“Well, I’m not really an expert, but…”

I’d already helped people build real businesses. I’d already done the thing I was about to teach. And I still couldn’t say the word “expert” about myself without an apology attached to it. I was waiting for someone, somewhere, to tap me on the shoulder and officially clear me for the title.

That tap never came. It never comes for anyone. And if you’re waiting for it too, I want to save you the years I lost waiting.

The Invisible Barrier Nobody Names

Here’s what I’ve noticed after watching thousands of business owners at every stage: the barrier that keeps smart, capable people playing small is rarely a skills gap. It’s a permission gap. You already know enough to help someone. What you don’t have is a piece of paper, a title or a stranger’s approval telling you it’s allowed.

That gap is invisible because it doesn’t show up on a resume or a sales page. It shows up in the hedge words. “I just…” “I’m still learning, but…” “This might not be useful, but…” Every one of those is permission you’re asking for out loud, from people who were never assigned the job of giving it to you.

Where This Comes From

Most of us grew up in systems built on external validation. Grades. Degrees. Titles handed down by someone above you. So when we start a business, we go looking for the same kind of green light, except no one’s handing those out here. There’s no test you pass that unlocks the word “expert.” There’s no ceremony.

The business owners who move forward anyway aren’t the ones who feel the most ready. They’re the ones who stopped waiting for a feeling that was never going to arrive on its own.

What Expertise Actually Means in 2026

The old definition of expertise was about credentials. Degrees, decades of tenure, a title from an institution. That definition is still around, but it’s not the one that matters most to the person deciding whether to invest in you today.

The definition that actually moves people to buy is simpler: you’ve solved the specific problem they’re facing, and you can show them how. That’s it. You don’t need to know everything about your industry. You need to know how to get one type of person from one specific point to another, and be a few steps ahead of the person you’re guiding.

Being a few steps ahead is enough. It was enough for the mentor who taught you what you know now, and it’s enough for you to teach the person standing where you used to stand.

Three Signs You’re Already the Expert You’re Waiting to Become

If you’re not sure whether you’ve crossed the line into “allowed to call myself an expert” territory, check yourself against these:

●      Someone has already gotten a real result because of something you taught, showed or told them, even informally.

●      You can explain how you’d solve a specific problem in your area faster and more clearly than most people could.

●      You find yourself giving away advice for free that other people are charging for.

If any of those are true, the permission you’re waiting for already exists. You granted it to yourself the moment you helped the first person. You just haven’t said it out loud yet.

How to Start Acting Like the Expert You Already Are

You don’t earn the right to call yourself an expert by waiting longer. You earn it by acting like one before you feel like one, in small, specific ways.

Start by dropping the hedge words from how you describe what you do. Say what you help people with, plainly, without the apology in front of it. Then get specific. “Expert” is a heavy, vague word to carry. “I help first time course creators finish what they start” is a light, exact one, and it’s far more convincing anyway.

Then keep doing the thing that made you an expert in the first place: solving the problem, for one more person. Confidence doesn’t show up before the evidence. It shows up because of it, one repetition at a time.

Where have you been hedging instead of owning what you already know? I’d love to hear it — tell me in the comments below.

Before you head out…

Turn your expertise into income faster! Take my $9 Profitable Micro-Niches Mini-Course!

You know the riches are in the niches… but most people’s niches are too broad — they’re missing that critical Market Fit.

And that’s exactly what your Micro-Niche is all about… defining exactly what you do and exactly who you serve in such a specific, compelling way that your Perfect Customers have no choice but to lean in and say, how can I get what you’ve got?!

I’ll show you how to find yours in my $9 Mini-Course!

The post Stop Waiting for Permission to Call Yourself an Expert appeared first on Live Your Message.

Three reels a week. Daily stories. A blog post every Tuesday. A live video whenever I could steal twenty quiet minutes away from everything else running my business.

And my revenue? It sat there. Flat as a Tuesday afternoon, while my content calendar looked like I was running a media company instead of a business.

If you’ve ever posted more, shown up more and still watched your sales stay exactly where they were, I need you to hear this: you’re not lazy, you’re not doing it wrong and you definitely don’t need to post more. You’ve fallen into what I call the visibility trap, and it is one of the most expensive mistakes I see business owners make at every single stage, from the person who hasn’t made their first sale yet to the one running a seven figure program.

The Story We’ve All Been Told

Somewhere along the way, “be consistent” turned into “be everywhere.” We were told that if we just showed up enough, the algorithm would reward us, the right people would find us and the sales would follow. So we posted. We went live. We started a podcast on top of the blog on top of the three social platforms we were already trying to keep up with.

Here’s the part that’s true: visibility matters. People can’t invest in what they don’t know exists. But here’s the part nobody’s saying out loud — visibility and revenue are not the same curve. One measures how many people see you. The other measures how many people trust you enough to hand you money. Those are two completely different jobs, and content alone can only ever do one of them.

What I Was Actually Measuring (And Why It Lied to Me)

During that eleven month stretch, I checked my analytics obsessively. Views, likes, follower count, reach. Every number was climbing, so I assumed I was winning. I wasn’t looking at the one number that actually pays the bills.

Vanity metrics feel like progress because they move fast and they move often. A sale takes longer to earn than a like does. So we chase the metric that rewards us the quickest, even when it isn’t the one connected to our income. I had to get honest that I was optimizing for attention, not for invitation.

Visibility Opens the Door. It Doesn’t Walk People Through It.

Think of it like a store with a packed sidewalk out front and no one at the register. The foot traffic isn’t the problem. What happens once someone steps inside is the problem. If there’s no clear product, no clear price and no one inviting them to buy, all that foot traffic just… leaves.

That’s what was happening in my content. I was drawing a crowd every day and then handing them nothing to do with the attention I’d just earned. No clear next step. No specific offer. Just more content, followed by more content, followed by a caption that ended in a question mark instead of an invitation.

Three Questions That Reveal If You’re Stuck in the Trap

Before you plan your next piece of content, run it through these three questions. I ask myself these every single time now, and they’ve changed what I create and how often.

●      Does this post give the reader a clear next step, or does it just end?

●      Could a stranger tell exactly what I sell and who it’s for from my last five posts alone?

●      Am I creating this because it will move someone toward an actual invitation to work with me, or because I feel guilty for not posting?

If you answered no to the first two or yes to the third, you’re not short on visibility. You’re short on clarity, and no amount of additional posting fixes a clarity problem.

What Moves the Needle Instead of More Content

If you’re still building your first offer, this trap looks like posting endlessly instead of getting specific about what you actually do and who you do it for. More content won’t clarify a niche that isn’t defined yet. A clear, narrow Micro-Niche will.

If you already have an offer and an audience, this trap looks like scaling your content without ever scaling your invitation. You add another platform before you’ve asked your current audience to buy even once this month. The fix isn’t a bigger content engine. It’s a consistent, direct ask built into what you’re already creating.

Either way, the answer is the same: fewer, sharper pieces of content that each do one job, instead of a constant stream that does none. Consistent action beats constant output every time.

The Shift From Visible to Valuable

I cut my posting schedule roughly in half. Every piece I create now has to answer one question before it goes out: what do I want the person reading this to do next? Sometimes that’s replying to an email. Sometimes it’s clicking a link. Sometimes it’s simply remembering my name when they’re finally ready to invest.

My revenue didn’t move when my content volume went up. It moved when my message got clear enough that people knew exactly what to do with it. That’s the shift. Not more noise. More direction.

Have you noticed the gap between how much you’re showing up and what’s actually landing in your bank account? I’d love to hear where you’re at — drop a comment below and let’s talk it through.

Before you head out…

Turn your expertise into income faster! Take my $9 Profitable Micro-Niches Mini-Course!

You know the riches are in the niches… but most people’s niches are too broad — they’re missing that critical Market Fit.

And that’s exactly what your Micro-Niche is all about… defining exactly what you do and exactly who you serve in such a specific, compelling way that your Perfect Customers have no choice but to lean in and say, how can I get what you’ve got?!

I’ll show you how to find yours in my $9 Mini-Course!

