#FBF #1: How I Came Back From Failure & Got My Start

Let’s flashback to August 2010. 

The day I walked in the doors of my very last job…

I didn’t walk in with the excitement of something new. 

I walked in with my head down, shoulders slumped in defeat.

5 months earlier, I had walked out the doors of my previous job with the intention to start my own business, but just couldn’t make it work. 

I’d been following the standard advice to do something practical, do something that would make money, so I offered web design — it doesn’t get more practical than that. But I still couldn’t sell it!

What was wrong with me?

I’d get maybe one client every 2-3 months that would bring in $3-7K, but I instantly spent all of that just to deliver my services and keep the business open. 

Worse still, I had to chase clients who tried to nickel-and-dime me over every single piece of their website.

Every button.

Every word on the page.

It just wasn’t what I imagined. I wasn’t having fun and I was running out of money.

So just five months after quitting my job, I gave up on my dream and got another 9-5.

This time it felt much worse. The instant I stepped into that HR office and started filling out all those dreadful, soul-sucking forms, I knew this was the last time I would ever work for someone else again — the last time I would start my work day by putting on heels.

So I invested a big chunk of each paycheck into learning from all the OG online business gurus — Brendon Burchard, Jeff Walker, Eben Pagan — and driving hundreds of miles to their in-person events…

At one of those events, I bumped into my client, Michelle Schubnel. She invited me to speak on web design at her event a couple months later… and asked me what I would sell?

I looked at her blankly. Sell? 

I couldn’t admit that I had nothing to sell, so the first words out of my mouth were, “How about my Build Your Site, Launch Your Business program?”

She said, “Perfect!”
And I responded, “Done!”

But the truth was it was far from done… and I had no idea how the heck I was going to pull this off!

My inner voice was screaming, “What did you just do?”

I had never spoken on-stage before so needless to say I didn’t have a talk…

I’d never created a program before…

I didn’t have an audience or an email list.

And my experience with online business was limited to just a handful of web design clients. 

Ready or not, here I come! 

I quickly discovered that the only way to get ready for something is to actually do it…

Enter my first group coaching program: Build Your Site, Launch Your Business. 

Clearly I didn’t know anything about choosing a compelling name…

Or designing a compelling logo (Yup, I made this bad boy myself. 🙂

But I DID have a laptop, an internet connection and a desire to help people with my skills and expertise — which I discovered are THE ONLY 3 THINGS you need to get started…

Not to mention that looming date on the calendar to get it all done!

I wished it was a year later — because less than 3 months didn’t feel like a whole lot of time to figure everything out.

But I had made the leap and the only option was to fly.

I was living on Sawtelle Blvd in the Mar Vista neighborhood of LA… renting half the top floor of a family house.

My office overlooked a long-neglected cherimoya tree and I could hear the urban chickens clucking away somewhere beyond my sight.

I remember staring at that tree for hours — as a way to take my mind off the blank page in front of me — and listening to those chickens who seemed to be mocking me.

“Still nothing?” they clucked.

“You better get on with it…”

And then, “Who you calling chicken?”

ok, Ok, OOOOOKKK…

There was no choice, but to write.

The weeks flew by until it was time to get in the car and drive those 5 long hours to San Francisco — a trip I had made so many times before…

I crashed at a friend’s house and made my way to the venue. The moment had finally arrived!

I sat in the back of the room cramming my notes until the last minute…“Let’s welcome my good friend Marisa Murgatroyd to the stage.”

I looked out at the 75 people in the audience… and they looked back….

No, they stared back at me… 

I started talking to the soundtrack in my head — I can’t do this. I CAN do this. I can’t do this. I CAN do this. I can’t do this.

A few people nodded. 

Wait! Maybe. I. Can. Do. This…

A few more nods.

Maybe they’re even liking this?

I managed to get to the end and fumble through my offer… 

3 people bought.

Not what I was hoping for, but at least I made some sales!

A week later, Michelle decided to give me one more chance and hosted me on a webinar to her audience, which attracted another 100 people. 

This was long before Zoom and I remember how strange it was speaking into the abyss — wondering if people were really there and really listening? 

But I got through it and made 4 more sales — bringing me to 7!

I really wanted 8, so I remember calling and messaging a bunch of people I had met on the event circuit until I got that last sale… 

Almost 200 no’s and 8 yeses… but I did it — I designed and launched my first program!

I was now a course creator!

And you never know what will happen when you take life-changing action.

Flashforward to today and those 8 students grew into over 12,000 students! 

It still amazes me that I’ve inspired my students to take over 500,000 hours of action — and it all started from me saying yes long before I was actually ready…

And, no, the path from 8 to 12,000 wasn’t easy and it didn’t happen overnight.

