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Juliet Le Breton's Honest Experience Product Masterclass review

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Juliet Le Breton

Did I accomplish my mission? Not yet. Do I feel certain that I'm on the road to success? Yes, yes, yes.

Confession time. I've been a wannapreneur for two years. Two long years on that emotional rollercoaster. Two years of hoping, praying, needing, pushing like h£ll to get to success, of relentless enthusiasm, of exhaustion, of burnout, of desperation, of fear - and at the end of it, all I have is a five figure debt and a broken heart.

For days now I have got up - full of bubbly excitement, rushed to my desk to begin to have an impact - make sales, share my message and genius with the world. Some days I have succeeded in doing this. Most days I've allowed myself to get pulled off track. And there have been many, many days when I have been furious with myself - I know I can do it. I want to do it, I can help people, I have helped people before, all I need to do is figure out how to do a tiny shift of what I was so successful at before and I'll find my tribe, my genius, my success. And there have been days when I've felt so bleak I didn't want to get out of bed. Or so excited as I invest another crazy sum of money I don't have and am secretly not sure I can make - on the latest magic bullet solution to all my problems. Each time my hopes spiral to the stratosphere as I think I have found "the answer".

And the irony is, that I've known the answer all along. "The answer is within," so the gurus say, as many of them (not Marisa) gleefully extract charge another 4 figure sum from credit card. "You know what to do, I'm just breaking it down for you - making it easy. All you need is my super duper wooper secret success formula which hypnotises your clients into buying your service and gets them screaming for more." The crazy thing is, in my heart, I knew most of them wouldn't work. I don't want to hypnotise anyone into buying my service or product, nor do I want a formulaic business in a box.

Actually all I want is impact. And when I say impact, I don't mean a million dollars in the bank. I'd much rather make a difference to a million lives - help lift people of poverty and despair. You see, I'm lucky. I may have a five figure debt, I may be living on the edge of burnout, I may be frustrated and stuck - but I have a house, and food on the table, a beautiful garden, and my health. And I live in a country where over 90% of people don't. And they are the ones I want to help.
So then one of those days when I was so frustrated with myself, and my choices and fed up with not making an impact, and not having success and not being able to make ends me - it struck me. I'd actually rather go broke than that run a business with the same morals as many I have seen around me. I have no desire to feed off people's fears and bamboozle them into parting with their hard won last resources. If that's what it takes to run a successful business, screw that, I'd rather go broke. And so that's exactly what I'd done. Oh crap.

And the worst thing was - I'd been a success in the past. Go back one more year to three years ago-- I was making 6 figures a year as an independent international development consultant, working with the United Nations and governments to help their citizens make good healthcare decisions so that they wouldn't put themselves at risk of diseases such as HIV. cholera, malaria etc. I'd invest 20 years and worked in 26 countries trying making a difference, and had got disillusioned when so much of my best work had been mired down in government bureaucracy, or political wrangling, and very little of it implemented. And I realised that the best way to develop a country is empower women entrepreneurs - people with a small business are already striving to improve their lives and development data shows that women invest 90% of their income in their families, communities and nations which leads to an upward spiral of development and growth.

So that's how I identified my target niche for my new social enterprise two years back. It had an incredible vision of working with mid level women entrepreneurs, helping them to develop their enterprises beyond subsistence to sustainability and growth, and then empowering them to turn around and mentor/coach their peers to follow in their footsteps. I wasn't just going to change a few lives. By the time I'd mapped out my vision trained women entrepreneurs were supporting each other, consumer campaigns where urging the public to buy products and services that were made by women-owned companies, even the governments were coming on board to support the plan. In my head, at least! I couldn't just change a few lives, or even a country, I could revolutionise women's lives all across Africa. And perhaps even beyond. OMG. This became my new raison d'etre.

And even though I am incredibly shy and loathe the public eye, I realised I was going to have to be a leader. And leaders are visible. So I screwed up my courage and did a TEDx talk - it was the first public speech I'd ever done. In for a penny, in for a pound, right? If I've got to make a leap, it might as well be a huge one. So I started with a TED talk and I was made a Global Ambassador for Empowering a Billion Women by 2020 the week before and I was so excited to launch my new business on Women's Entrepreneurship Day, two days after my TED talk, with a fanfare of pride and delight. Hundreds of people signed up to come to the opening workshop. I worked all night to perfect the training materials, and rushed to the venue early to set up.

Long story short, not a single person showed up. Apart from the caterer, with a bill for $400 and lunch for 20 people. On the way home, I got stopped by a police officer who fined me erroneously for not stopping at a Stop sign - I did but the line was so far back from the corner of the road that I then had to creep forward to see if the road was clear before making my turn. That was the great and glorious start to my new enterprise.