The post The Visibility Trap: Why Showing Up More Isn’t Making You More appeared first on Live Your Message.

The $10K month. The milestone that gets screenshot and shared in Facebook groups. The number that shows up in course sales pages with a student’s smiling face above it. The threshold that the online business world has collectively decided means you’ve made it.

And then one month — it happens. The notifications come in. The numbers add up. You cross the line.

And something unexpected follows.

Not the feeling you imagined. Not the flood of relief and certainty and “I knew I could do this” confidence you’d been picturing. Something quieter. Something more complicated. Something nobody really warned you about.

That’s what this post is for. Because the $10K month is real and it’s worth celebrating — but the conversation about what actually happens when you get there, and what you need to do next, is one that almost nobody is having honestly.

First: Why It Feels Different Than You Thought It Would

Here’s the thing about milestones. We build them up for so long that we attach an enormous amount of emotional freight to them. The $10K month doesn’t just represent revenue in our minds — it represents validation. Proof. Permission to call yourself a real business owner.

So when it arrives and the feeling doesn’t quite match the fantasy, there’s often a quiet dissonance that nobody talks about.

Some people feel a rush of excitement followed almost immediately by anxiety. What if I can’t do it again? Was that a fluke? What if next month is half that?

Some people feel strangely flat. Like they’ve been running toward a finish line and suddenly realized the race keeps going.

Some people feel genuinely proud — and then immediately compare themselves to someone doing $50K months and feel like they’re behind all over again.

All of these responses are normal. All of them are telling you something important. And none of them mean you did something wrong.

What they actually mean is that you’ve reached a real transition point — and transition points require a different kind of thinking than the climb that got you there.

What Actually Changes When You Hit $10K

Let’s be honest about what the milestone does and doesn’t change.

What changes:

•   You have proof of concept. Your offer worked. Someone valued what you created enough to pay for it — and enough someones in one month added up to a meaningful number. That’s real.

•   Your confidence has a new floor. Even if next month is lower, you now know this number is possible for you. That knowledge doesn’t go away.

•   You’ve likely bumped up against capacity. For most people, the first $10K month reveals a constraint — time, systems, energy or team. The ceiling shows itself right when you hit a new height.

•   Your relationship with money is being tested. More revenue means more decisions about where it goes. Taxes, reinvestment, paying yourself — the financial complexity of your business has just increased.

What doesn’t change:

•   The uncertainty. You will still wonder, on some months, whether the next client is coming.

•   The imposter syndrome. It doesn’t vanish at $10K. It just finds new material.

•   The need to keep showing up. Momentum is not self-sustaining. It still requires the same consistent, intentional action it always did.

•   The work. The $10K month is not the destination. It’s a signal that your current approach has legs — and it’s time to think more deliberately about what to do with that.

The Trap Most People Fall Into Right After

There’s a pattern I’ve seen play out so many times, and I want to name it clearly so you can sidestep it.

After hitting a meaningful revenue milestone, most business owners do one of two things — and both can stall momentum if they’re not approached carefully.

The first is to immediately try to replicate the exact thing that worked, at a higher volume, as fast as possible. More of the same offer. More launches. More hustle. The problem is that scaling without understanding is just amplifying — including amplifying whatever cracks were already there in your systems, your offer or your energy.

The second is to immediately pivot. The $10K month gives you a burst of confidence, and confidence can sometimes tip into restlessness. Suddenly you want a new offer, a new audience, a new platform. You start building something else before you’ve fully understood why the first thing worked.

Both traps have the same root cause: moving on before you’ve extracted the lesson.

The month you hit $10K deserves a debrief. Not a long one. But a real one.

The Questions Worth Asking After Your First Big Month

Before you plan what’s next, sit with these:

•   What specifically drove this result? Was it a particular offer, a specific piece of content, a relationship, a conversation, an email that landed differently than usual?

•   What was the actual experience of getting here? Was it energizing or depleting? Did you love the clients or did some of them feel like a misfit?

•   What would have made this month even better — not in revenue terms, but in terms of how it felt to run your business?

•   What did this month reveal that needs to change — in your systems, your offers, your team or your own capacity — before you try to scale it?

•   If you could only keep one thing from this month and do it bigger, what would it be?

These questions aren’t navel-gazing. They’re strategy. The answers tell you exactly what to double down on and what to leave behind as you build toward making this number your floor instead of your ceiling.

What to Focus on Now: Making $10K Repeatable

The goal after your first $10K month isn’t to hit $10K again next month. The goal is to understand your business well enough that $10K becomes normal — and then to build the foundation for what comes after that.

Here’s where most business owners need to focus their attention at this stage:

Simplify before you scale. The temptation after a breakthrough month is to add — more offers, more channels, more complexity. Almost always, the smarter move is to subtract. Identify the one offer that worked best and go deeper on it before expanding.

Build the system behind the result. If your $10K month depended on you personally pushing hard for 30 days, it’s not yet a business — it’s a sprint. Ask yourself: what would need to be in place so this could happen again without the same level of personal output?

Get clear on your ideal client — again, more specifically. At this stage, you have real data. You’ve worked with actual people. You know more than you did six months ago about who your best client is. Use that knowledge to refine your positioning and your messaging so the next clients you attract are even better fits.

Protect your energy intentionally. This one’s not optional. Burnout after a big month is real, and it’s one of the most common reasons businesses plateau right after a breakthrough. Build in recovery. Protect your creative time. Decide in advance what you will and won’t take on.

The Honest Truth About What Comes Next

I’ve been in this business long enough to have watched thousands of people build toward milestones just like this one. And the most important thing I can tell you about what comes after your first $10K month is this:

The number was never the point.

The point was always the business you were building to get there. The clarity you developed about who you serve. The courage it took to put an offer out into the world and ask someone to pay for it. The consistency you showed up with even when it felt like nothing was working.

$10K is meaningful. But it’s meaningful because of what it proves about you — not because of what it says about your bank account.

And what it proves is that you can do this. That your expertise has value. That the right people will pay to work with you. That the gap between where you started and where you are now is real and earned.

That foundation doesn’t disappear. You build on it.

Your Turn

Whether you’ve already hit this milestone or you’re still working toward it — I want to hear from you. What’s the number, milestone or moment that feels like the finish line in your mind right now? Drop it in the comments below. And let’s talk about what comes after it.

The post What Nobody Tells You About Hitting Your First $10K Month appeared first on Live Your Message.

In just 12 months, my revenue shot up from $648,374 to $1,453,795.

So, what made the difference?

This was the year I introduced my first 12-month Mastermind program (Flashback Friday #11) — and it’s a lot easier to reach those higher numbers when you’re charging ten or twenty thousand dollars than when you’re charging $100 or $1,000!

That’s why, each year, I take a small group of business owners to Lake Como, Italy to design high-ticket programs that skyrocket sales.

And that’s why I tell my Momentum students that — no matter how much (or how little) experience they have — their first year is all about building their foundation, so in year two they can leverage what they built, in year three they can gain traction and in year four and beyond they can optimize and scale. 

So, year four was the beginning of the hockey stick that would take me and my “little” business coaching and training company to over $7.5M/year.

And it wasn’t just about adding high-ticket sales… 

I also grew my email list to over 50,000 subscribers in 2015 by continuing my Superhero Summit Series (Flashback Friday #5 & #6)…

And I made a discovery that changed everything.

By this time, I had created 10 online courses and programs that had brought in over $2.5MM in sales and had slammed head-first into the dirty secret of the online course industry.

Only 3-7% of people who buy a traditional online course — the kind currently being cranked out by the dozen using AI — finish the courses they buy and get the results they were promised — just 3%! Say what!?!!

At first I didn’t believe it, but then I started digging into my stats and saw that my courses were not an exception. 

Out of desperation, I approached a colleague and asked, “Do people buy your courses and not finish them?” 

She looked at me and said something that changed my life forever. She said: “Yes, but maybe some people aren’t meant to succeed…”

Those 7 words — maybe some people aren’t meant to succeed — lit a fire in my belly…

Because I believe that every person is meant to succeed. That every single person — given the right education, the right advice and the right support — can and WILL succeed.

