" My EPM Story
I currently operate a nascent startup Venture Studio, a business that, in partnership with strategic allies, develops and accelerates small businesses into fully scaled LLCs. The goal is to foster individual wealth creation and drive economic growth in local communities.
The Challenge
Operating a venture studio as a single entrepreneur presents significant challenges. The workload is immense, compounded by the traditional obstacles every startup faces—lack of support, limited team members, and difficulty securing financing. Accessing any form of funding for a venture studio, especially in its early stages, or any of the businesses developed therein, is nearly insurmountable.
For a venture studio like mine, with projects ready to enter the market, launching the first successful business is the key to establishing credibility. A proven track record opens doors to business loans and potential investment capital, which can fuel further growth. However, I found myself stuck—I had a viable business model, but securing the funding to launch was a major roadblock.
To generate income for bootstrapping my startup, I explored several traditional business opportunities. However, each required a significant time investment, pulling focus away from my core venture. The trade-off was unsustainable.
How I Found Live Your Message
At this point, I was actively seeking ways to increase my authority and establish an image of success. One option I considered was authorship—writing a book to position myself as an expert in a specific field. I enrolled in a program led by a successful New York Times bestselling author, who used AI-generated content to co-author works designed for both credibility and revenue generation.
During my time in this program, I received promotional emails about various business opportunities, one of which repeatedly highlighted Marisa Murgatroyd’s coaching business. The endorsements were glowing—Marisa had built a highly successful program that generated extraordinary revenue while helping entrepreneurs build and scale their businesses.
Curious, I visited her website, LiveYourMessage.com, and found that the praise was well-deserved. I watched a video of Marisa explaining her approach, and I was immediately captivated. She was engaging, inspiring, and, most importantly, a marketing genius. Her experiential learning and experiential product development framework resonated deeply with me.
I knew right away that this was the perfect fit for me. Everything I had done up to that point in my life was grounded in experiential learning.
Why It Resonated
During college, while studying marketing, I didn’t just focus on theory—I created hands-on business opportunities as part of my coursework. Even though some ventures weren’t designed for long-term success, they were invaluable learning experiences. I developed business and marketing plans through real-world application, not just textbooks.
This same approach carried into my career as a firefighter. Everything was taught through experience. Senior firefighters mentored younger ones by demonstrating techniques, assessing situations visually, and engaging in hands-on training. We learned by doing—whether it was cutting ventilation holes, stretching a hose line to a fire, or, in the early days, even learning various ways to breath in smoke filled environments, with the limited availability of modern self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA).
Experiential learning has always been my preferred method of education, whether in business, firefighting, or any other endeavor. While people learn in different ways, this hands-on approach is what works best for me. That’s why Marisa’s program was such a natural fit as it aligned perfectly with the way I learn, work, and build businesses.
Joining the Experience Product Masterclass (EPM)
In early October, I joined Live Your Message’s Experience Product Masterclass (EPM) without fully knowing what to expect. However, as I reviewed the program structure, I quickly realized this was unlike anything I had encountered before in terms of marketing, organization, and product development.
The program was incredibly comprehensive. Marisa’s detailed presentation of the system—how it worked, why it worked, and how to implement it—was a masterclass in preparation and instruction. With clear, instructive diagrams and intuitive flowcharts, she broke down complex concepts into actionable steps.
One of the core principles of the program was reverse engineering success, taking our ultimate, big-picture goal (our ""Major Mission Accomplished"" outcome) and working backward to develop a single Minimum Viable Product (MVP). This method was strikingly like inverse catastrophic emergency planning, a process I was deeply familiar with from my experience in emergency services.
In emergency response, we start with the worst-case scenario and strategically plan backward to ensure the best possible outcome. EPM applied this same logic to business—except instead of planning for disaster, we were mapping out the most effective path to profitable and sustainable entrepreneurial success.
It was fascinating to see how different disciplines—entrepreneurship and emergency service planning—shared similar strategic foundations. The synergy between these experiences made the process feel both familiar and powerful.
Discovering My Most Viable Product
Walking back from our big-picture goal to our Minimum Viable Product (MVP), we had to determine which niche our experience product would fall into. Many participants in the program were creating products in the form of seminars, webinars, and coaching programs—offering expertise in areas like mental health, fitness, and professional development.
At first, I struggled to see how my projects fit within that framework. My business ventures were focused on tangible, patentable products—not coaching or training programs. I was developing innovative packaging solutions and had a travel agency ready for launch. While I saw the potential of the Live Your Message system to help bring these businesses to market, neither felt like the right fit for an experience product.
I needed something that aligned with Marisa’s framework—a business built around a transformative experience. But at that moment, I didn’t have one. I wasn’t alone in this. Many participants were also searching for an idea, trying to pinpoint an experience-based product that felt authentic and viable.
The Breakthrough Moment
Then, a breakthrough happened. During a session discussing the most profitable business sectors, I scrolled through the list, reflecting on my personal experiences. I wanted something current, something I was actively working on—not something from five, ten, or fifteen years ago.
Then I saw it: Health & Wellness.
It hit me immediately. Over the past year, I had undergone a total physical transformation. I had been classified as Class 3 Obese, a serious condition, and had struggled with coronary artery disease (CAD), multiple stents, and the physical limitations that came with it. Balancing these health challenges while maintaining a demanding schedule was incredibly difficult.
But I had turned it around. Through my own self-designed fitness and rehabilitation program, I combined aerobic and non-aerobic exercise, light weightlifting, and a structured movement regimen that I called Perpetual Motion. The results were remarkable:
I lost 175 lbs. in less than a year.
I improved my cardiovascular health to an excellent rating.
My metabolic age dropped to 32 years old—a dramatic improvement.
This wasn’t just a personal achievement—it was a proven system that could help others, especially older adults struggling with obesity and the loss of muscle mass. This was my experience product.
A Greater Mission
Initially, my plan was to develop this fitness program for older, retired men and women facing similar health challenges. But as I reflected on my workouts, my thoughts kept returning to a greater purpose—a way to give back on a larger scale.
I considered traditional fundraising events like charity runs and walks, but I realized I wasn’t quite in shape for a full marathon yet. Then it hit me—why not turn every step into a micro-donation?
A fundraising model where every step taken generates funds for a chosen cause.
The more I thought about it, the more viable it seemed. Nowhere had I ever seen a system that monetized every single step taken by a person for charitable giving.
And that’s when I had my true breakthrough:
We Step Together—an AI-driven, global fundraising system where every step becomes a micro-donation.
At first, I thought this idea might be too ambitious for an MVP. But my coaches, Coach Melanie and Coach Jennifer, both saw its potential. For the first time in a long time, I had a support system guiding me through the process, ensuring my ideas turned into something real.
Bringing It All Together
Over 12 weeks, I built We Step Together from the ground up—developing the concept, the marketing framework, and an expansive AI-driven system, all without prior experience in AI development. It was an intensive process, but thanks to the structure of the program and the encouragement of my coaches, I successfully graduated from EPM with a fully developed business plan.
What stands out most is that this wasn’t just about learning marketing or business development—it was about rediscovering purpose.
For years, I had been searching for a way to bring all my experiences together—my background in emergency services, my business ventures, my personal health transformation. We Step Together was the culmination of everything I had worked toward in life.
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