Let’s turn the clocks back to 2013…
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