And two years later, as I learned about the Experience Product Masterclass, my enterprise had held a number of training events, which barely broke even, given away a lot of useful training material and advice, consumed every waking hour, and was still not able to make ends meet. A business-to-business company I consulted for through my husband's company had just increased their revenue by a factor of ten based on some marketing advice I'd given them - so I knew how to do it. I just wasn't doing the right things in my enterprise. In my head that made me a fraud, a fool, and the world's worst entrepreneur. And so I'd kept searching for the answer, kept signing up for webinars to see what I could find. I'm on about 400 mailing lists. I was drowning in good intentions, half completed projects, and debt. Despite my big smile to the world. I was miserable.

And then EPM came along. And it made so much sense. A revolutionary way of teaching, to make it fun and motivating to students so that they will actually watch all the training and a way of incentivising them with fun rewards so that they keep on showing up and doing the homework. I'd done a course with Marisa before - Call to Adventure - and had been deeply impressed with the quality of her training, depth of her insight, and her ability to make things fun. And this offer, well it cut through my cynicism. This was something different - not run of the mill internet marketing hype. This was a new way of learning, of teaching, of sharing and of helping confused and stuck entrepreneurs (like me) break through, get results and finally, finally shine. And there was a no-brainer guarantee. Make your money back or we'll give it back! Who offers that?! Only someone with deep integrity, someone who totally believes I can get the result she's promised. No switch and bait here, no phoney claims of incredible results, no default option to blame me if I don't get the results even if I had done the work. Finally, a person of integrity. Offering something of huge value, with all the extra support I needed.

I signed up and committed fully to the course. The classes ran til 1am my time, but I was doing them anyway. I did what it took. And yes I procrastinated, and got sucked into fear and perfectionism and distraction. But I kept showing up. Kept doing the work. Did my best. Emailed the coach, even though I hate asking for help (I used to say I was culturally impaired to ask for help - I think its true, but if you don't ask for it you won't get it. I had to get over that as much as possible. And I had a great coach who instantly got the measure of me and made me feel comfortable - thanks Mike!)

Nine weeks later, here I am - an impact entrepreneur. I finally have confidence, direction and momentum. I honestly have more progress in 8 weeks than I have during the last two years. I have tested an offer, developed an opt-in, done a high ticket offer to potential clients - something that I know they will love, and I'm so thrilled to deliver. And the biggest difference is in my mindset. I've always known I can do it - I can make a difference - and I can have this huge world changing impact I've dreamed of. I've never been afraid of hard work, and I love to work all night to meet a deadline and then feel proud of myself for not compromising my exacting standards doing it. (Excellence drives me - another reason I was attracted to work with Marisa!). But now I believe i can do it. I've figured out how I can offer something of incredible value to people I already know - and use that to help the people I want to help who can't afford me. I had an idea of how to do this before - but now I'm actually doing it. I have practical strategies that I can follow - and adapt - and the clarity and confidence of knowing how long to keep going and what criteria to evaluate whether a new service or offer is going to work or not a good fit with my new market segments. It has a been a long journey to get here but I know success is within sight. There is light at the end of the tunnel.

The biggest lesson to me is that I can't change the world on my own. I knew this of course, which is why I'd worked with UN, and governments and aid agencies for so long - I thought they were the best lever for eradicating poverty and bringing about sustainable development. But for me they take too long. The best lever is through working with entrepreneurs. And the irony is that I get to combine my two weirdly disconnected worlds that I can expertly navigate and bring them together to create a revolutionary new kind of service and to make revolutionary changes to people's businesses, and lives around the world. I get to work with high level entrepreneurs - women I love and look up to -who have successful 6-8 figure businesses, and I get to link them with women back home in Africa who are trying to get by, trying to survive an incredibly hostile business and social environment - trying to take their business to the next level. And through this process I get to help business leaders around the world discover how to tap into their longheld dreams of changing the world - of making their own huge world changing impact for a social or environmental cause they love. And this makes my impact so much more than I could ever do - ever dream of - this is way beyond little old me. It's a revolution. for business. For lives. For social change. For the world.
And it all began with the EPM.

You'll laugh because "Oh crap!" has become my new rally cry. I say it every time I go into the fray, as all my excuses fall away and I know I'm going to have to do whatever it was I've been worrying about and putting off. If I want to make a difference, and make a dollar, if I want to increase my impact, my influence and my impact. I'd better get on with it then. And every time it gets a little easier. I just smile, saddle up the war charger, shout my rally cry and off I gallop, superhero cape streaming behind me and my clients, coaches and entrepreneur besties (BFs) beside me. Or so I'd like to think. We're allowed to have fun when changing the world, right?