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Hey there, it's Steph Crowder. Are you sick of the sales roller coaster I got you? Join me March 16th through the 20th at 2pm Eastern Time every day that week for the Sold Out Sales System Summit. This is a totally free 5 day live training that will get you fully booked and launch your groups repeatedly, consistently and with ease. You're going to learn how to build a predictable plan, create content that actually converts, growing, grow an audience that buys with you, and launch repeatedly without the panic. You can register right now@stephcrowder.com summit. 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. Well, hello there my courageous listeners. Welcome to the podcast. I am so, so excited to be taking you behind the scenes today. Who doesn't love a little bit of behind the scenes? I love a behind the scenes episode. So that's what we're gonna do. We are talking about why I built a summit, why I'm doing a five day summit instead of doing another launch using more of my kind of traditional launching system that I've been using for the past few years where I do a sort of one time afternoon workshop, like an hour 90 minutes. We're doing something totally different this time and I've already learned so much and the summit hasn't even happened yet. I know I'll be doing like a big debriefing, unpacking. Y' all know how, how I do things around here. I share everything. We don't gatekeep. So I will have much more to share when once this is, you know, in the past, but even a week away. So as I record this, we are kicking off the summit in a week on March 16th. So again, little plug for the summit. If you are not signed up yet, you gotta be there. It's gonna be so awesome. You can go to Steph crowder.comsummit to get signed up. It's gonna be at 2:00 Eastern Time every day. There will be replays available for a limited time, but if you can be there live, I keep saying to people you've still got time to move things around on your calendar. Get there live if you can, because. And I'll be talking about this a little bit more in, in my behind the scenes today, but I'm doing something I don't typically get to do, which is live coaching. We're going to do some audits, we're going to do some hot seats and it's going to be a blast. So I wanted to make this episode today because this summit has already been so instructive and so exciting and it just feels different, which I'm sure is really exciting to a lot of you. And it's also really exciting to me as, you know, the leader of my own company and my own platform and my own movement and all of the things in the last few weeks hitting you with some numbers here. At the time of this recording, 220 people have signed up to spend these five days with me live. And I think that is just so exciting. We still have a week to go. I am running ads for this five day summit. You, if you've been here a while, you know, I have a complicated, long standing relationship with Facebook ads. It's complicated. If y' all remember that Facebook status from back in the day when you'd be relationship status. It's complicated. That's me with Facebook ads. Even though my very best friend Claire Pels is the industry's number one ads expert, which is the ultimate irony, I am running ads for this summit. I often, you know, I've built my business really up until this point without leveraging much in terms of paid advertising. But even out of that 220 people, 150 are organic, meaning 150 people have not come from Facebook ads. And that is really meaningful to me because I should have pulled up this data ahead of time. But I'm pretty sure in my last few launches where I've done webinars, it's probably been more around a hundred people organically. And when I say that, of course I mean like people who are already in my audience, people who I guess I don't know for sure that they're already in my audience, but they're coming to me like they found me maybe on social media or they were just on my email list already. Right. So this is like utilizing the network that I already had. And I still have a week to go. So 150 gives me some data. What that tells me is that people are excited for to see me do something different. Right. I think this number is telling me and telling us that people are hungry for a change. And I'm not. Listen, I'm not here to say that y' all will see me do webinars again. I love a webinar. Webinars are super effective. They have built my business, they've built a lot of my clients, businesses. But just in general, I think that this really shows that when we lead with excitement and when we shake it up again, not just for our audiences, but for ourselves, the results really do follow. So I want to take you behind the scenes of why I built this, how I built it, and what I'm seeing unfold in real time. Because I really do think the story of this summit is actually the most useful thing that I can teach you about predictable sales systems. Because this is episode five of the series I've been doing here on the podcast leading up to the sold out sales system summit, which again starts on Monday. And I want to make the case today that what I'm, what I am about to do live for five days is not just an event. It's not just a flashy, like, you know, like, new thing. Even though I just said I think some of the excitement is watching me do something new, but it is still a sales system. I'm going to break that down for you. And watching it happen, honestly, might be the most valuable thing you do for your business next week. I know that's a bold claim, but I really think it will be that valuable. So let's start with why I built a summit. Instead, I've been getting this question, so I want to be honest about where this came from. I don't really feel like I built a summit because it was an obvious next step. Uh, I, I really came from feeling done doing what everyone else is doing and getting the same results that either everyone else is getting or even just getting the same results that I've been getting, my results have been great. I know I've shared that my past, at least half dozen of my launches have been six figure launches. So the system that I had where I would do a launch event, a webinar to be specific, and then have a six figure launch, like that was working great, Great. No complaints, right? I've had amazing new clients like love it. And I know I've also shared here on the podcast that I'm going after my first million dollar year and I've known that If I want to get different results, if I want to kind of explode