Side Hustle Trends for 2021
2021, a new year! But will some of the shifts from 2020 rollover?
I’ve got the best seat in the house, not only as I scale my own online business, but as I walk alongside brand new Side Hustlers who are out there testing these trends so we can analyze together which ones are worth it and which ones you can press next on.
I’m sharing all of that with you in this latest episode of Empathy Rising, so you can quickly figure out which might work for your own online business.
In this episode, we’ll go through 2020, what happened, what we learned, and how we can apply that moving forward, so you can go forth and feel more confident in your own strategies for the upcoming year.
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Full Show Notes (Transcript)…
Hey risers, we are back with episode 90 of Empathy Rising. I was talking with my editor yesterday and she asked if we were doing anything fun for episode 100, which was coming up so soon. I can't even believe it. And I was like, yes, absolutely! I just don't know what it is yet. So keep listening because we will be coming up with a plan for that.
I think it'll be something pretty cool, and pretty fun. And as soon as I know, you guys will know I'm super excited about today's episode because I'm sharing with you bits and pieces of conversations that I've been having with Side Hustle students for the past year. And I don't mean like I'm putting clips of other people talking. I'm going to share conversations that I've been having.
I’m always keeping an ear and an eye out on what's happening in the online business space. And of course, we're having those conversations inside of Side Hustle in real-time. But what I'm bringing to the show today is my interpretation of the market and of marketing trends that I've been watching for the past 12 months.
What I think is really cool about the collaborative nature of Side Hustle is that not only am I watching these trends, I'm doing these trends and I'm trying them myself, but my students often want to try them themselves. And so I get real-life data from my experience, but I also get real-life data from their experiences as well.
And so that's what I'm going to pass on to you is what I've been playing around with in 2020 and what I think is going to last and come into 2021, and what I also think is going to be falling by the wayside. But also the data comes from what my students have been doing as well. So it's not just me, it's them too. And I think that gives it even more validity as I share it with you.
I think 2020 was not only a crazy year for people, but it was also a really interesting year for business. Tried and true strategies died, or at least went dormant. I'm not ready to say they've died yet because who knows?
Everything always comes back. I think I just bought a pair of acid-washed jeans for my six-year-old, so everything comes back. But I do think that tried and true strategies have gone dormant, and I think new strategies are rising up. And it's been really fun to watch and to play around with.
I know both me and my students have been able to play and experiment. And that's one of the things that I think needs to be in your Side Hustle business is this element of play and this element of experimentation, right? You're doing this, you're branching out of your bread and butter therapy business because you want something new and fun and where you can be a little more creative.
And I think imposter syndrome and perfectionism creep, creep, creep, creep, creep, and they block out some of that fun, exciting playfulness. And so I just want to remind you, and me, to play in your online business. And so that's what I'm going to share today is these top trends that I see, these top shifts.
I think trends are a little bit of a tricky word because trendy things can come and go. And I'm going to comment on that a little bit later, but let's talk about maybe the top shifts I'm seeing in online business for 2021. I like that a little bit better.
Because, in my life and my personal life, I'm not really a trendy person. I consider myself more of a steady and classic person. I might occasionally dabble in something that's new or cool. But if anything, the little bit of the rebel personality comes out of me and I tend to go against trends, right? When short hairs trendy mine's long when long hairs trendy, mine's short.
I'm the white t-shirt jeans, mascara and chapstick girl. I'm not going to be, the chartreuse bodycon mini dress girl, even though there's nothing wrong with either one and there are definitely pros and cons to being more steadfast and being on-trend. We're going to talk about that as well. But I just have never really gotten into the trendiness of things.
And I think this tendency definitely spills into my business. I would much rather keep an eye on something that's up and coming, and I would wait to join in until I know a couple of things. I want to know, does it work like, does it actually work or is it a flash in the pan? Are multiple people having success with it or did one person get lucky? That's something that I'm watching. And also is it worth my time and my effort and my energy to jump on this trend bandwagon.
So the downside of this is that I'm rarely an early adopter. There's this new app called clubhouse that some of you might've heard about, and there are people who got on it right away and are already making a killing with it in their business. Maybe I'll do an episode on this too. Just a clubhouse episode. If you guys want to see that, let me know, or hear that, let me know.
