How I Make $100k Every Time I Run This 5-Day Event

Welcome back to the show, my friends. I think this is one of the most excited I've ever been to record an episode because we're going to be talking about 5-day challenges. Maybe that doesn't feel sexy to you, but every time I do a 5-day challenge, I make 6 figures. And I want to talk to you about why they work and why most people do them wrong. I'm going to pull back the curtains This is going to be so good. Get out a pen and paper. If you're multitasking, come back to this. Challenges have been around for a long time in business, and they get wildly misunderstood. I didn't realize how misunderstood they got until my clients started coming to me saying that they wanted to do a challenge, or they've already done a challenge, and then they're explaining to me what they want to do or what they did do. And I was like, what? Like, this isn't the 5-day challenge that I would like you to execute, the 5-day challenge where you're gonna make bank from. So let's talk about it. 5-day challenges— some people think they're out— outdated. Some people think that they're gimmicky. Some people think they only work if you have a massive audience. Yet again, every single time I run a 5-day challenge, I generate 6 figures. Not once, not accidentally, not because I got lucky and people showed up But because challenges, when they're designed correctly— there's absolutely an art and a science, and I teach my paying clients this— but when they're designed correctly and executed correctly, one of the most effective relationship-building and conversion mechanisms in an online business is a 5-day challenge. So today, why do 5-day challenges work? What they actually do psychologically and strategically to move the needle forward in your business. Why most people fail with them, and who they're not for. And then if this resonates, I'm going to tell you exactly how you can learn to build one properly in your own business. I have an upcoming workshop in March, and I'm going to break this down in even more detail. Today is going to be a high-level overview. So let's dive into what a 5-day challenge actually is and what it isn't. A 5-day challenge is not a content dump. This is one of the things I was referring to when I said client has come to me and said, you know, I just did this 5-day challenge and it was just a content dump of something that they were challenging their audience to do to lose weight over the next 5 to 7 days. It's not just a free course that you're doing to teach information. No, it is. Not a place to over-teach and just deliver information. It is not a way to give everything away. It's also not just an email series. So yes, is there email challenges that you can complete? Yes. A true live 5-day challenge, that's what I'm talking about right now. This is where people get it wrong. A 5-day challenge is a conversion environment. It is meant to drive sales. It is meant to shorten the cycle. It is a short, immersive container designed to create this momentum, and that momentum is going to breed momentum, and it's going to build trust quickly. It's going to demonstrate your competence. It's going to shift people's beliefs and mindset, move them along in the buyer's awareness journey. It's going to move somebody from observer, participant, and then buyer. You can go from cold to sold in a 5-day challenge very quickly. Let's talk about how this is an activation mechanism. What do I mean by that? It's not just building your list, although yeah, it is going to build your list. It's about moving them forward, activating them, creating that momentum, building the trust really quick. We're collapsing that timeline where it's not going to take as long in the sales cycle where they need to lurk you for a few months and see 27 of your posts and download 5 of your lead magnets and go to a few of your lives and have XYZ amount of Messenger conversations and do a sales call and come back months later. No, we are creating momentum, building trust really quickly. We're giving them quick wins. We're demonstrating that competence. We're shifting their beliefs and it's activating them. They work because of what happens inside of those 5 days is so strategically designed. Here's what a challenge does better than almost anything else. It compresses the time. So this isn't some just gimmicky thing to make conversions. It compresses the time. So where the typical sales cycle takes a little bit longer because they have to see all of these posts and, you know, download your content and watch your live trainings and have conversations, and then they're ready to buy because they trust you. And they see that you're a real coach and you get real results. Well, the 5-day challenge compresses that time. They get to trust you faster. They get to see what you're teaching in a shorter period of time because you're spending 5 focused days together. So instead of somebody consuming your content passively over months, it gets them to show up daily, gets them to take small actions daily while the challenge is going. You have accountability built in, you have prizes built in. It gets them experiencing wins in real time. Then they have this psychological investment. By day 2 or 3, they're not just watching, they're not just learning, they're doing the damn thing. They're participating. Participation is what converts. They're actually doing it. They've had the mindset shift, they've had the quick win. There's no turning back. You've jump-started their success. It's a beautiful thing. This is why I love 5-day challenges. I actually get people out of their head into service ASAP. I'm showing them you can actually do this, and then boom, they're doing it. How quickly somebody feels like they know you and trust you and believe you in your process is also magical. Challenges dramatically increase that velocity. The real reason that my challenges convert at 6 figures every single time— and I've been doing these for 2 years, and this is important— it's not because I teach harder or I'm a better teacher, even though I think I'm a really great teacher. And I actually have always wanted to be a teacher. When I was a little kid, I used to line up all my stuffed animals and I would teach them God knows what from my whiteboard. And I talk about this in my book, and I am a natural teacher at heart, but The reason my challenges convert is not because I'm good at, at