my results and do. And you know, as I've sat here being like, oh my gosh, how am I gonna, how am I gonna get to that place? How am I going to kind of do what, what I, I think is a quantum leap? It has really occurred to me that I'm gonna have to. There's gonna be reinvention and there's going to be. I need to think outside the. And so there's that piece. But then also, if you've been with me for a while, you already know I used to do a lot of five day challenges. Used to love them. I would do them in 2018. Really like 20. Gosh, it could, it really could have even been 2017, 2018 for sure. Through 2020 into 2021, I would, I would do a challenge, I would, I would attract big numbers with challenges. And I loved it. And there was something that I loved about seeing the same face every single day of a challenge. And something I would notice. Something would happen psychologically when you show up for the same group of people repeatedly over a short period of time. I would see the trust accelerate. I would see people go from curious to committed faster than any other kind of content I could ever create. But at the time, if you were around, you might know, challenges started to feel crowded. Other people started to figure this out, right? So then everybody was doing challenges, right? So I wanted to create something that felt different, something that positioned me differently, something that required me to think differently, something that pushed me to create something I was Genu genuinely proud of. So I started moving towards sales webinars that have a very specific structure that I've now developed. We have a framework called the Converts Framework. It works very, very well. And I teach it inside of the sold out group programs. Mastermind, right. So here I am again with something that's tried and true. My Converts framework system that I work with my clients and. And also kind of missing the days of, you know, the way we used to. Knowing that the way we used to do challenges is kind of stuck in 2020 or 2020 21, but missing some of those elements that I shared that I used to love about seeing people over consecutive days. So as I thought about it and as I was brainstorming, like, how can I, like, if I really want to get new and different and explosive results, how can I do something new and different and explosive? Let me pause on that for a second because I don't want to skip over the fact That I had this conversation with multiple people, with friends, with my coach, and it really hit me that if I wanted to get different results, I would have to do something different. That sounds so obvious, right? But it's like, I. How often do we do this ourselves where we keep repeating our results? And then we're like, why can't I get more than this? Why am I stuck at this number? And it's like, oh, right, because I'm doing the same things, right? I mean, it is Einstein's quote, right? If you always. How does it go if you always do the same thing? Or insanity is repeating the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Right. So even if you're happy with your results, which I have been, if I want to get new and different results, I got to think different. So that's really where this came from. Right. So for me, a summit really started to feel like the right container for me to try five days, one hour a day, live with real. A mixture of real teaching, coaching, and audits. Okay, so we'll talk more about the, the audit piece. But that's the other thing that I really wanted to bring back. Like, when I would do these challenges, there was just kind of more time for me to coach people. And I missed that in my launches. I wanted to bring that back. And I think it's also important to share that. You know, I, I never want to have a launch event that's a glorified sales pitch dressed up as a training. I. That's not my brand. It' been my brand. I'm always thinking about actual thought leadership. And so creating from this new format has really challenged me to bring new ideas to the surface, things I've never taught before. And something I didn't expect is that the process of creating this summit has made me already a better teacher, a clearer thinker, and a stronger leader. Right. Because when you have to take stand up in front of 220 people, I mean, by the end of this next week, I think we will easily be over 300 people. Gosh, it could be 400. You never know. If I'm gonna talk to that level of a room, then, you know, you, if, if you find yourself in that situation, you really get rigorous about what you actually know. Right. It kind of forces you to stop being, being vague. It forces you to find the edges of your own expertise and then push past them. And that's been one of the greatest gifts of this process for me. So kind of back to a little bit more about the, the, the 220 signups so far. And what I think that's actually telling us, because I really think this matters just beyond my own launch. I'm not sharing this to brag or anything, of course, but again, 150 of those registrations being organic and climbing, right? We still have a week. The. That means that those are people who found this opportunity through the podcast, through my content, through word of mouth. And these are not people who were retargeted or pushed through a funnel. And not that that makes. Not that you'd be any less of a lead if you came from ads or a funnel, but there's really something to be said for people saying yes, because it resonated, right? And what that tells me is that people are hungry for depth right now. People may be looking for more than surface level content, recycled advice. And certainly I think people are tired of free trainings that are really just long sales pitches. I know I'm tired of that. I'm sure you guys are as well. I think all of us want to be in a room with someone who really knows what they're talking about and is willing to show their work. Like really think about being willing to show your work. Right? And it also tells me something about my own audience that I didn't fully see before, and that is that, you know, as I see this number, this 150 number higher than where I would typically be, that tells me that people are waking up, right? That this is. That this is really waking people up. Maybe folks who've been on my list for months or even years and haven't necessarily bought anything or haven't signed on to work with me, those people are registering, right? Those people are coming back into the fold. And with what I really keep coming back to is that the right container at the right moment