I’ll be sharing a few more Flashback Friday (#FBF) moments in the hopes of showing you how humble (and even embarrassing) beginnings lead to extraordinary results…

Which leads me to my next story…

#FBF #2: Strike Two — As If One Failed Attempt Weren’t Enough!

Now let’s flashforward to 2011 and my second attempt at a program… 

Called the 30 Day Challenge, which lasted all of 3 months! 

At the time, membership sites and continuity programs were all the rave and the internet marketing gurus were shouting the promise of passive income from the rooftops.

Monthly recurring income was considered the holy grail of online business, so I thought I’d give it a try.

I’d been invited down to Hawaii to speak at my friend Peri Coeurtney Enkin’s event in Hawaii. It was my second-ever live speaking engagement and I was super nervous and super stoked.

Courtney was putting me up for a few days at an apartment in Kona and I felt like I was living the life.

This felt like my global debut, so I wanted to create something brand new that would wow Peri and her audience…

After watching 87% of my first batch of students finish my program (Build Your Site, Launch Your Business) without launching their sites, I realized there was a BIG gap between learning and doing.

So I wanted my next program to get people into action — that’s why I called it the 30 Day Challenge (or 30DC for short).

The idea was simple — every month, I’d give students ONE AREA of their business to focus on: 

• Month 1 was called “Why This? Why Now? Why You?” and was all about turning your story and personal experience into a message.
• Month 2 was called “Walking in Your Clients’ Shoes” and it was about aligning your message with your audience through market research.
• Month 3 was called “Brand New You” and it was about defining the key pieces of your personal brand.

I didn’t see the problem until it was too late…

I was selling the online business equivalent of the “Emperor’s New Clothes” — something that couldn’t be seen with the naked eye… 

A whole lot of work and process leading to…

*** drumroll please ***

An invisible transformation.

(Messaging, Market Research, Personal Branding)

Waa-waa.

So even though the price was just $97/month, I only got 3 sales of my new offer.

Granted, there were only 12 people in the room…

But – I did all this work and flew all the way to Hawaii for just $291/month???!!!!!???

Murray had even spent an entire day (and lots of research) building me a home-made teleprompter out of cardboard, 2-way glass and an old LCD monitor so I could record the videos!

That’s when I discovered that people don’t buy your program or solution, they buy the transformation they get.

And that was just the start of it! 

Because each month of the 30 Day Challenge was focused on a lot of work and process with an invisible transformation, guess what?!?

Yup. Those 3 students didn’t stick around…

One by one, they dropped out. By the third month I only had one student.

That’s right, I was creating 7-9 videos a month for 1 student (and $97)! 

Creating this program was costing me WAY MORE than I was making. 

And I discovered a sad fact that none of those internet marketing gurus mentioned: the average continuity program member churns in just 3 months… 

That means, after just 3 months, they cancel their membership as they fall farther and farther behind, lose interest or simply stop logging in.

Ouch!

The holy grail didn’t seem so holy after all…

So I decided to abandon my membership and go back to creating online courses…

#FBF #3: My First Semi-Hit — Insights Gained From My Message to Money Program

So far, I’ve shared the stories of my first two online course fails — Build Your Site, Launch Your Business & the 30-Day Challenge…

Which paved the way for my third course, Message to Money, which I created in 2012 and sold for 4 years before retiring.

Message to Money was a breakthrough for me in a number of ways, but I never would have gotten there if I hadn’t created those first couple courses.

That’s why I ask my students, “What if you don’t create your Blockbuster Hit Product until your third or fourth course? Would you still be willing to create Course #1 and Course #2, even if they’re total duds?”

Almost invariably, my students say, “Definitely, yes!”

But the truth is, you can’t predict the future and it’s so easy to give up after one or two fails when — so often — your greatest successes are on the other side of failure.

And — after Build Your Site, Launch Your Business & the 30 Day Challenge — there were many times when I doubted and questioned, “Shouldn’t this be easy if I were really meant to do this?” 

“How come so many other people seem to be having huge success with their courses and programs, when I’m struggling to make a few sales?”

As my mentor Lisa Nichols says, “It’s not how many times you fall, it’s how many times you get up. So strengthen your get up muscles!” 

And I gotta say, my “get up muscles” are rock solid 🙂

So – Message to Money was my first course to feature a signature system — My Live Your M.E.S.S.A.G.E. System — and that made a BIG difference when it came to selling this program, because it gave my course structure.

