I was having a problem finding a paying audience for my products and services. It's really frustrating to create fun things and want to make a difference in the world and struggle to generate an income. I joined EPM and realized it's not as much about my products/services as it is about my lack of a network, so I am starting from scratch to create an in person one, as I am not a social media person.
Your GRADUATION Story
I was having issues with figuring out how to build out my course and find the right path, I wasn't sure what to do as I had all this knowledge that could help so many. I joined EPM and Marissa, Coach Ed and Ainslee helped me organize my thoughts to present it best. I worked the materials provided, and got my course built out and a system to make this course great.
Your MISSION ACCOMPLISHED Story
I was having issues with figuring out how to build out my course and find the right path, I wasn't sure what to do as I had all this knowledge that could help so many. I joined EPM and Marissa, Coach Ed and Ainslee helped me organize my thoughts to present it best. I worked the materials provided, and got my course built out and a system to make this course great.
More confidence in my message and clarity on what I am doing in my business I know my next steps at least. Chatterboxing is hard when you can't find where your audience is hanging out. I have something great to sell.
Your MISSION ACCOMPLISHED Story
I was having a problem with designing my program and creating a irresistible offer. I wasn't even sure how to speak about my program in a clear and confident way. I joined EPM and it became so crystal clear to me all the program components that I needed in creation of my product. I learned how to talk about my product and present it in a confident way, communicating its value. Through a process called chatterboxing, I talked about it everywhere and as a result, I made a sale for $6,000 and another for $500 as a downsell, within less than 3 weeks.
Your MADE A WHOLE LOT MORE Story
I was having a problem with designing my program and creating a irresistible offer. I wasn't even sure how to speak about my program in a clear and confident way. I joined EPM and it became so crystal clear to me all the program components that I needed in creation of my product. I learned how to talk about my product and present it in a confident way, communicating its value. Through a process called chatterboxing, I talked about it everywhere and as a result, I made a sale for $6,000 and another for $500 as a downsell, within less than 3 weeks.
Clarity, confidence, and making a whole lot more in sales than I expected! EPM helped me to be much more clear, confident & comfortable in putting myself and my offer out there as a visible and highly valuable help to my ideal customers. My biggest take aways from EPM is to iterate my way to success, that taking action is the fastest path to clarity, and to always remember progress over perfection. I now feel creative, confident, and capable enough to talk about my product in all kinds of daily situations, because I have a proven way of presenting it. No longer do I feel a need to hesitate or procrastinate.
This program was well organized with obvious experience and the support received was phenomenal!
I wanted to work 1:1, in English and I wasn’t sure what to do to present it. I joined EPM for the third time just to work specifically on my not-to-be-translated texts. For the first time, I discovered that a product made with EPM, fully in English, sells like crazy and it sells without any extra work. Just by using chatterbox and enrollment conversations as an offer for a webinar, I made 5k. I can't take any more 1:1 customers for the moment, so I have a money-making limitation. Otherwise, I would have made much more.
What is your biggest takeaway from EPM?
Learning how to sell effortlessly while having fun and enjoying myself.
How has EPM and your success impacted your life?
EPM has absolutely changed my life. Business and personal. I even sold a house EPM style after my first EPM. I used to be totally stuck-up talking about my business, now chatterbox is my way of living. And it works.
What has been the biggest change in your business?
Getting people to understand the value and the price of aerial yoga and yoga therapy.
What is now possible for you because of your Experience Product?
To make money and have a thriving business. I love to sell.
The work was detailed with doable steps. I found myself rewatching videos to get every detail possible. I liked the support and the accountability. I loved the bells and whistles and can't wait to include it with my clients.
What is your biggest takeaway from EPM?
The different types of marketing techniques. I tried all of them, last one being my webinar.
How did EPM help you become successful?
The plan for my course is complete and I feel confident about my price point.
How has EPM and your success impacted your life?
It has decreased my anxiety about creating an eCourse.
What has been the biggest change in your business?
I feel like I have a platform and my course is completed for the first 6 weeks. I loved the fact that you all said that we didn't have to have the course completed before selling. It gives me some flexibility to revise as I go along.
