Poppa-Bear Care Yanked My Career Off Rails
Back in 2006, three years of increasing responsibilities to care for my ailing Poppa Bear had yanked my career off the rails and made it almost impossible for me to carry on with my creative work. Years of living with him in ICU waiting rooms and extensive care facilities were harrowing experiences that taught me how to navigate crisis care for a near-fatally stubborn parent while holding on to my sanity. Desperate for sisterly company and income, I fantasized about translating those experiences into online "Care and Carry On" programs that I could create and offer anywhere. I imagined creating programs that would be lifelines that similarly desperate, on-call-'round-the-clock, creative daughters could access anytime.
T-Totally Turned Off by PUSH Programs. So I bought a mess of programs that promised me bits of what I sensed I needed to know to make my fantasy come true. Problem was, each program that I purchased only gave me some of the puzzle pieces needed to move from idea to beta online offering. And none of them did it in a whole, supported way that matched my values or yearning, learning and earning styles. I often felt capital T-totally turned off by what I perceived to be manipulative marketing messages or techniques. Sometimes the trainings advocated using language and methods calculated to flat-out "control" or "puppet master" potential clients. YUCK!
The EPM Difference: Excellence, Compassionate Care & Beauty Through-and-Through What I needed--and am so grateful that Marisa provides with her team via the Experience Product Masterclass--was a strategically integrated business and learning model that resonated with my values of excellence, compassionate service and beauty through-and-through.
One that also offered ample FUN time for learning-in-community. One that included stories about the concerns and strategies of successful social/conscious entrepreneurs in the mix. And one that framed completion of the program as a MISSION aligned with my life-purpose. YES!
Before EPM: No Experience Escalation Plan
Before EPM, I created "DaughterWise Eldercare: How to Care for Your Ailing Parent While Carrying On with Your Creative Life," as a live workshop featured by the DC-located National Cathedral's Sacred Circles for Women Conference. It was a wild success. More women packed the room than there was ample seating for. But I didn't know how to structure an experience that offered members of my audience (who gave DaughterWise Eldercare rave reviews) value-packed ways to become clients who continued to work with me. I didn't have any experience escalation plan in place for following up with participants and continuing to serve them.
During EPM: Earning While Learning & Loving the Flub!
By contrast, soon after signing up for EPM, I agreed to be part of an hour-long teleseminar to support TreeSisters.org's Million Trees Campaign to crowdsource planting 1 million trees per year. Thanks to EPM's "Give Them What They Want" survey, (which was completed by several Tree Sisters) and coaching with Samara and Marisa, I was able to deliver an abundance of value to TreeSisters.org's founder, Clare Dakin, as she interviewed me during the call.
As a devoted Tree Sister, I coached Clare to "care and carry on"-- to strengthen her voice as a daughter of & for Earth while reclaiming a deeply nourishing practice of singing that she had abandoned years ago. We worked together with such passion, with Clare giving clear feedback about how the experience was benefiting her breath-by-breath, that listeners reached out to sign up for my $497 EPM project, "Voicing Your Power," before its sales page or content was even complete. It looked like I might reach MISSION ACCOMPLISHED before we were halfway through EPM's eight weeks!
I set up a Calendly account and began scheduling 30-minute discovery calls. Everyone said they were delicious! But when only one person committed to the five session program, I SO wished that the 10xDelivery training had been offered sooner. I flubbed the discovery calls, big-time. My biggest flub: not asking for payment and providing a link to a check-out page right there on the calls. But I took Marisa's message to "Love the flub and KEEP GOING!" to heart...Reaching Out with Heart Resonates
Before EPM, I've never conducted consistent mailings to the 1700 souls who have given me permission to contact them via MailChimp. But after learning about the perfect 4-email campaign, I outlined the first email in a 4-part sequence that would conclude with offering my Tribe the chance to join me in a world-changing adventure: "Voicing Your Power." I was in the midst of uploading everything for the email campaign into my MailChimp account when the election results of Nov 8th sent shock-waves throughout the USA and the world.