I called this an “inside out model” because you had to work your way from the inside out, and each of the 7 parts of the system became a module inside my program:

Make Your ROAD MAP (Module 1)

Energize Your MESSAGE (Module 2)

Shape Your Unique BRAND (Module 3)

Structure Your CONTENT to Sell (Module 4) 

Accelerate Your WEBSITE to Get Results (Module 5)

Grow Your Tribe With the Right MARKETING (Module 6) 

Explode Your Impact Through Smart ACTION (Module 7)

I didn’t know it at the time, but it was WAY too much. 

At least 6 courses in one — all crammed into a single 6-week program with a starting price of $497.

At the time, everyone was making these mongo, “multi-point programs” that taught you “everything you need to know” about this or that…

So I followed suit, since that’s what I thought an online course was…

I slaved for months on the content, the sales page, the launch materials, the webinar, the emails, the membership site, and all that stuff. I even paid a well-known copywriter $10K to write the sales page for me, which felt like a FORTUNE.

I worked my butt off and I ended the year with 40 sales of that first course — and just over $20K in revenue. 

It seemed like a small fortune at the time… and I was officially in business! 

I continued to sell that course for 4 full years and, along the way, we raised the price from $497 to $697 to $997, ultimately selling 501 copies and bringing in a grand total of $470,412! 

By the end I was making a pretty decent income… or so I thought.

Gradually, I started to see the cracks in the program, until I made the hard choice to stop selling it.

It all started with the refunds… 13.5% of our Message to Money students refunded, which dropped that revenue down by a full $33,488.

I was concerned. I thought something was wrong with my course and started to second-guess myself.

Out of desperation — I approached a colleague and asked, “Do you have lots of people buying your program and giving up before they finish?”

She looked at me, nodded quietly and said: “Marisa, maybe some people just aren’t meant to succeed…”

That felt like a punch in the gut because I believe that every person is meant to succeed. That every person — given the right education, the right support and the right guidance — CAN succeed.

But that WASN’T what I was seeing…

And when I dug deeper, I realized it wasn’t just me.

I discovered that the industry-average refund rate for traditional online courses is between 10-20%… but nobody tells you that when you hear about all those million dollar product launches!

And this was just the beginning…

I started to get this feeling in my gut that NOT a lot of students were making it through the course. And when we ran the numbers from our membership site, we saw the harsh reality — something that most online course creators never get to see. 

We saw that only around 5% of our students were actually completing the course — which lines right up with the industry average completion rates for traditional online courses. 

That’s when I found out that online courses and home study programs have an average completion rate of just 3%. 

That means — if you’re creating products, programs or courses in the traditional way like I was — up to 97% of the people who buy from you will either: Not even open your course or program OR open it, but fall off… fail to complete it AND fail to get the results you promised.

Which — even if you figure out how to sell your course — leads to declining sales and reputation. 

And that’s exactly what I was seeing. 

My students weren’t completing the course, so they weren’t succeeding. Therefore, I wasn’t succeeding…

I had also made the huge mistake of offering lifetime access to weekly group coaching calls in that program, so my students felt like they had all the time in the world to complete the program… and they were disincentivized from continuing to work with me in other programs since this program never really ended 🙂

So while I was making money, my business wasn’t growing… and I felt like I wasn’t really serving my students in the way that I wanted to be.

That led me to make the hard decision to retire the program in 2016.

Uncoincidentally, that was also the year I launched my real Blockbuster Hit Program, the Experience Product Masterclass, which completely transformed everything I thought was possible for an online course — both for me and my students.

But that’s a story for another day since I created several more programs between Message to Money and the Experience Product Masterclass, which ALL gave me the experience and insights I needed to launch EPM.

So stay tuned because there’s more to come in my Flashback Friday series! Each story will be sent to your email (so get on my list if you aren’t already :)) and I’ll also update this post.

Let me know in a comment your BIGGEST takeaway from my #FBF series…

But before you go…

Every fail paves the path to your future success.

So — while Build Your Site, Launch Your Business ultimately turned into Website ATM — the 30 Day Challenge planted the seed for a program I created 12 YEARS LATER: Success School.

Success School combines everything I learned about online courses and The Experience Formula (which I developed in 2016 as a result of making so many mistakes 🙂 inside a $97/month membership — and the results are blowing my students away…

I finally cracked the code on bridging the gap between learning and doing with a focus on results and transformation, but I never could have done this if I hadn’t #failedforward.

#FBF #4: The Win That Came Disguised as a Fail

I thought it was a great idea at the time…

Famous last words.

It wasn’t the idea that was bad, it was the execution.

Classic mistake! 

My boyfriend (Murray) — yes that’s the same Murray I just celebrated my 10th wedding anniversary with — had a LOT more success with his first digital product than me.

