silly, like, Hey, I know you suck at writing newsletters. Let me just do it for you. Here's a template. Don't worry, it comes with a video. If you're worried about it, it comes with a video. If you're even more worried, chat GPT.
Just plug it in. It'll be fine. Nine bucks. And so, ─ it's easy for me to sell. So really, again, finding that problem that needs solving for your people, that's where you're going to find the magic of your offer.
I love that. And thinking forward now, you've taken so much time away from your business. You've realized your business doesn't need you as much as you thought it did.  How are you feeling about business right now? And what's happening next? Like, what have you got planned for 2024? Are you taking six months off this time?
Uh, no, I'm only taking two months off now, and I really only like 45 days. I realize if I take that much time off again, I might not come back. Not because I don't love it. It's, I just, I just really like not working also. Um, I'd probably start a new business if I took that much time off again. I'd probably start thinking about something else.
But what's coming up really is just that, honestly, It's something new to me. Normally, right before the business truly scales, I sell it. I've sold a company before I've gotten bought out of one. Normally, this is the part where I exit. And so, for me, right now, full disclosure, I'm experiencing a lot of resistance of, Oh Liz, you could sell this so easy.
But I actually love it. I mean, it has my name on it. My face is all over it. And I really love the people that I serve. So I'm, you know, digging my heels in and learning even more about scaling. I just hired a copywriter to help me revamp the sales page, uh, to get my conversion rates up. Cause I looked at my conversion rates and my in ─ In the last six months my sales page converted at  6%.
And I think that's, that's pretty good.
Uh, but that's 94 percent of people that didn't buy. And that makes me sick when I think about that. Cause why would, why would I settle for only 6 out of 100? Like can we get to 10? So I hired a copywriter. That's kind of what's coming up is this new sort of revamped, hey now we're at 4, 000.
Here's what we can really do, um, with email marketing membership and at lizwilcox. com. Um, and really the next thing that I think is going to take me outside of the membership numbers, that's going to take me into multiple, I haven't said this to anyone yet, really, other than my assistant. I'm very excited.
I think this is going to very easily take me to multiple seven figures is licensing. So what I'm going to be doing behind the scenes with me, you know, a team, I'll probably have to, you know, hire other copywriters and workers. ─ It's taking all these templates and licensing them out. So licensing them to real estate associations, uh, you know, um, Food associations, you know, they say the riches are in the niches or whatever.
Right now the membership is very generalized. You get samples and templates from different industries, but right now what I really want to do with the membership is take it and duplicate, duplicate, duplicate, and then tweak for the specific industry. Email Marketing Membership for E Commerce, Email Marketing Membership, uh, you know, for Realtors, Email Marketing Membership for Course Creators, et cetera, et cetera, and then taking all those templates and licensing them to places like Intuit, you know, they own MailChimp, uh, to, you know, ─ Possibly like ConvertKit, things like that.
That way I'm getting multiple six figure contracts. I don't want to license them to other people like me. I want to license them to giant organizations and companies.
Wow. I love that. And that's such a, it's such a, not unusual, but it's such a different method of scaling compared with, you know, the usual, just add more offers, add more people, sell more, this is more of a, like, let's take a completely different approach. Let's look. What else, what other options are there?
And I love that. Now, Liz, you will remember from our last interview that I always ask, what, when did you take Imperfect Action? Uh, and we've talked a lot about Imperfect Action already in this episode, but I would love to know in the last couple of months, when's been a time that you've taken Imperfect Action and what happened?
Guys, I'm so glad she asked this. This is going to be, I mean, technically like a big failure I want to share with you. And I'm actually really excited to share it. ─ Um, so. So, I mentioned this earlier, my goal for 2023 was 10, 000 members. I'm only, you know, it's past 2023. Spoiler alert, we did not even get close to the finish line.
We, we fell flat on our faces there. And, but the imperfect action was I was just going to go for it. That's, tends to be how I do things. I mean, I just said I was going to license my templates to Intuit. I don't even know how to even begin that. But that's, that's the plan. Um, and so I said, I came back from rest and that was, okay Liz, you said you wanted 10, 000 members, but then you also said you wanted to take time off, but you took time off and things grew, maybe you could still hit 10, 000 members.
