240: 3 Ingredients to Fill a Program Faster When Launching (BFF Bonus Replay)

Hi, this is Charles Michael Davis. Toyotathon is on so stop by your local Toyota dealer for incredible year end deals on the cars, trucks and SUVs known for their legendary reliability like the stylish and efficient Camry, the Ready for anything RAV4 or check out a rough and rugged Tacoma or Tundra, all with great financing and lease options available to qualified customers. Visit buyatoyota.com to find out more. Toyota let's go Places.

This is your time. How can we earn twice as much in half the time with joy and ease while serving the highest good? That is our guiding question here at the Freetime Cafe, your home for heart based business. I'm your host Jenny Blake. Join me for conversations with authors, friends and fellow business owners as we explore ways to free your mind, time and team to do your best work. Now onto today's show.

If you've been in business for any amount of time, at least a year, then you know the feeling of a launch that just isn't taking.

The sales are crawling. You start having extreme doubt, wondering if you created the right thing in the first place. If you created a big enough audience to sell anything at all. And then all the insecurities that follow about when sales aren't flowing. Is it the offer that's off? Is it your invitation letter that's off? Is it the pricing that's off? Is it you? And it's so hard not to get a big morale dip in the middle of a sales dip during a launch. So this month's bonus is on a few strategies that I've learned over the years that came up often in the voxer coaching that we did over the summer for various offers that people were thinking of launching at a meta level. This has helped me launch almost every program I've done in the last five, if not 10 years. There's a few core magic ingredients that help me fill programs faster, especially when sales start lagging, and a few extra sweeteners to boost those flagging sales. Now before we dive in, I have to say that the flagship book on this topic has become Alex Hormozy's $100 million offers. That book will cover in great detail how to craft an offer that is so irresistible people feel silly turning it down. He is a much better expert at that than me on positioning and adding the value stack to make an absolutely again irresistible offer. And he just published a follow up book on $100 million leads. Now you know that here at FreeTime and BFF we're not obsessed with millions and billions and how many figures our launches are. We are trying to create products that resonate with our community and of course, to fill seats when we have them, when we are offering products and services. It's a terrible feeling to put a lot of hard work in designing something, thinking that you're crafting something so perfect for your audience, and then just hearing crickets. It's really disheartening. And it doesn't always have to be that way. So let's say you have as good an offer as you can possibly come up with, that you have your best possible hypothesis. Maybe you've even piloted or tested things where you know that you are generally launching the right product or service at the right time for the right audience. If you're starting from scratch on any one of those things, it's likely that you'll need to do some beta testing, maybe even free workshops or free content excerpts. Let's say if you're launching a book, free teaser podcast episodes. If you're launching a show, there's all kinds of things you can do leading up to a bigger launch. But when you are ready to wave that launch flag and say, okay, doors are open and you want to try to fill a number of spots as quickly as possible, here's what I recommend. There are three things that I always make sure I'm including in any kind of launch. Even if it's the inaugural launch for founding members of a certain program or the initial cohort like we just had with Business Bestie Brunch. Those three things are a deadline, a discount, and a limited number of seats.

The Deadline it's really important if you're trying to fill seats. If you want a launch to go well, if you want it to be robust, that there be doors open date and a doors close date. For many years now with bff, it's been rolling enrollment, partly because that serves what I'm trying to do with the free time podcast in the book, where I want people to be able to join when they're inspired, when they first encounter us, or they put the book down and they want to really put things into practice, put things into action. I have done more fixed date enrollments in the past and those always worked really well, oftentimes a lot better than these evergreen rolling launches. So sometimes you're going to pick between the two and you can even do both. You can have rolling enrollment. It will dilute a little bit more of a fixed launch with a specific deadline for doors opening and doors closing, but you can try a hybrid approach and in fact, when you do have a fixed doors open and doors close, what that allows you to do is keep a wait list in the interim. So you are building up interest and a really qualified set of people who by the time you do the next launch, you're not starting from scratch. That's what I do with Voxer coaching, because it's only a summer pop up that anybody who is interested in the program in the months that I'm not running it can sign up for the waitlist. And I often try to go to that group first and give little extra special bonuses and give them the first crack at the next round of spots. And that's the same thing that Sarah and I are doing for Business Bestie Brunch and the Pop Up Mastermind as well.

