I thought it was a great idea at the time…
Famous last words.
It wasn’t the idea that was bad, it was the execution.
Classic mistake!
My boyfriend (Murray) — yes that’s the same Murray I just celebrated my 10th wedding anniversary with — had a LOT more success with his first digital product than me.
It was called Job Secrets Revealed and he launched it with his best friend Acland in 2001… they sold it for a full 5 years, partnering with Monster.com until they decided to create their own digital products 🙂
It was all about the Hidden Job Market and finding opportunities that aren’t being listed, PLUS ways to bypass the usual application process.
It was a hit and Monster.com promoted it for years (until they decided to get in the game with their own products)…
Adding up to about 50K sales! One year Job Secrets Revealed crossed the million dollar a year mark and Murray and Acland traveled the world on the proceeds.
So Murray and Acland were living the dream! One year they reached a million dollars in sales on this one program alone… and traveled the world on their earnings.
Acland is one of those crazy idea guys with a non-stop flood of, well, crazy ideas. Whether that’s making giant buddhas for Asian restaurants (called Big Ass Buddhas no less) or creating custom laundry detergent with your favorite scent (Soap du Sauvage anyone?).
Of course, MOST of those ideas never saw the light of day but this one DID — with Murray’s support. Yes, everyone needs a Murray!
So – Murray suggested we take a similar approach with HSP. While JSR was about tapping the hidden job market, HSP was about sharing the hidden stories that people don’t otherwise hear as a way to market and connect with your audience…
Remember when I said the idea was good, but the execution was bad.
Rather than create an online course, Murray and I decided the best format for a program on stories was a book. A PDF.
And we decided to design the PDF like one of those beautiful Phaidon art books, so people could learn about storytelling in both narrative and visual form.
We wanted to match the message with the medium.
It was absolutely gorgeous, but we discovered a HUGE problem — only AFTER we created everything.
First of all, sales were SLOW.
People just didn’t want to plunk down $97 on a 94-page eBook. 🙁
And the people who bought just didn’t see the value — again, $97 for an eBook?
So something like 50% of the people who bought the eBook, refunded almost right away. I was devastated!
We had poured months into creating it. This was our first creative collaboration and — It. Was. Beautiful. But it just didn’t add up for our customers…
UNTIL we decided to turn it into an online course — complete with audio, slides, worksheets and group coaching sessions.I remember our first webinar like it was yesterday.
Murray and I were at a hotel in Chiang Mai, Thailand — living the nomad entrepreneur dream — and we woke up at 3am to deliver that webinar and sell the only course version of Hidden Story Power for $197.
(Yes, that’s twice as much as the eBook — and the first time I realized the power of choosing the right business model. The same thing in a different format could be twice as valuable, if not more.) As soon as I got to the offer, the sales started pouring in. 1 sale. 3 sales. 10 sales!!??!!
And it kept on going…
We got up to 24 sales that day alone and 40 sales by the end of the weekend!
And the really cool thing was we were meeting up with my dad and step-mom at the hotel that morning.
We ate breakfast in the courtyard as the sales continued to roll in… and we felt like we were not just living the dream, we were winning it!
As we cruised around Chiang Mai in a tuk tuk, that sales counter just kept ticking upwards!
Another $197 in… and another… and another!
But — eek — we still had to create the course!
That was a problem for another day…
After the failure of our Hidden Story Power eBook, we decided to sell the course before we created it, then meet the demand by delivering it live!
I remember it vividly.
Murray was in Australia and I was back in Los Angeles… I didn’t have a house, so I was crashing at my former boss’s house and she had two BIG, unruly golden retrievers.
The kind that would pounce on anyone who walked through the door and no amount of yelling — Nijo, no! — from Lyn could control.
I remember doing those GoToWebinar calls together — Murray from Australia and me in LA, with occasional interruptions from Nijo!
Murray would play the guitar as we did group exercises…
It felt so romantic — we were falling more and more in love as each Module rolled out.Maybe we could do this whole online course thing after all!
We sold Hidden Story Power for 7 years and a grand total of 819 sales and $172,749.
My biggest innovation there — other than realizing the power of online courses and choosing the right business model — was introducing our Quarterly Story Celebrations. You see, after we delivered the course live, it became a purely evergreen program. Meaning that people paid their $197 and got the recorded replays on a membership site.
That’s great, but it felt like something was missing. People spent all this time to create their story and — while we had 3 full models on how and where to share your story — we didn’t have a context for them to share their stories with each other.
So I introduced lifetime access to our Quarterly Story Celebrations as a BONUS. And it was a hit. Students came back quarter after quarter to share the next evolution of their story and get my feedback.
I got to witness (and support) them as they went deeper and deeper into their life experiences and got more and more comfortable sharing authentically and vulnerably — and how they response they got changed with it!
My students and I loved these Story Celebrations so much that I did them all the way through the end of 2021 — even after I stopped selling the course.
So — while I no longer sell Hidden Story Power — stories are still a HUGE part of both my marketing and my courses.
Because nothing creates connection more than story.
In our highly-connected, social media world engagement is king. That means — not just creating content or sharing tips — but sharing things that create some kind of emotional response, which leads to likes, comments, shares and interest in you and your work.
If you’re not getting in front of people in a memorable way on a regular basis, they won’t know you exist — much less remember you and consider buying from you.
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 #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