Inside the Scalable Coach Method Launch

Welcome to Million Dollar Grit, the podcast that dives deep into the world of entrepreneurship, where tenacity meets strategy and dreams meet reality. My name is Julie, and I explore the raw, often overlooked truths of what it takes to succeed in business and in life. It's not just about the glossy success stories. It's about the grit it takes to get there. Hey everyone, this is Julie. And today I kind of want to go through a launch debrief, specifically the course that I just released over at Funnel Gorgeous called Scalable Coach Method. I wanna kind of take you behind the scenes of how the whole thing came to be, because this was what I would consider a very last minute launch. There were a lot of things that we didn't do perfectly, and yet it's an example of how important the offer is because despite all of the stuff we didn't make happen, we had a great launch. So for those of you who don't follow me on social media or my email list, about a week and a half ago, I sent an email saying, "Hey, we're gonna launch something next week." And if you know launch strategy, it's important to build buzz and anticipation, and I knew that we didn't have that in our corner, and it would kind of seem a little bit out of left field that I was gonna start selling something that I had given no warning or lead-up to. So I had to be honest about that with my community. And the reason why there was no lead-up and the reason why we had so little time was because this was something that we wanted to launch, but it looked like it wasn't going to happen until 2024. And, you know, maybe you understand this feeling where you know that there's something you want to do, but life is so busy, you don't know how you're going to get it done, there's a million things going on, And so when I had met with Kathy, my business partner, to talk about the plans, I said, "You know, I have this course, this course that we're gonna do called Scalable Coach Method, but I just don't see where it's gonna fit in until summer of 2024." And she said, "Is there, you know, is there any way we can do it before then?" And I thought, "Well, if we do it next week, yes." You know, because there's like this limited time before Black Friday and Christmas. She's like, "Do you think we can do it?" I'm like, "I don't know. We're gonna try." And this is, I guess, Parkinson's Law in action, that things that you think are impossible are impossible until you decide that you're gonna give yourself a deadline and then magically it happens. Not perfectly, but it happens. So I started with an email out to my list about a week out just saying, "Hey, listen, the rest of the year is chock-full of events and I am going to get this course out the door if it kills me. And so I'm going to do a live round next week." next week. And that's how I did it. I just owned it, and the story is absolutely 1,000% true. And because of that, I think that the email really connected with people because they could see themselves in my situation. They could see, oh yeah, I understand how you're busy. I understand how life, you know, gets in the way. I understand that you really want to get something out the door. I had a 33% open rate on that email and a 1.2% click rate, And I had a, I threw up a waitlist. In fact, Kathy made that waitlist in about 15 minutes. And it's important when you're doing a launch, even a launch that's like last minute, that you have a waitlist set up so that people can have a way to raise their hand and say yes. So that's what we did. Then I proceeded to do basically 3 emails. And it was, the big one was 8 problems with Zoom client calls. And this is sort of my big idea, which is that Zoom client call coaching is tiring, exhausting, and not scalable. And I'm going to introduce a way to scale your coaching business, right? So this was the big idea. The email did fantastic. It had a great open rate. I took that email and I also put it on social media and it just totally resonated. So here's the call to action. If you're going to launch something and you don't have a lot of time to do, you know, a challenge or a webinar, make sure you have a great big idea. And this big idea was basically based on a real core problem that people have with coaching, which is they get bogged down with Zoom client calls. And I talked about this very problem that I had, that I couldn't scale my one-on-one coaching business because if I did a weekly 60-minute Zoom call for every client, before I knew it, it. I was, you know, stuck on Zoom all day, and there were a lot of problems, right? I became less creative. I felt like my clients, you know, felt ashamed and awkward during the call if they didn't get their homework done. We wouldn't be able to actually make forward momentum because we were just in catch-up mode. Massive Zoom fatigue, you know. The client would retell what happened over the week but without the emotion involved. And so there was just all of this stuff that I saw was problematic and that the scalable The Coach Method was actually solving. So that email, I sent that email out, and then I— so that was the big idea email. And then I sent the social proof email, the email that says, hey, not only have I scaled coaching myself, but I've actually taught my clients how to do this, and they've had crazy amazing success with it. And so that's really all you need to have a great launch is a fantastic big idea and fantastic proof. And so I sent these emails, Every single one of these emails, the story of why it was coming so fast, the big idea of the problems with Zoom calls and the testimonial or social proof. Those 3 emails had no call to action other than join the waitlist. They couldn't buy. And I think I barely did social media. I think I posted on Facebook. I think maybe I posted on my Instagram stories. I know Kathy over on the Funnel Gorgeous side was kind of like cross cross-pollinating a little bit, but that was really it. And we managed to get about 800 people on a waitlist in just those few days. Okay, so that was a huge success. And then the weekend came, and on Saturday, October 7th, I watched Twitter and read Twitter, and I saw the attack on Israel, And it was kind of in slow motion because, you know, in the morning of Saturday, that Saturday, we didn't really— we didn't really know what was going on in Israel. Uh, there were reports coming in