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Okay, let me guess. You fall into one of these two camps. The first camp is you want to earn $100,000 in a single year for the first time. Or you're in the second camp where you've already made six figures in a year before and now you want to learn how to make a hundred K or more in a single launch. And you don't want to just do it once, you want to do it every single time. Whether you're in Camp 1 or Camp 2. I want to invite you to a brand new training that I have cooked up and it's called 100k group programs. We are going over the 12 month blueprint I have for you where you're going to learn how to start, sell out and scale your group program. Whether you are making your First a hundred K or you're scaling to 2,50, even 500K, you need to know where you are on this map and exactly what strategies you need right now to get to the next milestone. This training is brand new, totally free, and it's happening on July 8th at noon Eastern time. If you want to get signed up, go ahead over to stephcrowder.com workshop and I cannot wait to see you there. Let's go to the show. 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, hello my friends. Welcome, welcome, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for spending some time with me here today. I am thrilled to be back on the microphone. Y' all have been hearing from me recently, but those were some episodes that I had recorded a little while back. I have been out of the office. I went to Boise. By the way, fun fact, some of you already know this. Shout out to anybody living in Idaho. It's Boise, Idaho, not Boise, Idaho. Okay, so I was in Boise attending Kits Craft and Commerce Conference. That's hard to say. And it was my first time attending. I loved it. It was such a good conference. If you are looking for a great conference for creators and coaches and authors and people like that, you should definitely look at craft and commerce for next year in June. I already bought my ticket. I will be there. So. So I did that and then my family flew out to Boise and we drove up to McCall, Idaho, visited some family. It was a blast. Cousin time, lake time. And I was offline and it was really lovely. And hey, this is what launching can look like. I am technically in a launch period and even though I was out of the office for really the better part of two weeks, nothing stopped here back at home and it at, you know, Steph Crowder headquarters. In my sold out group programs Mastermind, my clients still received the top notch level of service that we promise when you join the Mastermind. My clients got to attend coaching calls with amazing experts, including my support coach. And also we had an operations call and then we also had a ads focused call with Claire Pels. And I'm just super proud. I'm super proud of having built something where I can take time away. And I come back and guess what I came back to today. I log in and the first thing I looked at was our Wins and celebrations channel inside of our circle community. This is where people tell us all of their big, big and small amazing wins and the things that are going well. And I had all of these new wins to read while I was gone. My clients were on fire. Buyer. Okay. I had one client fill his brand new group program. He wanted five people, he got his five. I had another client fill her group program with seven people. Another client did her second run of a group program that we helped her design. She got five people right away. Another client is in the pre launch period and already has four people signed up. And then a different client shared that she has doubled her investment in the sold out group programs Mastermind. In just six, six weeks after joining us in a really financially dicey time, it was very important for her to make back that investment quickly. We've been working with her on the skills like closing sales calls, overcoming objections and scrappy selling. And so she's been able to earn a significant amount of money for her family and was just sharing how awesome that feels. So incredible. Incredible stuff. And I'm like watching this happen as I come back from this amazing vacation and trip that I've had and I wanted to share something that I've noticed about every single one of these clients and not just these clients, but really all of the clients who share their Wins with me, they are across all different niches, right? We have musicians, we have relationship coaches, we have business coaches, we have artists. I love that about the sold out group programs. Mastermind is. It's very, very, very diverse in terms of subject matter. But there is something that I think a lot of them would tell you they have in common. They are not beginners in business. Right. And they're also not really. Most of them are not necessarily at the scale to millions and millions stage just yet. They are in what I've always called, if you've been here for a while, I've always called this stage the messy middle. Right. I've also been recently using another term kind of interchangeably, which is the missing middle. Okay, so we'll talk about both of those. The messy middle is this part of business where you're not brand new to this, you're not a shiny green beginner, where you're just getting your website up and just listening to podcasts for the first time and maybe you're making your first coaching investment and things like that. But you're also don't feel like you're at the point where you're having the conversation around employees and, you know, true scale and really advanced strategies and millions and millions of dollars. Right? This stage is also the missing middle because I think in the entrepreneur