Your Mission Accomplished Story
I began my journey with EPM rather unsure of which direction to pursue. I had a great deal of experience in marketing---three decades plus---and had worked in and across a variety of industries, with both huge Fortune 500 companies as well as a variety of teensy little startups...but the common throughline in my career was education.
I decided to go back to where my career initially began---teaching---and to fuse that with what I've come to love in terms of structure and delivery: coaching, on both an individual and group basis.
CollegeComm is a service (and I've now booked $7700 in revenue as a direct result of what I learned in EPM) in which I'm helping high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors hone their written and spoken communication skills so that they can not only crush their college applications, but also succeed and flourish in college and beyond as world-class communicators. As you well know, there's a growing industry of professionals helping well-heeled families and their kids engineer ""great"" application essays in order to scale the Ivy wall, as it were---but I think that this approach does a grave disservice to the teens in question. For want of a better term, it's a ""one-and-done"" It does little to prepare the teens in question for the avalanche of papers and presentations they'll face in college and grad school. I feel it's far better, from a long-term perspective, to teach these young people to listen, respond rather than react, and communicate in person and on paper with grace, poise, and impact so that they can establish a firm foundation for their downstream scholastic, vocational, and interpersonal pursuits. My two cents, anyway.
And since this is is a legacy project for me, I intend to divert 15-20% of my profits to families who can't afford my services. I think that giving back especially at this stage of my career, is a really important thing to do.
What is your biggest takeaway from EPM?
That I have, until now, focused more on process than on experience in virtually all of my marketing and sales initiatives. In my capacity as a sales and biz dev guy in Japan and Europe (and, to a lesser degree, here in the United States), I've cultivated the capacity to listen, and *really* love hearing what my customers have to say rather than putting my own agenda first. I've become much better at being present and being in the moment---but to be honest, it's a work in process. I believe that, until rather recently, I've been more than a wee bit unaware of the importance of *experience* in the customer journey---and so EPM was a serious eye opener for me---one that I'll never forget. I fully intend to sign up for the Mentorship Program later on this year (assuming Marisa will have me :) ).
How did EPM help you become successful?
Please see above. I'm a better man---business and otherwise---for the work I've put in and, to whatever degree possible, the service I've been able to deliver to my fellow classmates along our collective journey.
How has EPM and your success impacted your life?
Well, here's a metaphor that might just resonate with you: once you pickle a cucumber, you can never "unpickle" it. I'm forever changed---for the better, I might add---for the experience I've been through over the past few months. Period.
What has been the biggest change in your business?
In addition to the MBA I earned 30 years ago, I have a masters in clinical psychology. I thought I'd developed a pretty solid facility for listening during the three years I spent as an intern in an inner-city LA mental health clinic...but I must say that EPM has added an important later to that skill set. I'm still unpacking what I've learned here, and at this stage find it somewhat difficult to fully articulate the feelings I have around my EPM experience. Suffice it say that they're extremely positive.
What are you most excited about moving forward with your Experience Product?
Building on what I've learned, joining the Mentorship Program, being of greater service to my clients, colleagues, loved ones, and fellow humans...and much more.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
So very much more! I can't possibly thank Marisa, Coach Paul, and the entire LYM team for this truly life-altering experience. My heart is smiling and I'm filled---overflowing, in fact---with gratitude :)