What is now possible for you because of your Experience Product?
I can market with more confidence.
Okay! Resharing my story in the correct thread,
The EPM came to my attention in 2020 after several natural and personal disasters left me near-destitute and needing to rebuild my career. It was hard to part with the $2000 program fee, especially since I’ve taken several other high-priced business courses which did not deliver. But the EPM money-back guarantee sealed the deal. I get it back if I do all the steps and don’t succeed? Okay!
Despite being a known self-publishing industry expert, blogger, podcaster, journalist, author, and consultant, I have not been able to engage as many authors as I’d like to the programs I know they need to succeed. Why? In retrospect, it was probably because I couldn’t articulate the cost-benefit solution in a way they understood. The EPM literally gave me templates for writing and saying the words out loud in a particular order, asking strategic questions along the way and leading me, and my future customers, through the process.
Holy moly, it was uncomfortable to parrot words that were not mine! But it was the practice I needed, and with a few adjustments for my own voice, it worked perfectly. Only half-way through EPM I was able to clearly and confidently articulate an offer to address and correct the book marketing problems most authors share, bundle my relevant online courses, and create a one:few beta group program. I sold it quickly and now, half-way through, participants aeyore bnd thrilled at their learning, progress, and results.
My focus for the EPM project was the Five-Star Book Launch Masterclass, which promises authors twenty or more five-star reviews when their book launches. Because I already have a decent audience and reputation, I used surveys and chatterboxing to sell all eight seats in the beta program at the reduced price of $997. I actually gave two authors half off because I really wanted them in it and I felt they’d give me the best feedback. Boom! $6000. And my intuition was correct. They have given me the best, most valuable feedback.
I was a little nervous because I have a private client who is keeping me pretty busy and also, every year in November, I start to invest a lot of time organizing, speaking, and promoting a popular writing conference. Oddly, they canceled the conference and didn’t make it virtual. I was incredibly disappointed, but quickly filled the gap with a project of the heart that I’d been timid about before now.
Enter win #2, the Your Motorcycle Diaries travel writing workshop. It’s an eight-week workshop on the craft that includes my travel writing online course, a weekly story workshop, and peer feedback. To give a little background, I’ve been a motorcyclist almost all my life, and have worked as a moto-journalist, editor, author, and speaker in this niche. The niche also spills over into the bigger adventure, overlanding, and power sports niche, and also into the women’s solo travel niche. My activities have been lagging these past years in this niche, but I'm back!
The mission for Your Motorcycle Diaries is to finish at least one publishable story by the end of the program and, along the way, learn how to structure and create consistently publishable stories. Only four weeks into the program, three of the 15 writers have met that goal and the others clearly will. It’s been awesome as there are new writers in the group and (I am pleased to say) a handful of widely-published journalists who joined to hone their craft and test some of their more-challenging stories.
I announced the Your Motorcycle Diaries travel writing workshop at the virtual Women’s Motorcycle Conference, for which I was a speaker back in November 2020. I sold the workshop to conference attendees for half-price at $99, and then for $197 after the conference ended. All combined, I sold 5 seats at $97 and 10 seats at $197, collecting $2146.80 from the 15 beta workshop participants. Magazine editors are even jumping in to help me teach, articulating their guidelines and deconstructing their favorite stories for the online course segment of my program. (In return, they get well-edited stories for their magazines, right?) And, like I said, that wasn’t even my focus for EPM. But EPM had already given me a repeatable template and the confidence to state my offering in a way that both came from the heart and sold the program.
So those are two amazing wins. There’s a third. The moto writers workshop and the cancellation of the writers conference gave me the confidence and the time to reach out even bigger with my brand (summarized as Carla King @MissAdventuring: Adventures in Travel, Writing, and Publishing) to create an Adventure Writers Conference (AWC) for writers and editors in the powersports niche: motorcycling, 4x4s, trawlers, and more.