sort of coaching space, this group is conspicuously absent from the conversation. Right. I've even heard people like, I've seen this on threads where people will be like, who's out here teaching to those of us who are in the middle? Right. There's tons and tons of courses and resources for beginners and there's really high ticket, super high level, 20k and above masterminds for people who are at true scale. So that leaves us with the missing middle. Right? And that's who really kills it with me. That's who I love to work with. And so I wanted to talk a little bit more about this stage. If you identify with being in the messy middle or feel like it's the missing middle, where you kind of wish there was more mentorship and more conversation around what it's like to be in this place. Because I was here for a really long time and I also quit my business when I was in the messy middle because it was so messy. In fact, it was messy to the point where I thought something was wrong. Right? It made me panic. It made me think I'm not doing it. Right? It made me think, I, you know, this is just too hard. Having a job would Be easier. That's the other thing that I think is kind of dangerous about this phase is it's like the money is kind of comparable to a really great job. So you find yourself sort of being like, is it worth it? Right. So how I would define the messy middle, there's a bunch of different ways to define it, so I'll try and throw out a few different things. You know, revenue can be a wide range, but I would say you're probably making somewhere between, you know, 50k to 100, maybe 100, even up to 150k in a year. Okay. You could be lower or higher. You know, there are some people who I feel like, really feel like they're in the messy middle and they're making. They've only made about 25k in a year or on the higher end. I've definitely worked with clients who still kind of feel like they're in that messy middle when they're at more like 1 80k, you get the idea. But I think that core range is something like 50 to 1 50k in a year. Okay. If you're in the messy middle, you have gotten clients before. Okay. You're not somebody who's never signed a client. Okay. You've had clients, you've had wins, you've delivered results. You've shown in some form or fashion that you can help people you like. It's like, enough traction to be like, okay, there's something here, right? Enough to kind of give you that belief. But you can't predict your next month. Right. You don't feel like it's stable. And at the same time, beginner advice doesn't fit you anymore. I've always said that beginner advice can actually get you really far. Cookie cutter advice I have. I am not somebody who's gonna put down like a sort of first do this, then do that, then do this kind of course. I think if you are in that beginner stage, you can get really far with some of these amazing resources that coaches and mentors have made for you. Right. But you will get to a place where you need more than that. You need custom feedback. Everybody's business does start to look different, right? At the very same time. The scale to millions advice isn't built for where you are right now. Okay. So the problem is you're stuck between two worlds with nobody teaching to you specifically. And I think the most vulnerable part is it can feel lonely. It definitely feels frustrating. It probably feels expensive. And again, like, this is the part where I quit. I. I think I Probably did like three years in a row. I also had some babies in there, but I had did three years in a row of 161, 180K. There is definitely, like an upper threshold of the messy middle, where it's going to feel messy, it's going to feel patched together. It's going to feel kind of like a hot mess is really the only way I can describe it. And meanwhile, if you're making somewhere between, you know, 50 to 150k and a great job comes along, you might look at that and think, well, gosh, like, maybe it would just be easier to let somebody else make the decisions for a while. I've been there and I've made that decision. Okay? But here's why I actually love this stage so much, and it's why I've kind of closed everything else right now just to focus on teaching to this group. It's actually the stage where the smallest changes can create the biggest jumps. Okay? The people in this stage are not too much of a mess. You're not doing anything fundamentally wrong. You're not going to break your business. Your business isn't going to break you. You don't have to shut everything. A lot of people get really tempted to burn everything to the ground at this stage, and that's real. I know that feeling very, very well, like I said. But the truth is, after mentoring hundreds of people at this level, what I can tell you is you are actually like 20% away from a totally different business. Okay? Truly, if we look at all of the things that you're doing right now, I would only change about 20% in order to create completely different results for you. Okay, here's the thing, though. This is what I have to be real with you. About 20% doesn't sound that much. You might be like, oh, by that logic, I'm like 80% of the way there. Here's the mistake that people make. They look at that 20% and they. You have to recognize that it's not going to come to you. Okay? You have to go out and make big changes in order to pursue that last 20%. So what do I mean? Every year you stay in the messy middle is going to cost you. Even though it's only the 20% that's holding you back, it's not gonna fix itself. This is what I've learned again. I repeated that year three years in a row, trying to figure it out. Then I quit, had to take a year off, and when I came back, I said, that's it. I'm gonna