reactivates a warm audience in a way that nothing else can. Okay, so this is really a sales system insight. It's not just an event insight. This is not just. I want to be clear, this isn't just about summits versus challenges versus Webinars. It's really about your sales system. We're going to get more into that as this episode continues. When you build something with genuine intention and genuine excitement, something that requires real thought, courage and investment of your expertise, people really feel that. And I think people show up for it. Right? Another thing I'm really excited about is I touched on this lightly, but just to go a little bit deeper is the psychology of five days. I do think this is underestimated and this is what I loved so much about challenges in the past. When you see someone's face for five days in a row, when you watch them teach, when you watch them answer questions, when you watch them handle uncertainty. Because God knows I will be. There will be something will come up and y' all will have to watch me handle it. That sounds so fun, right? But you'll watch me do coaching in real time. That shifts. That shifts something for, you know, the people that are watching me, right? The relationship that typically takes could take months to build through content or through listening to a podcast. That timeline gets compressed, right? You stop wondering if that person is the real deal and you see it for yourself right in front of your face. That's really what I'm trying to design here. Not just to, like, you know, love it. As one of my mentors used to say, trying to fit 10 pounds of crap into a five pound bag, that's not what I'm trying to do. I'm not trying to 5x the content. Okay? I think that would be overkill. What I am trying to do in part is five days of accelerated trust building, right? Really scaling that know, like and trust over five days. Because when you have one sales conversation, like a sales call, that builds trust with one person. I love sales calls. I do them in my business. They're amazing. But when you have an opportunity to build trust with 220 people at the same time, that's a really exciting opportunity, right? And we all know trust. And don't forget, trust is the only thing that actually converts. Do you forget that sometimes trust is what makes people convert? Not your tactics, not your clever copy, not the perfect funnel, not your list of features on your sales page, but trust. Trust and belief that working with that person is actually going to get you where you want to go. And a predictable sales system is really just a trust building system. I want you to think of it that way. Having a predictable sales system in your business is a trust building system with a clear invitation at the end. That's all it is. And a live summit, I think done right is going to be one of the fastest trust building mechanisms that exists. I mean, we'll see. It hasn't happened yet, but I have a really strong feeling that it's going to be the case. Y' all will hear me on the other side tell you how it all turned out. I also want to talk about identity because I know that identity is a big piece of what I've been talking about so far this year. And you all know that I'm an open book in terms of becoming who I have to become and being who I have to be to hit my goals this year. This is a big piece of it for me. Becoming the person who hosts a summit, it's kind of a big deal, right? There's definitely a version of me that would have waited, waited to be invited onto somebody else's stage, right? Instead of feeling like I had earned the right to just create my own. I think a lot of coaches are, and service providers, creators, experts. A lot of us are living in that version of waiting. Waiting until we have more followers, more credibility, more proof, more money, more whatever, waiting to be chosen. We forget that we can just choose ourselves, right? I know. I'm fully aware. Hosting a summit is a declaration. Hosting a summit says I am the person who convenes, right? I am the person who brings people together. I am the person who builds the room, who sets the agenda, who creates the stage. I don't have to wait to be invited. I create the invitation. And that identity shift is no small thing. It changes the way that I show up, the way that I sell, the way that I talk about my work. I can already feel it. It hasn't even happen yet, right? So when you see yourself as the thought leader who creates the table instead of waiting for a seat, hoping for a seat at somebody else's, I think everything gets easier. I already feel like this summit has pushed me into that identity faster than a lot of other things that I've done recently. And I think that opportunity that I've been going through is available to anyone who's willing to stop waiting and start building. By the way, you don't have to do a summit in order to tap into what I'm saying. This episode is not necessarily. I want to be really clear. This is not intended to convince everybody that now you should do a summit. It's just really about, what is that next? What is that next level for you that asks you to be the person who calls in the results that you want? That was really the conversation that I was having with my trusted friends and my coaches was, hey, like, if I'm gonna be this million dollar coach, I want to have a million dollar sales system. I wanna have a million dollar event. I wanna really show up on a. On a. On an another level. And I. That is what this iteration has brought out in me. And this really is what a predictable sales system looks like. I do wanna zoom out for a second because as you may know, if you've been listening to the podcast. This whole series has been about predictable sales systems. And I want you to see that this summit, even though it's a new style for me, is not separate from what I've been teaching. It is the teaching. Okay? This is. Hopefully you can see that the five weeks of what we've been talking about. We've been aligning the podcast episodes to each day of the summit. This brings us to day five, which is what we're talking about today. This is all part of having a sales system, right? I've been doing some things differently in this launch, but it all comes down to what I've been talking about. Having a plan that I can rely on. I've been relying on my own system that I teach for advertising an event five weeks in advance, right? I've been doing new things like having a secret podcast for registered attendees. Did y' all know this? Have you all listened to the sold out? The