The second element, the discount, I like to give a staggered set of discounts and I put a lot of thought into the discount staircase, if you will. To use a metaphor for this, first, I like to go to current clients. So if you're here in bff, you are a current paying client. I don't do one on one coaching anymore other than Voxer, but when I had the Voxer coaching clients, I went to them first to ask if they were interested in joining Business Bestie Brunch and the Pop Up Mastermind, for example. So I always like to give the first crack and the best rate to current paying clients. And that's a thank you to being part of that core group of active supporters and those who are probably most interested in what it is that you do and what you're offering. Then I give a discount for early bird enrollment and that can go to the broader community. So in this case BFF counts as current clients. You will get first crack before I launch something more broadly. But when I am going to launch more broadly, I always like to build in an Early Bird bonus for those who join early. Then I'll give a discount code for different mediums. Not the psychic mediums, but mediums of my IP that I'm putting out there. So a newsletter subscriber discount or a podcast listener discount, those can be informative because when those coupon codes roll in, you can see where are people joining from. So if I have a different coupon code for bff, then for the newsletter and for the podcast, I can actually see, okay, where's everyone coming from? Now in my case, I'm kind of familiar with everybody's names, so it's not a mystery. But for a bigger launch that would be really helpful information when you really need to juice sales. You can even create a more dramatic discount if it won't offend current paying customers. So I'll give you some examples of this right now. If you purchase the free time operations dashboard at the VIP level tier, that is essentially a VIP day with me, Jenny, virtually or in person to build your dashboard with you. Now, currently that's listed at $10,000. So if I wanted to really push for enrollment and create a very special offer around this, I could say for a limited time and a limited number of seats, drawing on those first two magic ingredients, I'm lowering the price or the investment for a VIP day to $5,000, for example. Now, I'm always trying to think about will this offend or upset or be unfair to current paying customers? Because nobody has hired me for one of these 10k VIP days. It wouldn't. But if somebody had just paid me $10,000 and then the next day or the next week I go launch it for five, that seems unfair. If I wanted to do that push and launch for five and open up five or 10 seats and try to drive business to that area, what I would probably do is go back to the client who just paid me and say, hey, I'm doing this. Do you want one of those spots at 50% off? Even that maybe I would offer them 2,500 or I would throw in some sweetener, some bonus for them, given that they had just paid. So I wouldn't retroactively refund, but I would want to kind of make it right that, hey, I just want to acknowledge that not only did you pay me full price, you paid early before I put all these bells and whistles or made the discount so dramatic. Another example would be substack subscriptions. Substack offers a lot of features to create discounts. And I've seen people say, oh, it's my birthday today, so the annual subscription is 50% off, or it's my birthday this month. And so all month you can join at 40% off. To me, that's unfair to the people that have all been paying full price leading up to that. So I feel like in those situations, while you might drive new subscriptions, it's kind of offensive to those who have already been paying. And those who again paid early raised their hand early and paid full price. And then all of a sudden, just because maybe subscriptions are lagging or you want to do another push, you're offering your discount. It just doesn't seem to reward things in the right direction. I would try to offer Other sweeteners, events, bonuses. But I do not discount the price when it would be unfair to the people who join early and enthusiastically.

The third core element of all this that makes a launch fill and fill quickly is having a limited number of seats. Now, you might think to yourself, I don't care how many people join, I want it to be as many as possible. I've had this thought delusion myself in the past where I'll think about, okay, I'm doing a BFF community launch and we are doing a big push maybe once or twice a year. And I just want unlimited people to join, I want a hundred new members to join. That's all well and good, but it doesn't really create an impetus or a reason for people to jump on it. And so while you don't want to create false scarcity, I mean, it is true that we could accommodate 10 new members in the same way practically that we could accommodate 100. But it does sometimes help to say we are taking in a Cohort. We have 25 spots available, the deadline to enroll is X or whenever the spots fill, whichever comes first. And by the way, if you jump really early, you're going to get this early bird discount. When you have a limited number of spots and a deadline and a discount. Those three things can combine to really give people the reason to cross that hurdle that they're debating, should I join this program or that one is now the right time or not? Kind of reduces decision fatigue in a way because you're saying now's the time and doors won't open again for another six months or for one year from now. So you're compressing the amount of time that someone is even debating whether to join your program or not.

