Okay! Resharing my story in the correct thread,
The EPM came to my attention in 2020 after several natural and personal disasters left me near-destitute and needing to rebuild my career. It was hard to part with the $2000 program fee, especially since I’ve taken several other high-priced business courses which did not deliver. But the EPM money-back guarantee sealed the deal. I get it back if I do all the steps and don’t succeed? Okay!
Despite being a known self-publishing industry expert, blogger, podcaster, journalist, author, and consultant, I have not been able to engage as many authors as I’d like to the programs I know they need to succeed. Why? In retrospect, it was probably because I couldn’t articulate the cost-benefit solution in a way they understood. The EPM literally gave me templates for writing and saying the words out loud in a particular order, asking strategic questions along the way and leading me, and my future customers, through the process.
Holy moly, it was uncomfortable to parrot words that were not mine! But it was the practice I needed, and with a few adjustments for my own voice, it worked perfectly. Only half-way through EPM I was able to clearly and confidently articulate an offer to address and correct the book marketing problems most authors share, bundle my relevant online courses, and create a one:few beta group program. I sold it quickly and now, half-way through, participants aeyore bnd thrilled at their learning, progress, and results.
My focus for the EPM project was the Five-Star Book Launch Masterclass, which promises authors twenty or more five-star reviews when their book launches. Because I already have a decent audience and reputation, I used surveys and chatterboxing to sell all eight seats in the beta program at the reduced price of $997. I actually gave two authors half off because I really wanted them in it and I felt they’d give me the best feedback. Boom! $6000. And my intuition was correct. They have given me the best, most valuable feedback.
I was a little nervous because I have a private client who is keeping me pretty busy and also, every year in November, I start to invest a lot of time organizing, speaking, and promoting a popular writing conference. Oddly, they canceled the conference and didn’t make it virtual. I was incredibly disappointed, but quickly filled the gap with a project of the heart that I’d been timid about before now.
Enter win #2, the Your Motorcycle Diaries travel writing workshop. It’s an eight-week workshop on the craft that includes my travel writing online course, a weekly story workshop, and peer feedback. To give a little background, I’ve been a motorcyclist almost all my life, and have worked as a moto-journalist, editor, author, and speaker in this niche. The niche also spills over into the bigger adventure, overlanding, and power sports niche, and also into the women’s solo travel niche. My activities have been lagging these past years in this niche, but I'm back!
The mission for Your Motorcycle Diaries is to finish at least one publishable story by the end of the program and, along the way, learn how to structure and create consistently publishable stories. Only four weeks into the program, three of the 15 writers have met that goal and the others clearly will. It’s been awesome as there are new writers in the group and (I am pleased to say) a handful of widely-published journalists who joined to hone their craft and test some of their more-challenging stories.
I announced the Your Motorcycle Diaries travel writing workshop at the virtual Women’s Motorcycle Conference, for which I was a speaker back in November 2020. I sold the workshop to conference attendees for half-price at $99, and then for $197 after the conference ended. All combined, I sold 5 seats at $97 and 10 seats at $197, collecting $2146.80 from the 15 beta workshop participants. Magazine editors are even jumping in to help me teach, articulating their guidelines and deconstructing their favorite stories for the online course segment of my program. (In return, they get well-edited stories for their magazines, right?) And, like I said, that wasn’t even my focus for EPM. But EPM had already given me a repeatable template and the confidence to state my offering in a way that both came from the heart and sold the program.
So those are two amazing wins. There’s a third. The moto writers workshop and the cancellation of the writers conference gave me the confidence and the time to reach out even bigger with my brand (summarized as Carla King @MissAdventuring: Adventures in Travel, Writing, and Publishing) to create an Adventure Writers Conference (AWC) for writers and editors in the powersports niche: motorcycling, 4x4s, trawlers, and more.
After some chats with events organizers who run related events, they are interested in adding the writing conference to their events. Industry influencers are even jumping in with offers to co-host. The first AWC, which will be virtual, is on the calendar for September.
To say that Live Your Message is all coming together for me is an understatement. It’s pretty intense, and sometimes I feel physically dizzy as I try to keep up with the opportunities as they come in. The opportunity to partner with organizations in the adventure travel niche has been especially rewarding, as has the unexpected opportunity to work with two professional authors associations. (Can I say that's win #4?)
All this activity working with writers and editors and adventure industry professionals fits my nomadic lifestyle so perfectly. The first AWC will be virtual, and there will always be a virtual component to what I hope will become a live event that moves around the world. I can offer this anywhere and partner with organizations everywhere. Right now I’ve got Chang Mai on my calendar for November.
Live Your Message, right? What a perfect description of what this has turned out to be—initiation into an infinite feedback loop where you do what you love to help people who help you help people live their dream and live your dream.
A heartfelt thank you, Marisa. and to the team you’ve gathered around you. The Live Your Message - Experience Product Masterclass journey you’ve created has guided me to overcome my challenges, waking up every day with the confidence I am in control of achieving the lifestyle of my dreams.
Carla King @MissAdventuring
Adventures in Travel, Writing and Publishing