There are people who got on right when it was brand new, figured it out, and adapted it into their business model and are already making a killing on it. So those are the early adopters. I've been on and I've been watching and I've been listening and I've been gathering some data. If you remember, back to the last episode where I say some people tend to be researchers, some people tend to be action takers. I try and be more in the middle, but I'm definitely been keeping an eye and an ear on this new app.
So the downside to that is I missed that early adopter ability. I missed the ability to ride the bubble to the top. A good way to think about this is like a brand new stock, a brand new stock that has an IPO that comes out on the market. And people can buy it for, like $5. And then that stock skyrockets up to like $500, that person had a hunch or just knew, or was lucky or right place, right time, whatever, they got to ride that stock price all the way. They were an early adopter of that stock price.
I'm more the type where I'm watching the stock and I want to make sure it's trending upwards and continues to trend upward. So sometimes I get in at like $300 and I only have a $200 rise. Whereas that early adopter they had a $450, a $455 rise because they got in early. So these are things to think about.
One of the things is how risk-averse are you? I used to be very, very, very risk-averse coming from, my upbringing and family of origin and all of that stuff. It's something that I've worked on. And so I will get in earlier than I might have in the past, but I'm still not going to always be that risky or risk-taker, early adopter person.
So sometimes waiting on trends, you might miss out on a little bit of the growth you might miss out on a little bit of the bubble or the wave. And so you just want to ask yourself, what makes the best sense for you?
For me, I wait a little bit. I want to know that it works and it works in multiple scenarios for multiple people. And I want to know, is it worth my time and my effort and my energy, because not every strategy that works is one that I want to do. So that's why I watch and I wait a little bit.
What I like about being the watcher for a little while is it allows me to also be a relayer, and I love that role for me. One of the things that I've always thought of as my role is to be a translator for you guys. To translate this business, speak these business strategies and make sure they make sense for us in our therapy world, because we have different businesses than almost everybody out there. We have different regulations, different ethics, different things that we have to consider.
So in that translator role, I also get to be a relayer. I also get to say, Hey, here's what's up and coming. Here's what's trendy. Here's what's new. And here's how I think we can use it as therapists.
Another thing to think about is that online business just moves so fast. But often a trend is only popular for a couple of months. So that's where I'm evaluating is this worth my time, effort, and energy to pivot or to do this right away if I know it's maybe not going to be around for a long time, right? So sometimes it's fun to do like a one-off strategy to try something once as an experiment, but is it something that's going to become part of my business model? Is it something that's going to be part of my marketing plan or my long-term strategy? Those are two different things, right?
Sometimes jumping on trends too early or viewing them as pivots instead of just one-offs or trials, if you pivot to something, sometimes that takes a lot of work to make that shift. And also sometimes it takes you further off course than if you had just stayed on the steady path. Sometimes detours are fun and exciting and sometimes detours take you away long way around. I think sometimes it just takes a little intuition to know, and sometimes you gotta like flop. You gotta try something and didn't realize that didn't work for you too. For you to realize okay, that's not what I want to do.
So again, this willingness to play this willingness to experiment, this willingness to take a little risk, all of that is going to look different for each one of you who's listening. And if we think of it on a spectrum, some of you are going to be way on one end of the spectrum, some of you are going to be way on the other end of the spectrum. And so when you're thinking about trends, that's just what I want you to consider.
Here's how I evaluate if a trend is worth following, like I said, is it actually working? I want to see if I'm learning a new strategy from a coach or an online influencer or whatever. I want to see a couple of things.
I want to see that it's worked for them. I do want to hear their personal story, their personal experience with it, especially if they are transparent and share the good and the bad. I don't want to hear like, I did this new trend and I made a million dollars and this is the best thing ever.
I really want to hear a well-rounded story from them. I want to hear, I like this part, but this part was really hard. And I made a mistake on this part and I should have done this part differently or whatever. I want to hear a transparent, well-rounded story from someone. If someone is only sharing the highlights and not that vulnerable part, not that transparent part, it sets my red flags off.
It makes me think. Okay. Why are they not sharing the other part? It could be that the trend is so freaking awesome and cool that there was no bad part, but that's really unrealistic. So I definitely want to hear both sides of the story when I'm hearing about a trend from people.
