How To Design Profitable Experience Products with Marisa Murgatroyd

Forget everything you think about online courses. In this episode, I'm going to show you why 90% of course creators are completely failing their students. Is that you? I think it's me. It was me. I don't really have courses anymore, but definitely looking back on things, yeah, that was me. The insanely talented, wonderful expert named Marisa Murgatroyd actually cracked this entire code. She's got what, 10 to 15 times more engagement than industry standards. She's helped something like 15,000 plus students to achieve similar results. She even built a platform to basically harness all these different brain engagement techniques. It's all built in her formula, which is exactly what she's gonna be talking about here on this episode. I brought her back five years ago. She was on here. It's still one of the most popular episodes. So I had to bring her back. And she's bringing the fire. She also brought a bunch of goodies for you completely free to go dive deeper. I suggest hitting pause right now and go over to liveyourmessage.com hustle liveyourmessage.com hustle go get her free goodies and then come on back to this episode and then you'll enjoy everything that she's gonna lay out for you here. The last thing before I let you go to the episode is I wanna remind you that we have a clone. I built a clone using really cool technology called Delphi. This thing has 600 plus episodes. Every single episode I've done on this podcast and a whole bunch of other content. It's all loaded in this magic box and you can ask it any questions, you can have a conversation, you can tell about all the struggles you're going through, the cool stuff you're working through, and ask for advice of not only me, but every single expert who's been on this show. You can get personalized customized advice to totally free. Go to hustleandflowchart.com clone hustle and flowchart.com clone. You can try it out right now. I'm going to send it over to Marisa and me. Enjoy.

Hey, do you have more to dos, less time and an infinite number of tools to keep track of? I know I do. Doing business has never felt harder. But you don't need a miracle to hit your goals. You just need HubSpot. Because they're all in one customer platform can make growing your business infinitely easier. Just imagine this. High quality leads, fast closing deals, wildly happy customers, and more benchmark breaking quarters. It's not a miracle, y'. All. It is HubSpot. So visit HubSpot.com to get started today. Marisa, we're rolling. It's great to have you back. It's only been, you know, five years. It's crazy. How you been?

Oh man. Well, a lot has changed in five years in the online course world. And for those of you just seeing me for the first time, my name is Marisa Murgatroyd. I'm the founder of Live youe Message and creator of the Experience formula. And the interesting thing is I was out there beating the drum of experiential courses five years ago. You were. And talking about how it's not about the information, it's about the transformation. And what I found is that in this whole AI revolution that's happening right now where people are creating courses with the push of a button, the experiential element has become even more important because people still do value really unique and life changing experiences that actually get them to a particular result in their lives, in their health, their business, their relationship, whatever it is that you do. So, so it's been really fun to see how this kind of methodology has grown and evolved over the last five years as well.

Yeah. And you've been doing this a long time. Of course. And yeah, there's no one else I know. There's a, there's a bunch of people that respect you as the course expert, creator, architect. You have software as well. I saw my friend John Assaraf on your page, you know, and he's a local mastermind buddy with me and you know, like I respect him. Obviously there's a lot of credible people that go to you for exactly this. And you know, there has been a lot of stuff in the last five years, you know, different community apps, software, platform, AI, YouTube of course, expanding more noise than ever, I would say in the last five years. And like on the last episode we did so five years ago, which still gets a lot of people listening. Obviously it's, it's evergreen, so will be maybe repeating some things, but really it's the formula. And adapting it I feel like is going to be probably the biggest takeaway. What do you, what do you think on that?

Yeah, 100%. So all of those kind of platforms and things and tools are really about accessibility, making it easier to create a course, making it easier to distribute a course. But with the rise of all of that, what has become more challenging is actually rising above the noise of all of that. So with everyone and their grandma, literally, I think there's a class on learning Italian food. From someone's grandma. Right now that's really popular as well. But with everyone and their grandma creating online courses, the messaging has to be that much tighter and that much sharper. And then the experience of delivery that drives people to consume and complete and get results needs to be that much tighter too. And so I think what was true five years ago is that you could create a course and start making money creating a course with relative ease. Right now, I believe if you want to create a course, you actually need to create a much higher level professional course and become not just an entrepreneur with a course or a coach with a course, but an actual professional course creator. So people are demanding just higher level of experiences and even a lot more touch points than before. So I think what we're seeing is the rise of high touch. And people, if they're going to spend $497 or 997 or 1997 or whatever it happens to be, they're not expecting to just go through this automated evergreen experience and come out the other side like a, you know, cog in a machine. People actually expect, if they're going to plunk down, you know, $500 plus, that there's access, there's access to coaching, there's access to the creator, there's access to the community. And so that's one of the big things that's happened as well. Because information just continues to, you know, more than double every single year. And because of that, the value of information is not what people are paying for. They're paying for all these other things.

You nailed it. And that's, you know, I've also, I would add in there. And this was actually came up in conversation I had earlier today with Sean Cannell from Think Media.