do something different to create, to. To like, work on that 20% that needs to change. Cause I'm doing 80%. Like, a lot of you, I probably feel like that you're like, a lot of things are going right. It doesn't. You might feel like you're really close. You might feel like I could. Like, I'm almost there. Right. And so it might not be that big of a gap, but what I have found is that gap is not going to close itself. Okay? Every year that you stay in the messy middle costs you something. It's going to cost you money, obviously. Right? I have watched super smart, capable people sit at 100k, 80k, 125k for 5 years. Seriously. I. I know I mentioned it happened to me, right? So if you do the math on that, it's not just one down year. It could be a quarter of a million dollars in compound losses easily over time. And I think the thought of, like, oh, I can just figure this out on my own. Like, I'm, you know, it's like I said, I'm not that far off. Like, I should be able to do this. I've gotten clients. I'm good at what I do. There's like this complacency at this level. We think about the money and wanting to hang on to our money, but we don't think about the loss. We don't think about the opportunity cost of not breaking past that plateau. Okay? So the money is a big piece of the puzzle. The second thing is the confidence, okay? Being in the messy middle for too long, again, I can speak to this very directly. Being in the messy middle too long will really erode your confidence. And I'm a confident person, okay? Spending too much time in the messy middle took me out of business. Every month that feels wobbly, every launch that doesn't go right, every Sunday night where you're refreshing your inbox, trying to see if anything has moved, it doesn't just cost you the income. It really does start to detract and take away from the belief in yourself. I have watched experts who started this work absolutely on fire and, like, so sure of themselves. I have watched them find themselves three years later wondering if they should just take that job. Not because they're bad at what they do. In fact, it's quite the opposite. But the messy middle will wear you down. It's messy. It doesn't feel good. You're not meant to stay there forever, okay? You have to do something different in order to break out of that messy middle. So that's the second thing, is the confidence. And then the third thing, and I get really fired up about this one, is the clients that you'll never reach if you stay in the messy middle. Like I said, this is the one that gets me. Because you know that you are awesome at what you do. Most of my clients come to me and tell me, like, I know I can help people. I know that I'm smart. I know that I have something to offer. But the longer you stay capped at where you are right now, the more people who need you aren't gonna find you, right? They might go to somebody less qualified. They might take a course that doesn't fit them. They may decide to not get any help at all. And every year that you sit in the messy middle is a year where a bunch more people who could have thrived in your room will never get a chance to meet you. And that's what's actually at stake, right? If you are somebody who's here to make an impact in your industry, there's also that cost of not getting to create that impact that you're dreaming of, right? So it's important to recognize that this isn't a, like, nice to have kind of problem. Being in the messy middle is a now problem. And the fact is that the fix is 20% doesn't sound like much. It's not a reason to delay, okay? It's a reason to move faster. Because the longer you wait, the more of that compounding effect, you lose the right time to fix. This was a year ago, okay? The next right time is now. Again, I say this with so much conviction because I kept hoping I could do more of the same and eventually break through, and I ended up getting a job instead. So now that I've scaled past the messy middle and I'm not there anymore, I look back and see how close I really was. It really was 80% right. And 20% of the most meaningful tweaks that helped me break past that 180k, have my first $300,000 year roughly when I came back, and I've been growing ever since, right? So with that being said, I have this class, at least at the time of this recording. I have this class coming up that's all about 100k group programs. You may have heard a commercial for the class at the beginning of this episode, if you're listening in real time. So because of the messy middle and this, I wanted to establish this phase, this missing middle, this group of people who I think go Underserved. That really leads me to why I wanted to create this class. Because there are actually two kinds of $100,000 group programs. When I say 100k group programs, I'm talking to those of you who are in the messy middle. And there are two kind of big milestones that we're going to cover in this upcoming class. And this is what I help my clients with. So I'm going to show you the roadmap in the class so, so that you can get really clear about what you need to do to hit the next. Hit the next milestone and keep going through those steps to scale out of the messy middle. Okay. The first kind is that you're going to build to a hundred K, right? Like a hundred K in a year. A lot of you listening have done that before. A lot of you haven't. And so, you know, that's kind of one camp that's like the first big milestone. And I help a lot of my clients do that. In fact, last year a bunch of my clients had their first. A hundred K a year. Yes. In this economy, with what's happening in the world, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, you can do it. You can have your first a hundred