← Courage & Clarity
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
Steph Crowder
Foreign welcome to the Courage and Clarity podcast. I'm your host, Steph Crowder. I'm a former sales training director who's helped thousands of entrepreneurs earn a living doing something they love over the past 10 years. On your journey, you'll need the courage to be bold, to take risks, and to do what looks crazy on paper. You'll also need the clarity, the brass tacks, simple strategies that actually work. And on this podcast, we deliver both in equal measure. Oh, and by the way, we've got absolutely no time for bs, gross marketing tactics or get rich quick schemes. Just sustainable business strategies for good humans with big dreams. If that sounds like you, you're in the right place. Let's go. Hello there CNC listeners. Welcome back to the podcast. Who's ready to debrief a launch? I know y'all love a good old fashioned launch debrief episode. I personally love listening to this type of episode. I mean, don't we all right, we're nosy. Beyond just being nosy though, I really think as a business owner it's of course just so helpful to hear what is working, what's working out there for other people in our industry, maybe in a slightly different industry. I think it's so helpful, beneficial and smart to stay up on new strategies, new tactics, new ways of approaching some of the age old sales problems that are not going away anytime soon, but just, you know, stepping outside of your own box. Especially for those of us who are running online, businesses don't necessarily have coworkers per se, and we have to get a little bit creative. We have to look to other people's podcasts, other people's bodies of work to, you know, have those peer to peer sort of colleague type relationships. So I know it can be really helpful to get to listen in on these honest sort of unpacking type episodes for a launch. And I wanted to be able to give that to you all today. I'm going to be honest, I kind of was dreading doing this episode. No offense, I love recording podcast episodes and actually this is a really amazing launch. This was a record breaking launch. We're going to get into all the results. So if you like the juicy stuff, the numbers, I'm not going to hold anything back in this episode. I'm going to tell you everything that went down with my most recent launch of my Mastermind program called Sold Out Group Programs. Really, really great launch. I think I'm just kind of dreading, you know, like opening up the hood, if you will, like opening up the, the Car, like the hood of the car and inspecting. Right. And I just want to acknowledge that. I want to start this episode by acknowledging that because inside of my mastermind, I really, really encourage my clients to go through our debriefing process. We have this template that will kind of walk you through really, what I'm going to do here live on the call today. And I think it's very common to sort of dread, like, sitting down and rehashing how it went. Even when it went really well. I think it just maybe feels tedious or heavy or. And, or you just gave like 110% to your launch if you did it properly. Sometimes you're like, I'm just ready to be done with this thing. Right. Like, I celebrated. I'm ready to move on. But listen, there is. I'm saying this to myself too. There is a real danger in not taking a minute to really reflect on what happened. So, I mean, I could have a whole separate episode on, like, all of the reasons that I have to reflect to really take the time to unpack and do a full launch debrief, not least of which is the risk you run of repeating the same mistakes over and over again. When you don't take the five. I was going to say five seconds. It's going to take longer than five seconds. All right. It might take you an hour. It might take you a couple hours to really dig up the data and look through everything and write it out and reflect on it. But if you think about it, I know it's hard. I know you're busy. Me too. But, like, if you think about taking an hour or at most two hours to really debrief your launch, is it worth doing that to not continue to inadvertently repeat the same mistake? That was very fixable all along. Right. So that's one reason to really sit and debrief your launch. Another reason is to get feedback. So if you're in a program, if you're one of my clients, not only do you debrief it and make your own, draw your own conclusions, but you get to send it in to me for feedback. I look at all of my clients launch debriefs, and I give them feedback on what I see and what I think they should do differently. So I think it's really important to have someone, a coach, a mentor at least appear, look over what you put together for your debrief of any, like, promotional window that you've been in to ask them, like, what are my blind spots? What are you seeing that I don't see super important. Those are a few reasons. And then the other thing too, this one's super interesting, is a lot of times my clients and myself will not realize how much good there is to celebrate until they do a debrief. So let's just say, like, you missed your goal. I have a podcast episode about what to do when you miss your goal, by the way, so you can scroll back and find that one. If you are on the receiving end of a bumpy launch and you feel like you just got the tar kicked out of you, you know, a lot of times it's just so easy and natural to hyper fixate on everything that didn't work. And, you know, people will come to me and be like, this was a fail. This was a bomb. This, this, this sucked. Right? And it is not until they actually get into the nuts and bolts of what happened where they find things to celebrate and they're like, you know, doesn't take away from the sting of missing your goal or whatever happened. That was disappointing. But it does maybe give you a different perspective on, like, huh, I didn't really realize that, like, this thing happened that I can. I could be celebrating or, you know, just. All different kinds of realizations are possible, but none of that is gonna happen if you don't take the time to really digest it. So that's my little plug for doing the, yes, admittedly tedious, kind of tiring, sometimes heavy work of sitting down and opening up and yes, even rehashing that launch, that sales window, that push that you just did, that you're really ready to be done with before you put it to bed, before you retire it, before you move on and again, risk repeating the same mistakes over and over. Take the time to study, right? I'm telling my clients all the time, as analogy. I really love to think about sports, right? So I'm a football fan, and I know that in football they spend time watching tape, watching tape back. It's not enough to just go out on the field and, like, do your best and then just, like, go on next week