The other thing is I want to hear that it's worked for their students or that it's worked for other people that they know. I think students are best because, or, students, coaching clients, people in their programs, fill that blank in with whatever makes sense. But I want to hear that the method or the tactic is not something that's a fluke. They could have just had a really big audience. And so of course they made $10,000 because they could sell anything to that big of an audience and still make $10,000.
Is it just something that only works for them because of a certain variable like audience size, or maybe they put a lot of money into ads or something that they're not talking about? But can it work for different people at different stages of business, with different audiences, with different niches? Those are things that I want to hear.
So if it feels like it's a well-rounded strategy that works for a lot of people in a lot of different scenarios, I'm more willing to entertain it.
The other thing is that it's lasting. I talked about how fast online business moves. So if I hear about a trend and I'm still hearing about this trend six months later, or even a year later, that makes me think it's more of something that's going to be around for a while. It's something I'm more likely to incorporate into my business model.
Now that doesn't mean I have to wait six or 12 months to experiment with it or to play with it. But to really bring it in and incorporate it into my business, it needs to be around for a while. So if people have been using the strategy, talking about it, sharing it for a good portion of the year, then it's something that's likely in my mind to be around for the long term.
Now, if you remember back a couple of episodes ago, where I talked about the difference between hunting and farming in your business, there's a difference between this one-off trial, right? I've been hinting at this a little bit. If you hear a new trend and you're like, Ooh, I just want to try that. That's totally different than building the farm, literally hunting and farming, then, betting the farm on a new trend.
There might be things that you want to play with, or you want to try as a one-off, or that you might want to give a solid week too and see what happens, right? Like this Clubhouse app, or something new. You might want to say, okay, I'm going to try it for a week and that's it. That is different than saying, my whole marketing plan is built on Clubhouse. I'm ditching Instagram, I'm ditching Facebook. I'm changing all of this traffic-driving strategy and I'm going all-in on this.
That's something I don't want people to do ever really. I don't ever want people to bet their entire business on one strategy. However, it's not something that I want to see people do before that trend has been around for a year and is really going strong and has this, the viable support behind it for a while.
Okay. So we've talked about the pros and cons of jumping on trends. We've talked about utilizing trends as experiments versus incorporating them into your business model. Now let's talk about what are these trends? What have I been witnessing? What have I been paying attention to? And I'm excited to talk about what is coming up.
I think if I could sum it up in one word, the biggest trend that I'm seeing coming is, there's a couple of words, but the first one that came to mind was ease. Ease for not only the marketer, for you, but also ease for the consumer, for the potential customer. And I think you'll see that pop up as we talk about this.
I want to start with one little caveat is that, the whole pandemic thing, right? Some of the trends that are falling by the wayside, or like I mentioned earlier, are a little dormant right now. I think as I said, I think everything comes back, but it's hard to say, are these just dormant because of the pandemic?
Did they just not work in 2020 or did they not work as well in 2020 because of the pandemic? And when, I would never say go back to normal, but like, when the uncertainty level drops a little bit when people are feeling a little bit more secure, will these things rebound sooner or will they go through a natural cycle of, in the online space two years or whatever, and come back again.
So it's hard to know exactly how long some of these things will be out of style or out of fashion or not trending, not popular. I do think however that a lot of these trends were already starting to happen. And I think they were just either exacerbated by COVID or happened so much sooner than COVID. An example of this is online therapy.
Online therapy has been on the rise for years and years and years, but because of the pandemic, it was like, boom, it's time. It is now the age of online therapy. So some of these online business trends I think are similar. Already on the rise and now it's just they're here to stay, or here to stay for a while.
So the first thing that is going to make you guys feel maybe a little uncomfortable because it's one of the biggest things that my Side Hustle students struggle with, is asking for the sale more frequently.
So when online business started, I don't want to say started, but you know, I've been in the space for about six years now. And definitely, when I got into the space in 2014, 2015, it was, your offer was almost a secret, right? This rose out of the Gary V mentality of give, give, give, ask, or jab, jab, jab, right hook. And it was like, I'm going to give you a ton of value. I'm going to give you this free training. I'm going to give you this free thing and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And Oh by the way now you need to buy from me. Cause here's my offer.