K year, even though it's not 2020 anymore. And all the things that people like to say, that's going to be your first milestone. And that's super exciting when that happens. Like, that's huge. But what's even more exciting is once you master that, you are going to build on top of it to do 100k and in a single launch, in a single enrollment period. So we have getting to 100k annually with group programs possibly being part of probably being part of that business model. You could actually probably just do it one on one if you wanted. But most of my clients have, you know, at least one kind of group offer as part of their. Like they may come to me with no group offer and then we help them build it and they get to 100k often through a mix of one on one work and a group offer. Okay. So you get to your First a hundred K, then you're gonna learn how to get and earn 100K in a single enrollment period of your group program. And that is a completely different ball game. Right. Most people don't know which one they're after. You know, a lot of people haven't really like sat down to think, okay, what are the milestones? It might just feel like you're doing random stuff to try to get to more More, more, more, more. And a lot of people who think having a $100,000 launch sounds awesome aren't spending enough time mastering the skill of let me get good at earning a hundred K in a year. Okay. So the move that you make next depends entirely on what milestone you are going after. Right. And we're going to cover all of this in the major three stages of group program offers and building a group program. What it takes to have a group program. That's what we're getting into in my free class July 8th. Okay. And again, you can go to Steph crowder.comworkshop to get all signed up. It's going to help you so much to know what your next steps are for pursuing your a hundred K, whether that's your a hundred k year or your a hundred k launch. So again, like, just to go a little bit deeper, why I'm teaching this class and I'm really excited about this. If you've been following me for a while, you know I teach a number of free classes throughout the year. I taught a summit, a whole free summit in the spring. This class is brand new and I'm so excited to build it from the ground up because I've been running this mastermind for years. I've helped hundreds of people. And like I said, I built it because I kept meeting messy middle clients who are doing 80% of the right things and 20% needs major change. But I've already said that a number of times. But here's what I haven't told you. Most of those people think they need to overhaul everything. They think they need new offers. They think they need a brand new strategy. They, they really think that they're a lot farther away than they actually are when what will just absolutely explode your results is knowing which 20% you need to refine. Okay, we're gonna keep the pieces that are working. We're gonna help you double down on what's already working. That's how my clients are able to come into my program and double their investment in six weeks. They not reinventing the wheel. That would take a year to completely blow up your business or to do something crazy different. Okay. This is how my clients can fill those groups while I'm away on vacation. It's not about doing more. You don't have time to be doing more. You're busy. But it's about doing the right things repeatedly. And that's, I think, the big difference. When you're in that messy middle, you have to stop reinventing the wheel. You have to Stop convincing yourself that you need just a new strategy, a new offer. You have to stop abandoning things before they've truly had a chance to work. And you have to identify what are those things that are actually working and how do you double, triple down on them and amplify them so that they can help you break past that messy middle plateau. And once you do get past that plateau, things are gonna feel predictable, things are gonna feel more sustainable, things are going to feel more like you can rely on and I promise you won't wanna take a job. You scale past the messy middle, you'll be like unemployable is what I call it. Right? Like I am unemployable at this point because it doesn't make sense. Like working for myself. I know that my, my income potential is limitless and that is what happens when you're able to get out of that place. So I wanted to make sure I did kind of a deep dive episode to really help you understand what we're going to be getting into in this training. On Wednesday, July 8th at noon Eastern time again, it's all about the 100k group programs and it's going to really cover your 12 month blueprint to start, sell out and scale. Okay. If you're in the messy middle and you're tired of trying to find help that's built for where you are, you feel like you resonate with this idea of the missing middle. This is absolutely for you. Okay? If you're an action taker who would rather refine than reinvent everything, if you love that, if you're like, oh my gosh, yeah, I don't want to have to do all this extra work like sign me up for refinement and getting better at what's working. I need you to show up. All right. Steph crowder.com workshop I cannot wait to see you on July 8th. I hope you've loved this episode. I have so much more good stuff coming up, including a super, super fun announcement I'm going to be making very soon. Possibly my very next episode. So stay tuned for that. So many cool things are happening in the sold out group programs world for the rest of this year are just getting started, my friends. I will see you in the next episode and until then, I'm wishing you the courage and the clarity to go after what you love.