and just keep trying. I mean, that's a. Certainly a piece of the equation. But why do football teams watch tape? Because they know that there's something to be learned, something to be gained from watching themselves, almost as though it's from, like, happening from the outside, right? And so you have that opportunity when you take the time to debrief. So with that being said, let's get into it. Because of my personal feelings, the resistance I've been having about Even recording this episode, I'll tell you, one of the places that this resistance was coming from was feeling like I had to sit down and do, like, a bunch of preparation ahead of time. I was like, oh, my gosh, I need to pull all my numbers. I need to pull up all the things. And today I just had the thought, steph, if you don't just get going on this thing, you're going to end up not recording this episode. And literally, I have had folks request this episode. They're like, are you going to do a debrief? A few of my clients had asked me that, and I'm like. To the point where I was almost going to not do this episode. And it's like, all right, so I have lowered the bar on myself. I've not really prepared a ton in advance. I have my debriefing document in front of me that I give to my clients. I'm just going to walk through it. I may have to pull things up as we're talking. I may even have some realizations as we're talking. So this is a bit of a live and therefore very casual debrief where I will share my reflections and my thoughts as we go. Of course, I deep. I've, like, I've thought about the launch. I already have some takeaways that I know. I've looked at the numbers a little bit. So, like, I do have at least one takeaway that I know I'm going to see as thematic here as we're talking today, But I guarantee that other things are going to come up as well. So a couple other just really quick things that I want to mention in terms of why doing this is so important is separating facts from feelings. Right? Our feelings are valid. Our feelings may be contrary to some people's beliefs. Our feelings have a place in our business. We need to be processing emotion, not stuffing it down. But we also need to not be confusing feelings with facts. And what I mean by that is, I think it's absolutely incredible when I see this happen, I'll have people be absolutely convinced that their launch was a failure. And then they actually look at the facts of the situation and they're like, oh, I outperformed what I thought. Right? So separating your facts from your feelings is huge. So, like, like I said, your feelings have a worthy place here at the table of your business. But we really shouldn't be making business decisions based on your feelings. Right? That should come from fact. And it can be scary to sit down and look for problems. I understand it's like, God, I don't want any more problems. But I always try to take a positive mindset when it comes to finding problems. Because to me, finding problems means that there's something to fix. I always tell my clients, this is good news. If you brought me a lackluster launch and I couldn't find any problems, then we're in trouble. Then we're in trouble. Cuz I don't know how to help you. Right. And you don't know how to help yourself. And so it's so incredibly important to understand that problems are such an opportunity. And I don't just say that to be like overly positive or toxic pos, toxic positivity in any way. It really is the truth though. And you can isolate and figure out like, oh, if I want to get a different result, I see where the problem is. I just need to fill in the blank. Well, now you know what to go and change. Right? If you feel that your sales promotion, your launch has underperformed, remember, there's really only two things to look at when it all comes down to it. You have a traffic problem. That is not enough leads, not enough people paying attention. Or, and, or could be both a conversion problem. So if you had a lot of leads, if you had a lot of people paying attention, but you didn't have the sales, that's a classic conversion problem. There's something going on with the messaging, there's something going on with your objection handling. There's something happening between people being interested upfront and actually taking the leap to pay you. That's where things are breaking down. So you want to isolate. Am I in traffic land or am I in conversion land? Where do I need to be focusing my attention Again, it could be both. Right? And then finally, so super important, I always give this disclaimer when I can is to not allow this to go into the land of shame spiral. Okay. If you had a launch that disappointed you, if you didn't show up the way you could, any number of things may have happened that knocked you off course. This really isn't meant to be an opportunity to beat yourself up. Right. This is instead a way to really assess what went down and adjust accordingly. Okay. All right, so let's unpack my recent launch. So we are talking about my mastermind program, sold out group programs formerly known as the messy middle. Now what's some. We start with the key data. We're just going to start with the kind of the top line. All right, first things first, this was, this was a big deal. Because we changed the. We changed a lot of things. And typically I tell my clients to try to only change like one thing at a time. I was pushing the limit, I would say, in terms of how many things I changed. I say that with a caveat. And I'm going to explain. This was more than just a random change. This was a change that I sort of tested in my last launch. So I'll tell you what I mean. The Mastermind has always been known as the messy middle. And I've known for some time that to really, truly grow the reach of the mastermind and frankly to help clients get better results, I wanted to focus on some kind of outcome, right? To shift the focus of the Mastermind from the name. The messy middle, which is all about the messaging is really all about like, you know, being in those middle, those messy middle stages of entrepreneurship and just wanting someone to kind of help you through those stages. Now, I'm not going to say that messaging didn't work, that launches with the messy middle have done multi. Multiple six figures, multiple six figure launches. And my clients still tell me I really resonated with that. So it's not that the messaging was wrong by any means, but it's. This is interesting in and of itself is like, I could have stayed there. But to really go to the next level of like delivering next level client results, like really tangible, like, hey, we're all gonna work on blank outcome. I wanted to choose something results focused, right, versus like, do you hear the difference there? Messy middle's like, hey, we're all here. We're in the messy middle. We're going to weather