"When I first joined EPM, I was not at all committed to the cause.
My partner Don thought it would be helpful, and I hesitantly agreed, so we went ahead and joined.
Even though I had a course idea I desperately needed help building, we were in the middle of our first real product launch so I didn’t think we had time for EPM. We were also about to leave for an anniversary trip. Plus, I had done A LOT of online training recently, and was feeling fatigue and resistance to yet another one.
With everything that was going on, we fell weeks behind in EPM. But when we finally came up for air and logged into the course, we were highly impressed with the content and amazed at the level of coaching support. So we decided to binge-watch the training and feverishly took action on it.
With support and encouragement from our wonderful coach, Emily, we started to catch up. We pushed forward with our idea to create a book writing course for kids that would help boost their confidence, find their voice, and encourage their creativity.
Then we came to the Bird’s Eye View outlining task, and we stalled. We fell behind once again. Holiday breaks were unproductive, especially when covid-19 hit my family and an uncle and cousin died as a result.
When we logged back into EPM in January, we were yet again weeks behind where we should have been. According to the schedule, it was time to start marketing and launching but we still needed to decide on our course outline. Catching up felt impossible.
But this creative writing course was one of our biggest goals for 2021. So we buckled down and broke through our mental blocks. Again we sprinted through the training and with Coach Emily’s help we took action.
We started to catch up again but we were seriously running out of time to hit Mission Accomplished. I was about ready to give up on launching in January and just settle for graduating. But Don wouldn’t have it.
So we laid out an ambitious schedule to launch the last two weeks of January. We came up with a 3 pronged approach to launch our Book Creators Club for Kids: chatterboxing, lead magnet promoted by Facebook ads, and email marketing. Normal price - $297, Founding Group price - $147.
Our free Treasure Map Template for story outlining was a huge hit. We got great feedback from our existing audience and we added a thousand people to our 4k email list. Going into our open cart, we were feeling excited and optimistic.
Day one of registration arrived for our Book Creators Club... and we didn’t get a single sale. A knot formed in my stomach. I started to doubt everything. But keeping in mind the Marketing Mindf**k and Coach Emily’s reassurance, we trudged on with our planned 5-day campaign.
On day 2 of the launch, we got our first enrollment. Hooray! we thought. Now the sales will start rolling in. Only 13 more to go to hit mission accomplished.
But we only got the one sale that day. And one more sale on day 3. What were we doing wrong? I made updates to our sales page and tried different angles in our emails. On day 4, we got zero enrollments. So we had a total of 2 students for the first 4 days of our open cart. Super disappointing.
Feeling thoroughly discouraged, I went back to watching EPM trainings and listening to coaching call replays to make sure we could at least graduate, and possibly uncover a gold nugget.
It was during one of the coaching call replays that I realized something: we weren’t doing enough chatterboxing. I was extremely uncomfortable with the strategy, but it seemed to be one of the themes of success among those who had already achieved mission accomplished, or close to it.
With my heart beating like crazy, I posted a vulnerable note about the Book Creators Club on my personal Facebook page. Then I reached out to anyone in my professional network that I thought might be interested or might know someone who could be interested in our creative writing course for kids. Not everyone responded, but many did, and they were surprisingly supportive.
On day 5 of our launch, we got 8 enrollments!! Some were from our existing email list, some were from our new freebie subscribers, and some were from chatterboxing. We were back in the game! By Saturday night we needed at least 4 more students to register for the course.
The challenge was, our 5-day discounted price was ending. But with Coach Emily’s guidance, we raised the price to the full $297 at midnight and kept registration open. There were only two days left to hit mission accomplished.
On Sunday morning, we woke up to a sale at full price! YAY! We just needed one more at full price. Then a new subscriber emailed us saying a storm had knocked out her power for the past couple days so she wasn’t able to register on time. We offered to honor the discounted price and she accepted.
We still needed at least one more enrollment. And we got it! Through chatterboxing to family! Unfortunately, the person who had purchased at full price early that morning was a family friend, and we didn’t feel right about them not getting the family discount. So we refunded half their money. We were back to needing one more sale.
Exhausted but hopeful, I sent out one last email to our abandon carts on Sunday afternoon. Monday evening I received a response from one of those abandon carts who turned out to be a referral from chatterboxing. She became our 14th enrollment. Just in time. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
Lesson learned: chatterboxing may be uncomfortable, but it works! We got a third of our sales from our original 4k list, a third from our new 1k subscribers, and a third from chatterboxing.
This experience has created huge momentum for us. It was the most expensive offer we’ve ever made and the most resourceful we’ve ever been to meet our goal. Don and I are excited to now deliver the beta course to our students and have confidence that we can do even better next time we launch.
Thanks EPM Team! #Couragepodforever"