Scrapping the note that I intended to send, I reached out instead from my heart with a simple message, summed up in the subject line: "Here for You." I asked, "How are you? How are your children?" I asked about relations with family and friends stressed by political differences. I offered my heartful ears if someone needed them. I shared Perseverance, by Margaret Wheatley--a book that I found especially supportive during the 48hrs immediately following the elections. I encouraged my readers to care and carry on, together, with love.
Implementing lessons that I'd learned in the course on writing copy, and the language insights gleaned from my survey, I kept the note resonantly authentic, short and sweet. My open and click rates on that email were through the roof.
A woman unknown to me (my ideal client incarnate!) asked for help powering up her voice in a new role as the President and COO of a SaaS company that supports Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) professionals. She'd joined my list after seeing me create vocal community throughout a Wisdom 2.0 event in 2013
After our first discovery call, I was so inspired by her and her work that I offered her a second free session. After call #2 she invited me to integrate elements of my "Voicing Your Power" program into one of the premiere CSR conferences that her company is hosting. I'd never even considered CSR folks as a "niche" when thinking about my perfect client. Yet many are: mostly women, passionate about justice and longing to be deeply heard as they inspire communities of people (employees of the corporations they work for) to take world-changing action.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED inside an out! I'm listening to former and current clients more intently and intelligently. Establishing systems of experience escalation and streamlining product creation processes. $7997 earned: $7,500 contract to design and deliver fabulous "Voicing Your Power, Together" conference experiences. And I'm exploring how to offer my work to other corporate attendees. (Signed up for additional consulting time to help me think THAT through!) $497 working 1-on-1 with a client secured after TreeSisters.org teleseminar. Will conduct my first paid Voicing Your Power 1-on-1 retreat at Singing Farm.
Deeply, deeply grateful to you, Marisa, to Coach Samara and to the whole Live Your Message team!
What are you most excited about moving forward with your Experience Product?
It was an amazing experience and the membership site is super easy to handle. You are the best amazing group and team I've met in the online industry. I'm so thankful about all the things I've learn and will go ahead for my next course after my program is running... I'm looking forward to see you again. My very best wishes for you all, keep the spirit high and the feet on the ground... I felt very inspired and well supported all the time.
Getting clarity on my target customers and what they want and need has always been something I struggled with. After going through epm, I found that I got really great clarity on my customers, their ideal future self and the mission that would be interested in attempting. I feel i have my birdseye view refined and the benefits for my course clearly identified. these assets i can take forward in my business.
Your Mission Accomplished Story
I was struggling with four online courses I created on video last year, to get to a situation where I had something I was really proud of and felt confident about selling. I watched Marisa’s sales sequence a year before joining EPM and put in my diary a note to do the course in 2019. Although I moved house and had flu for a month, I have managed to pull together a programme I am excited about and I’ve overcome many of the barriers I had around selling, thanks to Marisa’s laser coaching. I can’t wait to start the programme on Tuesday next week.
What is your biggest takeaway from EPM?
Confidence selling my programme, knowing that, rather than bothering them, or feelings I’m doing it for me, I know I’m offer something amazing that will change people’s lives for the better.
How did EPM help you become successful?
Doing the programme as a group, having great video training, clear deadlines on a shared document, and a mission to accomplish, Coach Uwe’s loving support and coaching, and particularly Marisa’s laser coaching.
How has EPM and your success impacted your life?
It’s given me clarity about what to do, step by step to take my programmes from where they were to where I want them to be.
What has been the biggest change in your business?
Confidence to sell. Having got over some basic issues, I will now have more interesting problems to solve!
What are you most excited about moving forward with your Experience Product?
Confidence selling the programme and more fun delivering and getting creative about how much I can experiencify it as we go along!
Is there anything else you would like to add?
Thank you to the whole team for your wonderful support and endlessly positive attitude!
What is your biggest takeaway from EPM?
Focus. 1. on the fact that what I do IS an experience product 2. Systematizing the process to use less of my time and engage the client in discovering and expressing their needs. MOST IMPORTANT: the mindset and marketing techniques. I had never marketed myself before, except very low-key Chatterbox. I had no website.