sold out standard is a whole secret podcast I made for you all. When you register for the summit, you get it automatically as soon as you register. I did that to build trust before day one of the summit, right? I've also been creating consistent content to seed all of my ideas. I've been doing personal outreach to warm leads. I've been doing a clear invitation throughout all of this to start talking about the fact that I'm going to be opening my mastermind sold out group programs. None of this was random. I want to be really clear. None of nothing that I've done for this summit has been something that I've made up. This has not been me throwing spaghetti against the wall, even though this format is slightly new and different for me. But every piece that I have done has had a job. Every piece has been connected to the other pieces. And that's what a system looks like. It's not a collection of tactics, it's not trends, it's not fads. It is a sequence of intentional moves that build on each other. And here's the part that I think matters most for you, for me, for all of us. This is repeatable, right? If I wanted to do this again in six months or next year, I could run it again. It would be faster and tighter and convert better because I've done it, you know, once before. But here's the thing. The assets that I'm building, the frameworks, the teachings, the podcast episodes, the content, none of that stuff disappears. In fact, it all starts compounding. And that's the difference between isolated launches, like seeing your launches as kind of these like isolated events versus viewing it as a system. A launch is an event. It's kind of like a one off thing that you're trying. A system is something that you run, you learn from, you refine and you run it again. And that's how you end up perfecting something that can turn into a sales engine for you, something that will keep selling into the future. Instead of you having to reinvent the wheel every single launch. I really want to make sure that that is coming across that I think from the outside it probably looks like, oh, like she's doing something new and different. She's doing a launch like, like I'm kind of making it up from scratch or like I'm doing something totally reinvented. And while there is definitely some new and fresh energy, like if you're feeling that, you're not making that up, I feel it too. But it's all part of the system that I already built, right? I already know, like I have my buzz blitz system, this is just a version of that. And I'm able to iterate on what is already working for me. So that makes me feel like this isn't a gambler, this isn't me putting all my chips in and being like, let me go all in on something that's unproven. In fact, it's taking what I've proven many, many times over and giving it a twist. And I think there's a big, big difference between putting a twist on something that works versus making it up from scratch every time. Now, I want to close with something that might sound a little bold, but let's go for it, right? This section of my outline, I, I called it the historic moment. So dramatic. Really mean it. Genuinely, I really do think something is happening in the online business space right now. The era of hype and shortcuts and overnight successes and promises, all of that is sort of fizzling out, collapsing. People are done with it, okay? People want substance, people want expertise, people want to be in rooms with people who have actually figured something out and are willing to share it honestly, okay? That's what I'm building. And this summit, my very first one, is the beginning of something I've been doing for a long time, right? But it's an extension of that, which is continuing to show what I know, right? If you've been following along for these five weeks, you've been watching me build towards something, you've heard me being honest about what's hard and clear about where I'm going, you've watched the behind the scenes of somebody who's going after that million dollar year by making things more boring and more intentional. Monday is when it's going to get real. Okay? Five days live, real teaching, audits, coaching. And at the end, a seriously amazing invitation for the people who are ready to go further. This summit is a historic moment for me. It's a historic moment in the Steph Crowder arc. It's a historic moment in the online business space, I think as far as how all of us are wanting to learn and what all of us are craving. So I would love for you to be in the room with me next week. Okay. Not just to learn something, there will be plenty to learn. By the way, that seriously, the teaching content, I finished it last week, is I'm so excited, so excited to teach it, but also it's an invitation for you to watch something being built in real time. I know. I love being in the front row of somebody who's building something exciting. Right. I'd love for you to be part of my first summit to say that you were there. Right? So come. Okay. Steph crowder.com summit, we get started on Monday. If you miss, if you fall behind, whatever, it doesn't matter, just come. If you miss Monday, for example, like, it's okay. Just come on Tuesday. Come live when you can put it on your calendar to watch the replays because they're going to be available for a short time. But make sure you're signed up. And like I said, you can be listening to my totally secret private podcast, the Sold Out Standard, which is available as soon as you register for the summit. I would love to hear if you like just what you're thinking, how it's been for you, if you've been paying attention during my, you know, getting the summit put together and talking about it for the past five weeks, you can always reach out to me at heystephcrowder if you've been here for a long time or if you're somebody who's brand new and you're just discovering me. I just want to tell you I'm so excited that you're here. I'm am so incredibly excited to host the summit. It is going to be a personal landmark for me, but I absolutely plan on making it transformational for the people who attend as well. So I can't wait to see you there, my friends. And until then, I'm wishing you the courage and the clarity to go after what you love. Thanks for listening to today's episode. Are you ready to get fully booked? And fill up your group program. Join the sold out sales system summit March 16th through the 20th at 2pm Eastern. It's Friday. Free five day live training and I cannot wait to see you there. Steph crowder.com summit get all signed up and I'll talk to you soon.