it together. Which again is. Has value. Sold out group programs is a huge shift if you think about it. It's all about driving towards. It's like desire, recognition. Like, yes, I want to have a group program. Yes, I want it to sell out. Yes, I want to be full year round. It attracts a different kind of client. And it's also a risk. It's also definitely a risk because, you know, one of the things that happened right away when I started talking more about group programs is it's a bit of an objection that's been created as well. You might be surprised to hear me say that. But listen, not everybody wants a group program. Not everybody is sure that that's the problem they want to be solving. There's plenty of people who are like, I don't even know what that would look like for me. Like, I'm not really sure I've tried group programs. Wasn't really my thing going in the direction of choosing sold out group programs created objections. For me, it's not a problem. It's just something that I had to keep in mind and have a really solid action plan for. Namely, I had to make a lot of preemptive, like pre launch content that would overcome those objections in advance. Now here is the part where I say this was more than like a random change. And I started preparing for this change in my last launch. This is something that I think a lot of you all who are making big changes, you're missing this. There are ways to test those changes that are less risky than just blowing everything up. So in my last launch in April of this year, I didn't change the name, I didn't change the length, I didn't mess with any of that stuff. It was still the messy middle. It was still 6 months, it was still 6k per person. But I knew this change was coming. And instead of making that change, then I decided to just go really hard on the concept of sold out group programs as a marketing angle. So what did that look like now? I'm talking about my last launch now. Okay, I did a whole the Group programs series on the podcast, why group programs? I reached out to my email list and I asked you all, what's going on with you in group programs? Do you have one? If you do, what's going well, what's been hard? If you don't, why not? Like, what are your group program questions? And I got, I got replies and I turned those replies into podcast episodes and I talked about why you should consider a group program. And I brought my friend Claire Pelz on the show to talk to me about group programs being better than courses, right? So I had this like free launch. I was selling you all before my launch even got really going. Before we had the webinar, which was also about group programs. That webinar was called Super Fan Group Programs. I was already answering the question, why the hell are we talking about group programs? And then in all of my emails, I was really driving this idea of having a sold out group program. Whether you already had one, a group program, or you want one in the future. Again, I was still referring to the messy middle, but I was really changing the direction of these emails by talking a lot about the heart of this program being having a sold out group program, creating a sold out group program again. Now we're in the future. Plenty of my clients are still doing one on one, but they, they, they all know that someday they would like to Have a group program. That's fine as well. So by sort of, like, playing with this angle and making sure that it worked, in my last launch, my last launch was very as well. I was like, okay, I. I was able to get myself on board with making this big name change, and that was very scary for me because the messy middle's been my baby. The messy middle's been my ride or die. And I knew my clients really liked it. Also, something I learned a few months ago is I went to my. I do not recommend this and clients listening to this. I love y'all so, so much. But I don't recommend asking your clients who bought the previous version of the thing to help you make a decision about the future of it. So what I mean is, I went to my clients, and I was like, what do you guys. I was excited. I was like, what do y'all think? Like, we're gonna make this program sold out group programs. And some people liked it, and other people were like, I don't know. I really like the messy middle. Like, that's what I signed up for. And as soon as I asked it, I was like, of course. That makes sense. Like, that is what they bought. So as much as y'all want to ask your clients how. What they think of your changes, be careful with that. I don't think. I think our current clients can help us shape the future of our company so much, but when it comes to making changes, maybe not so much. Right? So keep that in mind. But knowing that this marketing angle resonated and seeing also the clients that it brought in, clients who were really ready to, like, get down to work and work on a group program, it really made me feel like we were going in the right direction. And it gave me the confidence, and it took me, again, it took me weeks, even months, and a lot of coaching for myself to get on board with changing the name of the program. So there's that. I think that's already one really important lesson is, like, I see a lot of people just kind of being, like, squirrel in their business, like, oh, I have an idea. I'm gonna make this big change. And you can end up regretting that when you don't find ways to make sure that it's an educated change. Right? Like, I knew that sold out group programs was going to resonate. I had proven it by using it as such a heavy marketing angle in my last launch. Okay, so that's what we did. We changed it to sold out group programs. We also increased the length of the program from six months to a year. And with that, we increased the price, but we didn't do what you might expect. The program was 6K for six months. And that sold gangbusters. That's always been great for me. At first I was like, okay, easy, we'll go to 12K. That's easy enough. And then I was like, well, maybe I'll like sweeten the pot and make it 10k. And then I was like, what if we made it 8K? And you know, I think that that price, like could vary. I very much think that It'll go to 10k in the future. But I wanted, I wanted the. I didn't want to create a huge price objection for myself with this change. And I wanted it to feel like as much of a no brainer as possible. Okay. In addition to that, like, you might be asking yourself, like, why did I go from six months to a year? The easy answer for that is a lot of my clients renew and six months goes by really fast. So it kind of was feeling like it's been six months forever since I started it in 2021. And it always kind of felt like, you know, three months in, we're kind of already having to think about like renewal. If you think about it, it's like, are you gonna continue? Like, we