So the offer was almost slipped in, like the vegetables in the pancakes or whatever. You're trying to like sneak in the pill and the peanut butter. You're trying to sneak in the unwanted thing and wrap it up in a bunch of wanted stuff.
And that is just, I think that's been going by the wayside going by the wayside for a while now. And I think it is officially gone. Now that doesn't mean we still don't provide value. It's still give, give, give, ask. It's still jab, jab, jab, right hook. But it's the right hook is not secret or sneaky anymore.
There's no more like keeping your cards close to the vest. It's more about planting seeds from the very beginning. So it's give, here's this free podcast. And by the way, here's when you're done listening to this podcast, here's my offer or give here's this free training, this free training leads directly to my offer.
You'll even start to see this in people's emails, where they're like, when they're asking you to register for a webinar and they say, they'll say, you're going to get point 1, point 2, point 3, and an invitation to join me in my program. So they're even saying it in the registration emails for the webinars.
So that transparency is just right there. Having the offer front and center while providing value and while still giving is definitely coming to the forefront and something that is, I don't even think of as trendy. I think it's just, I think that's one of the things that might be here to stay.
The market has gotten so much more sophisticated. Three, four years ago, you might've been in someone's funnel and been like, I didn't even know I was in a funnel right? Now, everybody knows okay. I signed up for this freebie, so I'm going to get a series of emails, and here's what happens. And eventually, they're going to ask me to buy, right?
So as the market became more sophisticated and started to know what was going on and to started to see behind the veil, the marketers had no choice, but to either play dumb and be like, I don't know what you're talking about, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. To act dumb or to be like, yeah, you're right. Let me just pull the veil down now. And then you can just from the beginning, see.
So that is definitely what is happening. People are asking for the sale more frequently. People are presenting the sale just more readily. It's not a secret anymore. It's just very clear and very plain that there's an offer and you can take it or leave it. They're still going to provide value, the marketer, or you are still going to provide value. You're still going to show up. You're still going to do, give, give, give, ask. But the ask is no longer secret.
Another part of this is there used to be false urgency and false scarcity, right? Buy before 72 hours, are the prices going up! And then you would four days later see it for the same low price, right? So it was fake urgency just trying to get you to buy.
The same thing with false scarcity, there are only 20 spots available. And then you get into the course and there are 75 students who were like, wait, I thought there were only 20 spots, right? So these false marketing claims, these false urgency, false scarcity. Those are also falling by the wayside.
It's much more starting to be about, Hey, I have this really great thing for sale. I really love it. I think it's great. And this is why. I've had students go through it, they think it's great. This is why, and I'd love to invite you. And then if the customer or the consumer can say yes or no at that time.
So one of the positive things about this is I really feel like it leads or lends itself to an abundance mindset. And this is why I think it's scary and hard for people at first because getting out of that scarcity mindset is tricky. It's hard. And it's not, it's something that I personally am like, Oh yeah, I'm so abundant. And then something happens and I'm like, I'm so scared I'm in such scarcity. And then I'm like, Oh, I'm feeling so abundant.
I have not overcome this. It's not something that I just can look back and be like, Oh, remember when I was in a scarcity mindset? No, it's like today, what's my mindset. What I do feel like I'm better at is recognizing it now and being like, okay, that's lack talking. That's scarcity talking. How can I shift and get back to abundance?
But I do think just cutting out the games, right? Cutting out the trickery, cutting out the games, puts the seller in a more confident position because it's like, Hey, I really believe in my offer. And I would love to invite you if now's not the right time. That's fine. Because the right time will come in the future. Or it may never come, but it gives the seller much more confidence, but it also gives the buyer much more confidence because I know that I've been in those funnels where it's like, Oh God, I'm on the fence about this. And I don't know if I want it, but they're telling me if I don't buy in 24 hours that I'm never going to get it again. So I have to buy it.
And so the buyer doesn't have to go through that game, that emotional mess, right? It's just Hey, here's your chance for right now. There'll be another chance in the future. I'm not lying about that, right? I'm not saying you may never see this ever again.