After some chats with events organizers who run related events, they are interested in adding the writing conference to their events. Industry influencers are even jumping in with offers to co-host. The first AWC, which will be virtual, is on the calendar for September.
To say that Live Your Message is all coming together for me is an understatement. It’s pretty intense, and sometimes I feel physically dizzy as I try to keep up with the opportunities as they come in. The opportunity to partner with organizations in the adventure travel niche has been especially rewarding, as has the unexpected opportunity to work with two professional authors associations. (Can I say that's win #4?)
All this activity working with writers and editors and adventure industry professionals fits my nomadic lifestyle so perfectly. The first AWC will be virtual, and there will always be a virtual component to what I hope will become a live event that moves around the world. I can offer this anywhere and partner with organizations everywhere. Right now I’ve got Chang Mai on my calendar for November.
Live Your Message, right? What a perfect description of what this has turned out to be—initiation into an infinite feedback loop where you do what you love to help people who help you help people live their dream and live your dream.
A heartfelt thank you, Marisa. and to the team you’ve gathered around you. The Live Your Message - Experience Product Masterclass journey you’ve created has guided me to overcome my challenges, waking up every day with the confidence I am in control of achieving the lifestyle of my dreams.
Carla King @MissAdventuring
Adventures in Travel, Writing and Publishing
I had a lot of challenges: feeling burnout in my job, no energy, no idea what to do – what I would be able to do. I´ve started many online programs but I haven't finished any of them, so I 've lost self confidence and I thought that I was just a lost case. When I saw Marisa speaking about EPM, everything she was saying gave so much sense to me, and I decided to give myself one more chance and I joined the program. I had no product, no idea, no list, no active presence on social media, just the gut feeling that this is the right program for me. I have to tell you, it was not easy, my English was not too good, so to go through 1-hour video training took me at least 3 hours, and Google Translator was my best friend. But I loved everything on EPM, I strongly believed Marisa, the coaches and the process, and I was focusing on just one step after another... It was often difficult, even painful but having a laser focus on just one next step helped me to overcome some frustration moments and to move on. I've experienced a lot of beautiful, creative and fun moments too and even flow after a really long time! And I was so excited and proud of myself to accomplish each Milestone on time, and getting the „thumbs up“ from my coach was very encouraging for me. I have to admit I had a breakdown too – it was before Xmas, when our coach said that being a good student does not mean to be a good entrepreneur and I realized how big of a truth this is and that this is exactly me – a good student but so far away from an entrepreneur yet! All my fears and self doubts and imposter feelings put me down and I was feeling tired and lost my momentum completely. I took a rest for a few weeks and now I´m in again, starting with chatterboxing. I haven't made my first sale yet, I need to do some iterations but I have all the tools and knowledge and I have no doubts I´m on my way to live my message and to be awesome. I had a really great time in this training, I´ve learned so much and I am feeling deep gratitude to Marisa and the whole team for such a great program and all the support. The EPM is for sure the best program I´ve ever invested in!
I was exhausted from being on a marketing treadmill even though the people who do my programs were gaining great insights and achieving transformations. I joined EPM and learned about shifting my marketing language to selling what people want, not what they need, in their language, not what I want them to know. I applied this in my MVP and noticed how excited people got. I have sold the MVP to 3 people so far but I can also see how I can shift the marketing language in my existing program.
Your MISSION ACCOMPLISHED Story
I did not want to produce a coaching course at all. I came into EPM hoping to find out how to simply create and sell a product. I teach during the day and like to do anything else after work. However, to "be a good student" of Marisa, I wanted to follow all of the rules, but I couldn't keep up with the facebook group posts every day. I let them slide while I created my last illustrations, and after about 2 weeks, I saw a facebook post called "Are you a best kept secret?" I made my own version of it and got some quick responses. Without that one post, I wouldn't have set up my free info session and launched my course. I was actually 4 days late in launching, based on my EPM planning document. Since launching, I have been motivated to create all the materials I had stuck in my head. I am not making much money now, but the reality of having something that could become much more is here. I needed to have that success, especially since the motivation from Marisa, Coach Kanu and the other EPM crew is ending soon, because my customer/friends will be my motivation for the next few weeks.