That’s why I became a course creator — and that’s why so many of my students become course creators!

BUT, I kept bumping up against the same problem over and over again — people buying my programs and not completing them, which was keeping me stuck. 

I just didn’t feel good about selling something that wasn’t consistently and reliably getting my clients results, so I got obsessed with what it took to drive engagement, results and success for my students. 

So I went down the rabbit hole — researching EVERYTHING from video games to slot machines to the best-selling and most popular apps…

I also researched psychology and education — or how we as humans learn best… 

Because, I wasn’t interested in creating a game here — I wanted to change how online courses were delivered and consumed!

And you know what I found? Over and over again, I found that THE best and most addictive apps and games ALL relied on the same collection of 10 Core Experiences to engage people and get them hooked on taking HUGE action.

I turned this discovery into The Experience Formula, which ultimately became the methodology that put me on the map as the premiere curriculum design expert for people who care about student success. 

But, before I started teaching this to others, I experimented with using just the first 3 Core Experiences in Call to Adventure, a new course I wanted to launch to support my students in mining their strengths, passions and past to discover the right business — for them.

THREE amazing things instantly happened:

First, my sales spiked 33%.

You see — rather than trying to promise the sun, the moon and a bag of chips — I created a Product Mission (Core Experience #1) and Future Self Vision (Core Experience #2) with a crystal clear promise that people could imagine themselves realizing. I also defined my Bird’s Eye View or the specific way I was going to get them across the finish line, which is Core Experience #3.

The “Big 3” answered the essential what, why and how questions my students had, which inspired them to buy! I quickly sold 83 units @ $197 for a total of $16,351.

But that was just the beginning… 

Next, student engagement inside the course went through the roof!

Rather than the typical 3-7% completion rate, my new course saw a 76% completion rate!! That’s 25x higher than the industry average! TWENTY-FIVE TIMES!

And third: most of those 76% were so happy with their success that they immediately bought from me again!

In less than 60-days, that SINGLE group of 83 students investing just $197 each up front — brought in over $138,000 in revenue in total, because happy customers buy more.

And, as an added bonus, since those who engaged got serious results, they gladly gave testimonials and became ambassadors for the course.

Which led to another spike in sales as word got around — and the next time I launched this program, I upped the price to $997 and 50 people bought! 

That’s when I realized that customer success is the best marketing you could ever get, because when your customers win, they reward you with repeat sales, referrals and testimonials. 

So, in 2015, I made Student Success the North Star Metric here at Live Your Message;

Student Success: All Our Programs Create at Least 10x the Industry Standard Student Success Rate (minimum: 30%, target: 45%, stretch: 51%+) 

A North Star Metric is a single, measurable metric that captures the core value a company delivers to its customers and acts as a guiding light for long-term growth and success.

Assuming the industry-standard Student Success Rate is 3%, we have a Minimum Goal of 10x, which is 30% Student Success. A Target Goal of 45%, which is 15x the industry-standard. And a Stretch Goal of 51% — which is what it takes to be able to look our students in the eye and say that more students succeed in our programs than fail.

We take this goal seriously and it’s the secret behind how I went from ~$2.5MM in sales in 2015 to over $53MM in 2025.

In fact, our last annual cohort of the Experience Product Masterclass (in 2024) had almost 63% of our students complete — that’s over 20x the industry standard student success rate, which has led to 3,388 testimonials for a SINGLE online course. 

I made the switch from creating traditional online courses to Experience Products in 2015 and it’s made all the difference especially now — as traditional online courses have been replaced by AI. 

But Experience Products continue to command a premium because they’re based on getting your students results — in an engaging and inspiring way — rather than overwhelming them with information. 

That’s why this is the only way I’d create an online course or program in today’s market!

If you want to find out more about The Experience Formula and what differentiates Experience Products from traditional courses and information products, download my Free Guide: The Dopamine Button: 3 Brain Hacks That Skyrocket Your Course Engagement & Sales.

This Guide is only available for a limited time, so I recommend grabbing it today!

And, when you do, you’ll be invited to my FREE, once-a-year “Crack Your Course With AI” Challenge, which leverages The Experience Formula to get you to a profitable Experience Product idea in just 5 days (while experiencing the power of Experience Products yourself).

Throwback Thursday Series

Throwback Thursday #1: Build Your Site, Launch Your Business

Throwback Thursday #2: Strike Two — As If One Failed Attempt Weren’t Enough!

Throwback Thursday #3: My First Semi-Hit — Insights Gained From My Message to Money Program

Throwback Thursday #4: The Win That Came Disguised as a Fail

Throwback Thursday #5: You Did What?!!?

Throwback Thursday #6: This Put Me On the Map

Throwback Thursday #7: Me? Do a Live Event?

Throwback Thursday #8: My First Upsell

Throwback Thursday #9: Course SaaS Next?

Throwback Thursday #10: 1 Launch > 4 Big Lessons

Throwback Thursday #11: Message to Millions

Throwback Thursday #12: Website in a Weekend

Throwback Thursday #13: Brand in a Weekend

The post Throwback Thursday #14: Call to Adventure appeared first on Live Your Message.

In fact, Live Your Message didn’t start out as a business coaching and training company, it started out as a branding and web design business. 

You see, I had been doing branding, web design and video production for non-profits in my previous career and it was something I was good at. 

I’d spent my teens and twenties obsessed with art, media and all forms of expression. I wanted to create things that changed the world, so I started writing in grade school, then picked up photography in junior high — and won a bunch of awards for both in high school. 

My dream — when I entered Brown University — was to become a National Geographic photographer. 

By that point, I had travelled and taken photos in 30 countries across 5 continents — and I was good! I even printed all my own photos in the darkroom — I loved printing black and white and color images on large format 16×20″ and 20×24″ sheets of paper.

That very first semester, my dad went through my course packet and listed out ALL the courses he thought I should take — semester-by-semester for all 4 years — to get a well-rounded education and prime myself for the job market.

His list included Economics 101 and many other reasonable, sensible courses… that didn’t make it on my list.

I took classes with names like Visionary Fiction and Perception, Illusion and the Visual Arts. I majored in Art/Semiotics — an interdisciplinary major combining culture and media theory with hands-on practice in the visual arts.

I cross-enrolled at the Rhode Island School of Arts and took all my photography classes there, plus bookmaking, film, installation design, hypertext and interactive media (that was back in the days of CD-ROMs, just when Hi8 cameras were being replaced by mini-DV cameras)…

I learned it all! 

I wanted to create a literal “mountain” of things. I imagined being able to put all the things I had created in a giant pile on the floor at the end of my 4 years in college — and I did! I started a photography magazine, printed my first book and hosted my first solo art exhibition.

But, then I was done. I put down my camera and never picked it back up.

What happened?

I read a geeky little book called “Perspective as Symbolic Form” that compared art movements to economic theories — specifically the law of diminishing returns. Basically, the more common a particular form of art or media becomes, the less effective it will be.

At that moment, I saw the writing on the wall. I saw that photography was everywhere and there were less and less photos that seemed to capture the popular imagination.

It was 1999 and the last photo I could remember that seemed to captivate the world was the 1985 National Geographic cover of an Afghan refugee with piercing green eyes — 14 years before.

(BTW, the next photos that seared into our cultural memory weren’t until September 11, 2001 — and the shocking photos from Abu Ghraib that followed.)

I could remember dozens of photos from the mid 40s through the mid 70s — the country doctor, the sailor kissing the nurse, the migrant mother in the great depression, the photos coming out of Vietnam… but I could remember very few from recent times.

I imagined a future where everyone had a camera in their pockets and it became clear to me that photography had reached diminishing returns. So I hung that final show, retired my camera and started looking for a new dream.

Photography was no longer enough, so I decided to try film and communications. I enrolled at the Royal College of Art in London for a masters in Communication Art & Design.

That took me to Brazil where I produced my first documentary film in the Brazilian Amazon — which would kick off my first 7-year career in documentary film and non-profit media, which ultimately led to setting up that first version of Live Your Message in 2011, as a branding and web design business. 

By that point, I was no stranger to creative production and getting projects done and out — fast. 