It was called Job Secrets Revealed and he launched it with his best friend Acland in 2001… they sold it for a full 5 years, partnering with Monster.com until they decided to create their own digital products 🙂

It was all about the Hidden Job Market and finding opportunities that aren’t being listed, PLUS ways to bypass the usual application process.

It was a hit and Monster.com promoted it for years (until they decided to get in the game with their own products)…

Adding up to about 50K sales! One year Job Secrets Revealed crossed the million dollar a year mark and Murray and Acland traveled the world on the proceeds.

So Murray and Acland were living the dream! One year they reached a million dollars in sales on this one program alone… and traveled the world on their earnings.

Acland is one of those crazy idea guys with a non-stop flood of, well, crazy ideas. Whether that’s making giant buddhas for Asian restaurants (called Big Ass Buddhas no less) or creating custom laundry detergent with your favorite scent (Soap du Sauvage anyone?).

Of course, MOST of those ideas never saw the light of day but this one DID — with Murray’s support.  Yes, everyone needs a Murray!

So – Murray suggested we take a similar approach with HSP. While JSR was about tapping the hidden job market, HSP was about sharing the hidden stories that people don’t otherwise hear as a way to market and connect with your audience…

Remember when I said the idea was good, but the execution was bad.

Rather than create an online course, Murray and I decided the best format for a program on stories was a book. A PDF.

And we decided to design the PDF like one of those beautiful Phaidon art books, so people could learn about storytelling in both narrative and visual form.

We wanted to match the message with the medium.

It was absolutely gorgeous, but we discovered a HUGE problem — only AFTER we created everything. 

First of all, sales were SLOW. 

People just didn’t want to plunk down $97 on a 94-page eBook. 🙁

And the people who bought just didn’t see the value — again, $97 for an eBook?

So something like 50% of the people who bought the eBook, refunded almost right away. I was devastated!

We had poured months into creating it. This was our first creative collaboration and — It. Was. Beautiful. But it just didn’t add up for our customers…

UNTIL we decided to turn it into an online course — complete with audio, slides, worksheets and group coaching sessions.I remember our first webinar like it was yesterday.

Murray and I were at a hotel in Chiang Mai, Thailand — living the nomad entrepreneur dream — and we woke up at 3am to deliver that webinar and sell the only course version of Hidden Story Power for $197.

(Yes, that’s twice as much as the eBook — and the first time I realized the power of choosing the right business model. The same thing in a different format could be twice as valuable, if not more.) As soon as I got to the offer, the sales started pouring in. 1 sale. 3 sales. 10 sales!!??!! 

And it kept on going… 

We got up to 24 sales that day alone and 40 sales by the end of the weekend!

And the really cool thing was we were meeting up with my dad and step-mom at the hotel that morning.

We ate breakfast in the courtyard as the sales continued to roll in… and we felt like we were not just living the dream, we were winning it!

As we cruised around Chiang Mai in a tuk tuk, that sales counter just kept ticking upwards!

Another $197 in… and another… and another!

But — eek — we still had to create the course!

That was a problem for another day…

After the failure of our Hidden Story Power eBook, we decided to sell the course before we created it, then meet the demand by delivering it live!

I remember it vividly.

Murray was in Australia and I was back in Los Angeles… I didn’t have a house, so I was crashing at my former boss’s house and she had two BIG, unruly golden retrievers.

The kind that would pounce on anyone who walked through the door and no amount of yelling — Nijo, no! — from Lyn could control.

I remember doing those GoToWebinar calls together — Murray from Australia and me in LA, with occasional interruptions from Nijo!

Murray would play the guitar as we did group exercises…

It felt so romantic — we were falling more and more in love as each Module rolled out.Maybe we could do this whole online course thing after all!

We sold Hidden Story Power for 7 years and a grand total of 819 sales and $172,749.

My biggest innovation there — other than realizing the power of online courses and choosing the right business model — was introducing our Quarterly Story Celebrations. You see, after we delivered the course live, it became a purely evergreen program. Meaning that people paid their $197 and got the recorded replays on a membership site.

That’s great, but it felt like something was missing. People spent all this time to create their story and — while we had 3 full models on how and where to share your story — we didn’t have a context for them to share their stories with each other.

So I introduced lifetime access to our Quarterly Story Celebrations as a BONUS. And it was a hit. Students came back quarter after quarter to share the next evolution of their story and get my feedback.

I got to witness (and support) them as they went deeper and deeper into their life experiences and got more and more comfortable sharing authentically and vulnerably — and how they response they got changed with it!
My students and I loved these Story Celebrations so much that I did them all the way through the end of 2021 — even after I stopped selling the course.

