Your GRADUATION Story
"I did it. After 3 years of watching the EPM webinars, I finally bit the bullet, dug through old birthday cards from my mom to find $100 bills, wiped out my ‘spending money’ bank account, and hit that big, scary, “Buy Now” button. “Ka-ching,” I’m in. Yikes! I’ve been wanting to start a digital course for years. I worked at Social Media Examiner for TEN years, surrounded by experts in every form of digital marketing… But I never had an idea for a business, or the confidence to take the first step.
A month or so before watching the EPM sales webinars for the third time (I think?), an idea came to me in the middle of the night: Joy Scouts. It was perfect! I had a concept, a name, a new URL, and I was ready to go. But it was terrifying to push that button. $2500 is a LOT of money to me. I put everything into this investment.
I jumped in, excited and ready, but struggled to fit all the live sessions and recorded sessions and homework around my full time job. It was a lot, and I missed the deadline for a milestone in only the second week, realizing later that I had just invalidated my guarantee, right from the start. I kept on going, knowing that I HAD to make back my $2500 now.
The sessions were broken down into logical building blocks. Some were a little too simple, some were way too much, but the logic and the organization was beautiful. I wished there were more videos I could do over Thanksgiving. Then, BAM! December hit and everything fell apart. A business trip threw off my schedule. Several really intense sections with really short deadlines set me behind. I realized that the product I was developing didn’t feel anything like ME, and I needed to backtrack. All this, while traveling, holidays, and family obligations were in full swing.
In January, the pressure to start chatterboxing came from all sides. I didn’t have a product to sell yet. I was working on that–all the time. I was sick. I was tired. I was behind. It was raining. And I was failing. Happy Birthday. I finally pulled out of my funk when I shut out the noise for awhile and stopped caring about the EPM deadlines (sorry!), and stopped trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. This is MY business, and it’s MY money spent on a really good program that’s just pushing too fast. I spent 2 weeks focused on developing my product, creating something I’m ready to deliver.
I officially launched yesterday, January 28. The day before the end. I’m ready-enough, and I’m starting.
I’m glad I had the push and the structure of EPM to get me moving. I’m excited to see where Joy Scoutz goes.
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I started it It ruined Christmas, but I'm happy to have made a start. Success will come in 2024. MVP and Iterate Your Way to Awesome I know the important things to consider when starting a new business. I can use these techniques for many other projects.
"-Overall, EPM is a great course. I love the building block progression of it, and the way it guides you through important decisions at the start. The live sessions, the videos, the coaching, the FB Group, the Milestones doc, the workbook pages...It's got all the pieces, and they're really well tested and thought out to guide you through the process. The one big problem I had with EPM (and most or all of my many points of feedback below are related to this...) is the speed and the timing. Maybe it's fine for someone creating a course out of a business they already do, but for me, developing a brand new concept from scratch, it felt way too rushed. It did get me into action, which is great. But from the bird's eye view onward, I felt like an entire section on actually developing your product was skipped or glossed over. It went from 'make an outline' to 'start chatterboxing.' And I'm not ready to sell something I can't deliver. The entire month of January was just...pressure. I kind of gave up on EPM's deadlines and goals, realizing that I needed to create a product that I would be proud of--and not worry about the EPM stats. So...apologies for the ranting below. I'm happy with EPM overall, but stressed about this one critical element of it.
-I would suggest separate FB groups for the SuperCharge track people. I believe the intent was that they would motivate people who weren't as far along as they were, but it had the opposite effect for me. Seeing their posts about surveys and logos and chatterboxing in early December was a distraction, and made me feel stressed and panicked that I was falling behind.
-Speaking of chatterboxing, please either put that video earlier in the lineup, or ask the coaches to not start pushing people to do it before it's even released.
-The single FB posts for sharing things like the mission statement were unwieldy, since the comments got into the thousands. Maybe create one for each pod?
-Holding this 12 week challenge over the holidays was really awful timing. I ended up neglecting many of my family obligations & celebrations because I was struggling to get all the assignments done (see comment below about Milestones 11,12,13), and for all the hours I put into it, I still ended up without a completed product, or a sale. Lots of regret there...
-Please stop calling EPM Live ""Free."" It's not free, it's $100 until and unless you offer a way to opt out of the swag box. This falls into the ""slimy marketer semantics"" category, which as a marketer myself, I can't stand.
-The Guarantee is misleading. The requirements and deadlines are unrealistic. Two items in particular: Milestones 11, 12, & 13 - ONE WEEK was allotted to designing your entire product after the videos were released. This is not viable for someone developing a completely new concept like I was. Why not at least release these videos before the Thanksgiving holiday week, and give more time to truly think things through? I understand and agree with the MVP concept, but this time frame did not allow for a level of quality that I'm willing to put my name on. Second, the number of chatterbox conversations for a low-priced product is not feasible. Mine was in the thousands. What a joke. The low number of claims against the guarantee which sounds so great during the sales webinar isn't because people didn't want to make a claim... (= slimy marketing semantics #2)
-I earned the T-shirt by getting to 100 points (ONE deadline that I met--I was really excited about that) but the email to claim it came while I was traveling, and only gave TWO DAYS notice to reply with your size, etc. So that was disappointing...A little more time would have been helpful.
-It would have been nice to see a list of each person's EP & mission statement at the end of the course. I'd love to see the variety of topics people were working on. I saw many interesting topics mentioned in passing in the FB Group, and would love to know how they ended up. It would also be helpful to facilitate networking among people in similar fields who may want to help each other or collaborate.
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