So the idea of an Implementation Retreat was super appealing. Plus, back in 2015, everyone was obsessed with having a website. Most people believed they couldn’t start a business — or even get a client — until they hung their digital shingle out. And I wanted to take care of this objection once and for all, so my new students could start selling and succeeding — FAST!

That’s the reason we originally launched our done-for-you Take Flight Now package in 2014 — I shared that story in Flashback Friday #9. But I quickly discovered that people couldn’t give us the content for their website — since they didn’t have the clarity on their business and offers, which they needed to create the site.

So I originally came up with the idea of “Your Website in a Weekend” to help our Take Flight Now buyers prepare everything they needed to represent themselves online — in just 2 days, so we had what we needed to move into the actual design and implementation of their site. 

Now, one of the first things I always do in the early stages of designing a new program is talk to people — whether that’s my students, my friends, my peers, a coach… I immerse myself in the field of possibilities.

A good friend and creative collaborator, Michelle Falzon, put together this framework called the “Create Without Burnout Cycle”.

The challenge for many creators is they jump right into creating or they get stuck in creating (trying to make everything perfect), and they miss the all-important first two phases:

Saturate — where you learn and absorb materials and possibilities for what you’re about to create. And Percolate — where you give yourself time and space to reflect on everything you just learned. Before you actually Create — which is where you roll up your sleeves and design “the thing.”

(Of course, many people also get stuck at the Saturate & Percolate Phases and never get to “Create.”)

So my goal for Website in a Weekend and all the Implementation Retreats I’ve done since is to collapse the first 4 Phases — Saturate, Percolate, Create and the all-important Celebrate — into a single weekend. 

In other words, I wanted to create a container for “Forced Implementation” that would support my students in avoiding the big traps — creating without a plan, endless learning and thinking, or getting stuck in perfection and never leaving the Create Phase — so they could finally get their website done, out and making money. 

I thought it was a great idea, but then I shared it with a friend who said, “don’t do it.”

WTF?

You see, she had hosted a get your book done in a weekend retreat the previous year, and all chaos broke loose. One person got a headache and left. Another person curled up under the table moaning in pain.

As soon as she tried to get people to actually create and implement — live in the room — they slammed into “The Resistance.”

This is the force — identified by Steven Pressfield, author of Do the Work, Turning Pro and The War of Art — that keeps you from doing your most important work. 

This force is strongest right before you begin something important — especially something that matters to your growth, art or higher self — and also right before you finish. 

According to Pressfield, “The Resistance” wants to stop you right before the thing that will change everything. That’s why he compares it to the dragon guarding the gold. The treasure’s right there — but so is the monster.

As Pressfield writes, if you’re feeling massive Resistance, it’s a signal that: “You’re onto something that matters. Keep going.” 

My friend had experienced the monster first-hand at her Implementation Retreat. So I was warned, but not dissuaded. As a creative professional, I had fought the Resistance many times and came out victorious…

Because, inside that warning, were the cheat codes for designing a successful Implementation Retreat: You can’t just sit people into a room and have them implement, you have to address the key objections, traps and false beliefs that stop them.

It’s well known that mindset is just as important as strategy, so you have to do the inner work alongside the outer work — something that’s become a cornerstone of my work and one reason we see such high levels of student success.

It’s well-known that up to 80% of your success comes from your mindset while just 20% comes from the how. Yet so many course and program creators, either spend all their time on mindset (and nothing actually happens) or not nearly enough time on Mindset. 

That’s why “Normalizing Challenges” is Core Experience 6 in The Experience Formula, the model I developed for getting 10-30x higher student engagement and success than the industry standard.

These early programs gave me the insight I needed to create such a groundbreaking model as I designed experiences that activated “The Resistance” — in all its forms.

So — even though it wasn’t until a year later, in 2016, that I developed The Experience Formula, the first 12 Program Launches I’ve shared in this Series gave me the insight I needed to design a revolutionary new way to create courses.

That conversation with a friend gave me insight into the potential challenges I would face — in Your Website in a Weekend — so I could engineer a few virtual experiences to counterbalance The Resistance I knew they’d face… and it worked! People were able to make massive progress fast — even in an online format.

We gifted this program to our Take Flight Now buyers to help them across the finish line, and we also sold it separately starting in February 2015.

The first time out of the gate we sold 30 programs for $1,497 — for a grand total of $22,410.

We didn’t actually build the website during the weekend — since technical implementation in a group is super challenging, and we had our Take Flight Now Program for that… 

But we helped our students create absolutely everything they needed to move into the design and development of their site.

Later on, once we stopped selling Take Flight Now in August 2015, we lowered the price point for Your Website in a Weekend to $997 and sold an additional 51 programs at $50,847 (with our last sales in March 2018).

Eventually I decided to turn the 2-Day Implementation Retreat into an online course called Website ATM (I’ll share more about that in a future Flashback Friday) for 2 reasons:

#1 – It was challenging for me to find the time to run these events, since I had 5 Implementation Events to run for my 12-month Message to Millions Program (I told this story in last week’s Flashback Friday), plus my annual Message to Money LIVE event (which is now Live Your Message LIVE) — and all the other webinars and group coaching calls I was doing.

#2 – While Live Events & Implementation Retreats are SO powerful when it comes to depth of transformation and getting things done, they’re tricky to sell since people have to be available at that specific time.

So I decided to take the IP I developed in Your Website in a Weekend and turn it into Website ATM, which people could buy and go through at any time.

I kept the implementation focus from the original Implementation Retreats — so, in every single training, my students weren’t just “saturating” and “percolating” they were “creating” — but used the online course format to create more flexibility for my students and for me. 

But I learned a TON about Implementation Retreats, which I translated into my next in-person event, Your Brand in a Weekend — and all the other Implementation Retreats I did as part of Message to Millions and now Momentum.

I hope you can see that nothing is ever lost. You’ll create programs and sunset programs, but — with everything you create — you’ll get closer and closer to what really works… for you and for your students!

I just finished delivering Program #33, my X-Factor Certified Business Consultant Program and it’s chef kiss… 

But I definitely didn’t start at this level. I got there through the school of hard knocks and I’m committed to sharing everything I’ve learned with you so you can get there faster and easier. 

Afterall, we’re only on Flashback Friday #12!

Throwback Thursday Series

Throwback Thursday #1: Build Your Site, Launch Your Business

Throwback Thursday #2: Strike Two — As If One Failed Attempt Weren’t Enough!

Throwback Thursday #3: My First Semi-Hit — Insights Gained From My Message to Money Program

Throwback Thursday #4: The Win That Came Disguised as a Fail

Throwback Thursday #5: You Did What?!!?

Throwback Thursday #6: This Put Me On the Map

Throwback Thursday #7: Me? Do a Live Event?

Throwback Thursday #8: My First Upsell

Throwback Thursday #9: Course SaaS Next?

Throwback Thursday #10: 1 Launch > 4 Big Lessons

Throwback Thursday #11: Message to Millions

Throwback Thursday #13: Brand in a Weekend

Throwback Thursday #14: Call to Adventure

The post Throwback Thursday #12: Website in a Weekend appeared first on Live Your Message.

You see, the real reason I’ve become one of the most respected program creators in the industry is simply because I’ve tried a lot of things, which gave me the feedback I needed to improve.

As I like to say, “There is no failure, only feedback.”

This is one reason I ask my students, “If you knew that your fourth program were to become a blockbuster that changed the world, would you be willing to create programs #1, 2 and 3 even if they were kind of duds?”

They universally say yes, yet so many people get hung up trying to make their first program perfect that they never launch when the truth is that your first program isn’t going to be your best program. It’s going to be the one that allows you to learn how to design and launch a program, which is even more valuable. 

That’s why I teach my students to focus on a Minimum Viable Launch, which equals a Minimum Viable Program + Minimum Viable Marketing & Minimum Technology, to just get it done and out as quickly as possible. 

And that principle of making decisions and moving forward as quickly as possible is something I learned from the five Live Implementation Retreats we included with Message to Millions.

Brian taught 2 of them and I taught 3 of them. The first one was called “Your Brand in a Weekend” and here’s how I described it:

Message to Money LIVE was the first 3-day event I designed (in October 2013) and Your Brand in a Weekend was the second (in April 2015).