Ah, he's a big partner of mine.

Yeah, I thought, and that was another thanks to Naomi McKenna. Gotta give her a shout out here is he was talking about exactly this, what you're talking about. Cause he has his own training and community and all that is community. And then accountability is a piece that he was really leaning into. And you know, with information, it's great to be overwhelmed. It's not great, but like, it's very easy to get overwhelmed, that is. But like, who's got your back in the process? Like the human connection. I don't know if it's just me, but I'm curious of your thoughts. The last five years have been a lot less human connection, or at least it's changed. You know, it's less personal feeling. It's A lot more one to many platforms, digital, you know. So yeah. What are your thoughts there?

Well, 100%, because I think that, you know, when people have the choice to learn the same thing, watching a YouTube video or, you know, going on to TikTok or whatever, they already have all those channels that are more just broadcast channels where they're a recipient, an audience member. And so I think that if someone, you know, signs up for a co for a course or a group coaching program, they want to be more than an audience member. They want to be a participant, engaging with other participants as well as coaches and creators. So one of the things that we do in pretty much every single program that we offer, whether it's our $97 a month membership or it's our signature 2497 experience product masterclass, is we actually include group coaching and sometimes private coaching touch points. So no matter what it is that we do, we support it. And I think that that's one of the reasons why we've got that higher lifetime customer value. We've got people who come back year after year after year, people who rave about our programs because we are in relationship with them. And I think that that whole idea of automation, there's a lot of things that you should automate in your business. You know, automate administrative tasks, automate, you know, research, automate, you know, different aspects like that. But I think that the human connection is the one thing you shouldn't try to automate. That people still want to feel like they are seen, that they are heard, that they are acknowledged, they are validated in their journey. And while you can do perceived customization, and I know in our experience, ify platform, which is an a fully gamified learning management system, there are playbooks that you can add so you can send voicemails or text messages or emails based on actions that people take or don't take and add that perceived customization. Now that's a level that can help, you know, create that intimacy. But it's not enough. I think people getting on calls like adding, whether it's a group coaching call, in our experience product masterclass, people get assigned a coach that they have unlimited email access to and milestone reviews. And then they go to weekly smaller group pod calls. So they have kind of a smaller community within a larger cohort because we'll have a thousand person cohort and then they're in this smaller community that feels really personal and then they've got that direct touch, touch point into the coach. And I still do my really big group coaching calls in those cohorts. But then Sometimes there are 500 people on that call and maybe I get to coach like 12 or 15 of them in a two hour period. Right. So it's a really different thing. And so I think that there are ways to scale, create scalable personal experiences that go beyond automation and perceived customization and that actually create communities within the context of these programs. And I believe that that's the thing that gets results. So for example, I've got an evergreen version of our experience product master class that does not have as much of those touch points. I believe that the highest level of student completion that we've gotten in the evergreen version is I think 42%. But in the live version we get 59 completion. So that's a 17% jump by simply having more touch points. Because that's the accountability component. That's the feeling like you're walking alongside of not hundreds of other people as you go through this. And that rising tide lifts all boats and that momentum and excitement that comes from just a group of people like that having a shared experience is irreplaceable. And when you add an evergreen component, meaning people just aren't going at the same pace or entering at different times, that sort of synergy of walking in lockstep changes. And there's just no matter what I do, I can't get the completion rates much higher. When you have that kind of asymmetry in terms of when people are starting and stopping and what they're doing. When.

Yeah, that's in when you're. A couple things come to mind and I'll just say the second thing first because I kind of want to dovetail into. It would be more the storytelling, the messaging. You said having that tight. But before that you're mentioning the way to communicate with people. I feel like people want to be spoken with or to directly, not as a hey, you all kind of thing. And when you identify that one person, this goes for YouTube content, goes for teaching like this, it goes, goes for a podcast, whatever. And you know, if you identify that one person well, there's inherently a group of people that are around you that are probably similar if you've done your work right and they attract each other. You know, referral basis, however means you bring them together. And that's the power of group coaching, you know, and like you said, cohorts or pods, I love that structure of delivering that experience. And I wouldn't say content, it's delivering the experience and then outcome, like you said. And.

It'S been brought up a couple times on the podcast recently here. And the ways that people will change their business model from either an agency or a course to more this group environment and how they can kind of move along the path together. I'm seeing it pop up a lot more. So it's really cool. You noted that that's a trend even.

In our year long business coaching program, which is a much more premium experience. We kind of call it like a best of all worlds program where you have a private coach and you do private coaching calls every single month. Then you've got a small group pod which is like your mastermind container of just no more than 30 students. And then you have all the resources of a larger program like events and guest speakers and AI tools and vault with everything you could possibly want to know. So it's like people want all of that. They want to have the intimate touch point of someone who really gets to know them and communicates with them private, privately. They want that smaller group where you've got that accountability and the relationship with peers. And then they also want the energy and the excitement and the resources that come with a larger program. So we found that that structure can actually be really scalable because you can add more pods and a program can feel intimate even as it grows.