gotta start having that conversation at least, like, and it just felt abrupt a little bit. And also I've been finding that my clients who stay on for a year, so two cohorts, I really find that we start hitting our stride in that second six months. It can take six months. Most of my clients are getting major results in the first six months. In fact, in the first four months almost, you know, the vast majority of my clients are earning back their investment and doing amazing things. Most of my clients are 2 or 3 Xing their investment in the first 4 months. So it's not a question of not getting results in the first six months. It's just that it really can take six months to do some of the major, like to implement a lot of the changes that my clients are getting feedback on. So six months is enough time to at least do one launch, maybe even two. It's enough time to do two 90 day plan rotations. With me, you maybe you've tuned up your messaging. That's a big thing that we do is we help people overhaul their messaging as you as needed, makeover their messaging. And it's like, then all of a sudden it's six months and it's like, that is hugely powerful. I'VE had clients have an incredible six months and then just feel complete and move on. And that's great. But for a lot of clients, then they sign on for that second six months and that's really where the rubber hits the road. And of course that makes sense because they're starting to get some traction. And so I felt like bummed that I was having to say goodbye to some, some of my clients. I would say about 50% of my clients typically resign with me. And about the, for the half that feel complete, I'm just like, oh man, we could have had so much more fun, right? We could have like really rocked these changes that you've made. And so I want to experiment with a year because I know for me as a client who gets coached, I love hiring my coach for a year. I love knowing like, I've got my coach for the next year. I'm set and I make my decision. I make a decision about what my coaching team is going to look like once a year. And we have that with same day sales as well. My foundational sales program where you get a year with me in that program. And when I've written my emails and done my marketing messages for same day sales, I love being able to say like, I'll be your business coach for a year. And I longed for the opportunity to be able to say that in the mastermind. So that's why we went to a year. And the price, yes, 8.8k. So the way we do it is it's 8,000 for pay in full and it is not any extra charge to do the payment plan. So we don't upcharge for that. It's like six, a six month payment plan. So six equal payments, I believe worked out to 1335. Now I always have my clients choose good, better, best goals and I should do a whole separate episode on what, how we do that and what exactly it means and why. But for the purpose of this episode, I'll just tell you what my good, better, best goals were. And we have this range to really create the feeling of success. Because just a spoiler alert here for my high achievers out there. If you were to just choose one goal, you're always going to choose the swing for the fences goal. And it's just a recipe for beating the crap out of yourself when you don't hit a home run every single time. And so it's kind of like, okay, to carry the baseball analogy here. It's sort of like what is getting on base look like? Okay, that's like the good goal, you know, what is like hitting a double or a triple and what's the home run that's good, better, best. And so for this round, I would. My good, better, best was 15 people. Was good, 20 was better and 25 was best. And at 25, I would have capped enrollment and said like, we're full and I, we have at this time and always like we start in a week from today. We always sometimes like we sneak in a couple like, you know, sometimes like I've been having conversations. If I have an open conversation with someone and, or a previous client comes back to me and is like, you know what, I changed my mind, I want to stay. We can always end up with a couple stragglers. But we ended up with 22 enrollments. So that is between my better and best goal. And so that is a what I consider a sold out launch. Right. So we talk about in my program and I'll be talking about this more on the podcast too. Sold out being a range, right? So sold out being the feeling that, you know, you've done what you came here to do, right. You set a goal and you said, I want to have at least 15 people. You get your 15 people, you have filled your program. Right. So this is another sold out lo launch for us. And 22 is really what I've been doing pretty. I think that's exactly what I did in my last launch. So that's interesting. So that was 22 people at 6K, this was 22 people at 8K. And so that makes it the most profitable launch or the biggest revenue wise of all time for my company. So it was $176,000 in sales. That's not cash. We got people on payment plans. But for the purpose of a sales number, that's $176,000 in sales. So that's the total revenue. Now it's interesting to also talk about how this breaks down in terms of new clients versus previous clients and resigning clients. So I was right away, very early in this launch, I noticed something different that I'm very excited about. Well, number one, a lot of people resigned with me. That's not new. I always, like I said, typically I'm resigning at about 50%, which is really, really good in my opinion. In my experience, sometimes people, every once in a while somebody will ask me like, are people resigning because they're like not getting results? And the answer is absolutely not. It's the opposite. People are resigning with me because they I'm their ride or die business Coach. They don't want to shop for another business coach. I have some clients who've been with me since their business started as early as 2018, people who are making really serious money in their business now. And I've been with them every step of the way. And so they're just comfortable with me. I know that, like, that's the thing about me with my clients, as I know my clients businesses intimately. I am familiar. I remember we have conversations every single week. So they're just happy with me and they just want to stay. And so we had 10 clients resign for this round. And it's interesting because of those 10, I guess it's a little bit. Well, here, here's the deal. 10 resigned and two were. I had two more apart from that, 10 that were previous mastermind clients who skipped the last cohort and are coming back. So they're like, I don't wanna do that again without you. They're back after six months off. So of that. So that's 12 previous clients, right? Of those 12, there's actually like four of them have been clients in the past. So the two that I mentioned that took the