How did EPM help you become successful?
I have much more clarity around what I am offering clients and most importantly, how to reach out to prospects in engaging ways to show the value that I offer. It is not clear yet if people will agree to pay for what they may consider an estimating exercise. Condo Polish will work best for prospects who are not sure what they could do to improve their homes. However, I expect many prospects will already know what upgrades they want (or think they know). Those prospects may want to go right to a hire, which is essentially the upsell from Condo Polish. I will only discover that once the program launches. However going to the second phase (the hire) is still a win and launches directly into the interior designing experience I already provided.
How has EPM and your success impacted your life?
Increased confidence in my ability to market myself and my unique value. Looking forward to reviewing the key materials again as I move towards launch in about 2 weeks.
What has been the biggest change in your business?
Launching the website, developing the marketing materials and the launch sequence schedule. Before I relied on client referrals and chance meetings with prospects in the elevator of buildings I was working in. Now I've reached out to a larger group who may eventually become clients or provide referrals to other people. The open rates (40%) and click-through rates (6% on second email) show that my list is engaged, though small (300)
What are you most excited about moving forward with your Experience Product?
I have a system now to reach out to new prospects (the Start with an Experience - Send out Postcards to all units in selected buildings to stimulate requests for Pre-interview) backed up by website content and ongoing blogging and social media postings.
Although enjoying a successful corporate career, I've wanted for some time to grow my impact and use my experience and skills to serve a broader audience. I'd been blogging for a while and had built a small following, but had no product or service to offer. Without a product, there was no money to invest in growing the blog, no mechanism to deeply impact my readers, and no accountability or focus to my blog-building. But the idea of going from zero revenues to ANYTHING meaningful seemed incredibly daunting. I set myself a goal and a deadline but wasn't sure how I was going to achieve it.
Just at the right time, I came across the Experience Product Masterclass. There was a great deal of material, but delivered in a gradual and progressive way that wasn't overwhelming. And it was a lot of work, but there was a real sense of momentum and excitement from day 1 onwards and a great sense of camaraderie and support in the Facebook community.
Having purchased courses that turned out to be a set of pre-recorded videos to watch, I really appreciated the personal interaction that was a hallmark of the process. Marisa was pretty accessible, in Q&A sessions, live coaching and the private Facebook community. And I was thrilled to be able to email my own Experience Coach as much as I needed, for encouragement and ideas - as well as hopping on weekly coaching calls too!
By the end of the program, I had made back way more than my original cost. I made $3814, had my first product, my first customers, and a roadmap to deliver a fantastic experience! Most importantly, I had a sustainable way to serve new people!
My achievement program, Rocket Results (rocketresults.co) helps people bring a new level of strategy, focus and discipline to their business, non-profit, or passion project.... so they achieve more in the next 12 weeks than they did in the last 12 months, and have the results and impact they truly deserve.
And the techniques the Experience Product Masterclass have both taught and demonstrated are allowing me to deeply engage with my customers and get them the outcomes they need.
EPM got me out of the endless cycle of "growing my list" and into action, forward movement, and concrete business results.
Hi I'm Richard Metcalf.
I'm an Englishman in Paris and I run a business called X quadrant. We help business owners and leaders multiply their impact by first of all becoming leaders truly worth following. And then we help them build high performing and healthy teams and organizations. I'm an experienced consultant with 20 years worth of experience in face to face consulting however translating my consulting knowledge into an online product and program was an entirely new endeavour.
I've been blogging for a while and built a small following but had zero revenues online and to go from zero to anything seems pretty daunting. It was a new challenge. I felt I was stalled. But on the other hand, the idea of going from zero to anything meaningful seemed a real challenge.
I came across EPM and was immediately attracted by Marisa's professionalism. But I also love the way that the course was structured bringing not just a bunch of online videos and modules which many online programs do have but it also brought a lot of face to face interaction with Marisa on Q&A's but also with coaches and other support which I felt was really going to help me take action on the material.Having bought a number of online programs which didn't always deliver what they promised I clearly had to think before going and making the investment.