And so I think it just brings the buyer and the seller closer together. It gives the buyer and the seller more confidence. It puts the seller in a more abundant mindset and the buyer doesn't have to feel tricked or fooled into buying. I see this definitely as a positive trend,
The next trend is asking for the sale earlier in the relationship. So this kind of goes against, give, give, give, ask. This goes against jab, jab, jab, right hook a little bit. And this is something that I am watching. I've used it in my business. My students have used it in their businesses. And I've talked about it on this podcast already several times because I've been watching this trend. So I want to report on it. I want to relay it back to you guys.
But as an overall shift in my online business, I'm not fully on board with it. Okay. So asking for the sale earlier in the relationship. The traditional method, the traditional route of online business is you offer an opt-in freebie to people. That's one of the gives, right? That's one of the jabs. You give them something free of value and people take it. And then they're now in your ecosystem and it's your job to nurture them to then eventually buy.
That is tried and true. I don't think that's going anywhere. What people are starting to do, and I think it's a case by case basis. And I think it's on a business by business basis. And I don't think it's either, or I think it's both. And, but what people are starting to do is replace these freebies with something for sale. We called these SLO funnels. Self-liquidating offer funnels. You also might've seen them called tiny offers. Another person out there is calling them pocket products.
So the idea behind this is to swap out your freebie for something that's paid because people will pay or because what you're doing is attracting buyers instead of freebie seekers.
So something that does happen is a lot of people go out and they're like trying to learn a new thing and they'll go get everybody's opt-in who's talking about it. Let's say it's Instagram, right? They're trying to learn Instagram and they'll go out and every single person who has an opt-in on Instagram, they'll download them all. And then they'll unsubscribe from people's lists. Once they have the freebie. So they have no intention of buying. They're only out there looking for the freebie.
That happens. I'm not gonna say it doesn't happen. However, I think it happens less often than people think. And also if that's happening to you, you have the wrong freebie. Because like my freebie, the quiz, you can't just take the quiz and then. I mean, you can get your result of the membership site and then you can unsubscribe from my list, and then you could take the membership site and you could go to other people, everybody who has freebies on membership sites, and download all of those. But it's much less likely to happen that way.
So I do think freebies still have a place. I don't think that freebies need to go by the wayside. I think slow funnels, tiny offers, pocket products are difficult to set up. There's a lot of moving pieces. And if you don't know your audience very well, it can be a big gamble. And it can be a gamble that might not pay off.
So I think that slow funnels, tiny offers, pocket products, I think those are a higher-level strategy. And the way to get to know your audience is to still have a freebie.
There are other times to ask for the sale earlier in the relationship that I am a fan of. And I'm not saying I'm not a fan of the slow funnel. I actually am building one this year, but remember it's my sixth year in online business. So I know my audience, I know what they need, I know what they want. I've tested my offer. I've tested my things. Now I'm ready to build an entire funnel around it.
What I do think you can do sooner is the things that I've already talked about on this podcast, which is a paid workshop. A paid workshop is a great way to get the sale earlier in the relationship. They're still on your list or they're still in your audience. So the freebie still definitely plays a part here. It plays a role here, but we can ask for a paid workshop, we can ask for a sale sooner because what a workshop could help you do is test out like a module of your course.
Maybe it's something that you're a little iffy about. You're not exactly sure how to arrange it or how to outline it. So you run a workshop on it. You're gathering data, you're getting feedback on the material, but you're also getting paid to do that. So a paid workshop can definitely have a place sooner in the relationship with people with your audience also making you money, but it's a lot less risky than something like a slow funnel or a pocket product or a tiny offer.
What I am also watching, I have not done this trend yet, but I've been watching it for a while. I think it has pros and cons. Is a paid challenge. Now I ran a challenge in October. It was the Side Hustle Schedule Challenge. It was really successful. A lot of people had some huge ahas, a lot like business ahas, but even personal ahas. And it was really humbling and just powerful and magical to be a part of as the facilitator, to just witness these transformations that a lot of people had.
I did not charge for that. It was free. However, one thing people are doing is charging, you know $30 for a challenge. The idea behind that is the people who participate in the challenge are much more engaged because it's not a free event, it's a paid event. And then again, when you do introduce your offer at the end of the challenge, you are presenting that offer to people who have already bought.
So they've already pulled their wallet out. They've already said I'm committing to learning more about this topic in a challenge format. So the likelihood of them committing to the topic in a course format or a group program format, or whatever is higher because they're already buyers.