While Message to Money LIVE was designed as an introduction to my world, which taught the essential ingredients for building an online business, Your Brand in a Weekend was designed as a deep dive in one specific area.

So I had to really reflect on what I wanted participants to walk away with and what could actually be accomplished in a room, without bringing in actual designers and photographers. 

In Flashback Friday #10, I shared my breakthrough around creating Frameworks:

“I remember spending DAYS asking myself, ‘What’s the Framework?’ before I began creating the course — because the Framework (or what I now call the ‘Bird’s Eye View’) would define the structure of this course. And, without a framework, it didn’t have a compelling structure… as soon as I came up with this, the entire program snapped into place!”

I decided to apply that lesson to this Implementation Retreat and started by creating a Framework that would really allow people to understand what a Brand actually is.

You see, many people mistake having a Brand with Branding or the process of creating the visual assets that comprise your brand. 

But I knew that Brand went deeper and, before you create any Brand Assets, you need to define your actual Brand, which is at the intersection of what you offer, who you serve and how you’re different — your Niche, Tribe and Value.

I define Brand as the “invisible layer of meaning” around your business created through the clear and consistent use of language, symbols and experiences that create trust and convey

distinction. Your brand separates your business from other similar businesses in the hearts

and minds of your audience. Different matters in a world where almost 2 billion websites

are competing for less and less attention. Small is the new big.

Once I created this, the structure of the event became clear. I would need to spend the first two days helping my participants get clear on their Niche, Tribe and Value, before we could start defining key Brand Assets on Day 3. 

So I designed Sessions around each of these things that would allow my participants to get the clarity they needed to start using language, symbols and experiences consistently — in a way that conveys how they’re different.

One of the Sessions I designed was around tuning into your Brand Voice and included a series of exercises that lead up to writing and practicing your Brand Voice Statement — a Session I still deliver to my Momentum students to this day!

My big breakthrough was in realizing that it wasn’t enough to give my students clarity on their Brand Voice and to have the written Statement. They actually needed to practice speaking on message and on brand to really internalize it.

I came up with the idea of using Story Dice to make the practice more spontaneous, rather than just having them sit and write something in the room (since we’d already been doing a lot of written exercises, including their Brand Voice Statement).

This was a table exercise. So participants would read their Brand Voice Statement to the table, then roll the dice and speak on message and on brand for at least a minute using the sentence starter on their dice.

It worked super well and the randomness of speaking on message and on brand got them out of their head and allowed them to have fun with it…

But I remember one woman really struggled with this and, ironically, she was the person in the group with the biggest personality!

Whenever she’d start talking about her business, she’d freeze up and lose all that personality. She’d speak in monotone and just get boring all of a sudden.

I dug in to see what was going on and she shared that, when she was a girl, her parents made her do hundreds of hours of missionary work in the local community. All she remembered was how uncomfortable she felt knocking on people’s doors and the trauma of getting got door after door slammed in her face.

In her mind, she linked that experience with trying to spread the word about her business, so she’d freeze up. It was almost uncanny, as soon as she started talking about anything business-related, her personality would instantly disappear.

At one point, I asked her to pat her head and rub her belly as she spoke. It made no difference. Then I asked her to pat her head, rub her belly and stand on one foot and all of a sudden she started laughing and the personality came through… she was able to speak on message and on brand with her signature charisma and personality!

That’s when I realized that it wasn’t enough to design exercises that gave people clarity, I had to design exercises that would support them in breaking through the mindset blocks they had around business, marketing, value and worth…

And I wouldn’t have realized this if I hadn’t spent 3 days in a room with my ideal clients, watching them participate and seeing where they got stuck.

This is where I really started to see that outer transformation starts with inner transformation and that the actions people take are based on their identity and who they believe they are.

That combination of inner and outer momentum has become a hallmark of our Momentum program, alongside 3-Day Quarterly Implementation Accelerators like “Your Brand in a Weekend” because they allow our participants to get so much done while upgrading their beliefs.

The 3-day live or virtual event model allows a depth and speed of transformation beyond what you can create in any other format.

And, because this first retreat was going to be live in-person in Los Angeles, I also offered it to my list to help offset the costs of renting a conference room and feeding everyone.

8 people bought at $997, which added an additional $7,976 in sales.

Since this first Implementation Retreat in 2015, I’ve done OVER FIFTY 3-day events, so it’s become a cornerstone of my business.

That’s why it’s so important to just get your programs out as quickly as possible, so you can get out of the “Stuck Cycle” and enter the “Iterate Your Way to Action” Cycle.

That’s where:

• You start with an idea
• You take fast action on that idea to launch it to your market
• This testing gives you feedback and clarity as you listen to your market and understand what they want
• You gain momentum by taking that feedback and making the next iteration of your idea stronger and more profitable… 
• And then the cycle continues…
• As you reach your program goals… and beyond.

So let me know whether you’re ready to iterate your way to awesome!

Before you go…

Turn your expertise into income FASTER! Take my $9 Profitable Micro-Niches Mini-Course!

You know the riches are in the niches…

But most people’s niches are too broad — they’re missing that critical Market Fit.

And that’s exactly what your Micro-Niche is all about…

Defining exactly what you do AND exactly who you serve in such a specific, compelling way leaves your Perfect Customers no choice but to lean in and say… how can I get what you’ve got?!

I’ll show you how to find yours in my $9 Mini-Course!

Throwback Thursday Series

Throwback Thursday #1: Build Your Site, Launch Your Business

Throwback Thursday #2: Strike Two — As If One Failed Attempt Weren’t Enough!

Throwback Thursday #3: My First Semi-Hit — Insights Gained From My Message to Money Program

Throwback Thursday #4: The Win That Came Disguised as a Fail

Throwback Thursday #5: You Did What?!!?

Throwback Thursday #6: This Put Me On the Map

Throwback Thursday #7: Me? Do a Live Event?

Throwback Thursday #8: My First Upsell

Throwback Thursday #9: Course SaaS Next?

Throwback Thursday #10: 1 Launch > 4 Big Lessons

Throwback Thursday #11: Message to Millions

Throwback Thursday #12: Website in a Weekend

Throwback Thursday #14: Call to Adventure

The post Throwback Thursday #13: Brand in a Weekend appeared first on Live Your Message.

It’s easy to assume — from the outside looking in — that I’ve always been successful and that all things business and marketing came naturally to me, when nothing could be further from the truth.

So over the last 2 years, I’ve shared the stories behind my first 10 products, programs and courses — including the wins, the flubs and the lessons I learned along the way — so you can see behind the curtain and learn from my experiences. 

Now I’d like to continue the Series this month and share the skinny on my next 4 launches — starting with my first 12-month group coaching program, Message to Millions.

This was the predecessor to our Momentum Business Coaching Program, which has now been road tested over 10 years with 1,315 students and $25,663,726 in sales!

So, the very first lesson I want to share is that big things often start small and we can’t anticipate what something will become before we start.

Flashback to 2015… 

I had a couple years of experience delivering shorter programs (3 months or less) at lower price points (usually $1K or less), but I had never offered a premium yearlong program.

That felt like the next step, but I was terrified. 

I wasn’t confident in my sales skills and I knew premium programs required sales conversations — eek! 

I also wasn’t confident I could deliver the depth of transformation that premium price points required, since I had more experience as a course creator than as a coach.  

So I teamed up with a partner who had both the sales skills and the long-form delivery experience, but struggled with the marketing and facilitation which were my forte.

He had been offering a yearlong program for years, so I borrowed his experience and confidence to launch Message to Millions.

What I didn’t realize at the time is just how much I had to offer and that business partnerships also bring some unique challenges. It’s not just about bringing different skill sets to the table, a successful partnership also requires shared values, comparable work ethic and compatible communication styles. 

I wouldn’t recommend jumping straight into a 12-month partnership — like I did — before you’ve had the experience of working with someone on a smaller project and already know you’re compatible. 