Yeah, that's. That's incredible. Cool. And I just think of all these different things that are trying to bring that human experience, that personalized experience. And there's some really cool tools. There's one I'm a part of called Delphi AI that's a cloning tool and it's very one to one. But when it comes to, like you said, experience, you can't beat humans and following that similar kind of experience or path that you give them, which we'll talk about with what you're doing here. So I want to go back to the messaging and the storytelling because that I feel like is, I mean that goes for everything. It's your brand. That's how you attract the right people. That's living your message as you've been doing for a long time with your company. But I know you started off like way back when creating videos or creating documentaries, storytelling in that manner. So kind of curious if you can just like maybe give us like some nuggets and things you picked up before the course world came into play and then like where, where you're adapting, maybe some of that. And what have you learned recently that you think is more impactful?

Yeah, 100%. So I think one time someone wrote in the customer support to complain that I didn't just get to the point in my course. And I was telling stories and giving examples and doing all this stuff. And I wrote back, you know, if I just got to the point, you wouldn't get the point. And I think the role of storytelling and the role of pretty much all good marketing is to create the attitudes, beliefs, and conditions someone needs to make a change in their life. And so when someone just receives information, they're not able to see how that information relates to them in their lives or someone else and, you know, their life. Right. And so what storytelling does, you know, in the brain is that our brains actually don't know the difference between experiencing something firsthand and experiencing through. Through a story. So you can actually pace someone's experience in a story where they're imagining, they're visualizing. It could be visualizing solving a problem. It could be visualized rocking a particular scenario. It could simply be connecting to me because I'm telling a personal experience about a hard situation that I had with my dad. And then they imagine their situation and their relationship with their mom. And so there's so many different roles that that story actually plays. Plays in understanding and in learning. Now, I really like to use stories for, you know, what I call the future self vision. Helping people imagine a different, you know, future, a different tomorrow for themselves and kind of teleporting themselves into that particular story and also using stories potentially as pattern interrupts in the middle of, like, some kind of. It's getting chunky, the content, whatever it happens to be throwing something in just to break it up. I mean, Lisa Nichols is someone that I have personally, privately mentored with, and she talks about story as, in some ways, the exhales, where people have the chance to integrate the content and the information. So her kind of thing is, let's do, you know, teaching story, teaching story, teaching story. And all that's doing is giving this pause where whatever kind of teaching point Jess Scott made, there's just a breadth in which they can integrate it versus going straight into more teaching, more teaching, more teaching. And then people are overwhelmed and they start to shut down. So for me, like, storytelling is one of those key things, but there's different ways to use it. So one of my favorite approaches to storytelling is actually using kind of metaphors, unrelated stories, and then tying them into, say, a mindset teaching. So one example that I share in my experience product masterclass is a group of tourists that wanted to get to the top of Mount Everest, right? And of course, the metaphor is, these are my students who want to launch a successful course. And they didn't want to spend however long the week or two going from base camp to base camp to acclimate to each level of the atmosphere, and decided to just hire a helicopter to take them up to the top of Mount Everest in just like an hour. And so they get to the top of Mount Everest, they open the door, get out of the helicopter and instantly pass out because they did not slowly and gradually acclimate their lungs to the more rarefied air at the top of Mount Everest. And I think that that's a story that I tell when I talk to people about slowing down to speed up, going through the process step by step, module by module. These are like the base camps in route to the successful outcome, which is launching a blockbuster hit product. And so I also talk about a blockbuster hit product begins with the minimum viable product. And I think I actually have this sort of graphic where, oh, cool. I talk about. And I think this is. I'm too short to kind of see my whole face over it, but I'll do that whole, like, great shot.

Thumbnail for this.

Yes. Build an airplane. And they want to build this really fancy kind of souped up, you know, program before they've even tested it and know it works. They kind of build it one piece at a time versus understanding what is the core solution that you're trying to test in your product and then doing the minimum viable version. So the minimum viable version of a. A jet plane is a paper plane. So the core solution of a jet plane is if you put wings on something, will it fly? So a paper plane is the easiest way to test whether if you put wings on something, it will fly. Once, you know, yes, it does, then we can kind of expand to a more fully fledged version of that, a hang glider than maybe a biplane and then just a simple, you know, propeller plane and then ultimately the jet plane. And this is kind of the way these are almost like the base camps en route to the Everest version of your product. Right, the blockbuster hit version. And so I would tell, you know, I'll have this model where I'm showing them and getting them to buy into the concept of developing an mvp. Because so many people decide to, like, I'm going to go direct to camera, I'm going to hire a crew, I'm going to spend all this money. And then there's ambiguity or a lack of clarity in the course, and then they have to redo it anyway, once people start Going through it. So these are kind of examples where, you know, I like to tell these sort of unrelated stories, stories that help to cultivate a particular mindset or buy in into a concept that I'm going to teach versus just say, trust me, you want to do it this way. You know, I can say that, but it doesn't create the emotional realization. You might have an intellectual understanding without a more fully embodied emotional or somatic understanding. Now, the Everest story gives you the somatic understanding of this particular model, you see?