So — while I no longer sell Hidden Story Power — stories are still a HUGE part of both my marketing and my courses.

Because nothing creates connection more than story.

In our highly-connected, social media world engagement is king. That means — not just creating content or sharing tips — but sharing things that create some kind of emotional response, which leads to likes, comments, shares and interest in you and your work.

If you’re not getting in front of people in a memorable way on a regular basis, they won’t know you exist — much less remember you and consider buying from you.

#FBF #5: You Did What?!!?

I tell my students that you already know everyone you need to know to have at least one successful online course launch…

But every course creator hits a moment — usually around the 3rd or 4th launch — when they need to grow their audience to start making more sales and ultimately scale their business.

Because — at this point — they’ve put the same offer in front of the same people several times in a relatively short window of time and those people have either already bought or aren’t interested in buying.

That’s where I was in 2013…

I had made my way through 2 failed product launches — Build Your Site, Launch Your Business and the 30 Day Challenge…

And now had 2 courses that were performing relatively well (not the blockbuster hit products I have today), but they were making sales every time I launched them — Message to Money and Hidden Story Power.

It was time to grow my audience and expand my reach!

So when a friend of mine asked me if I wanted to produce an Online Summit with him, I said yes.

His name was Matthew Peters and he was a video marketing expert, so he had the idea of doing a Summit called, “Video Marketing 2013.”

He wanted to use the Summit to launch a new video marketing app that would allow people to create different kinds of sales and marketing videos from their cell phones using pre-built templates. 

I had heard Summits were a great way to build your audience, but I wasn’t a video marketing expert and apps weren’t something on my radar at the time.

My business model was coaching and courses and building an app felt too techy and too overwhelming.

So I told him, “I’m in” if we can a) use the Summit to build an audience for our courses (rather than using it to launch an app) and b) find a good hook for the Summit.

I had seen so many people launching different versions of the same boring summit where they interview 20 guests and you don’t really learn anything…

And — if I was going to do this — I wanted to do it differently.

I remember mulling on it for weeks — asking myself, “What’s the hook?” over and over again…

“What’s the hook?”

Until I saw the latest Superhero movie poster and thought — that’s it!

Let’s bring together an all-star line-up of video marketing superheroes and call it the Video Superhero Summit. We can even turn all our presenters into superheroes — because, who doesn’t want to be turned into a superhero?

That was the hook!

You see, I was a newbie at the time. Just a year and a half into my online business journey and I didn’t have the relationships or the reputation to attract the superhero line-up I imagined.

But I did have ONE relationship!

In 2011, I had bought Don Crowther’s Social Profit Formula program, which came with 2 tickets to Don’s live event. 

Murray and I went and — when the time came for Don to do hot seats — I reluctantly raised my hand. 

I’m not sure what possessed me to do that, since I’m not the kind of person who puts my hand up in a room like that. But something compelled me to raise my hand.

Don quickly vetted each person with their hand raised and chose to bring me up on stage. Apparently our conversation was so interesting, that everyone was buzzing about it afterward…

But that was just the beginning.

I had invested $20K in Brendon Burchard’s Empire Group and it came with a ticket to his 10X event in New York City.

Tickets were selling for $10K a pop so I felt chuffed to have a ticket.

And guess who else was in that room?

Don Crowther!

I remember approaching Don on a break and asking, “Remember me?”

He said, “Of course,” which completely shocked me. 

But that was my “in”…

I can’t remember exactly what I said next, but it was something along the lines of “Your website sucks” — in nicer words. 🙂

And, bless his heart, he said, “Tell me more.”

One thing led to another and we agreed on a trade — I would lead him through a personal branding VIP Day and guide him on developing his online presence — and, in exchange, he gifted me a year in his VIP Mastermind…

I felt like I had gotten the better end of the bargain, but that kicked off our friendship and partnership.

So, he was the first person I invited onto our Video Superhero Summit and he not only said yes, but offered to introduce me to his friend Andy Jenkins — the late great “video boss.”

OMG OMG OMG, I had the proverbial foot in the door! 

Andy was a LEGEND and this was my chance…

We had found an artist on Upwork who could draw epic superhero characters for 30 bucks a pop…

So I went ahead and paid for Andy’s character to be drawn in advance so — when Don introduced me — I could “future pace” his experience on the Summit by showing him what he looks like as a Superhero…

I also recorded an audio complete with superhero-themed music to make the invite feel really epic.

Here’s a screenshot of the email:

And wonder of wonders, Andy wrote back that very same day:

Hey Marisa!
Sounds SUPER cool!
Can we connect the week after next and you can give me full lay of the land?