last cohort off, actually it's three. Sorry, this is confusing. Three people skipped this last cohort. One of those people had paid in advance to be in this. To be in this next round. And then one person had had some personal circumstances in my last round and is coming back into this round. So let's just say 12 people are from like, they either were in this last cohort and they're simply continuing or their previous clients that have come back. And I think that clients coming back after leaving is like a huge testament to the program. Right? It's sort of like. Because I totally understand the desire to be like, let me go try this on my own for a while. And I have clients who did that and are like, yeah, no, I want to go ahead and put plunk this 8k down because it's better in there than it is out there with that 8K in my pocket. So right off the bat, I think that speaks volumes. The other thing that came up so that. That wasn't really new, but one thing was new that blew me away, which was I got a lot of referrals, a lot of refer. A lot of folks came to me via referral in this launch, and nothing ma. Like, nothing feels more complimentary than that. I know the power of our personal networks. I know how much we all treasure our friendships and how much we would all die a thousand deaths if we of mort. Like feeling mortified if we were to make a bad referral, right? If we were to refer someone to someone who did harm or someone who wasn't any good. So I know that when my clients refer me, that is, I take that just so, like, just again, just the ultimate compliment. I feel like there's no better testimonial and I got quite a few clients from referral this time around. I should maybe pull it up as we're talking here. I can tell you specifically, but I mean I just would have like, especially my early application. So this is an early. This is an application based program. You have to apply in order to be accepted. And I mean 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. I mean, almost guys, almost every one of my new applications, most people were referred by someone or mentioned someone. And I don't even have like an incentive program for this mastermind at this time. So it's not people trying to get like 500 bucks in their pocket or something. Maybe we'll do that in the future just as a thank you. But like, this is just people wanting to talk about how amazing this program is. So that blew me away and made me feel so proud. That was a moment of me feeling like I have built something so worthwhile. And some people were referring multiple people that aren't even my client anymore. They've moved on, they're complete, and they're still freaking referring me. That is huge. And again, just a, a huge sign that I'm on the right track, right? So that's like one thing to think about too. I will say it's so just to be transparent. It's so interesting the way we find ways to beat ourselves up though, because if you can even believe it, I found the way my, my launch brain, right? So as you're launching, it's so normal to spiral and to feel negative. And we're gonna get to all of that. That's. That's coming. Um, one of the things I did was I used this to beat myself up by saying that no one knew was coming. And you know, not that like, I, I want to make it really clear. There's. It's not that there's like a hierarchy in terms of like a new client is better than a resign or anything like that, but my clients will know like. And maybe you, dear listener, understand what I mean here. It can be a little bit worrying to be like, well, well geez, is no one gonna buy unless they're a referral? Like that can sometimes feel a little scary. Because you're like, there's only so many referrals available in the world. Right. Versus, like, what if I'm not doing a good job appealing to quote unquote, cold leads? And that felt a little scary because my. My referrals were my warmest leads. So it made sense. Like in hindsight, it makes sense that they. It makes sense that they came in the earliest, but it just made me feel nervous when I opened applications. I was like, geez, I'm so like, it was like two feelings at once. It was like, oh my gosh, I'm so glad to be referred and so honored. And also, am I doing a poor job appealing to people who don't know me? So that became something that scared me off the bat. And I will circle back to that because it connects. It connects to the thing that I was going to tell you is really my biggest learning from this launch. But there's that looking at. Because I have it in front of me looking at the clients. So my re sign clients don't have to reapply. They just get automatically invited to keep working with me. So I'm looking right now at the people who applied. And I had 14 applications. Of my 14 applications, 10, 10 signed. So 10 out of 14. And so that's pretty good. And then also of. I offer my clients a sales call if they want to. We call it the next steps call, where I sit with them for an hour and I help put together. It's a really robust call. It's not just like a sales pitch call. My people will walk away being like, that was genuinely helpful. Like as almost like a coaching call where we make a plan for if you were to work with me, what would we have you do? What would we have you work on? And I believe almost. Let me see, how many sales calls did I do? I think I did 11 sales calls. Sorry, 10. And of the 10 sales calls that I did, nine out of 10 did sign. So that's also a really positive metric. One of the things that I have, my clients we look at very. I really say on my clients about this, they know is how are your consult calls converting? Are you getting people onto calls? That's traffic. And then are they converting? That's conversion. Right. Remember I was talking about traffic and conversion. So I know that when I have a sales call with somebody, the likelihood is really high that as long as they're a good fit, which sometimes I do disqualify people, I tell people straight up, hey, I don't think this is going to be a good fit based on where you are, I think you should go to my same day sales program or I even refer them out to other coach friends because I'm well connected. But for, I'm just talking about people that, that were approved here for people who are a good fit, um, I know that for the most part, if they're going to, if they take the time to have a call with me, more than likely they're. We're going to end up moving forward together. That's what I want for my clients as well, is we're working towards having as many of those calls converting as possible. Of course we're going to take the time to do the call and it's a qualified lead. We want to be improving your success rate. So that's a metric to be keeping track of for sure. Now, quick caveat, because I know I get asked this a lot is like talking about applications, talking about