The thing that you have to be careful about with this strategy, however, is a bait and switch feeling, right? If they say I already paid you for this challenge. Now you only got me here to sell me this bigger thing. People can be really offended and upset by that.
So the paid challenge needs to be spectacular on its own, even if they don't come up to your big program, it still needs to be worth whatever money they paid for it. Even if it's $10, it still needs to be worth money. It still needs to be a complete event. It still needs to get them a result. And then. That way there are no hard feelings if you're like, and now I have an offer. If they paid you 10, 20, 30 bucks for this challenge and felt really let down, and then you offered them something else to pay for. That's when you're going to piss people off.
So attracting, or selling earlier in the relationship not having to wait six months, a year, three months, however long that is not having to wait so long to nurture people for the sale is definitely on-trend. It's happening a few different ways. It's happening with the slow funnels and it's happening with paid workshops and paid challenges.
Slow funnels. In my opinion, are a higher-level strategy that I think you can wait on. Paid workshops and paid challenges are a strategy that I think you can start now.
Okay. The next trend, this has been happening for maybe two years, maybe three years in the online space. So this has been a trend that's been around for a while. This is something that I think the pandemic has made a necessity. I think this is something that is okay, this was coming and now it is the time of, and that is, it is the time of fewer offers.
There used to be a business model that people followed in the online business space. It was called the Hub and Spoke business model. So in the hub, they had their signature offer, so to speak their signature program. For me, that would be like Side Hustle to put that in perspective for you. And then they would have a bunch of spokes coming out from that. It might be an ebook. It might be a mini-course. It might be this or that, or this like a ton, like an octopus, right? The head of the octopus with a bunch of arms coming out.
And the goal of those arms was just to grab anybody they could, and to hopefully bring people back into the mouth of the octopus. The spokes would bring people back to the hub. It was a really inefficient business model because those spokes were not always targeted to the people who were actually a good fit for the hub. And it's also really hard to run because you're trying to remember okay, what am I launching? If you've got five spokes and you're launching them all at different times in different whatever, it's hard to keep track of.
So that business model was already going on the wayside. People were realizing it was not efficient. It was not effective. It was hard to run. And as the buyer. So that was from the seller’s standpoint. But from the buyer’s standpoint, sometimes it was confusing because sometimes those spokes, there were two or three things that were really similar and it was like which one do I need? And which one do I want? And which one's the best fit for me. So from the buyer's standpoint, there was a lot of confusion.
In 2020 in a pandemic year, people were not buying anything if they were really confused. Now don't get me wrong. People were buying stuff. I went through a buy all the things phase, and I know a lot of us did that, but if there was any kind of confusion in the marketing, if there was any kind of this isn't right for me, or I don't know, or dilly-dallying around it, like no one had time for that.
So people were definitely buying, but they were buying decisively. And so if there was any confusion around the program or the product, it sold very poorly. That's why some people had their best years in business in the pandemic and others had their worst years in business. I can directly attribute that, I won't say fully, but I can directly attribute part of that too confusing marketing.
So what fewer offers do for you, is we started talking about this Ascension business model. So instead of a hub and spoke or an octopus, it looks like a ladder. You have one offer for a person earlier in their journey. You then have another offer for that same person further in their journey. And then that same person even further in their journey has another offer.
I think the Ascension models work best with three offers, an entry, a middle, and a high. This helps A, keep it much more organized for you. You know exactly who is a fit for what program, where they need to be, where they come in, and how they continue with you. It's also much easier for the buyer because they could say, am I a space holder fit, or am I a side hustle fit? Which of these is right for me at this time?
They may be interested in both, but one might be too early in the journey for them, or one might be too far in the journey for them. Right. So it's much more confused or much more streamlined for the seller and it's much easier to understand from the buyer.
The other thing that you need to think about with fewer offers is that it's cheaper and easier to retain a customer than it is to go out and get a new customer all of the time. So with a hub and spoke model, that's what you were doing. Those spokes were going out and getting new customers, new customers, new customers, trying to bring them back to the hub, trying to bring them back to the octopus mouth. With the Ascension model, you're saying, Get on my ladder here and continue on this same ladder with me. I know your program. I know your product. I know your goals. I know your dreams. Let's take it all the way to the top.