The other thing I didn’t anticipate was how much harder it is to sell two people than it is to sell one person… 

In order to buy, people had to trust and want to spend time with both of us equally and I quickly discovered that people who were attracted to me — and my marketing — weren’t necessarily attracted to my partner.

He was a nice guy but we weren’t on the same wavelength in a lot of ways. While I embraced technology and the internet, he was more comfortable in person. While I love design and experience, his slide decks looked like they were 10 years old. While I’m responsive and responsible, he’d miss messages and often wouldn’t respond for a week.

I also realized that — in addition to needing to split all my profits with him 50/50 — my reputation was now entwined with his. So, if other people had a bad experience with him or felt uncomfortable around him, then they assumed they’d feel the same way with me…

On the flip side, the contrast between our styles helped me understand what I valued and what were non-negotiables for me: congruence, mastery, excellence and, yes, beauty.

I realized: “I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.”

I didn’t need anyone else to lend me credibility and confidence, I simply had to own it within myself. 

At the same time, being in partnership allowed us to divide and conquer. 

While I was onstage delivering the Message to Money LIVE event, he was offstage having enrollment conversations with people who applied for the program.

My job was to get people to come to the event and apply, while his job was to enroll them.

I remember how miraculous it felt when I walked off stage on Day 3 and into the lunch room where our new Message to Millions members were waiting for me.

To be honest, I was kind of amazed that anyone bought… so when I walked into the room and saw 18 people smiling up at me, it felt like a Christmas miracle. 

We sold 122 tickets to the event and 18 people enrolled in Message to Millions. That’s about a 15% conversion rate, which is solid but not great for a live, in-person event. 

So, while we did bring in $259,946 in sales the first time out, I was confused. 

I had gotten great feedback about the event and couldn’t understand why more people didn’t join.

Later, several people told me they would have joined if it were just me delivering the program. I also realized that — in my desire to provide huge value at the event — I had left people full. They felt like their problem had been solved and they didn’t need to invest in ongoing support. 

That’s when I realized that I was doing people a disservice by trying to give them absolutely everything possible in my free and low-cost content because there’s a huge difference between knowing what to do and actually doing it. 

I now know that most people can’t implement a roadmap on their own for something as complex as building a successful business — they need ongoing guidance, support and community to get the best results possible.

That’s why many people stay with us in the Momentum Program for years. It’s not for the content, it’s for the implementation support — because that’s where the rubber meets the road.

Getting people to actually implement over an extended timeframe was trickier than I imagined — even at this level of investment and support — and some people struggled.

I learned that a 12-month program is the most challenging type of program to design for since you have to keep people motivated over a long period of time. Life invariably happens along the way — people get sick, they experience loss and hardship. Plus, over longer periods of time, they come face-to-face with the inner blocks and challenges that have stopped them in the past.

One of the things I think we did right from the start is balancing inner and outer growth, because I genuinely believe that both are required to build a successful business.

I created an Ascension Plan for both their business and for themselves, which is something we introduced at Message to Money LIVE and then implemented together during the program.

The initial program design was simple.

​​Our minimum goal was for all our members to increase their annual income by at least twice the amount of their investment — and the program was focused on coaches who already had a business and were making some money, but hadn’t taken their business across the $100K mark.

And we were able to create that ROI by supporting them with 4 Essential Elements:

1. Value & Pricing: Own Your Value, Define Your Offer
2. Positioning & Branding: Claim Your Niche, Build Your Brand
3. Enrollment: Master Enrollment
4. Marketing & Tribe Building: Build Your List, Speak to Sell

In other words, we had a clear target client and a clear path to cash — which are essential for strong sales. We were able to show people they could double their investment by making progress in any of these 4 domains — they could increase their prices, improve their offer, skyrocket their enrollment skills or expand their reach.
We originally offered 2 options:

– Message to Money Silver ($9,997 or $1,997 Up-Front + 12 Payments of $797) – Included bi-monthly coaching and training calls, plus five 2-day Implementation Retreats (one for each of the 4 Elements and one devoted to inner growth).

– Message to Money Gold ($17,997 or $5,997 Up-Front + 14 Payments of $797) –  Included everything in Silver, plus monthly small group laser coaching calls, 3 mastermind days (prior to events) and private coaching.

Plus Bonuses such as my partner’s complete archive of trainings.

In the first cycle (January 2015), we sold 8 Silver Packages and 10 Gold. In the second cycle (September 2015), we sold 5 Silver Packages and 13 Gold. So it was clear that people wanted the Private Coaching and additional Access enough to pay for it.

Overall, the program design was solid and it could have potentially continued.

But, there were 2 core challenges:

1. True partnership isn’t just about showing up in big bursts, it’s the everyday experience of working together — and how someone shows up over time. That wasn’t aligned for us.
2. I hadn’t discovered The Experience Formula yet and — as a deeply compassionate person — it was challenging for me to watch people struggle and that gave me the desire to create an even better program. My partner was less driven to experiment with the program design, since he’d been doing something similar for years, while I was obsessed!

So, after two cycles of Message to Millions — and $543,892 in sales — I sunsetted that program, stepped away from the partnership and launched my own yearlong group coaching program, which was originally called Mentorship. Then Momentum.

10 years later, I’ve mentored 1,315 students and made $25,663,726 in sales with my yearlong programs.

And, most importantly, I’ve designed a 12-month program that works so well that the average student stays for 26 months — that’s over 2 years at a 5-figure investment! I even have one student who’s been with me in Momentum for 10 years.

But it all started in 2015 with those first two groups of Message to Millions students.

I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for that first step and that first partnership. 

So, here’s to feeling the fear and doing it anyways!

Stay tuned because next Friday I’m going to share the story behind how I created and sold my first implementation event — Your Website in a Weekend!

Throwback Thursday Series

Throwback Thursday #1: Build Your Site, Launch Your Business

Throwback Thursday #2: Strike Two — As If One Failed Attempt Weren’t Enough!

Throwback Thursday #3: My First Semi-Hit — Insights Gained From My Message to Money Program

Throwback Thursday #4: The Win That Came Disguised as a Fail

Throwback Thursday #5: You Did What?!!?

Throwback Thursday #6: This Put Me On the Map

Throwback Thursday #7: Me? Do a Live Event?

Throwback Thursday #8: My First Upsell

Throwback Thursday #9: Course SaaS Next?

Throwback Thursday #10: 1 Launch > 4 Big Lessons

Throwback Thursday #12: Website in a Weekend

Throwback Thursday #13: Brand in a Weekend

Throwback Thursday #14: Call to Adventure

The post Throwback Thurday #11: Message to Millions appeared first on Live Your Message.

I was about to launch the second Superhero Summit in the Series that put me on the map… (Read about that here in #FBF 5 and 6.)

And realized I didn’t have anything relevant to sell.It was the Social Media Superhero Summit and I didn’t consider myself a social media expert…

So I asked myself, what am I an expert in that’s related to social media?

Storytelling? Nah, I had already sold my Hidden Story Power program during the Video Superhero Summit…

And it felt like I needed something new and different.

Web design? Isn’t the point of social media to engage people on social media (at least at first)? 

Branding? Getting closer… but that still felt a little broad.

How about personal branding? Ding, ding, ding!

Everyone needs to figure out their personal brand before they build their social following…

There was only one problem, the Summit was about to happen and I hadn’t created anything yet.

What do I do?

It seemed like a lot of effort to host the Summit without selling anything at the end, but I didn’t have time to really develop my offer.

Hmm. Why don’t I create a quick application and invite people to apply to a discounted, MVP version of my course?

OK, I can do that! 

I didn’t have time to write a sales page, so I offered a live workshop special of $197 for the course and sent people straight to an order form. I let them know I’d be raising the price to $297 as soon as my session was over and — lol and behold — I got 80 sales!

Since it’s so easy to procrastinate on a decision like this, I’ve discovered that you always want to give people a reason to buy right then and there, live on the line — a special price or a special bonus that goes away at the end of the webinar.

This approach quickly brought in $15,760, but I thought to myself, “If I’m going to go through the effort of creating a brand new course — and teaching it through live virtual delivery (which, BTW, is the fastest way to create an MVP) — I might as well have more students.”