On the other hand the promise of EPM was very clear: make back the cost of your original investment. However the promise of EPM was very clear make back your original investment in revenues in selling your new program or they would work with you until you make that money or eventually give you your money back. So I felt the guarantee was rock solid that I was pretty much set up to win.
There's a real sense of momentum in the program and camaraderie amongst the students. There's also a lot of support not only from Marisa and from the coaches but also from the whole tribe in the Facebook community. One key aspect of the course which was really foundational for me was getting crystal clear on the exact transformation that I wanted to see in my customers. In my case it was helping them achieve in 12 weeks what they had been unable to achieve in 12 months. Well if I had that clear everything else made a lot more sense.
My favourite part of the program was the coaching relationship. It was so great to have somebody available by email and during coaching hours to really brainstorm ideas and bounce ideas off and to validate my thinking and ensure that I was making progress in the right direction.
[00:08:52] Probably the hardest point in the program was the day I actually went live with my product launch. I opened up the sales page, opened up the sales carts and wondered would anybody come. Would anybody look at my what I'd prepared would anybody put out their credit card and make a purchase.
At that point. Marisa was great she reminded me that this feeling never goes away and you actually have to push through the feeling of doubt and uncertainty and just do the actions and trust the process. That really helped me knuckle down and be as active as I could to get customers on board with the program and it worked.
I think my biggest breakthrough with EPM was quite frankly taking action and getting the results. I had a successful launch with my pilot group of rocket results members and whilst I beat my financial targets made way more than my money back from the program. What was most satisfying was seeing my students get the results that they wanted in their businesses.
What I like most about working with Marisa was first of all she's extremely professional. Secondly, she's able o get people results pretty fast on those coaching tcalls which is really important. It was great to see people getting those breakthroughs. And thirdly she's firm and very approachable.
Epm taught me a sustainable way to serve new people and the tools and techniques that the Experience Product Masterclass has taught me have really enabled me to--and the techniques around building experience products are really enabling me to build my online and my physical business in such a way that customers really get the transformation that they need.
Its not just about transmitting information. I have one more line up where I want EPM got me out of the endless cycle of growing my email list and into action taking results and growing my business. I was really happy about the results of my EPM launch. I was hoping for around four or five customers in the end I got an initial cohort of around about 10 which brought in around 5000 dollars of revenue more than paying for the course.
But more than the money I've been most excited about the transformation that I've seen in my students they've gone in many cases from strangers to friends I've seen their progress some of them have come back to me on following EPM to ask me for additional services. And one of my students even invited me out for lunch when I was in his hometown. So it's been great to see both the relationships develop with students and also the transformation that they've seen in their lives and in their businesses.
Yeah. EPM has given me the confidence to build a true hybrid business which is consulting face to face with business executives but also rolling out online programs to employees in the organizations I serve and also to individual leaders and individual entrepreneurs or founders.
This has given me the ability to scale. There's only so many hours in the week, so whilst consulting is great to truly build something bigger and more sustainable I think the online component is essential and the experience product formula that Marisa taught me I'm able to use in both my physical business and in my online business.
Yeah. Okay. Yes and one of the things that I love about having my own business is the ability to be flexible in my schedule so that I can make time for both my family and my clients. And the online component allows me to be more location independent than I could be than if I was having to be physically present with customers every single day.
Yes. My my rocket result students are spread around multiple countries. When I was in London a few weeks ago I happened to let one of my students know that I was in town and he jumped at the chance to actually invite me out for fancy lunch in one of the nice restaurants in London which was great because before rocket results I don't really know the guy. And now we've become friends and I've become a trusted adviser.
My rocket results students have amazed me with their clarity of thought and the action that they've taken since the course. For example Robin who is the CEO of a software company after only a small part of the course, decided to make quite a radical change in his whole pricing model and his business model which is since implemented.
Another student Martin who is extremely accomplished professional as a freelancer and as a consultant has really changed again his whole portfolio of business to make something which is more sustainable for him and focus more on the outcomes that he truly wants to achieve in his life.