having consult calls. People will ask me, should I have that in my business? Should I have an application? Should I be doing sales. Sales calls with people? And the answer is definitely nuanced. I have to look at people's businesses to really be able to give them the answer. But typically my, my short answer to that, without knowing if that's your question, dear listener, without knowing your business, if you're talking higher ticket and that's going to vary by lots of different factors. Let's just not even start to define what that. Let's just say higher ticket. If you think your offer is like higher ticket, then I do think it's a really great idea to offer. It can be optional. I have two people here who didn't even want the call. They're like, I'm just ready to enroll. That's great. I'm not gonna make them do the call, that's fine. But offering it as an option and offering it as a helpful option, again, it's all about the language there of we're gonna help you. We're gonna put together a plan of what your goals would be and exactly how you would attack those goals with me in my program for a year. Right? That's what we do on those calls. So if you're asking people to spend a significant amount of money, I think it does make sense to offer a consult call. And I teach my clients exact, the exact process for how to do this using my consultative sales background. It's actually available in my same day sales program too. And it's like that, that training alone has helped my clients make so much money. In their businesses and start to get clients. Even, even being in client dry spell or client drought, that's the number one way to just get out of it is to start booking consult calls and get good at closing them. So there is that something really important to keep in mind. Oh, and answering that question of should you have consult calls? The answer is yes, if you are offering something higher ticket and should you have an application? I am a big, big believer in having an application. I should do a whole separate episode on this as well. But to make it short and sweet here, there is something that happens. We talk a lot about sales process in my programs because I am a sales trainer by trade. And when someone takes the time to fill out an application, they are mentally and psychologically already insert, they're inserting themselves in your sales process. They are starting to picture working with you. They are like, you know, really evaluating on a different level of seriousness if they're going to take the time to apply. And so yes, if you're going to, if you have a higher ticket offer and you're going to offer consult calls. I really like an application to be like the first line of defense where if somebody comes to me with interest, I'm in there. Like, I don't know, I'm not sure I'm a fit. I always just tell them, go fill out an application. That way I can look at it and I can assess whether or not I think this would be a fit. And if it's not, I'll refer you to somebody who I think is a better fit for you. Or if it is a fit, then we'll hop out, you know, you'll have opportunity to book me on an hour long call where we'll make a plan together. And so having that application be the entry point into my sales process is absolutely huge. And something I do recommend for coaches and service providers who have higher ticket price points. Okay, so that's all of that. That's all the key information. I'm gonna talk a little bit. I'm not gonna go too. I don't want this episode to be too crazy long. So I'll give you the high points and like the most interesting points about what the strategy was for this launch. So I did do a webinar. Oh, oh, oh, sorry. One more key piece of information that was different going into this launch is my website rebrand. So you may know that I did a big website rebrand with Jasmine Hotelani over at High Flyer Powerhouse. You can scroll back a few episodes and you can find my Interview with her. It's a really great conversation. She's so incredibly talented. And if you want to, if you haven't seen StephCrowder.com the results just speak for themselves. I'm obsessed with my website and I will be forever. It just like doesn't get old. But I went from having like such a just janky decade old squarespace website that served me just fine for many, many years to deciding that this was gonna be the year that I like really grew up my online presence and made my online presence match my online reputation as somebody who's been doing this work for a decade online. And so this launch being the, this launch being the first time that that new website was live, I think did make a difference. I did have at least one conversation with someone who told me she'd been following me for a long time. And the website rebrand sent her a, sent her the message that maybe I was really on her level. She's a more advanced client. And I think just like also I had all of my, my photos from my photo shoot that we did for the rebrand. Those were used on my social media, they were used on my webinar. And so having upgraded visuals, like I said, I've had many six figure launches without all that stuff. So I'm not here to say that you have to spend, you know, five figures on a rebrand in order to have a big launch. You don't. But it didn't hurt. It certainly didn't hurt. And I think it helped my self concept, I think it increased my confidence. I think it was maybe, you know, even more appealing for people who didn't know me. And so that was very cool as well. So with that, what made me think of that is Jasmine's team also helps me with design services on an ongoing basis and they helped me with my new webinar slides. So we did do a new webinar this time which was very specific. The topic of this webinar, this felt like again, I really did change up a lot for this, for this, this launch. The webinar I did was called fill your group program in five weeks. And what was the tagline? It was something like, I don't know if it'll let me even go to it now or if it's redirecting. It was like about three part roadmap to consistently sell out your offer year round anytime. And so on this webinar I taught a few things that I've taught many times in the past. Like I usually teach my buzz blitz Process, which is the five week process for filling up your group program, but going with a really specific title. Again, a little bit of a risk. I did find that I had fewer registrations than maybe my last launch, which that webinar was called Super Fan Group Programs, which is more general. I want to say that that last Launch had about 250 registrants. And that was a combination of new people coming on my list. But honestly it was mostly people who were already on my list. And then this time. So that was 2:50. This time was 180. 