So I enlisted, you know, my army of affiliates. I said, hey, this is the plan. I'm going to open up this annual pass, that's what I call my annual option. I'm gonna open it up and you can sell it from now through the end of the year. And I'm thinking, well we made, my affiliates during this 48 hour flash sale we talked about at the top of the hour Made 121 sales in 48 hours.
We're gonna hit this 10, 000, you know And I'll be back on the beach in no time. Like I won't have to work again for 10 years. Like this is gonna be great It wasn't great. My affiliates Some of them took imperfect, perfect action. A lot of them I think said And I was like, eh, you know, I'm gonna wait and I'm gonna sell it in November like normal.
And so I took their feedback, oh I wish I could sell this all year. I took it and I opened it up and I mean, no other way to put it, like it failed miserably. We sold 30, my affiliates sold 30 in like 60 days. So I ended up, before the end of the year, I said hey, actually, this isn't working. Uh, you know, I've done affiliate contests, I hired a copywriter, all new swipes, I did all the things.
I was giving away a brand new iMac computer to people. Like, there was nothing I could do, apparently, in my mind, I'm sure that will be what I learned this year, what I did wrong, um, to get these people to sell. And that's, you know, last Q4 of 2023. That was a tough one, wasn't it? I feel like everybody was just tired and so I don't blame them.
It's not their responsibility to sell my product, right? And so that's something even now as I go into Q1 of 2024. Okay, what worked? Why didn't that contest work? Why did some people sell and some people didn't? Where did my top affiliates go and what are they selling that You know, I could get in on, right?
And so that's one of the reasons from that imperfect action and that lackluster result that's one of the reasons I said you know what, actually I don't know why, it's just a little bit of a gut feeling I'm getting, I'm actually going to cut off that annual pass and we're only going to sell it once a year because my gut feeling is telling me that My affiliates, especially my top affiliates that used to sell 20, 000 in a weekend of this, ─ they're a little burnt out on the offer.
They want something fresh. And so this year from that Imperfect Action, I'm actually launching a lot more, but I'm launching the different products that came with the annual pass. I'm launching the five foundational courses that come with it, and I'm doing a live launch, you know, Pretty much every other month through the end of the year, and it will culminate into that annual pass on Black Friday.
So it's a lot, it's actually a lot more work. Last year I barely worked at all. You know, I had to do a little bit of front loading. This year, you know, we just had a live, actually we just had a live workshop.  Let this be a testament that not all failures are actually failures. You know, prompted me to get my act together, do a live workshop.
We had over 3, 000 registered and almost 400 attend live, uh, just yesterday. And so, all is not lost. People still want my offers. I think they're just, in 2024, I think the lesson from the imperfect action in 2023 is that ── This is the year of fresh, this is the year of doing, of taking action, of not just hoarding, um, but actually consuming the information that you purchased.
Oh, I love that. Liz, I'm feeling motivated after listening to you speak, uh, for our listeners who are also equally feeling motivated, maybe they realize, Oh, I need to be getting on top of my email marketing. Where can they find you and where can they find email marketing membership?
Sure, of course, I'm an email marketer. I want you to join my list, right? So you can go directly, you can go directly to LizWilcox. com In the top right hand corner there's a hot pink button, you can't miss it. You're going to get some free email swipes from me, an entire welcome sequence already written for you, three newsletter samples from email marketing membership to show you how to get people to click, reply, and buy.
You're also going to get 52 subject lines for a year. ─ So you never have to write from scratch, cause that totally sucks. Uh, that's all for free. LizWilcox. com, hot pink button. And of course, I'd love for you to try out my membership. At the top of LizWilcox. com, there's a yellow navigation bar. It says, are you here cause you heard about the membership?
Just click that and you can join for nine bucks.
Thank you so much, Liz. This, like I said to you before we hit record, I have no idea where this conversation is going to go. It went down a completely different tangent to what I was expecting, but I know that this will be so, so valuable for our listeners. So thank you so much for sharing your entire story so transparently today with everybody.
Thank you, I can't wait to see what we all do.

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