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a look at an online launch

Online Launch Lessons + How to Deal with Clients Who Second Guess Your Programs

When you launch, you expect to work long. You expect to work hard. You expect your list size to change. You expect to welcome new people into your community. You expect to have to shift a few things on the fly. You expect to receive good and bad feedback. You expect to gain valuable insights on your product/program/service.

But it can blow your mind the inner shifts that a launch can bring on…

Lonely girl meditating on the open road

Our completely updated, all new, totally revamped, last ever live with me Money Map launch ended this week after two long months. And there were massive inner shifts happening for everyone on our team, most of all, Me.

First and foremost, this was the longest launch in the history of launches. Whew, I’m glad it’s over.

Why was it so long? Because the first phase of the launch didn’t go well. The videos we made just didn’t build enough awareness and understanding of what the Money Map is and how it would help you to transform your life and business.

So, we needed to pivot at the last minute. We knew if we opened the cart and started selling the program then, we would not have the results or impact we wanted.

My strategic mind got activated and the first thing I did was decide to discount the program significantly. The Collective was not on board with that and while they did go along with it for a minute, they called for something else, something more impactful that would help people to truly see the power of the Money Map.

So we decided to give the Accelerated version of the Money Map course away for free. (Read more about our rule-breaking launch here.)

This scared the crap out of me because it meant delaying sales of the program for another 3-4 weeks and we needed the revenue to make payroll. And we didn’t know if giving it away for free would cannibalize the enrollments when we did put the program on sale.

But we did it anyway. We took on a private client, put off paying ourselves and invested in the next level of our growth as individuals and as a company.

Over 5,000 people enrolled in the 2-week free course and I could feel the shift in energy. Finally, people were deeply understanding the work of the Money Map. I knew that when we began to enroll in the full 6-month course, we’d have plenty of people ready to join us.

Putting off our enrollment for 3 weeks brought up a lot of my own fears around money, time and return on investment, forcing me to get into true alignment with my own Money Map at a far deeper level.  It required me to look at where I was working out of alignment, investing more time than I really wanted to in things I don’t really love to do, and not valuing my energy as much as I could.

What a gift. To be “forced” to do my own work on myself is always such a blessing. I encourage you to look at where you can choose to do your work on yourself more often so that you are not forced into it. It’s far more enjoyable to choose. But force sure does work too.

So I once again applied the Money Map in my own life and came to clarity. This clarity is requiring a restructuring of the way I work in both the New Law Business Model business and the Eyes Wide Open Life business, and I’m grateful for it.

Going forward, I will devote about ten hours a week to each business, freeing up my time to finish the proposal for You Are Not Your Credit Score, move forward more powerfully with my media projects and devote plenty of time and energy to self care, relationships and 2 private clients.

I’ve decreased my pay from Eyes Wide Open so that each of the Eyes Wide Open Collective partners are paid exactly the same thing and I’ll make up the difference by serving the private clients I will now have space for. I feel excited about that.  (Email [email protected] and let me know if you’d like to be considered for one of those two spots.)

I love how the Money Map has forced me to get clarity and come into right alignment with time and money because that’s exactly what I am supporting this new cohort of Money Mapper’s to do over the next 6 months.

Now that the launch is finally said and done, it’s time to move into deep service mode. Releasing new content each week, live coaching our members every other week and time spent answering their concerns and needs in the private forum in between.

Spending time in the forum each week is one of the places I’ll be devoting a substantial amount of my ten hours per week. I love coaching this way and got a beautiful chance to do just that this morning.

One of our new members was having second thoughts about her decision to join the program. This is extremely normal and if you are offering programs, you’ll want to learn how to deal with clients who second guess your programs so you don’t get stressed out when it happens. Instead, you want to look at each opportunity where someone is having a second thought about their decision to join you as an opportunity to coach and support.

Many program leaders would take this into the shadows and work with the member offline or perhaps judge herself and go into questioning around the work, but instead I am working with this member publicly on our forum so everyone can benefit not just from hearing what’s coming up for the member, but also seeing how I am working with the member.

This is how I teach, not just by preaching or telling, but by showing you what it looks like to live and work in the new economy.

You do not need to take anything into the shadows. The more open and transparent you can be, the more impact you can make. {Tweet It!}

I know that by doing it this way our members will handle their own complaints or second-guessers entirely differently than they would otherwise AND by showing it rather than just teaching it, I can transmit far more possibility and truth.

If you would like to participate in the Money Map and join our community of truth-telling and get into right alignment with time and money, sign up here for the waiting list.