Oh, yeah. And you can visualize it throughout. And I was even before you brought out the paper, which that solidified it even more. It's like there are steps, there's different base camps. It feels like home, you know, it's okay. You don't need to rush. And if you do well, you already got the scenario outlined in your brain of how that can at least feel. You're going to pass out from overwhelm. You're going to, you know, whatever those emotions can feel like. So you're painting multiple pictures in the future for people.

Totally. And the other piece of messaging that I freaking love, that I will not create any kind of even lead magnet without much less a course or full fledged group coaching program or whatever it happens to be, is mission, which is at the top of my experience formula. Mission is at the top and mission accomplished is at the bottom. So mission is actually the finish line of your course. So, for example, going back to that Mount Everest metaphor, once you get to the top of Mount Everest, you get to stare out over the view, Am I right? You know, there's a clear finish line of getting to the top of Mount Everest. So the, the mission of your course is essentially that finish line. And I teach that you want that finish line to be so clear and so specific that you could photograph someone crossing the finish line. Right? Because a lot of times people have these big inner transformations. Like you say, okay, the promise of this is to remove your limiting beliefs. But how do you know when your limiting beliefs are removed? You know what I'm saying? There's still more of them. There's always more of them. Am I right?

Oh, yeah.

So you want to kind of ground the transformation in something super, super specific. And let me actually see if I can find this example of one of my students here. I think I got it right now. So one of my students, his name was Helmut Whitaker, and he was a shaman. And he actually was, you know, doing these shamanic initiations that he was trying to sell people into. And he had such a deep well of expertise because he had learned a. Like a. A lineage from this group of. Of this kind of group in I think Peru is. It was. Took 17 years to actually learn.

Wow.

The full kind of sh. Shamanic traditions. And I was like, you know, helmet, 17 years is kind of a hard sell.

You know, shortcut it, get to the mvp.

It's kind of a hard sell. You know, I know that it might take 17 years to be fully enlightened, but is there a piece, like, could someone sample and taste some of those experiences in, like, six weeks? Like, even if it's for a fraction of a second? And he said yes. So I wasn't recommending that he promise instant enlightenment or something like that. That's not possible. But this is what we did. And I worked with him and I helped him craft this particular piece of messaging, his what I call a product mission statement. And the product mission statement becomes the promise of your program, and oftentimes it becomes the sales page, the headline of your sales page too. So it's a really important piece of messaging. And I teach my students to use what I call the mission possible template, which I stole from Ethan Hawke and the Mission Impossible movies, which is your mission, should you choose to accept it as blank. What that does, simply using this phraseology, even if you pull those words out of it later, is it puts you in the shoes of the person who you're inviting on the journey versus looking at it from the perspective of what you want to deliver. And I think that one little mental shift really changes the way you write messaging and the way you approach messaging. So here is the.

Kind of mission statement that we came up with. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is in just six weeks, receive the four essential gifts that every human needs to feel whole, loved, and on path. The gift of knowing your truth, the gift of connecting to your life energy, the gift of a quiet mind, and the gift of opening to the infinite. So it was four shamanic initiations that matched up with the four directions, north, south, east, and west. And so now you know, rather than being like, oh, you're gonna connect to this, this, and this, you can actually imagine getting these four gifts. Am I right?

Yeah. And you're feeling the direct. I feel like you're bringing in other senses. It's not just intellectually, but, like, how you can actually embody that and feel it.

And the best marketing is about making the intangible tangible or the abstract concrete. So when you can do that by having a really clearly visualized pro finish line. Not only does it help you sell your course, and by the way, Helmut had 120% conversion rate on this program. So he actually emailed 18 people and 21 people said yes. So basically he emailed 18 people, they all said yes, and they were so excited that they brought in three more. So he made $11,000 just like that the moment we created that product mission statement. So, so it works because now it was a very specific offer versus coming along for the shamanic initiation, which seems like a really different kind of thing. So when you've got that, it really kind of grounds the transformation. But it's not just for marketing. When it comes to delivery, all you need to do is deliver on that promise and you can strip away everything extraneous. Because many people are kind of taking the old school approach of just doing this content dump, this information dump, dump this knowledge dump. And then it's like this massive stuff that you're trying to integrate, which is someone's lifetime of trial and error and it's just too much. So it also focuses the delivery so you know what to include and not include. You only include what it takes to get someone that result. And then also if people start to ask for more beyond the scope of that, you just simply say, that's beyond the scope of our shared mission in this program. But it is something that I teach in my next program, should you be interested. Right, right.