Your FIRST SALE Story
Nothing was going right for me with my chatterboxing. As an introvert who was being told to approach strangers in public--just before Christmas, with a lot of new snow making travel difficult--this didn't produce any sales. My audience for my coaching course would be parents with non-readers at home. When I went to the local science museum, I knew they were there, but that I did not want to interrupt their fun outing. Everybody was engaged in some kind of activity, and since I am not that bold to interrupt, I gave up on that approach. I made business cards with QR codes to hand to interested people, but only gave out 2 to local libraries... for their bulletin boards. At the local library, I hoped to meet parents who were bringing their children for story time, but nobody showed up. That was sad for many reasons. The local bookstore provided some hope, but since my product is only digital, those fizzled. My weak attempts at using Facebook and Linked in were not doing me any good yet. So, with all the snow that buried the Twin Cities, Holidays being here... I set out to simply finish creating my books. After finishing all the artwork, I started looking through the EPM Facebook page again and found a 2.5-week-old post from Emily Fontes called "Are You a Best Kept Secret?" I took her advice and posted it. Within two hours, I had 5 responses, and another two later on. Then, I followed up with them all, invited them to a virtual meeting about my course, and had to crash through the preparations for the virtual meeting. On the day of the meeting, I had yet to create any slides. Things were getting hairy, but I had four hours before the start time to get it done. I quickly made tweaks to my setup, tested zoom options, and customized a Canva slide deck for my own purposes (only leaving 2 rogue slides). Of the 7 people interested, 4 attended with me, and the others watched the replay. I got two sales from the live attendees, and one from the replay (so far). It doesn't feel like I am making any money yet, but the work I am putting into this course creation could be re-used with 100 clients or even 1000 at a time. I am making progress towards simply selling the books to the right audience... and creating freebies that can be used to get new customers.
What's been the biggest change in your business?
I didn't have a business, so having something that I can actually sell to a school district is a new thing. I haven't made any contact with them yet, but it's coming!
Now, I actually have to prepare teaching materials for parents... which are going to become freebies/lead magnets soon!
How's EPM and your success impacted your life?
When I signed up for EPM, I knew I was trading in my youtube-info-surfing habit for EPM. I was always looking for how to get business going, website stuff, taxes, branding, etc. from youtube, but nobody was able to help me write out the reasons why somebody would ever want to buy something from me. So far, it has been a lot of work and the goals are not totally realized yet. I feel that the mission accomplished beyond this 12-week course are coming, though.
It has made me deal with social aspects of marketing that I would have never been able to figure out on my own.
What's your biggest takeaway from EPM?
So far... ask questions and be interested in people when you talk to them... as early as you can. Not all of your close circle of friends are your customers, but they probably know somebody who is.
So far, the messaging. Even if my friends are my first customers, being able to speak to real people about the course materials and why they should care is helping me learn what to say next time.
What's now possible for you because of your Experience Product?
Now, I am (almost) able to call on any school district in the country and have a conversation about their reading success with their Kindergarteners, then offer them a freebie of my product and give them an offer they can't refuse.
I am nearing the ability to call any school district and offer them my product (NOT my course), which has the potential for higher ticket prices and no ongoing support.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
I am glad to have the chance to be part of this course. It was more info than I could absorb in 3 months, but what I did learn has been worth it.
I had this vague idea of creating an online course for almost 10 years. But always felt, I had to attend to other priorities or had not the right product idea or simply wasn’t ready yet. In autumn I decided to finally begin developing an online course based on my job application workshops, which I’ve been running for the past 5 years. -- And the universe heard me and sent me this Email with an invitation to the “Crack your course idea challenge”. That was fun and helpful! -- I liked the gamification approach so much that I signed up für EPM. It has been a great experience, but also a rough ride since I started off in English and halfway through realized that I had to switch to German, the language of my course, to succeed. In hindsight, I should have worked with my German coach Uwe from the beginning. In the end, I graduated, finished my MVP track, and can now push on to iterate my way to awesome.