We are trainers and personal development junkies, so we have never been afraid to invest in ourselves.
That’s why when we started out as entrepreneurs over a year ago, we were happy to invest our time and money in getting help to get our business off the ground. You only get out of life what you are prepared to put in, right?
So we invested in several different products, as well as some 1:2:1 coaching around online marketing, all of which we benefited from significantly. We learnt heaps and did a great job of applying it to our business.
But we still seemed to be stuck.
No matter what we did, we were not able to translate what we’d learnt into profit. Our growing tribe, great content and extensive skills did not seem to be enough. It was still a struggle and we were still not making any money.
To top it all off, we were beginning to test the patience of our highly supportive partners and families as we juggled entrepreneurism with Motherhood, part-time work, partners, family commitments and time for ourselves.
Although we had lots of small successes, we needed something more to keep us going. And we needed it to happen soon!
Wham! Enter WE Mastermind.
I knew as soon as I heard about Women Entrepreneur’s Mastermind that we had to get onboard. I’d been following Natalie Sisson for a while and had a strong hunch that it was our ineffective launch strategy that was holding us back (what launch strategy you may ask?)
To tell the truth, we couldn’t really afford to invest in yet another course, but trusting in my gut has worked well in the past and it was enough to convince my incredibly supportive business partner Jo that we should pull out all stops to make it happen.
So where did we get the money?
Affiliate sales! Praise the universe that a couple of lovely people from our tribe were also inspired to join WE Mastermind (thank-you!) Their commitment gave us the injection we needed to make it happen, and the rest is history.
What We Have Achieved Since Launch
In March we kicked off our official launch with a killer webinar and things are looking up, big time.
Finally, we got the boost we needed to know (really know) that our business is going to succeed. Yes, it will take more time. No, we can’t quit our ‘day’ jobs yet, but we are getting closer everyday. Here are our launch results in all their glory….
- On 22nd Feb we officially launched our “Work Less, Earn More, Make a Difference” Ebook and Ecourse . We had over 125 people register for the live webinar, with loads of great interaction and feedback happening in the chat room during the live event. People were resonating strongly with our message! This was a huge confidence builder for us and a fabulous way to engage with our audience.
- In the 2 months since we launched, we’ve only had one webinar sign-up unsubscribe from our newsletter, so it seems we have attracted women who are engaged and onboard with our message.
- We made sales and continue to do so! We didn’t hit our ambitious launch goals, but we earnt enough to keep us going and invest in outsourcing.
- Our 10 week Ecourse and forum is going great guns. The interaction and energy from participants has been inspiring. What we are offering is really impacting on people’s lives and businesses, which is incredibly exciting. We couldn’t be happier with the feedback we are getting and it’s going to make for great testimonials for launch #2.
- We now have a small but dedicated group of affiliates shouting out about us, with great results. Our last launch experience and WE Mastermind have helped us realise that JV and affiliate relationships were going to be key to our success. This time around we put lots of work into nurturing these relationships, with good results.
- We added 150-200 people to our tribe during the launch, and grew our facebook and twitter followings considerably.
- We have a growing waitlist of highly motivated women entrepreneurs who missed out on the first Ecourse and want earlybird access to the next round (wahoo!)
- We’ve had several invitations to speak at offline and online events recently, most likely a result of the momentum we generated from the launch.
Things that didn’t go so well
(and why it is going to help us blow our income goals out of the water next time around)
The Natalies provide an incredible amount of high quality content in WE Mastermind. So much in fact that we didn’t manage to implement it all perfectly! But we learnt stacks from what didn’t go so well.
In a nutshell, here’s where things went pear-shaped.
- The “selling” part of our webinar. We ran out of time and didn’t do a great job of our ‘upsell’ during the webinar or at the end. Our listeners enjoyed great content, but we didn’t seed the idea of buying early enough, or spend enough time outlining the great outcomes people would get from buying our Ecourse.
- We ran out of time and energy for lots of things we’d planned for, some of which would have had a big impact on our launch results. Promotion, for example. We didn’t get to facebook advertising, videos, product reviews, press releases, or any offline promotion.
- Everything took longer than we thought it would, and we were still finishing off our product at the same time as trying to write promo copy and webinar content, engage with affiliates, set up systems etc etc. A major learning – outsource next time around so we can focus on the important stuff!
- We didn’t get as many sales as we wanted (though it was significantly more than we’d ever had before!)
Notes to self for next time.
We knew these things before we launched, but now we really know them!
- finish the actual product BEFORE you start the launch! This means you can focus solely on promo and selling, and launch knowing your product is ready to deliver (having said that, imperfect action is better than complete inaction!)
- Create the promotional material for affiliates, media, offline advertising and facebook ads etc well in advance, which takes the pressure off during the official launch period.
The biggest lesson of all.
Stop shying away from selling! We have something that is truly valuable to offer our tribe and we have been holding ourselves back by pricing ourselves too low, being hesitant to shout about our product due to fear about being too ‘pushy’ or ‘salesy’ and in effect, holding people back from the huge benefits of our work. It feels like Jo and I have both had a big shift with this now.
WE Mastermind has certainly taught us a lot, but there are also some things that you have to learn from experience. You can know them intellectually, but still not really know them, if you know what I mean.
That’s why we can’t wait for our next launch (coming up in July!) because we are know that we will be stepping it up yet another level this time around and we can’t wait!
About the author: Janine Ogg is a highly trained facilitator and coach, Mum and blossoming entrepreneur who devotes her time to helping women discover their ‘why’ and transform their true calling into a profitable business strategy. Janine and her business partner Jo Foster are the founders of Love Your Small Business.