There you go. It's a natural evolution of knowledge transfer experience. And I feel like it gives a little bit of freedom for the course creator or that, that experience creator being, let's say us or you listening, watching. Because it can contain how your brain is thinking about, you know, giving. Because yeah, like if we, if we know it's not too much, but we know way more than the ones that are seeking that, that transfer of knowledge and experience. So it helps us kind of contain ourselves. Pace, you know, you mentioned that. And really flow it out in an order that makes sense. And pausing this episode really fast to shout out another show you should follow. It's called this Old Marketing. It's hosted by Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose. These guys are expert content marketers. This show is also on the HubSpot Podcast network, the audio destination for business professional. Now, Joe and Robert. On this show they break down all of the latest content marketing trends and things you got to know as a business owner. To attract and retain customers, they break down old marketing strategies called this Old Marketing examples from the past and apply it to them now. So super useful. It is entertaining. They love to rant. Joe and Robert do. So I always love a good rant. And just go check it out yourself. Go check out their latest episode. Listen to this old marketing wherever you get your podcast. Are you tired of the hassle of building sales funnels? I totally get it. I've been there. You started your business not to be changing your laptop all day. You built it for freedom. And thankfully there is an all in one platform that makes it easier for you so you can focus on attracting customers online. The platform is called Kartra and it gives you all the tools you need to grow your business. The best part is Kartra comes stock with all the done for you campaigns so you don't have to worry about thinking about building from scratch. Everything is designed, connected and written for you already. It also leverages AI to help you with some of this writing. All you got to do is just customize this to your liking and then boom, you got a fully built sales funnel for you. This is marketing made easy. So go try it out for free. 30 day free trial over at hustle and flowchart.com Hartra will get you there. So again, that's hustleandflowchart.com K A R T R A and you mentioned it's not just marketing, it's delivery. And I would almost say. Well, I think you've said it before and that's why it's triggered. But there's so many other ways to spread this around. How about your team, you know, the people that are actually supporting you, your family, there's buy in and ways to use this kind of messaging and everything. Yeah. What are some other use cases or ways? You've seen the mission statement but also just delivery in general here?

Well, I mean with the mission statement it's something that gets repeated all the way through a program. So it's something that I'm kind of weaving into every module. Sometimes most of the trainings people kind of know it by heart. So a few things that you can do is once you've got a clear mission, then you can kind of create goals or milestones in the program. You can even wrap a guarantee around the mission. So for example, the mission of our Experience Product Masterclass is to design, launch and profit from what I call an experience product, which is any kind of course or program that leverages the 10 core experiences of the experience formula. You can also experience ify one on one engagements as well. Right. So once we know that design, launch and profit from an Experience, experience, product. In 12 weeks or less, then we create our money back guarantee. So if you go through the program, you use the coaching, you submit your milestones on time and you don't make your money back, I'll make up the difference up to the total amount you paid. So then I can stand behind that mission with an ironclad guarantee. Now the other thing that we do, this is kind of a framework of our course is we have these goal states. So this here is graduation is simply completing the core track of the program, which is the first three modules. The, the second, the last two modules are in what I call the supercharge track. Right. It's not necessary, but if you're more advanced, you want to go farther, you can use that. Now goal number one is that you do your MVP launch. So goal number two is you make your first sale. Goal number three, three is you prove your offer with three sales or earning your investment back. And then goal X is a whole lot more. So what I do is that there's a graduation bonus and there are also bonuses for each level of the program. I don't think I've got them on my desk right now, but I've got this win the game of business box where we send people their wings. And so they get kind of, if they have launch wings, they get their kind of silver launch wings. Their first sale is their green money wings, their proof offers, like red proof wings. And goal X is like the supercharged kind of gold wings. And so also there's a bonus that they get, you know, if they hit the mission accom, the mission accomplished state, which is simply doing an MVP launch because everything they want is on the other side of their launch. So then I can actually incentivize. We put on the membership site, which we do build in our platform experience ify because it allows these different goals. There can be celebrations and people get bonus points for hitting these different levels. We also know that the greater the consumption, the greater the completion, the greater people are likely that people are going to continue. So we have almost 3,000 testimonials and counting now, because in order to be eligible for the graduation or mission accomplished bonuses, in addition to clicking the button, you know that from there they get redirected to submit their story in order to claim their prizes. So out of like I think about 7,000 students, almost 3,000 have left a story, which is an insane number. And by the way, my 59% completion rate industry average is 3%, sometimes 3% if you're lucky. So those Numbers, you know, are actually really huge.

That's wild. And that's. Yeah. Success rate, completion rate, and I love the fact that you're. And I know it's a core component. We talked about this even five years ago before a lot more of this stuff was more prevalent. But the gamification throughout the entire thing here is that you're gamifying, but you're also getting them. You're keeping them accountable to what they committed to. And then along each milestone or base camp, you have them reporting back, essentially, and then also rewarding them.

Yeah, go into that a little bit, basically.