The Summit ended on November 15th and we were getting close to Thanksgiving…

I was also tired from 12 days of Summit hosting… and I had to start developing the new course I just sold, so I didn’t have time to write a sales page.

So I decided to invite people to submit an application if they were interested in joining us in the program… then, from there, send them a confirmation email saying their application had been approved with a link to the order form for $297.

We no longer have a record of the application and order form, otherwise I’d show you screenshots, but what I do remember is asking 5-10 short questions including, “If your brand were an animal, what kind of animal would it be?” and “What are 3 adjectives that best describe you?”

These questions were designed to engage applicants around the idea of personal branding in lieu of a proper sales page. 

We leveraged the unique psychology of the Application Campaign — where your customers are convincing you why they want to work with you, rather than the other way around. 

The result? An additional 37 sales and $10,989 in revenue! From just 2 emails to an application form — bringing my grand total for this beta launch up to $26,749… now, we’re talking!

I wrote these emails in collaboration with my husband Murray and they may just go down in the Live Your Message history books as two of our best emails ever. (See the P.S. for the full transcripts of those 2 emails! You’re welcome…)

Since this was a beta campaign to an MVP offer that wasn’t fully defined yet, we based the first email on the famous ad British explorer Ernest Shackleton posted in the newspaper to enlist a crew to accompany him on a crazy voyage to the South Pole:

== WANTED ==

Men wanted for hazardous journey.  Small wages.  Bitter Cold.

Long months of complete darkness.  Constant danger.

Safe return doubtful.  Honor and recognition in case of success.

The result? Shackleton was flooded with about 5,000 applications!

Apparently LOTS of people where looking for this kind of death defying adventure and he had his choice of crew members!

So we thought, why not take the same approach and invite our audience on a “hazardous yet rewarding one-way journey to ‘extraordinary’.”

In the marketing world, this technique is called “swiping” — and it’s where you take something that’s already working in one context and you repurpose it for another. In other words, you keep the structure but change the content.

And it worked! (I highly recommend reading the full email in the P.S.)

That email did really well and we decided to send one more email 4 days later — the day after Thanksgiving — on Friday, November 29, 2013. Black Friday. 

Subject line: The Black Friday “problem” in your business

We sent the first one on the Monday before Thanksgiving and the second one on Black Friday — since the program started on the Monday after Thanksgiving.

So that’s it. 2 emails. 37 sales. An additional $10,989.

I’m kicking myself that I didn’t send another email on November 30th. 2-3 more emails on December 1st. And another one on December 2nd, the day the program started. We would have at least doubled our results if I had… 

At the time, I didn’t understand how to write a Perfect Email Campaign and was concerned about being overly promotional, so we just sent 2 emails. 

But, hey, that’s my learning curve and it doesn’t have to be yours…

And 117 sales was STILL a huge win for me!

Now, I had to focus on actually delivering this program — since I didn’t have anything other than the idea when I sold the program.

This was the ultimate “build the plane as you fly it” experience…

And I learned FOUR valuable lessons along the way:

Lesson #1 – It’s always better to pre-sell a course before you spend a lot of time developing it, so you know there’s market demand before you build it.

Lesson #2 – You don’t need to pre-record your Course in advance. The fastest way to create the MVP Version of your Course is through Live Virtual Delivery — i.e. teaching your course live on Zoom, then posting the replays. PLUS, Live Virtual Delivery gives you the opportunity to interact and engage with your students — and get their feedback through the delivery process, so you can make your course even better.

Lesson #3 – When I started creating Personal Brand Power, after I sold it LIVE on the Summit, I realized I hadn’t fully defined my methodology around personal branding. 

You’ll remember that I was basically pulling ideas out of a hat trying to find one that would be relevant to the Social Media Superhero Summit audience…

So, I hadn’t developed a deep body of work around personal branding yet. I remember spending DAYS asking myself, “What’s the framework?” before I began creating the course — because the framework or what I now call the “Bird’s Eye View” would define the structure of this course. And, without a framework, it didn’t have a compelling structure. 

Here’s what I came up with:

And, as soon as I came up with this, the entire program snapped into place!

I now spend a lot of time teaching my student’s how to create a Bird’s Eye View in their course — or exactly how they’re going to get their students to the promise or destination of their course. What I now call Mission Accomplished.

So I hope you can see that the best way to learn is by taking action — even if it sometimes feels like Fire, Aim, Ready… 

Which brings me to Lesson #4, which was perhaps the most important. While I did sell 117 units of my course the first time around, that was the peak. Here’s what my Personal Brand Power sales looked like over the life of that course:

• Nov 13, 2013: 80 @ $197 = $15,760
• Nov 25 – Dec 5, 2013: 37 @ $297 = $10,989
• July 29 – Sept 18, 2014: 27 @ $497 = $13,419
• Jan 29, 2015 – Mar 13, 2020: 13 @ $497-997 = $10,659

That’s right, I only sold another 40 units after my initial launch and ultimately stopped selling this course.

Why? It wasn’t because it wasn’t a great course. And it wasn’t because there wasn’t market demand. 

In fact, Mindvalley ended up picking it up for awhile and offering it through their Evercoach brand.

It was because it was a one-off that didn’t really fit into my product suite — or what I call my Message to Money Pathway.

So it felt like a dead end. People would go through Personal Brand Power and there wasn’t a next natural step for them to keep working with me. Or they would go through one of my other courses and Personal Brand Power wasn’t the next natural step after that…

Along the way, I realized that my business would do MUCH BETTER if I developed an integrated product suite where all my programs fit together and led my students on a journey to the Ultimate Result I promise, which is to Win the Game of Business.

This is a process I teach each year at my annual Live Your Message LIVE event since it really focuses you and your business on what’s really going to move the needle.

So, while powerful, personal branding wasn’t an essential step in my Message to Money Pathway, so I ultimately pulled it off the shelf in 2020 (though I had stopped actively selling it by 2015), so I could focus on my 12-month coaching program — which I’ll share more about in an upcoming Flashback Friday (now Throwback Thursday)!

Throwback Thursday Series

Throwback Thursday #1: Build Your Site, Launch Your Business

Throwback Thursday #2: Strike Two — As If One Failed Attempt Weren’t Enough!

Throwback Thursday #3: My First Semi-Hit — Insights Gained From My Message to Money Program

Throwback Thursday #4: The Win That Came Disguised as a Fail

Throwback Thursday #5: You Did What?!!?

Throwback Thursday #6: This Put Me On the Map

Throwback Thursday #7: Me? Do a Live Event?

Throwback Thursday #8: My First Upsell

Throwback Thursday #9: Course SaaS Next?

Throwback Thursday #11: Message to Millions

Throwback Thursday #12: Website in a Weekend

Throwback Thursday #13: Brand in a Weekend

Throwback Thursday #14: Call to Adventure

The post Throwback Thursday #10: 1 Launch > 4 Big Lessons appeared first on Live Your Message.

It’s everybody’s favorite day of the week: Flashback Friday (now Throwback Thursday)!!!

Or at least mine… because this is when I get to turn the clocks back and revisit the product launches that got me where I am today (even the ones that went off the rails!)

The expression “everybody loves a train wreck” is true… but not necessarily for the reason you think!

The “wrecks” in our lives give us the opportunity to see what doesn’t work… and learn! 

And, if there’s anything I know to be true — after 13 years coaching and training almost 16,000 business owners — it’s this: learning is just as important as succeeding…

Because learning — even through mistakes — paves the way to greater levels of success.

As I always tell my students, “There is no failure, only feedback.” 

So, what was my big fail? 

It was an affordable, custom web design package called Take Flight Now. 

We designed the package to support our students in getting onto our Heroic web design platform, which we ultimately sold in 2020.

Heroic was our first attempt at building a software as a service platform or SaaS. And — unlike online courses and programs, which are relatively easy to design and launch — SaaS takes a large upfront investment of time, money and expertise to get right. 

As my friend Ryan Levesque says: “Take a million dollars, set it on fire, and, once the smoke clears, you’ll see if you have a profitable business.”

That’s the challenge of SaaS. And that’s the challenge we hit with Heroic (and Take Flight Now). 