180 people had signed up for the webinar and again, the vast majority were already on my list. I want to say 30 something new people came on specifically for the webinar, didn't run any ads. Uh, I do believe Claire Pell is my buddy. She did pop up a retargeting ad for me once the replay went live. But I did not do any paid traffic for anything having to do with this launch. That would be an opportunity for the future for sure. Not something I'm opposed to, just not something I've gotten to yet. Which you already know if you listen to my podcast regularly. We've talked about that multiple times with having Claire on the show. Um, what I thought was interesting though was of those 180 registrants, 100 of them were not on my list at the last webinar. So that means that they had come onto my list between now and then. So that was a pretty healthy indicator. You want to have new leads, obviously in between your launches. And I think, you know, a hundred is a really kind of a good, like, I mean, I prefer it be more, to be honest, but like sort of the bare minimum of new people. At least at my level. Your business might be different, but at my level, I gotta have a hundred new people there, you know. And so when I saw that it was a hundred, that felt good. Especially because now here comes the key learning the key takeaway that I promise, my number one takeaway. And talk about repeating problems. I've probably said this here before because I know that I've had this realization. But my number one takeaway is I've just got to be prioritizing my lead generation in between my launches. It gets lost. I'm spending a lot of my time serving my clients. Most of my time is spent serving my clients between my two programs making this podcast, which does reach some new people. How many? It's impossible for me to say, but I'm really not spending my time, you know, Learning, like, about paid marketing, for example. As I just mentioned, I'm not intentionally. I don't have a strategy right now for getting on other people's podcasts, which is one of the number one things I recommend is doing a visibility tour, doing collaborations with people participating in summits. Hey, by the way, if you're listening to this and you want to have me on your podcast or come to your summit, I'm gonna say yes, so you can email us. I'm gonna say yes to a lot of opportunities because I need to be intentionally doing lead gen in between my launches. It's very, very common. I see it in my clients all the time. It's very common for Legion to be the thing that just falls off everybody's list of things to do, because it's like, no one's gonna die if you don't do Legion, at least until you get your next launch. And then you're like, I hope I have the numbers right. So that is a mistake that I really don't want to repeat for my next launch. And I'm saying it here for accountability is, you know, what am I? And we all need to be asking ourselves the question, what am I intentionally doing? Ideally on a weekly basis, guys, to bring new eyeballs into the business to be ready for my next launch. Now, for me, I'm lucky because we're coming up on super bowl season, which is none other than Year on the Wall. If you know, you know. If you don't know, you're about to know. And I get a lot of new leads, typically for a year on the Wall, I usually get between 200 and 300 registrations, and maybe a hundred of those will be brand new from Facebook ads. One time of year that Claire does bully me into doing Facebook ads, and it pays off every single time because she's amazing and knows what she's doing. And people love Year on the Wall as an entry point into my business. So to be honest, Year on the Wall has been like. Has, like, carried me quite a bit. Like, I will scoop people up in my mastermind launches who are like, oh, I came to you from Year on the Wall. Maybe some of you listening are even like, I. That's how I came in, right? So that is a lead gen event, but it's one time a year, arguably not going to be sustainable to only do a big lead gen push, like, one time a year. So that would be the number one thing for me to focus on in between my launches, which I am. I am focusing on. And I will talk more about that in future podcast episodes. But you got to be thinking about how you're, you know, it's interesting. A lot of people will. Well, my clients know and I should go on a rant on this here on the podcast in due time. Whenever they try to tell me my list is dead, I. I don't let them get away with that because it's not a helpful thought, nor is it true. I don't really believe anybody's list is dead or maxed out or burnt out or any. Any of that. The truth is, every time I sell something, people from four years ago, like, I've been here for four years and I'm going to join you now. Um, you never know. For some people, they're going to hang out on your list and they're just watching every launch and they're paying attention and they're just waiting for the time to feel right. And so you don't want to make that assumption that your list is dead or burnt out or any of that stuff, because to some degree, people's process is just their process. And that's okay. That's more than okay. That's just how it goes. I act like that as a buyer sometimes myself. So it's not that you can't get great results with the list you already have. I. You can, and I can. If you don't believe me, I can show you how in my. And come join either of my programs. We'll help you with that. Right. But at the same time, you have to be doing both. Right. It's like we can continue to nurture the people who are going to think about it, the people who are following, the people who are super fans. They just haven't joined you yet. They absolutely can still convert. And we need to be also kind of continuing because you are going to lose people off your list. When you're launching, you send a lot of emails, at least in the way that I recommend it, you're going to lose people off your list every single time you send an email. And that's totally fine. It's the process. But you need to be adding people to kind of fill that, to replenish that, that sort of attrition, that natural attrition. So we have to be thinking about that. Speaking of emails, I did. I followed my typical buzz blitz process that I teach inside of sold out group programs, which means that I sent about four weeks worth of emails before the webinar even kicked off. I did a podcast series that was new. Have y'all Listened to that podcast series. It is so good. I think maybe some of you skipped it because I dropped eight episodes on you out of nowhere. And it was kind of a lot. But if you scroll back, there's eight individual episodes called like the eight reasons your group program isn't full or something. Such a good series. I did that series during my pre launch run, like kind of like before the webinar. And in all I created a lot of podcast content. I did a lot of client interviews. That