P.S. Friend requested you on FB, cause that seemed like a good thing to do.

🙂

AJ

Of course it took me a couple weeks and a couple more messages before I actually got him on the phone… 

But, once I did, he was in! And he introduced me to Maria Andros, the Video Queen…

Within a couple months I had my superhero line-up: James Wedmore, Jason Fladlien, Pete Williams, Andy Jenkins, Don Crowther, Jody Jelas, Marshall Wayne, Steven Washer, plus me and Matthew Peters.

(Once we got into the actual planning, Matthew realized he didn’t have the bandwidth to go all in, so we moved him into a Summit guest position and I became the organizer.)

I started the Summit as a total newbie with no relationships, no reputation and an email list of just 3000 and ended it with a list of well over 10,000 and an “in” to all the major players in the internet marketing space. 

I was even invited to a Thanksgiving potluck dinner with Andy, Mike Filsaime and Frank Kern! (I was in charge of the mashed potatoes lol 🙂

I’ll share more details on our unique Summit model in the next edition of Flashback Friday — since, based on the success of this first Summit, I did a grand total of 5 Superhero Summits over 2 years…

But I did want to say that I bundled all 10 Sessions into my next digital product, the Video Superhero Pack. We sold 133 copies and brought in $18,451, which I split with the partners.

I also got affiliate commissions on everything our partners sold through the summit and I also sold my Hidden Story Power course from my Summit Session…

I’ve lost track of exactly how much I sold from my Session, but I ended 2013 with 291 sales of that course (and $54,521.00 in revenue) — way more than the 40 I was able to sell to my own audience in my first launch.

All in, I made about $100K from that first Summit while adding 10K people to my email list… 

So you better believe I was going to repeat it!

#FBF #6: This Put Me on the Map!

In my last edition of our Flashback Friday Series (#FBF), I shared how — in 2013, two years into my business — I was bumping up against the edges of having a not-big-enough audience to generate the kind of income I was hoping for…

And how I solved that problem by launching the Video Superhero Summit — even though I thought I had nothing to offer. I didn’t have a lot of high-profile relationships or a large email list…

But I used the power of a great, well-executed idea to attract an all-star line-up — which added 10K people to my list and $100K in revenue.

That one event built my audience and put me on the map with high-profile JV partners… I went from being a complete unknown to having my online business legends asking ME to feature THEM — just so they could be on the line-up as a cartoon Superhero… 

So, what do you think I did?

I repeated it. 

4 more times!

Video Superhero Summit (May 13-24, 2013)

Social Media Superhero Summit (November 4-15, 2013)

Traffic Superhero Summit (March 24-April 4, 2014)

Online Business Superhero (July 7-18, 2014)

Author Speaker Coach Superhero (November 10-21, 2014)

I learned that once you have something that works, you want to rinse and repeat. And rinse and repeat. And rinse and repeat! 

And that’s what I did…But I went a little overboard! 3 Summits in 8 months was WAY too much — and by the time the last Summit wrapped, I was DONE.

We had sold 946 Superhero Packs (featuring recordings of each of the 10 sessions) between the 5 Summits, for a grand total of $115,060.

I had also brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars in affiliate commissions and summit sales of my own courses.

Built my list up to over 50,000 people…

And commissioned 53 Superhero cartoon illustrations!

Was it worth it? 100%!!!

So what exactly did I do to make these Summits such a HUGE success — above and beyond having a great, well-executed idea and a whole lot of hustle?

That’s a great question… and the answer is — a lot!

So I’m going to focus on the 3 biggest lessons and needle movers:

#1 – It’s kind of hard to believe, but back in 2013, live streaming video (yes, the kind we now take for granted everyday through tools like Zoom) was BRAND NEW. And the only way to do it was through Google Hangouts on Air. 

It was so new and complicated that I had to hire a specialist — one of the few people in the world — who understood how to hook up YouTube and Google Hangouts to actually make this possible.

And it was buggy AF! Sometimes it just didn’t work. Sometimes we got the livestreaming going but it wouldn’t record. Sometimes it just glitched in the middle of a session…

BUT, we did it anyway. 

And we were the first to feature these online business and internet marketing superheroes in a way that people could see them LIVE… and interact with them on chat… and ask questions!

And the energy of that was new and exciting and even magical.

So I learned that it’s worth it to jump through a few extra hoops to leverage tools and strategies that other people weren’t vs simply doing things the fastest easiest way possible. 

Because — when you do that — you standout!

#2 – I quickly discovered that Webinars, Events & Summits get a significantly lower opt-in rate than instant gratification PDFs, and that money is made when people show up live. 