These three elements will work really well even if you're just starting out. So let's say you're a new coach and you're ready to take on your first five paying clients. What I often recommend is sending an email to your network announcing that fact saying, I'm so excited. I've just finished my certified notion advisor training. I just made that name up. It's probably called something else officially. And you say, I am really excited to work with small business owners who need help organizing their operations. Ideally, they're two years into running their business, earning six figures and have at least one or two part time team members. That would make our work together most fruitful. A little bit about me and you put three to five bullets and then you say a little bit about the work we can do together. And you put three to five outcomes. Not what you're going to do, but what they will walk away with. And you can see some examples of benefits or outcomes at the Free Time Dashboard page. Just to give you an example of a related topic that's@itsfreetime.com dashboard and then now this is crucial if you want to fill those five spots. You say, I am looking for my first five clients and as a thank you for joining me at this early stage of my business, I'm offering those first five clients a discounted rate of X. I'm hoping to fill the spots by October 1st or when I have five, whichever comes first. If you know anybody who fits this profile, I'd be very grateful if you could pass this along. And then your network can forward that email to friends of theirs that could be a fit. And it feels good to your friend to be able to forward and say, hey, I thought of you. There's a discount. I said thank you for being one of the early clients. Here's how to sign up. And of course in that email you want to save them. The next steps have a link to Calendly where a prospective client could automatically right away without even having to email you. Book time for a free consult call with you.

We'll be right back just after this.

Cuando entras a Burlington encuentras precios increibles irregalos geniales Jeso es energia del protagonista porque en Burlington los ahoros festivos no son lo unico que llama la attencion descubria Jasgos de calidar y regal los perfect.

Minute Maid Zero sugar tastes so amazing you've just got to say great taste and zero sugar. And Minute Maid Zero sugar sells itself. Great taste, Zero sugar sells itself.