It builds more trust with your customers and it builds, we call it the LTV lifetime value of a customer, and you increase that greatly when you build an Ascension model. So it's easier for you. You don't have to make as much crap. You don't have to launch as much crap and you can keep track of it much more easily. So essentially model fewer offers. It's not going anywhere. I think it's here to stay for a while.
Now, this next trend, this is, again something that I saw happen because of the pandemic. This is something I think was already happening for some niches, for some buyers, for some sellers. I saw it become widespread in 2020, meaning applying to most, if not all niches and most, if not all sellers. This is something I think I'm watching because I don't know if it's going to quote-unquote, go back to normal where it's going to be applicable for some people and not others, or if this is here to stay.
So I can't make a firm call on this one yet. But it is something that we're definitely seeing throughout 2020 and something that I would lean into in 2021. I don't know if it will be the case say for 2022 and beyond.
But this is the idea of a lower time commitment. Lower time commitment from the buyer. They have less energy and less attention span and less time to give to longer events. And so they're not sticking around for longer events as much. Now the best example of this is a summit. If any of you remember or have been in my audience all the way back to Holiday Happy Hour, this was a 30-day summit. It's like 28 or 29 days. I can't remember.
There were 30 presenters. We started the day after Thanksgiving and we went to two or three days before Christmas. And this happened in 2017. So it's been three years now since Holiday Happy Hour. Logan was like six months old. When I was hosting that event.
The engagement never dropped off.
We had people coming all 30 days. I remember one person, she went home for the holidays for Thanksgiving and was watching. And then she went back for the holidays for Christmas and her family was like, you're still doing that? And she was like, yes, it's the best thing ever! So that long term, that longer time commitment worked really well then it. It established "know, like, and trust", it established authority, and it was something that worked really well.
Over time, what I've seen is summits turning more into conferences, which I don't like. I don't like the idea of the conference because what they've done is they have condensed those 30 days, they still have the 30 speakers, but they're condensing it over three days. You have to either take the three days off to be able to watch everything, or you have to pick and choose the talks that you actually want to attend. And then what they started doing is selling pass, selling like all-access passes. So you got the recordings for sale.
And to me, it felt just like a cheap shot. I didn't enjoy summits delivered that way. So they were starting to get more condensed. People were seeing like, okay, those longer time commitments aren't working. And in 2020, I can tell you that we did not have a successful summit inside of Side Hustle.
The last successful summit that we had inside of Side Hustle was November of 2019 where it functioned just like a summit should. This was Lisa, who hosted her summit. She got 1500 sign-ups and she launched her membership site off of it. And I can't remember which I think she got something like 16. It might've been 13. Can't remember exactly the number peoples in her membership site from her summit. So the signups were great. The sales were great. It functioned perfectly.
We had people inside of Side Hustle, run traditional summits in the January round and in the June round and neither were as successful. They had a couple of hundred sign-ups instead of thousands. And the sales were not what I what you would expect off of a traditional summit. So this is one of the things that I think is definitely dormant now. In its traditional form.
Now there are other ways to take advantage of what a summit does for you because the notion of a summit is a PR event. What it does is combines multiple people promoting a single event. We can still do this ina shorter time commitment way.
You can do it. In this conference style, you can jam everything together. Create urgency and scarcity because people can't watch all of the calls. So that's the scarcity and create urgency with, if you want to buy, if you want to buy the all-access pass, you need to do that before the end of the summit so that you can watch the recordings, right?
So those are not fake. Those are legit. That's legit scarcity, legit urgency because the event only lasts so long and it is condensed. I just, I personally don't like the way those feel.
So there are a few other ways that we can use the same strategy but go with the trend of the lower time commitment.
The first one is a panel. If you guys were with me last year in 2020 in the spring, I did a pick my brain panel where we had six presenters on the panel. Each one of us presented for 10 minutes, so that was one hour, and then there was an hour of Q&A. There were six people still promoting the event. We were able to gather and cross-pollinate six audiences into one event. And then it was still within a short, reasonable timeframe for the buyers to watch and for the presenters to show up for. So a panel is a really great way to do this.