So, for every Summit, we created a Guide featuring top tips from each Superhero while teasing their upcoming Session!

And — to drive LIVE EVENT participation even more — we created high-value show-up gifts.

We designed an amazing infographic for each Superhero around their Session… like this one from Pete Williams! 

By attending each Session live — people would get each infographic and ultimately fill their “event Playbook” one Session and one page at a time. Or, of course, they could also buy the Superhero Pack and get the complete Superhero Summit Playbook in one go. How cool is that?

And finally #3 – I was able to attract such a great line-up because I offered our presenters 3 bites at the apple. 

I don’t know about you, but I get dozens of Summit invites every year and most of them are thinly-veiled list grabs — send 3 solo emails to your list of 5000 or more and you’ll have the honor of being on my Summit.

No thank you.

Why would I do that?

The opportunity cost of carving out that time on our editorial calendar (and everything it takes to prepare for my Session) is larger than the pay-off. 

I KNEW I was approaching people who had much larger audiences and businesses than me, so I had to offer them a big enough win for them to say yes.

The superhero cartoon was great, but they needed to make money too!

So I gave each presenter 3 ways to get paid (which, BTW, also overcame the greatest potential objection to being on the Summit):

• they would get 50% commissions on any Superhero Packs their audience bought

(Everyone offers this, so it wasn’t special, but combined with the other 2 ways to get paid, it added up!)

• they could make an offer of $197 or less at the end of their live Session
  (Since we limited each Summit to just 10 Superheroes, I thought higher price points would mean less to go around for everyone, so I capped everyone’s offer at $197. This had the unintended side effect of generating some incredible deals as presenters dropped the price of $497, $997 or even $1997 courses to fit this restriction — and our attendees knew they couldn’t find offers like this anywhere else.)
• I would split my 50% commission on other partner sales with them

(This overcame the big objection, why would I send my audience to everyone else’s stuff? That’s true, but you’ll get paid for it!)

So, as you can see, by giving all my Superheroes 3 bites at the apple, they were stoked to say yes and promote!

That said, what I quickly learned is that not everybody honors their word.

Some people took me up on the opportunity to speak and to earn, but didn’t follow through on their promotions…

The most egregious present sent just 33 opt-ins. Others sent 100-300. And my top Superheroes, who I invited back, sent 500-1500.

Since I limited each summit to just 10 Superheroes — and needed each Summit to build my list by about 10K to make it worth my while — it was a HUGE hit to get less than 300 opt-ins from a Superhero.

This was one of the big reasons I stopped doing the Summits after 5.

I put so much into each Summit — and delivering a big audience for each Superhero — but many of them didn’t do their part.

I also discovered that many Superheroes didn’t know how to convert on a webinar or presentation.

So, not only did they not send traffic, they didn’t get sales — which meant I blew a spot and got little to nothing back in return.

But the thing that was a dealbreaker for me was that I discovered that not everyone in this industry has integrity and a commitment to delivering extraordinary value to their customers. 

Despite my due diligence, there were a couple Superheroes in there that sold products they couldn’t fully deliver on and I had to clean-up the fallout, since I had made the recommendation. 

My reputation became linked to theirs. And I wasn’t OK with that. That was a HUGE learning and — after that — I became a lot more careful about who I put in front of my audience.

So — while I did ultimately end up returning the Superhero Summit series after 5 Summits — I had already won big!

We closed out 2012 (the year before my first Summit) with about $175,000 in sales…

In 2013 — after our first 2 Summits — we almost doubled our business to $305,974.

Then in 2014 — after 3 more Summits — we more than doubled our business to $648,374!

Our 2-year focus on list growth had really paid off! 

And it just continued from there! 

In 2015 — the year after I closed our Summit Series to focus on launching our own courses with my new 50K+ person list — we took Live Your Message to $1,453,795 (more than doubling again)!

And we’ve grown every year since then… through recessions, pandemics and even during times of personal or family crises when I felt like my attention was being pulled in a million directions… 

Showing that you CAN build a successful business in just about any circumstances when you focus on the right things!

#FBF #7: Me? Do a Live Event?

Around this time last year I started my Flashback Friday Series… to answer the question I’m always asked, “Marisa, how did you get your start?”

The series began in August 2010 — the day I walked out the doors of my very last job… 

And ended with the Superhero Summit Series I hosted between 2013-2014, which put me on the map… taking my business to $648,374 in annual sales and my email list to over 50K!

Along the way we dived into my very first courses and programs — and the lessons I learned along the way.

Now I’d like to hop back into the time-traveling DeLorean and take us to October 26-27, 2013…

My very first live event. Eeeeek!!!