So those three things, discount, deadline and a number of spots are going to drive a lot of the sales. And then there are a few sweeteners that I also turn to when things still seem like they're flagging or lagging. One thing that is a total win win that has helped me get over the hump of a lot of launches is offering one on one time with me as a bonus for those who sign up. Now, this won't scale and it's not always possible. You don't always have the capacity. But every single time I've done this, I've been able to sell at least double of what I originally had been doing. I've done this for BFF launches. The first 10 people to join this cohort will get a one on one 30 minute coaching call with me or strategy session with me. I also did this with the summer Voxer coaching pop up where in the early days I'm wanting to make sure that I filled at least five spots. I ended up filling 11 because I was saying and if you join I would be happy to give you a one on one 30 minute strategy session with me and the investment for that alone was often worth it. And so even joining something like bff, if I do a promo right now on substack, the annual subscription is 997. While if I offer a 90 minute strategy session with me for anybody who wants to pay for a year in advance, that is less than what it currently costs to hire me for a one on one 90 minute strategy session which is currently priced at 1497 and not even available on my website because I'm not even actively marketing those. So people would be getting access to something that I'm not currently offering except to current clients or previous former clients who have already worked with me in that way. And I'm getting that push of people joining for a year up front. Now again, going back to that fairness issue, I would feel bad if current BFFs didn't also have that same offer. So it has to be different enough. Maybe I would say to current BFFs as I very well might, maybe even before this goes live, I might say by the way, I'm going to be offering this to the broader free time community for you. You could join for a year at an even lower rate and it will come with a 90 minute one on one with me. So while I wouldn't offer one on one time for anyone joining BFF at the monthly rate because that would not be fair to the 50 plus who had already signed up in that way. If I were doing something else or a related push or something where it is a win win like cash infusion and offering some of my time, I know that that can be really fulfilling in all directions for the participants. It adds a lot of value. There is nothing like getting on the phone with someone and I know how much we can achieve together one on one, setting a really big vision or big strategy or cracking the nut on something kind of gnarly in the business or something that feels so stretchy and edgy like writing a book or launching a podcast. I know what's possible in 90 minutes or even 30 minutes when I've offered that as a bonus that goes with something like Voxer coaching and then as the leader of these programs. For me, it actually gives the benefit of helping design these programs and products and services with your or anyone else's exact needs in mind. I learned so much from doing these calls of what's getting in the way, what's exciting, maybe even why somebody joined in the first place. And it just helps you get to know your ideal community members better and make your programs, products and services even stronger. So in the early days, in fact, many years ago, BFF has been around almost nine years now. In the early days, everyone who enrolled got a regular one on one with me. And I can't remember the exact cadence, although it did take take in quotes a lot of time. I was learning so much about how people were doing and what they needed and I was able to add a lot of value to them that really helped make their membership ROI completely worth it. Another way that you can sweeten the launch is by having referral partners, even just a small handful. You don't have to go full blown affiliate kit and affiliate program. Even with affiliate links, you can do something like contacting three or four of your closest friends. Or if I were going to do a big push for bff, I could mention it to all of you and you basically put it out there and you say this is available for referral partners now. So I did that with the dashboard. I ran it for a year, kind of selling it off the shelf, just me, no referral partners. Because I wanted to make sure that the product was sound, that we had our onboarding process, that we would really handle every single dashboarder with care and wanted to make sure we knew what we were doing. And then as I approached year two of running the free time operations dashboard and adding a lot of value for dashboarders and giving bonuses to those early people in the early cohorts, then I did create an affiliate kit. Of course, in Notion I use Kajabi to create the affiliate links, but you can even do it without that as long as you have on your enrollment form. How did you hear about bus? How did you hear about this program? And that's where they could put someone else's name. The one thing you might want to think about when you want to open a launch up for referral partners is you might just need to raise the price a little bit to enable a discount for their audience and room for the affiliate payout. Because with the Dashboard, I'm paying for two hours of our Notion Pro Alex's time. I can't really offer it without raising the price to affiliates. So I ended up raising the investment from 997 to 1497, partly because it was now road tested. And I have all this great feedback and I know that it really works and I know what we do together in the quarterly office hours, and partly so that affiliates could offer their community a $250 discount. That kind of sweetens the pot for their community. And I can pay. I forget the exact number, but let's say a $350 referral fee to the affiliates. By the way, if you're here in bff, you too could be a dashboard affiliate at any time. The links to join as a BFF affiliate are in circle, and I'll also put them in the show Notes the last sweetener when you're doing a launch is don't be shy about sending extra one or two or even three Last Day, Final Night, Night Owl, late last Minuter emails. That was a really wordy way of saying that, but I remember my friend Dori did a launch for Recognize Expert, her big flagship program, and she told me she was shocked that she scheduled three emails for the last day of the launch and she couldn't believe it that it practically doubled her enrollment just from having almost a bombardment. What really felt like a bombardment to her brought in a lot of people. And that happened when Steph Houston and I were doing a