teaching, or it's not because I give more stuff away. It's not because I'm louder or I'm more articulate. It's because I design challenges around movement, not just information. I'm not just here to teach. I'm here to move and shake and create momentum. Each day is gonna solve one specific problem for your ideal client. But it also needs to create that specific shift. It's all about the shift. They have to have a shift. It— each day is also going to build towards a larger transformation. So it's really important when we're creating this challenge and we're deciding what each of your days are going to be, that we're reverse engineering the larger transformation as a whole. The challenge is not the product. The challenge is the bridge. It is the proof of concept. It's about selling in a way that's helping people make decisions. That's exactly what it challenged us. By the end of the 5 days, people aren't asking, should I trust you? They're saying, how do I keep going? This is incredible. If this is what you have to offer, I don't even know what else you can teach me. I'm curious. Tell me more. I just came off a challenge and I had a man tell me, you know, Carly, I almost didn't click the button. He had already signed up. He almost didn't click the button to show up. He said he was pretty skeptical and he told me at least 3 times how blown away he was and how he's been to other events and I do it differently. Okay, so why do most people fail with challenges? Why, why do they do it differently? Why wasn't he blown away by what they did, but he was blown away by what I did? Well, most people are way too broad to begin with. They try to serve everybody. They don't have a clear endpoint, so they didn't reverse engineer that transformation. They didn't tie in accountability. They didn't make the shifts to lead people to have that momentum where they keep going and they get those quick wins. They're just not leading anybody to a specific place and it's just kind of a bunch of word salad thinking that they're then gonna get a sale. And it is very quote unquote salesy if you've been to some of these. They're not educational forward. And people think that I can just deliver really good content and then people are gonna buy, but they're not even delivering really good content because they didn't plan it in the proper way. And this isn't how humans work anyways. People buy when they feel momentum. I can't say that word enough. People buy when they feel supported. People buy when they feel like stopping now would cost them something and it's too late to turn back because they've already done XYZ already. A challenge without clear next steps is— it's just free labor. It's going to be a waste of your time. It's going to be a waste of their time. But if you have a challenge with a clean pathway that you have reverse engineered, This is a conversion engine that will make you fucking bank in your business. If you can't hear my passion for 5-day challenges as I'm talking about this, then I don't know, skip to a different episode. But I'm obsessed with 5-day challenges. I love doing them in my business. I do them often, and I want to teach you how to do this too. Challenges, they're not for people who hate being live, don't wanna engage, want everything to be passive. If you're not willing to show up consistently, then I would say maybe challenges aren't for you. Challenges are for people who— you want that fast trust. You want that high-touch connection with your people at scale. You wanna sell high-ticket offers. You want momentum without constantly launching all the time. This is why I use them. This is why I keep using them. They're intense, but they are efficient. And once you do it once, it gets so much easier. It is pretty much just rinse and repeat. So this isn't just another misconception. People think challenges only work when you're new. No, that's not true. Challenges work because they re-engage cold audiences over and over again. They activate warm ones. They bring new people in quickly. They create urgency without this manipulation. I've run challenges at different stages of my business, and it works regardless every single time. It works regardless of the audience size. It doesn't matter. So the biggest mistakes that I see people make— people copy the format without understanding the function, meaning they copy the format of 5 days, daily prompts inside the Facebook group, and you have these live trainings each of the 5 days. That's not the strategy. The strategy is sequencing belief shifts. This is sales psychology. It's designing the momentum. Sales psychology is creating a felt sense of progress. Sales psychology, it's positioning the offer as the obvious next step. This can be learned, but without that, that challenge becomes very exhausting for you and for them as well. So I'm teaching this in March in much more detail. I'm hosting a workshop specifically on how to run 5-day challenges that convert, not just attract. Because once you can understand this, you don't have to launch consistently. You don't need a massive audience. You don't need to burn out to make money. You need one clean, repeatable system. For me, it's 5-day challenges. It's been one of the most reliable pops of cash that I've ever used in my business. This is why I'm teaching it to you. This is why I teach it to my paying clients. And it's from execution. I have perfected this over time. So 5-day challenges work not because they're trendy, not because they're human, but because they create connection and momentum and trust. And when they're built intentionally, they're not pushy. It feels natural. If you've ever thought, I want a way to sell that feels aligned, that feels energetic, that feels effective, I want to collapse the timeline for my clients, I would love to have a pop of cash in my business that felt easy. This is the ultimate win-win. This is it, and I want to teach you how to build one properly. I'll see you in March for the workshop. Thank you so much for listening to the Thriving Therapreneur podcast. I hope that this episode has inspired you to reduce burnout, work smarter, and see the freedom potential you have as a therapist. We would love to have you inside the Therapist to Coach Accelerator Facebook group, where we have live trainings and cheat sheets on all things marketing, sales, and adding coaching ethically and legally. I am here cheering you on, and I'll see you around.