So from there, you know, you can have these goal states. We also have milestones. I have this kind of like EPM milestone template. And I'm going to see if I can share my screen really quickly and I can show you this and I'll also show you the reviews. So let me go ahead and share my screen here. We have kind of milestone docs that every person gets a private, custom Google Doc. Now, this larger mission breaks down into 16 milestones, from defining your audit experience, product type, to defining what I call your bird's eye view, which is the structure of your program, the name, your mission possible statement, the duration, deliverables, feature and benefit statements, MVP launch plan, all of these different things. So people, people get to tag their coach and they actually have to get their milestones approved to be eligible for the guarantee. Then we have supercharged milestones too. So we're able to kind of break this path to mission accomplished down. And then this is part of maintaining the eligibility to, you know, of the guarantee. And we know that many people, if they actually do this, they're more likely to.

Make their money back, they're more likely to complete. They're gonna be happy. And so we're more than happy to give someone their money back if they do all that and they don't succeed. And so all of this, you know, this kind of structure has led to this. This is unedited reviews. So can you see, like every single year, we have 2,927. Now, how many people do you know with 3,000 reviews for a single program?

Not many.

And you can look at it just year by year here. You know, some of them will have graduation stories, some will have kind of mission accomplished stories. And you can just go back. And this is why I can give so many testimonials here. I can even search testimonials, whatever it happens to be, you know, these are unedited. It's just like we publish them directly once people submit.

Beautiful.

So as you can see there are a lot of use cases and then the other thing that we do with the mission is, is we make it time bound. So just like a smart goal is timely as the T in smart, we put a countdown timer on the membership site. So what we'll do is your mission starts in. So before the program even begins, when they get access, your mission begins in and counts down to the start of the program. Then it flips over to your mission completes in. So they know exactly, you know, how much time they have to achieve this mission. And even if they have lifetime access to the program, that's still also really powerful because that keeps people on track to have this container that it's not, it's unlimited access to the content, but it's 12 weeks access to the container which includes the, you know, unlimited email and milestone review with the coaches. It includes, you know, when I do my big annual cohort every year, that weekly access to me and all of those things. And also they have to achieve graduation or mission accomplished or goal 1, 2, 3 or X by the time the counter hits 0 to be eligible for the prizes. Right.

It makes perfect sense and it's very clear, you know, the game plan is set right. When people join, they know what they're committing to. They're committing to themselves because you have their back. I mean, that's my big takeaway. I haven't seen any, I think I even said this five years ago and I still haven't seen any. Anybody doing this to the level and thought that you have because you're genuinely doing it for them. But obviously you want to do this because you're going to get better results. You're seeing that in the forms of testimonials. People, great case studies talking about you.

But the big thing is it's not just gamifying. You're creating a great experience that people want and that's the change they're showing up for, for others in the way that they probably see themselves. But you're getting them started and keeping that momentum throughout.

Yeah, 100%. So the metaphor I like to move to share is I get to feel like. You ever watch the Hunger Games?

I have, yeah.

You know, when the game masters are on these big screens and then watching the outer world, like I get to feel like a game master but rather than sending them things that are going to drag them down or kill them, you know, I'm sending them exactly what they need in the moments they start to get into trouble. Makes sense where I know where people's energy flags and what do I need to send them at those friction points in the program to keep them going so I get to be the more benevolent game master behind the scenes.

Well, let's be honest. I mean, with what you've done, you've also created the arena with experience, ify the platform itself. So, I mean, smart. I'm just thinking as a model, I mean, you now have a lot more visibility and of course, others can use that platform as well. Go check it out separately there, Marisa. I want to get into, because you've hinted at it, the experience framework and the thing that. Because I know we outlined some of this in the previous episode and it's probably modified and maybe we just hit on some of the main things because I know it goes deep and you obviously have that big old list. The thing that stands out to me, it seems like, and I think you've said this is. It's kind of designed around when you mentioned dopamine, how our brains are working and throughout time. And like Silicon Valley, a lot of the apps that are built out there are kind of have that in mind as well, different goals and agendas on their behalf. But it's really honest. It's giving an experience. It's keeping attention. The dopamine release or that hit. So the experience framework, I don't know exactly where to start. We covered probably a lot of it already kind of bouncing around. But what are some key things that we can nail on that would be. Be. Yeah. Relevant here in.

Yeah. So, I mean, experience number four, core experience number four is constant wins. Now, the opposite of that, Sears is chasing your tail. Right. So the idea of constant wins is that even if you have this big mission at the end of your course, as you can imagine, it takes some time to design, launch and profit from your experience product. So if you just saved up the win to the very end of the game, you know, a lot of times people get into a cycle of learn, learn, learn, learn, give up. So if you can instead have. Create a cycle of, you know, watch. You know, basically watch, do, win, you know, watch more, do and win. It actually keeps people in the game because what they're doing is they're taking action and they're winning every step of the way. Now, the wins are smaller and you want them to escalate into larger and larger wins. So this is both. Not. Not. It's not just gamifying in terms of attaching points to actions into trainings, which is something that we do, but it's also in the sequencing of the program. And that kind of relates to the core experience of unstoppable momentum. So have you noticed that if you were to start playing a video game, it starts really freaking easy, right? Because if that game defeated you in the first round and you were just losing, losing, losing, losing, your desire to continue would probably, probably not be super high. Am I right?