was another thing that I think really paid off. I believe we did seven interviews, seven success stories here on the podcast. Those are also being repurposed into testimonials on my website. They were featured in emails. So just a lot of clients really giving that proof that what we do in the program works. And I think in 2024, going into 2025, people need that. People really do want to know that it will work for them. So that was something that we did as well. I really focused on objections very heavily. You can go back a couple episodes in my feed to talk about that. I talk about that, the importance of overcoming objections. Really thinking about one of the big ones that came up this time was I had a previous coach who actually like hurt me, hurt my feelings or was not. Did not give me the kind of care that I expect and desert deserve. So that was really difficult to hear. And I. I hated to hear that when people having a really. Not just a negative coaching experience, but actually a harmful one. So I had lots of conversations about what my coaching style is like and how I help my clients and how I lovingly challenge them, but never in a harsh way or never in a berating or critical kind of way. So that was something that I talked about a lot is the previous bad experience. And that was featured pretty heavily in my emails as well. But I send a lot of emails through my launches, you know, in the last few, like once the doors are open, so you come to my webinar. The doors are open for a week. I'm doing these consult calls and talking to people. I'm sending multiple emails per day, sometimes as many as four or five emails with different. And they're not just like throwaway emails. They're really good, helpful, valuable content. And I choose to have the thought being on my list, being in my orbit when I'm launching is the best time to be here, like. Cause I just put out so much. There's so much value here on the podcast, in my emails, on my social media. I really want it to feel like, you're kind of getting this. This, like, influx of really helpful coaching and information. I want you to feel like you're kind of getting it from all angles, right? Whether you're following me on any of the platforms, you can tell that I'm launching. Like, it's obvious that I'm launching. And that right there is something really simple that I see folks tripping up on, where you tell me you're selling something, and I go to your Instagram, and I can't even tell. I'm like, you are. Because, like, it should really punch people in the face. And I think we underestimate that. So those are the real high notes. I already shared some takeaways. The last thing I'll share is from the mindset perspective, I may do a whole separate. I mean, there's just so much to talk about. How many. How many separate episode ideas have I come up with here today? But one of them is this new concept that I'm calling Pavement Day. My clients already know. I posted this photo of me on the day after my webinar, and I'm laying on the literal pavement on my driveway. My kids are actually laying next to me. They were riding. It was like, 5pm they're riding their bikes and their scooters, and they came and laid down next to me. I was just. I just was like, I gotta lay down on this pavement. It felt so good. It was cold. Like a cold pavement moment. And so now me and some of my business friends and my clients, we call this being on the pavement in your launch. And that might sound really dramatic. A. It is dramatic. You're welcome, baby. It's so normal. And I had to really embrace that and be okay with, like, of course you're gonna have a moment where you're on the pavement in your launch. Like, the vulnerability hangover that comes from teaching a webinar or a workshop or a challenge or any kind of sales event, paid workshop, any of it. Plan to be tired, plan to be embarrassed. No matter how well it goes. Like, you are standing on stage naked is a little bit of what it feels like, and you're just giving it your all. And I found myself kind of in temper tantrum mode a little bit where I was like, I feel like I have given so much and, like, where are my results? Right? And I wasn't letting people's processes just be their processes. It all worked itself out, and we ended up with a really strong showing. But I learned that the day after a big sales event is just Pavement Day. You know, and instead of like spiraling on top of that and being like, what's wrong with me? Oh my God, I'm so tired. This is so hard. Something must be wrong with my business. Instead of entertaining those kind of thoughts, I was able to just process how I was feeling. It was like, oh, I'm feeling kind of a vulnerability hangover. I gave it my all and I don't know how this is going to turn out. I don't know if it was good. I don't know if it was helpful. I'm scared. Like all those normal feelings just like not judging myself on top of that negative emotion. Right? Like you are asking yourself to scale a mountain. You are asking yourself to go to a different height than you've ever been at before. Like, for me, this was the number one revenue producing launch I've ever had. That is a new summit. That is a new mountain that I'm on. And you don't think I'm going to be tired? You don't think I'm going to be winded? You don't think I'm going to be like, I quit. And I just wish that somebody had told me that sooner because they people don't talk about it publicly, really. And you know, it's easy to record an episode like this and celebrate myself. And Yay, I made 176k and yay, yay. I'm so excited to, you know, coach my new clients. All of that is true. But I also want y'all to know I was on the damn pavement. On the fully on the pavement. And next time I launch in about a month and we do year on the wall and we'll open same day sales, I'm beyond the pavement again. And so day two of your cart being open is just pavement day now is one thing I learned. So my friends, those are the takeaways. That is my launch debrief episode. Hilarious. I said it was gonna be kind of brief. It really wasn't. It ended up being pretty meaty, pretty juicy. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, if you made it this far in the episode, will you let me know? Because I wanna know if this type of episode is worth it. Send me a DM @ hey, Steph Crowder, tell me you love when you I do these episodes or what you'd like to hear different or what you wish I had said that I didn't say or what I didn't address or you can reply to any of our emails and let us know your thoughts in a similar manner, my friends. I have some really great episodes coming up for you. One in particular I'm excited to talk about is navigating the election as a business owner. So tune in. I'll talk to you soon. And until then, I'm wishing you the courage and the clarity to go after what you love.