I got my start designing websites for other entrepreneurs.
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 Throwback Thursday #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 Throwback Thursday) 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 Throwback Thursday), 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 Throwback Thursday #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