Yeah.

Yeah. So what you want to do is you want to create that cycle of winning and actually help build confidence one win at a time. So.

Mihaly sent me high, actually created this idea of the flow channel. And I think on one side of the flow channel is, is skill, right? And on the other side is challenge. It might be challenge here and skill here. And you get into the flow channel when you're balancing skill and challenge. Now, if your skill is too low for the level of challenge, it creates anxiety. And if your skill is too high for the level of challenge, it creates boredom. But if you're able to actually stare, steep people up into greater and greater levels of challenge, what's happening is you're expanding their skill set and their confidence at the same time. So in structuring a course itself, I like to create this motivational design to a course. A lot of people do courses linearly, which is the first step. Is the first step because it makes sense that this is the first step. But that's something in the behavioral design world called function focused design. You want to understand this more human focused design, which is when you work with people's motivation, you realize they have to win each step of the way. So what I like to do is make that first win super duper easy and make it foolproof that anyone can win. So, for example, when people join our experience Product masterclass, the very first training is called show me the money. And the show me the money training is it says, you know, your, your path to a blockbuster starts here. And it's simply choosing the minimum target and stretch goal for how much money they want to make and put in their pocket by the end of the program. Now that could still be paralyzing for some people if they're brand new to business. So I give formulas based on if you've never made any money before, if you're making, you know, some money, but not a lot, if you're making a lot of what those minimum target and stretch goals should be. And then all they have to do is kind of choose from the existing thing. And then this is where the experiential element Comes from creating both. The peak emotional experience in a community is I have them write their minimum target and stretch goals on a sheet of paper, hold it up, take a picture, post it on the kind of community, and then what they do, they get extra points for posting on the community. Then I'll go and have my team pull a bunch of these images, create a whole collage out of them that becomes the kind of banner in the community moving forward. I call it the wall of unshakable momentum. So it's like everybody has goals. They get to see themselves. We weave it into the program. And people get so excited with these goals and you can see their faces are like hopeful and they're lit up. And so that's something that not only is it so easy that anyone can do it, because I've created formulas for setting each level of goal based on your level of experience. But there's this. It's reinforcing the mission of the program. Design, launch and profit from an experience product and the future self vision. Because when they do this, they can imagine hitting those goals. So future self vision is core experience number two, which is imagining, you know, each step of the way, the outcome. So what I've done is just in this one little choice of the program I've got, I'm reinforcing the mission. I'm creating the future self vision. The bird's eye view is the path to getting there. So I'm also talking about how this is the first step. They get the constant wins, they get points for watching, they get points for doing, and they get social points, a different category of points for creating the action. Also taking the picture is a bit of a peak emotional experience, right? And also like within that, I normalize challenges. The whole reason behind the minimum target and stretch goals is that the minimum is, is, you know, even if you do this, it's a huge win. You know, even if you launch and make no sales, if you're a total beginner, that's the minimum goal is to launch. It's a huge win, right? Making one sale is the target. Stretch is actually earning your investment back. For the beginners. Now for the people who are more advanced, the minimum goal is earning their investment back. And you know, the stretch goal could be their monthly nut, whatever it happens to be. So that's normalizing challenges, even in the structure of the three wins. And it's also a feedback loop because I'm getting them to do something, to post something. And there's the community element because they're posting it in the community. And it's part of the unstoppable momentum because it's a step up into the more challenging elements of that first module. And you know, the mission accomplished state is the thing that you wait till the end. But this is also reinforcing that mission accomplished because they're defining and customizing what mission accomplished looks like, like to them. So there's an example, the very first touch point, what I do in the first hour after they join, I'm actually reinforcing the entire formula in a single touch point. So the thing about these elements is they're both macro. You apply it for the program as a whole, you have the mission for the program. You have a mission for each individual training, you have a mission for every single module. You actually can apply these in a micro way too to every single touch point in the program, every training, every group coaching call, whatever it happens to be. And that's kind of how this formula works.

There it is. And that is, it's usable everywhere. And I could see that. And again, it's a big win across the board. And this makes, it makes all the sense in the world. And this is your, this is your structure for launching any kind of experience. I'll just call it, it's not even a course. You know, it's, it's literally you're creating experiences in the best that you possibly can.