Another option is a bundle. Now, a bundle is where you gather all of your freebies. So remember, freebies are still important. Gather all of your freebies up and you promote it as a bundle or a resource kit or something like that. So you and 10 other students or 10 other people could your, or nine other people for a total of 10 can get your freebies all together in one place. And you can promote that. All 10 of you are promoting to your different audiences, but you're promoting one central thing. So all of the audience is shared among the 10 of you.
That's a really great option. And. It's a lower time commitment. You can still promote it for a week or two weeks, but the people, the buyers don't have to show up for anything. The customers, consumers don't have to show up for anything. And then you put it together once like you put together a landing page and that's it. So the time commitment for you and the time commitment for the consumer is much lower.
Another thing, if you want to keep the live element to this is you can do something called a round-robin. That's the old term to call it. And they're now calling them pass the mics, where you can do one hour like the whole idea of a panel almost, but you're not doing it at one central location. You're doing it on like everybody's Instagram. So you do an Instagram live for 10 minutes and you say, okay, and now I'm passing the mic over to so-and-so and then, so make sure to go and head to her Instagram right now, because she's going live in 30 seconds.
So you're passing the mic and that's still a fun engaging way. But if you have six people talking for 10 minutes, then that is an hour, right? So we're still using these central PR strategies where multiple people are promoting one thing. We're still using that strategy, but we've condensed the time commitment from days and weeks down to a much shorter time commitment.
And the last thing that I want to comment on is the trend for high touch. There will always be demand and there will always be a market for high touch programs, even though the time commitment for some of these marketing events, like the summits and these things are going down the amount of guidance that people are wanting is going up.
And we can attribute this to the uncertainty as well. The uncertainty and the anxiety and the nervousness of the pandemic. It made people have less time to maybe pay attention to marketing, but it also made people want to double down on getting results and double down on getting guidance and actual reliable help from people.
They don't want to waste their time, maybe tunning into a bunch of nurturing, but they also are willing to invest the time with the right coach or guide or mentor.
Things like group programs and one-on-one coaching and higher touch, higher investment programs are absolutely still selling. And I think they're even selling better than before because people want to make sure that their investment is worth it.
So what this means is if you're staying completely on-trend, which you know, I'm not always the person who stays on-trend. I'm usually the person who likes to stand away from the trends. But if we were to stay completely on-trend, we would need faster, grabbier, snappier marketing that leads to a more high touch program. That is what people are wanting from the consuming of marketing standpoint and from the consuming of programs standpoint.
Now, those are an oxymoron. Typically faster snappier marketing lines up better with faster and snappier, your programs like courses or mini types of programs. But if we pay attention to what consumers are wanting from a marketing standpoint, and also from a program standpoint, they're a little at odds right now. So I think that's something that is interesting to pay attention to and interesting to see how best to use in business.
So of course, you guys know I will be watching these things and I will be reporting and relaying back to you whatever I find and whatever I'm witnessing, and whatever I'm finding is working and not working for my students. Because transparency is something that is super important to me and sharing both the good, the highs, and the lows. Everything that we do is really important to me.
Now, as you can probably tell the biggest trend for 2021 and something that I've been sharing for a couple of years now is that you have to start with your offer in mind. If you are asking for the sale more frequently, if you are asking for the sale earlier, if you are not using gimmicks, if you are having to have snappier marketing that leads to your offer, you have to know what that offer is. It doesn't have to be complete yet. It doesn't have to be done yet, but you have to know what the dang thing is.
And that's why I think that my on-demand masterclass, How to Transcend the Therapy Room is a great place to start because it walks you through everything you need to consider when you're starting to think about what you want for this Side Hustle. When you register, you get instant access, so you can watch it whenever is most convenient for you. But you get to explore elements of different programs. Like how high touch you want to be, how much money you want to make, how much marketing you want to do, and what type of marketing you want to do. And all of those are key indicators to help you identify the offer that's right for you.
Once you know your offer, you can start doing all of these things that are important for online business in 2021 and quite possibly beyond. So go ahead and register for my masterclass at marissalawton.com/masterclass. Super easy link for you guys. And you can get started on this reflection and this investigation, so you can know which offer is right for you.
All right, guys, I'm excited to talk with you next week and until then keep on rising!