My husband Murray and I invested several years and over a million dollars designing an incredible website builder, but we made a huge mistake: It was targeted at everyone and anyone.

In other words, we were trying to create a better solution to the same problem so many other platforms were already solving. 

But, as they say: Don’t try to be better, be different.

With Heroic, we were trying to build a better website builder, but we weren’t different enough from more established builders such as WordPress, Squarespace or Wix.

So the big objection we kept getting was: “How is this different from Wordpress?” or even “Does this work with Wordpress?”

And we didn’t have a good enough answer. So we struggled to get people on our platform.

That’s when we came up with the idea of creating Take Flight Now, a done-for-you web design package that used Heroic to deliver the finished product.

You see, I had gotten my start in business by designing websites for other businesses and — as my expertise grew — I was getting bigger clients and charging up to $50K for a done-for-you branding and web design package. I was able to charge these rates because I was doing a lot more than just designing a website, I was really supporting my clients in finding and expressing their authentic message and brand.

So, we thought we could replicate the success we were having with our larger clients in a much more affordable way that could really help our earlier stage clients by using Take Flight Now to create leverage through repeatable processes and customizable templates — to make beautiful, high-converting web design accessible to them too, without the $50K price tag!

We had the best intentions and created a sophisticated, self-paced intake process — using everything I had learned over the years with my high-end clients — where people would self-select their branding preferences and submit their materials to us online, so we could build their sites for them, without needing to charge for consulting time, which was the most expensive part of the process.

But we didn’t realize that our more beginner clients would need a lot of training and coaching before they felt comfortable making the kind of messaging, branding and positioning decisions we were asking them to make.

So they’d postpone and postpone and postpone the process — for months (or even years) — until they got crystal clarity on their niche and their marketing…

So, while we were able to sell 95 Take Flight Now Web Design Packages priced between $2,997 and $4,997, plus some consulting, branding and copy upsells — for a Grand Total of $373,507 over the course of a year…

AND deliver some amazing websites for our clients…

We realized we didn’t have the ideal message-market match and that a self-serve, yet highly-customized package — like the one we had created — would work best with more established business owners who already had clarity on what their business was all about.

The early stage business owners we were serving either needed a cheaper do-it-yourself solution or a completely done-for-you service, which we couldn’t effectively deliver at a price point they could afford.

So we ended up pivoting to offer a 3-day event, Your Website in a Weekend (which ultimately turned into my 12-week Website ATM program), to walk our participants through the process — as a group — of making each of the key decisions they needed to get their sites done and out, with support and guidance each step of the way.

I’ll share the stories of those products in a future #FBF, because that’s when I really discovered the power of LIVE, guided implementation, which now forms the basis of our most powerful programs — Success School, Experience Product Masterclass and Momentum…

But I do want to share one big marketing breakthrough I had with Take Flight Now, which is something I still teach and practice today!Because, remember, learning — even through mistakes — paves the way to greater levels of success.

It’s well known that webinars work best to sell products in the $500 to $2,000 range ($3,000 tops) and live events are great for products in the $5,000 to $50,000 range, but we were selling Take Flight Now for between $3,000 and $5,000 — which required a phone call.

So, we combined what I call a Reverse Webinar Campaign, an Application Campaign and a Consultative Sales Process.It worked like this:

We used a webinar to attract potential buyers and educate them about the 4 things their website absolutely needed to have to be successful.

It was called, 4 Quick Fixes to Turn Your Website Into a Lean… Mean… Conversion Machine.

At the end of the webinar, I invited attendees to submit an Application for our Take Flight Now Web Design Service, which included all FOUR of the things I just taught.

The Application consisted of a $97 refundable deposit, so we knew they were serious and could add them to our design and development queue, and a questionnaire.

From there, we got them on a discovery call where we answered their questions and sold the package.

We sent a replay and Perfect Email Campaign to follow-up with those who signed up for the webinar but didn’t show up, or who attended but didn’t buy.

And this Campaign Stack worked beautiful…

The first time out of the gate — in July 2014 — we had 300-400 people on a live webinar. That resulted in 101 $97 deposits and 49 sales at $2,997 for a grand total of $146,853!

That’s when I really discovered the power of Campaign Stacking to drive HUGE sales… and it’s something I now teach my EPM & Momentum students how to do.

So, I hope you can see why people say that “the road to success is paved with failure”… 

And that all failure is really feedback in disguise!

Throwback Thursday Series

Throwback Thursday #1: Build Your Site, Launch Your Business

Throwback Thursday #2: Strike Two — As If One Failed Attempt Weren’t Enough!

Throwback Thursday #3: My First Semi-Hit — Insights Gained From My Message to Money Program

Throwback Thursday #4: The Win That Came Disguised as a Fail

Throwback Thursday #5: You Did What?!!?

Throwback Thursday #6: This Put Me On the Map

Throwback Thursday #7: Me? Do a Live Event?

Throwback Thursday #8: My First Upsell

Throwback Thursday #10: 1 Launch > 4 Big Lessons

Throwback Thursday #11: Message to Millions

Throwback Thursday #12: Website in a Weekend

Throwback Thursday #13: Brand in a Weekend

Throwback Thursday #14: Call to Adventure

The post Throwback Thursday #9: Course ✅ SaaS Next? appeared first on Live Your Message.

I launched Message to Money in 2012 and sold it for 4 years…

A couple years in, I decided to experiment with offering a 1:1 Coaching Package to my Message to Money graduates…

I loved the group coaching I was doing in the program and wanted to give them a way to continue working with me once they were done with the program…

So I sent out a SINGLE EMAIL to the 60 students who had graduated from the program and what happened next shocked me!

The subject line was: [M2M] Would 1-on-1 time with me be valuable? 

The email ended with a super specific call to action — to schedule a call with me to discuss coaching together — and 7% of the recipients clicked the link.

7% of 60 isn’t a lot — just 4 students — but that 7% quickly turned into $21,999! (See the exact email I sent in the P.S. below.)

That’s when I discovered the power of having a back-end offer…

A back-end offer is the second, third or fourth thing someone buys from you.

It’s an opportunity someone usually only sees after they complete their initial engagement with you.

Studies show that your existing customers are 12 times more likely to buy from you than someone who hasn’t bought from you before.

Repeat sales are also 16x more profitable than first time purchases.

That means that once you get a client — you want to keep them engaged with you through additional offers.

I didn’t really understand that when I first launched Message to Money and my goal was to give my students absolutely everything they needed to build their online business.

That’s still my goal today!

However, what I’ve learned from coaching almost 16K students is that most people need additional support to get there…

Most people can’t take a single 12-week online course that sets them up for the rest of their life!

PLUS, when it comes to business, you can always go deeper.

I’m always improving my offers and my marketing and so are my students — that’s why I have some students who’ve been with me for 10 years!

They already have access to all my content, but they keep coming back for coaching, community and implementation support!

(it was amazing to get together in person with my Momentum students — that’s my yearlong business coaching program — for the first time in a few years

That’s why the most successful coaching, consulting, course and service-based businesses make up to 80% of their revenue from back-end sales…

Since my first back-end offer went so well, about a year later I decided to create a yearlong group coaching program to support even more of my students at a much deeper level — making the leap from 1:1 to 1:Few…

Throwback Thursday Series

Throwback Thursday #1: Build Your Site, Launch Your Business

Throwback Thursday #2: Strike Two — As If One Failed Attempt Weren’t Enough!

Throwback Thursday #3: My First Semi-Hit — Insights Gained From My Message to Money Program

Throwback Thursday #4: The Win That Came Disguised as a Fail

Throwback Thursday #5: You Did What?!!?

Throwback Thursday #6: This Put Me On the Map

Throwback Thursday #7: Me? Do a Live Event?

Throwback Thursday #9: Course SaaS Next?

Throwback Thursday #10: 1 Launch > 4 Big Lessons

Throwback Thursday #11: Message to Millions

Throwback Thursday #12: Website in a Weekend

Throwback Thursday #13: Brand in a Weekend

Throwback Thursday #14: Call to Adventure

The post Throwback Thursday #8: My First Upsell appeared first on Live Your Message.