Experiences that you want people to, to take action on. If you don't need to motivate people into life changing action, then you don't need to do all this. But if your goal is to actually drive people to a result and you can use this, I had someone say, okay, Marisa, can you really use this for everything? I'm like, yeah, even boring corporate stuff. I said, yeah, well how would you apply this to taxes? I said, oh, no problem, here's how I would apply this to taxes. So any kind of tax professional, accounting accountant has trouble getting people to actually submit the backup documents. Am I right for that? They need to create the, you know, do the taxes. So if you were a tax professional and you wanted to do this, what you could do is start off by, you know, setting a goal of how much money do you, more money do you want to make and, or save, right? And then based on that goal, you might even have the minimum target and stretch goals. You could have certain win states. Okay. If you hit these goals, then you're committing to taking whatever 10%, 20% of that bucket and applying it to a bucket list experience that they pre define Whether it's going to a monster truck rally and smashing a car, whether it is, you know, going to the Taj Mahal, you know, whatever floats someone's boat, whatever that is, they're defining that ahead of time. And then the only caveat from the accountant is that if you make or save that much money money, you have to actually spend it on the bucket list experience, and you need to take a picture of it when you do. And then that accountant simply takes all those pictures, puts a wall behind himself, which is a wall of all the people who've had their bucket list experiences because of the extra money they've been able to make or save because of that, you see? So you can actually experience ify anything, even a boring thing, in a way that creates virality. That's a feedback loop. And then what happens next is when new customers go into that office, or even if he's on zoom doing virtual sessions, like, well, what's all that behind you? Oh, these are all my clients who have hit their financial goals of making or saving more money. And these are the fun. And when you do that, I make sure that you don't just keep that in your bank account, but that you actually go and have unique life experiences when you hit your goals. So you reward yourself, and you want to do it again and again. So then he gets to point that out. And. And the other thing that happens is a viral loop with the customer base who gets to say, well, guess what my accountant just had me do, Right? I just went to the Taj Mahal because my accountant made me do it. Well, who's your accountant? My accountant doesn't make me do any of this stuff.

Sounds fun.

Yeah, I know, I know.

Wow, that's. I mean, that's incredible. And, yeah, it's. It's. You're taking probably the most resistant thing that most people do. Taxes, Dealing with an accountant in general, and making it fun, making it empowered, empowering everyone. And again, this is incredible. So I want to give. I know you have a little next step or basically something for people to jump into, and you are doing a whole cohort coming up pretty soon here. So maybe tell us about two things, you know. Yeah, go for it, Marisa.

Yeah, 100%. So if you're interested in just seeing how I experience ify everything, including marketing materials, launch materials, online challenges, all of that st stuff, I've created an entry point for you. And it's a PDF. It's a guide. It's called about the 20 most profitable online course mega niches. So Basically, I've seen and I've studied the market, and I've helped about 16,000 people launch online courses. Pretty much 99.9% of all successful courses fall into one of these 20 mega niches. So if you go to liveyourmessage.com that's L I V E Live, your message.com forward/hustle, as in hustle and flowchart. Liveyourmessage.com forward/hustle. You can get that PDF, but that actually puts you into.

A bunch of stuff that I got coming up, including a crack your course idea challenge, which I use all the experience vacation. It's a free challenge, but you get to see me use all of these techniques in the context of a free challenge while coming up with your own profitable course idea. I also have this online course creators workshop series that I deliver live once a year that includes some really kind of fun sessions on the dopamine button and the viral course checklist and the accelerated course blueprint. So I go live and do all of this stuff and I'm using these principles all the way through. So just go to liveyourmessage.com forward/hustle. Get the PDF, that's instant gratification. If you don't even go and look at anything else, that's going to give you some quick value. And if you want to, you know, follow the rabbit hole even deeper, you'll be able to do that from that point as well.

You got me hooked, Marisa. And there's so many other things I want to go down here in rabbit holes, but I honestly am just going to experience it. I think that's the best way. Right. And it's. Yeah. So go there if you're here still with us. Thank you. You, obviously, you have something to put out into the world and there's an experience that you want to empower others to do as well. So, Marisa, I mean, you are the best. That's why we're chatting again five years. And in between, there have been a lot of people that have come to me and saying that they have got so much value from that episode we did five years ago and actually jumped in and experienced it alongside you. So if that's one of you watching, then awesome. You know how it feels. So go along with that. And Marisa, any final bits before we wrap here? Any any specific questions or things to empower those watching here?

No. What I would just say is that, you know, one of the ways I love to end is with one of my favorite quotes from Zig Ziglar, which is you can have everything you want in life if you'll just help enough other people get what they want. And I think so many people begin the course creation journey or hear from people prioritizing, make money, make money, make money. But I find that when you prioritize the content, customer experience, when you prioritize people winning and getting results, for me, I'm so much more motivated to market and sell because I know in every cell of my body that I am actually setting people up for the best possible outcomes they can get anywhere. Right? And your business starts to grow. You get referrals, you get the case studies, you get the testimonials. You get lifetime customers who buy from you over and over again, who share what you do, who talk about you. And for me, that's winning the game.

That's completely winning the game. And that game doesn't end, and it shouldn't because it feels great and you're given. So Marisa, appreciate you so very much and can't wait to see you in the. In the challenge and all beyond that.

So talk soon 100%. Later.

Sam.

Sa.