And then Ingrid who recently changed into a new corporate role has had a really flying start into that role. As a result of the rocket results methodology. Yeah. So yes, good point. Ingrid is one person who had been on my relatively small email list for a few months and who found that rocket results came just at the right time for her as she moved into a new corporate role. So she decided to jump in as a way to really give her a flying start into that new position. I think she was one of the great students in the course.
She really understood this idea of getting clear on your purpose your plan getting your productivity sorted out and then working on the people aspects of the influence around you. And as she worked on that, it was great to see the progress that she made she really established herself in her new role.
She never gave you some tricky relationships that she had to deal with as she came into that company. And since then she's reached out to me for some specific coaching and consulting and other topics that have come along since. So again another great example of somebody moving from a stranger or perhaps an acquaintance to somebody who's a real friend and with whom I now have a good long standing relationship.
I'm extremely proud of my rocket results clients. It's great to actually see them go through the process and apply it. I think thanks to some of the experience product techniques and actually get the transformation that they wanted to get more done than they ever thought possible. So it's been really satisfying to see them put that into practice.
Well it is hard work and you are going to have to hustle. At the end of the day to get customers in and make things happen there's no two ways around it. But it is a fantastic way to actually go about building a product getting a real business and forcing yourself to take the actions that you need to do that. And as my rocket results students will attest it does actually help you create a program that results in genuine transformation in your students.
Your Mission Accomplished Story
When I finished EPM, I hadn't hit Mission Accomplished yet and felt I had a lot more work to do before I was ready to get my program up and running. I had tried launching a program before EPM, before I was ready or had a clear mission forward and it flopped, so I didn't want to make the same mistakes as I had before. I am still working on putting my program together a couple weeks after the end of EPM, but have a clearer outlook of how to speed things along and how it will flow. I have yet to even launch my campaign, but an earlier lead that I had a sales call with early on in the program decided to contact me again and have another sales call. When we initially spoke, I wasn't clear on my mission or how I was structuring my program or of its value. Since then, I have made some clear decisions about who I am working with, my mission and the value of what I am offering. I realized the 1:1 work I am doing with clients is so much more than a regular online course and their outcome is in a sense, priceless, so I raised my price and even though I originally offered her a $997 beta price, I was able to sign her on a $3000 program price! I feel so much more confident and clear about what I am doing now and this has made all the difference.
What is your biggest takeaway from EPM?
The authentic support you give to all your attendees.
How did EPM help you become successful?
By giving me the tools to build a powerful and successful program.
How has EPM and your success impacted your life?
EMP has helped me gain trust in others and have faith in myself again after having some not-so-good experiences prior to EMP.
What has been the biggest change in your business?
Finding my focus.
What are you most excited about moving forward with your Experience Product?
I feel like I can finally do this now and that it's really happening after so much trial and error. I'm really excited to watch my own life continue to transform and become more of what I want for myself and my family.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
Thank you Marisa and Murray for being you and being an example for so many.
What is your biggest takeaway from EPM?
Regaining confidence in my own competence
How did EPM help you become successful?
The community and the coaching helped me to become more confident on facebook. The high quality visual training materials were a delight to look at and helped me to relax and trust ..and the content was excellent, too! It was less wild west internet and more considered which I really appreciated.
How has EPM and your success impacted your life?
Have got my mojo back! I had a year of cancer treatment and had expected after that to just bounce back .. but I didn't. So I am extremely grateful .
What has been the biggest change in your business?
I am less seduced by shiny object syndrome. I am more capable of settling down to make things happen.
What are you most excited about moving forward with your Experience Product? firstly to simply get back to running small in person courses, then I want to expand it and take it properly online.
Before: I have taught live/online/hybrid graduate-level project management courses for my university for ten years. But I never did any marketing, nor set up my own course delivery portal. I am now retired from academia, so I am a solo edu-preneur. My prior revenue for direct marketing teaching was $0.
