Two Fridays ago I shared the story behind Message to Millions — my first 12-month Mastermind program — what worked, what didn’t and what I learned along the way…
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 Throwback Thursday #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…
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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