that hostages had been taken, and but it like, as the day went on, there was just this bigger and bigger feeling of like, holy crap, something really really huge and horrifying has happened. And, you know, the footage starts to come out, and yes, there's a lot of misinformation, but then you're just like, oh my God. And then by Sunday morning— actually, no, sorry, Saturday night— I have clients that are in Israel, and, you know, I posted on my feed, I said, you know, I stand with Israel and I'm praying for my friends. And then I just got all kinds of support and hate on that thread, and I thought, oh my gosh, okay, You know, to me it was like, there was this sense of like, of course we stand with Israel, like, look at what they just did, you know, but the divisiveness of the issue, you know. And so by Sunday morning, I was like, gosh, I don't know that I can launch. So I had done all these emails, gotten everybody kind of like thinking about it. And then I wrote an email saying that there was going to be a benefit to being on the waitlist if you Sunday night, the first 20 people, would get access, an extra bonus. And I had sent all of this, and on Sunday morning I'm like, "I don't think I can do this," you know? And so I had to send out a delay message. So after building the little buzz that I could build, now I had to say, "Oh, just kidding. I'm not actually launching." So that was a little bit stressful, but I just, I was so emotionally distraught by what was happening, I just couldn't in my right mind do it. So our audience was amazing. We kind of put the launch on hold, and normally we do launches Monday to Friday, right? We are Sunday night to Friday night. And so now it was Monday and I was like, I just, I don't know if we can do it. And then Tuesday I realized, I'm like, okay, this issue with Israel, this is like massive. This is not a short-term thing. Like this could escalate, this could become a huge thing. Like, I gotta get my sea legs, you know? That's kind of how I felt. And so we basically launched on Wednesday, so it was a couple days late. We sent out an email to the waitlist on Wednesday saying, "Hey, you can buy all day today, and tonight we're gonna open it up to the main list." And we had over 60 purchases off the waitlist within, I don't know, 20 minutes or so. So we opened the cart on Wednesday, night, and this was another thing. We didn't have a webinar. We didn't have an open house. We didn't have any of that. We literally sent an email on October 11th at 6:08 PM. We had a very basic sales page because again, we didn't have tons of time to get that out the door saying, here is the, here's what's going to happen. Uh, you're going to be able to buy Wednesday through Sunday. The first class is live on Friday. Like we're not, we can't stop. Like this is the schedule. So you have from Wednesday night till Friday morning to buy if you want to get in on that live class. That had a 40% open rate, a 1% click rate. And then the next couple of days I sent 4 emails. I sent an email on Thursday. I sent an email on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Actually, I sent, I think I sent 2 on Sunday. And these are the emails that I did. I did an FAQ to try to answer all the objections. I did a last call if you want to attend the live class on Friday. I told people you can still buy, but if you want to catch that live class. So I did that. All of these had over 35% open rates. Then I did a will answer your questions personally, and then I did a doors closing. So how did we do? Basically, this was a $1,000 course that we gave a $300 discount on. So it was $697. We did have a pay plan, a 3-pay plan of $270 9, we ended up at the end with 240 students, which was unbelievable given that we had so little time to promote, build buzz, and actually sell. And I went over to the sales page and I saw that we had about, I don't know, 1,600, maybe 1,500 page views on that page. So if you think about it, our audience of 60,000 people on our email list, you know, 15,000 in our Facebook group. I have, you know, 16,000 on my personal Instagram. We really didn't get a lot of views. I would say in most of our launches, we can get somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 views to a page in a week. But keep in mind, we usually have a little bit more lead up. We also run ads, so we run ads either to like a freebie leading up to it, or we run ads like during the actual launch so that they can go to the sales page. We had no ads for this whatsoever. So at 1,500, 1,600 unique views, we were about 50% less of what we could normally push out in, in a, in a week time. So if you kind of do the math and you take, you know, 240 sales divided by 15, that's a 16% conversion rate. And that speaks to the proof and the big idea. I cannot, I cannot say this any more than I say it to every single student and client. The big idea based on a real key problem and the social proof that you are the one to fix it are the two things you need to sell more than anything else. They are the hardest thing. And I actually think I may bring back— I have this offer brief. I may describe it in a podcast episode coming up because I think it really helps with these two things around the big idea and the proof. So we had 240 sales. We did about $141,000 in sales. There's a bunch more coming in for pay plans. So this is just my way of saying that sometimes when you think you don't have the time, you can't get it out the door, you're not going to do it perfectly, you're missing the trimmings and trappings of an amazing launch, but you have these two key factors of proof and the big idea around a problem, you can make it happen. So I hope this was helpful. It's kind of a long, you know, long debrief about something that doesn't have a lot of, you know, cool extras. But I hope this encourages someone who is kind of sitting on the fence and trying to decide if they have time to get that thing out the door, You actually do. So I'll talk to you soon. Thanks. Bye. And there you have it, folks. Another dose of Million Dollar Grit. I hope today's episode has left you feeling inspired, equipped, and ready to face your own entrepreneurial journey with resolve. Remember, until next time, embrace the struggle, harness your grit, and keep pushing forward. You're stronger than any challenge you face. I'm Julie Chenell, and this has been Million Dollar Grit.