Guess what?
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