The 3D Plan

This post was actually supposed to be about why I am switching the content on my LinkedIn and essentially “de-niching” myself. However, I realized that I had a presentation that I needed to prep for later this week, and since I usually type out all my presentations in written bullet form first, I might as well do it here.

This presentation is for a group of early-stage “digital clinicians” who are starting their own businesses. While some of these folks are thinking of ABA companies, most are BCBAs looking to sell education, a service, a membership, etc.

This is also the third and final presentation that I have done for the group, so I am hoping this final presentation will close all open loops and leave the participants ready to go forth and not make the same mistakes I made for the first 3+ years of business.

The Goals/Purpose

The name of this presentation is Planning Marketing Campaigns so you don’t go broke. This final webinar comes after a webinar on positioning yourself to sell in a vacuum and understanding your business’s marketing numbers.

Presentation one taught them how to nail their offer’s positioning, presentation two taught them to start tracking data, and the goal of presentation three is to use the data they have and start planning it.

Applied 2022 – When I Learned This Mattered

About 1 year into starting The Behaviorist Bookclub, I decided to do a massive online conference. This was when online conferences were a relatively new concept, so the idea that I, a relatively small fish in the pond, could pull this off was a tad unhinged. But I called it the Applied conference and started getting speakers together. I ended up contacting about 8 speakers, agreeing to pay them about $300 each, and sending a hell of a lot of money through PayPal.

Keep in mind that, at the time, I was barely making $1k a month in revenue in this business, so this was a massive expense.

I then posted the first social media post and sent the first email out, praying that I was going to be able to make back the money I was spending on the event. I remember the 14 days of selling the event were some of the most stressful times of my young business life, as I begged and pleaded for the numbers to creep up and up until I was at the breakeven point.

That event did become profitable; in fact, I 3x-ed my investment into the event, but the “hit send and pray” way of marketing was awful. It left such a bad taste in my mouth that I was paralyzed from future events for quite a while and never really invested such a big percentage of my business again.

Looking back, this was a clear example of a time when the anxiety and stress that I was feeling were a direct result of not having enough data to make an informed decision. I made a series of guesses; most of them turned out right, and I made my money back. But if even one of the assumptions I made was wrong, I would have emptied out 70% of my business’s cash flow and basically had to restart.

What I Should Have Done (and What You Should Do)

I am a firm believer that quick and dirty is better than nothing. So many of the decisions we make in life have no data behind them, that using what you have in your decision-making process will increase the probability of a correct decision exponentially. So while I don’t have anything close to the data I have now on my audience, what I should have done prior to running Applied is:

• Analyze my current paying customer base: how many are currently paying and likely to buy a new product?
• Analyze my non-customer leads, such as the email list and FB group. What is the current conversion rate on these leads, and how many can I expect to convert?
• Model out three different prices and three different conversion rates (the 3D plan) – analyze at what price point we break even in the worst-case scenario and whether it is worth the upside of things going amazingly.

The 3D Plan – How You Can Use It

The 3D plan is a phrase I borrow from The Money Guy Show (look it up on YouTube; it’s a great finance show). The point of a 3D plan is to model out the Dream scenario, the Down-to-Earth scenario, and the Do-Do scenario.

Fun fact: this was the exact model I used to see if it was finally time for me to quit being a full-time clinician and pursue marketing.

Let’s model out the 3D framework for a marketing campaign to attract new ABA clients. Let’s assume your goal is to get 10 more clients over two months, and each client increases your profit by $2.5k a month (assuming 25% margins on a 30-hour-a-week client for $20/unit 97153). The marketing agency that you are working with says that with your current budget, they will likely be able to get you 5 clients a month.

• Dream outcome: The agency gets you 10 clients a month, doubling its prediction and cutting your spend in half. That means you essentially get your new profit and savings from a fast result ($25k PLUS additional money saved).
• Down-to-Earth: The agency performs as expected and gets you 4 clients a month. You end up having to spend 3 months on client acquisition, so while you get your profit by the end, you spend triple on marketing and don’t get to the $25k for three months.
• Do-Do: The agency flopped and is only getting you one client per month. You’re stuck in a 6-month contract you can’t get out of, so you’re still paying for marketing and barely floating by, only adding $2.5k per month in profit, which might be getting eaten up by marketing expenses.

So what do you make of this plan? You have to consider… Can I float the Do-Do if everything goes to shit? Because the answer may be NO.

I almost started running ads for a personal business of mine, but I realized that the plan worked on my dream outcome, barely worked for down-to-earth, and fell apart for Do-Do. So, with only a 33% (at best) chance of success, I didn’t take the risk.

In a similar way, if you are about to step into a marketing contract or run a campaign you are feeling iffy about, run the 3D model. See if you can swallow the downside to get to the upside, and if the answer is no, step away from the deal and figure out a new way to get to the same point.

This post is already too long, but more on why entrepreneurs are just decision-makers later!

Next Post

How I got bored of selling on LI and why I am changing my content.

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