2 Things You Should Know Before Start Your Own Program

Some hard truths about starting or launching a new program or product! Before you invest your time, effort and money in creating a new product, service, or program get a little bit of tough love from “Small Business Stacey” before you decide to move forward. #ASmallBizLife  #WhereMarketingMeetTechnology

Episode Transcript

Morning everybody. I am starting a new thing called Bitch Slap Sunday.

As I was having my morning cup of coffee, I was thinking back over the past week and the common theme that was happening is that I have both clients and prospects who are really excited about starting their own program and I get it right? We all have this innate excellence in us. We’ve learned things. We want to help people learn from what we’ve learned. We want to put together training, coaching packages that can help other people and subliminally we’re thinking, oh, we’ll have this great passive income stream so that the money will just pour into the bank. Well, it doesn’t quite work that way. Now I had a prospect who reached out to me this week, wanted some help with their marketing services. They wanted to launch a new program, so I was asking some questions about it. I was like, okay, do you have a list?

Nope. Haven’t even built a list yet. Are you active on social media? Nope. I don’t even have my social groups set up yet. Do you know what the biggest problem that your avatar is facing right now? I think I know. Well think doesn’t put money in the bank. Now, I had a client who wanted to launch this coaching program, she spent time, effort, money, building it out, and then she launched it and no money in the bank. I have another client who was so passionate about launching a retreat and I said, “Put the brakes on.” So today’s #BitchSlapSunday is about my lessons learned of making these same mistakes so that you don’t either. You see when I was $500,000 in debt, I found the solution to get out of that and it felt so good, right. I was so passionate about wanting to take what I learned and teach other people so that they wouldn’t make the same mistakes.

I spent weeks putting together a curriculum. I spent money on the technology because you have to have a membership site. You have to have a website, you to have sales pages, you have to have email, all these technology tools that you need in place. You have to do video. And I built out this magnificent 12 module video course and I launched it and nobody bought it. It was only $97 but nobody bought it. And that was a big lesson learned. The #BitchSlapSunday lesson learned is that it’s not about you, right? People don’t care about you. They only care about themselves. So in my book, Small Business Marketing Made EZ (get a free copy while they last), we always start with the A in the Action Marketing System, knowing your avatar. Because if you know your avatar, what their pains are, what their challenges are, what they’re struggling with, then if you create the program that addresses that, they will come running to you with open wallets.

It’s a lot different than probably how you’re thinking of doing it now. Taking what you know, what you learned, what you want to teach, you see that’s not what people are willing to pay for. So with all of my clients irregardless of where they are in their marketing journey, we always start with the A, getting clear on your avatar. And the way that we do this is with a pre-launch survey. So if you have a program that you’re looking to create, launch, rollout, you need to do a pre-launch survey and ask your prospect of customers, clients and patients what they want, and there is a proper way to do this. It’s not just throwing out a survey, so if you’re interested in learning more about that, then reach out to me, leave me a comment below and I’ll share more about that. What I want you to leave with today is to know that it’s not about you.

If you want to make money in your business, and I know that you do, it’s about delivering what your customer, client or patient wants. Now another lesson learned that I’m implementing it now. I’m going to get it right this time. I’m really passionate about helping the independent coffee, smoothie juice bar owner sand my newest book, Cups To Gallons, is about helping them do that. Now this in itself, it’s just a book. It’s not going to give them the exact answer, right? They’re coming to me after reading it, wanting more hands-on training, and so I already know that I want to do live event training. Now I could go out and book the hotel room. It’s going to cost me thousands of dollars to have this room block put together my marketing materials, build out the course, that is more of a build it and they will come.

I’m doing it right this time. I’m launching my pre-launched survey to understand my audience. What do they want? Will they come to a two day event? What is the best time of year? What if it were a two day event? What two days are the best days of the week? What would they want as the takeaways from the program? See, I’m not building it about me. I’m building it about them and when it’s created, addressing all of their pains, challenges, and struggles so that I can show them the transformation they’ll receive, they will happily pay the premium price that the course is going to launch for.

All right. That’s my #BitchSlapSunday. What did you think? Do you like the idea of me coming live with you every Sunday? Leave me a comment. I would love to hear from you. I’m here to support you, so if you got value from this, please leave a comment below. Even better, please share it. Tag somebody, another business owner that you know could benefit from Small Business Stacey. All right everybody, have a fantastic day and hopefully we’ll be with you next Sunday for another bitch slap.