And be sure to leave a comment below and tell me your own launch insights and experience with second-guessing clients.

A Peek Behind the Scenes of a Launch that is Breaking All the Rules

Online marketing is an interesting beast…

On the one hand, the internet provides an incredible vehicle to distribute content that has the ability to impact thousands. When you have a mission, there is no better way to share it with the planet than online marketing.

On the other hand, this industry is rift with terminology and tactics that are used to manipulate human behavior. The formulas have been essentially the same for 20 years, with nuances here and there, but in many (not all) cases are designed to manufacture scarcity and fear.

The way that I was taught to reconcile this as a student of internet marketing was through terms like “ethical bribery,” “tripwires” and “diminishing rewards,” and the idea that as a marketer, if I had confidence in the ability of the program, product or service to create transformation, than it was ok to do whatever it took to get people to separate money from their pocketbooks to be able to access my specific flavor of transformation.

Even if that meant tapping into fear, lack and scarcity.

These are not values that I am personally aligned with. They are not values that any of us here at Eyes Wide Open Life are aligned with.

From the very inception of discussing the strategic design of our recent launch of the Money Map, we knew that we were willing to take a risk and break these rules. We desired to create art. We desired a level of integrity, generosity and beauty that defied the old rules of the internet marketing game, after all – “it’s been statistically proven that ugly pages convert better!”… blech.

I am sharing this ‘behind the scenes of a launch’ with you because I want you to know that if you share our desire to embody your personal values in the way that you market your products and services, it is more than possible. We have some amazing discoveries and results to share with you.

Here’s a Peek Behind the Scenes of a Launch that is Breaking All the Rules:

Not everything we tried worked… our initial gateway into this launch, our much touted ‘visual meditation video,’ didn’t work. People didn’t get it right away and the average viewer only watched the first 30 seconds of the almost 7 minute video. And since it wasn’t behind an opt-in, we lost thousands of leads provided by our partners because the next step of opting in for the complete series was at the end. It was beautiful, yes. And it was not effective.

Another example is the several fairly intense debates on our daily team calls about how to complete this launch in the strongest way possible while maintaining our values.

One strategy that you’ll often see marketers use is to say that a program is closing to new enrollments, only to – surprise! – give you one last chance to allow the people who regret their decision not to join to bring in a final burst of sales. Although this strategy works revenue wise, (and we care strongly about revenue here at Eyes Wide Open – it’s the oxygen in a growing business) Amrita made the final call. We will not lie to you. We will not tell you that the program is closing when we know it’s not true.

Another often used strategy is to have disappearing waves of payment plans and/or bonuses. Nope. We’re not doing that either. We’re leaving them up until the cart closes. (Rather than give into knee-jerk reactions that cause marketers to turn up the scarcity volume mid-launch – believe me we were tempted.)

By far the boldest thing we did (near the start of the launch), with the most incredible results in terms of effecting change on the planet, was offering an Accelerated Money Map Course, which we could have easily sold for $500 or $1000 — for free. 5000 people participated and had the opportunity to get clear on their Money Map. We can see from the feedback we’ve gotten that this made a real and lasting impact on people’s lives – of course the greatest indicator of success of all… and also resulted in incredible exposure & attendance rates, and conversion of 16% on our cart open call.

Has it been perfect? Not even close. And even though we are not at the finish line yet, I am so proud to have been a part of this grand experiment.

We’ve been blessed to have two incredible assets: 1) our team. Wow. Their commitment to holding us to our highest intentions, even when we were scared and wanted to go back to playing by the old rules because, well… when it comes to making sales, they work – kept us from self-sabotaging our commitments to ourselves and holding you, our community as the dearest outcome of our work. 2) our coaches, especially Alex Mandossian, who understood what we wanted to do from the get go, and has held us to it in ways we could not have possibly seen for ourselves.

Last night Alex invited us to let go of our goals.

“The end results are none of your business,” he said. “Take care of people. Finish what you started with the integrity and commitment that you began with, and those who are meant to be with you will be.”

He asked to have the entire team share how they will be celebrating on Tuesday when this run is over.

Ultimately, we are reminded that we all show up. We all make mistakes. We all have wins that are important to recognize and celebrate. But ultimately, what matters is honoring our word, living our values and surrendering to exactly what is, learning from the experience and leveraging it to create more goodness in the world.

(Check out this post for a behind the scenes look at our launch through the eyes of our CEO, Amrita Khalsa.)

Want more rule-breaking, revolutionary, new economy launch insights? Be sure to leave your name and email below. We’ve got plenty more to share!