launch for bff. With Dory's input, and given that advice and her experience, we added there was an email an hour from the deadline and then there was even an email that night saying, are you a night owl? Are you reading this like it is your very last chance to join BFF in this cohort? And sure enough, we got a handful of people, and it was almost more people from any other email than we had sent the rest of the time during the launch. A couple people even said they hadn't even seen a single launch email until that one. They didn't even know the launch was happening. So what feels like harassing to you? And I'm laughing because of course we don't want to overly harass or be obnoxious. I think that probably in the BFF community we are leaning far too much toward the quiet end of the launch spectrum. And really, people do need multiple touches and multiple ways to hear about it when doors open. Maybe a surprise bonus or two in the middle that of course you would retroactively as well give to anyone who enrolled on the first day. The first day you're going to drive with the early bird. Of course the discount, but also any sweeteners for the first X number of people who enroll. And then at the very end, just don't forget about your night owls. Don't forget about the last minuters, the people who save a decision till the very, very end and send quite a few messages to let them know and to just let everyone know that doors are closing. If you're anything like me, the idea of launching and sending all these messages is super draining. I'm not saying you have to love it. I'm just saying if you are going to launch a program and you do want to fill spots in something, don't give up before you hit the finish line. Like push through your resistance, your insecurity, your worry. I've had all the things and more when I launch, even something like business bestie brunch that I really love. Sarah and I had the best time. We're still in process. At the time of this recording, I said to her, filling events is not my strength. It's not my zone of genius. I'm not great at it. I don't love the process of filling events, even though I absolutely love the process of designing them and facilitating them. Just remind yourself that it will be worth it. You don't have to love launches, but it is worth it to put in the effort and run through the base. As they would say in softball when I played, or baseball. Don't slow down before you hit the base. Let's say you're trying to round the corner into home plate and someone's chasing you. They're grabbing the ball, they're starting to feel that they're about to throw it to home plate. You got to run through the base because every now and then, if you try to slow down before you get it, the ball will get there first. You're out. The run doesn't count. Sprint through the base. Don't slow down before the launch ends, even if you get down, even if you feel discouraged. And at the end of all of it, remind yourself, as Tosha Silver would have us do, that the perfect clients for this launch are already picked and on their way to you. And that however many clients you end up with as a result of that launch, once the doors close, is the absolute perfect amount. It's the perfect size at the perfect group at the perfect time. And you will learn every subsequent time that you open doors again. So the other thing I want to say is, do not give up on something just because one inaugural launch doesn't go well. You don't have nearly enough information and you will be really sitting on assets that you created. You did all the heavy lifting already. Don't sit on that stuff. If you created an invitation letter, not to mention the product or service itself and the marketing and the email messages, and you went through all the mechanics of a launch, you have learned so much and you will learn so much tweaking the program and how you talk about it. You will get testimonials from your first set of clients. I'll put a link to an example testimonial survey in the show notes. You will be so much stronger heading into the next launch and you will have 50% less of the work to do, if not 75% less of the work, because it's already done, it's already written. And now for the second and the third launch, you just need to tweak. So do not give up on something after only one launch. It's almost expected that the numbers aren't where you want them to be, and I don't want to discourage you. Sometimes it'll blow your mind what the numbers are, especially if you go into a launch with a waitlist kind of collecting people who are already interested. Maybe that will be the subject of another episode. Another bonus, even if 0 people sign up for the inaugural launch, you now have so much more going for you heading into the next time that you offer that program or service. As always, I would love to hear from you in the comments or in circle. What works well for you when you're launching something? What strategies have you tried? What helps you get over the hump of vulnerability or feeling discouraged or down by the numbers? How do you sprinkle sweeteners throughout a launch? What bonuses have worked best for you? I know that I would love to hear more and so would fellow BFFs, so please do share and I really look forward to hearing what has worked well for you. Thank you so much for being here listening. I hope you have a beautiful rest of your day.

If you've listened this far, you get a gold star.

Thank you.

Word of mouth is the most joyful way we can grow this show and it helps us land interviews with the luminaries and insights insightful guests that you would most love to hear from. Please send this episode to a friend who might find it helpful and for show notes and related links from this episode, visit itsfreetime.com while you're there, make sure you're subscribed to the Time well Spent newsletter. You'll get instant access to my Tech Toolkit, a continually updated list of all the software I use along with the total monthly spend to run my business where no one works full time even me. Visit itsfreetime.com join remember you are running the show. It's time for radical reimagining and everything.

Is up for grabs.

Let it be easy, let it be fun and build with love.

Hey Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. You know one of the perks about having four kids that you know about is is actually getting a direct line to the big man up north. And this year he wants you to know the best gift that you can give someone is the gift of Mint Mobile's unlimited wireless for $15 a month. Now you don't even need to wrap it. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.

Of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes if network's busy. Taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.com.