For this program, I wanted to take the content I developed and taught academically, and streamline it into a powerful, practical offering that anyone in the world could take, online, on their own schedule. I wanted to remove the academic BS and experencify my material into a true experience product, and teach using the Socratic Method -- so my students are led to discover powerful insights, by themselves.
My EPM product is an online workshop: Critical Chain Project Management Breakthrough Bootcamp -- the next level in project management, and a new paradigm for consistently finishing projects early. The ideal customer is a project manager facing an impossible deadline. I have modeled my workshop directly on EPM in terms of the duration (8 weeks of content, 10 weeks elapsed), with 3 presentations, a coaching session, and a Q&A session each week. I especially appreciated the volume of content in this course -- everyone online seems to be so scared of OVERWHELM that they cut back their content to the minimum. I prefer to deliver mastery level material, and coach people how to handle it and apply it.
I have done many live/online/hybrid presentations -- but never to SELL. So the messaging and marketing material in this course is invaluable to me. To accomplish my mission, I did one live/recorded conference presentation (30 minutes) and one live/recorded webinar (90 minutes) following the plan for the Captive Audience and Reverse Webinar campaigns.
Because these were sponsored by a professional society that includes project managers, I could not make my offer directly/explicitly during the sessions. So I made two tweaks:
(1) I presented my offer as a specific example of what all/other experts in specific areas in the profession should be doing as "service to the profession". I told hat I'm doing, and you should be doing somet__this is what needs to happen, and this is whing just like this, because we need to grow, and that means people must be able to learn. So offer a course like this in your own specialty."
(2) I collected emails at the end of both sessions, and used the Website ATM campaign to actually sell and get money for my pilot course and a bonus one-day live workshop I'm doing December 17 in New York. [The idea for that came from my first Get Them What They Want campaign.]
I held an online semi-sales webinar on 11/20 at noon (to reach West Coast to Europe) and made $2K (two people signed up). Mission Accomplished! I am now using the Reverse Webinar campaign to leverage that for additional sales.
Update: Reverse Webinar Campaign kicks ass! Double Mission Accomplished! My pilot course is 6 weeks at $997 (half of the $1997 for my full course starting in Jan 2017). The bonus live one-day workshop is also $997 including meals. As of the end of EPM today (11/21), I have a total of five people signed up for $4985 and more are in process.
P.S. I want to especially thank Don Crowther for his tech tips and advice. The combination of Marisa's strategy and Don's how-to teaching (and the delightful contrast in their styles) was a very synergistic combination. Definitely retain this part of the course for the future. I love the techie stuff, and Marisa + Don is a powerful and unique combination
What is your biggest takeaway from EPM?
Experience products vs info products how to market online courses, campaigns & tactics How did EPM help you become successful? Marketing! a strong message is key.
How has EPM and your success impacted your life?
I now know how to refine great content to a marketable product, and how to incrementally refine that marketing to ramp up success.
What has been the biggest change in your business?
Confidence.
What are you most excited about moving forward with your Experience Product?
I can bring high powered corporate "new product development" methods to solo entrepreneurs -- they don't have to go on the "pivot merry go round" to find their success
Is there anything else you would like to add?
Experience products vs info products is a game changer -- more people need to understand this difference
Your Mission Accomplished Story
I wasn't sure how to market myself better to get more offers and clients. Experience Product gave me a lot of ideas to use, and I did 3 European seminars with most attendance I ever had. And as a result, I am getting some great feedback, and more offers are coming.
Some of the concepts she talks about came naturally to me, and it did not take long to implement. For example, Bird's Eye View, I would give my students overall pictures of why you need to learn this movement or technique and how to apply a real situation, rather than just repeating techniques, which is more conventional. Constant wins work well with what I teach. Progressions of drills give students small wins and expand themselves to bigger wins. And I create my training where each student feels good about himself at the end of the day. I am finding more confidence in what I present and the brand that I am creating for myself. It's still just a start.
What are you most excited about moving forward with your Experience Product?
I wanted to make an online course but I had to change it because of my time restraint. Now that I have more time, I could go back to study and tackle that.