Little ole’ me standing at the front of the room with everyone’s eyes on me?!!???

What would I say?

Would people come? 

Could I even do it? 

Growing up I was always the shortest kid in my class… I was also quiet, shy and easily overlooked. 

I found the world of books more comfortable than the world of people…

So the very notion of hosting my own live event was daunting. But after a few years of coaching people online through my courses, I thought it was time to meet them in person…

I decided to name the event Message to Money LIVE, and bolt it on to my first “semi-hit” program of the same name…

And roll out an invite to all 221 of my Message to Money students. 

I had been doing weekly group coaching calls in this program and allowed my students to come back to those weekly calls for life — as long as I was delivering that program.

I don’t recommend this for a number of reasons, but it did lead to me having a close relationship with many of them — especially the ones who came week after week… 

So — with a few emails — I was able to sell 35 tickets at $97 a pop for a grand total of $3,395!

The promise?

A 2-day message & brand makeover: “I’ll be personally leading you through the process of finding the perfect words and images that transform your big message for the world into a call to action that your audience will feel compelled to listen to and act on. We’ll also help you craft your unique brand so that message shines through everything you do.”

PLUS, “2 days of in-depth exercises, group shares and hot seats designed to give you huge breakthroughs.”

AND, “2 days of fun while building those vital in-person relationships (including a Saturday night mixer).”

That was enough for almost 16% of my Message to Money students to pay an additional $97 and find their way to the conference room I had rented in a cheap, beyond dated hotel in Harbor Island, San Diego…

I don’t think the money even covered my expenses, but I got paid to learn, which is the real value in doing things like this for the first time! 🙂 I created home-made name tags and got a few vinyl signs and stickers printed…

It wasn’t a lot but it was a start… and a start is all it takes!

One of the concepts I teach my students is that, over time, slow and steady compounds into exponential growth…

We just can’t see all our future success when we’re at the beginning of the hockey stick, so we discount and overlook our 35 people in a cheap hotel room because we see someone else with 350 people at the Ritz! Or 3000 people.

But, you know what?

Those 35 people in a cheap hotel room scared the f* out of me!

And I did it anyway…

My only goal for that event?

To simply do an event.

See if I could do an event.

See if there was something there for me.

And there was!!!

Even though I didn’t make any money from that event (the $3,395 in ticket sales didn’t even cover expenses and I didn’t make an offer during the event), those 35 people at my first Message to Money LIVE turned into Live Your Message LIVE — an event that’s now going into it’s 12 year and has attracted 9025 people!You see, I learned a lot from SIMPLY doing an event… and the next time I hosted Message to Money LIVE — in 2015, there were 122 people in the room and I DID make money. 

So those 35 people truly were the beginning of a hockey stick I couldn’t see back in October 2013…

But now I can see it and here’s what those 35 people in a cheap hotel room turned into: •  2013: 35 people in a cheap hotel room (and it still scared the f* out of me!)

• 2015: 122 people
• 2016: 170 people
• 2017: 355 people
• 2018: 401 people
• 2019: 516 people
• 2020: 600 people (last in person Message to Money LIVE)
• 2021: 1753 people (first virtual Live Your Message LIVE)
• 2022: 1772 people
• 2023: 1713 people
• 2024: 1588 people
• 2025: Mark your calendar for March 7-9th! Our 12th Annual Live Your Message LIVE!
  
  

Sometimes I see my students get frustrated by what I call “slow success”. The first time they do something it takes WAY more time and energy than they imagine and often gets LESS results…

So they give up and think “it’s not worth it” or “I’ll never be like Marisa with thousands of people at my events,” but they’re judging themselves against someone who’s been doing that “thing” they’re trying to do for years…

So the overlook the fact that the mentor they’re following also experienced the same growing pains as them because almost everyone starts with “slow success.”

Very few people experience overnight success and those who do often crash and burn because they haven’t built the capacity, over time, to hold for the level of success and growth they’re experiencing. 

In the music and entertainment world, there’s a famous phenomenon known as the “27 Club,” which is full of famous people who died at the age of 27.

Kurt Cobain. Brian Jones. Jim Morrison. Amy Winehouse. Jimi Hendrix. Janis Joplin. To name a few…

So don’t discount your “slow success” because it could be the start of sustainable and even exponential growth.

Think about it. If you get just 2 sales the first time you launch something, then the next time out of the gate you get 4 sales. Then 8. 16. 32. 64. And, in just 6 launch cycles, you’re up to 128. And onwards and upwards…

This is what hockey stick growth looks like!

The big challenge is that you can’t see you’re at the beginning of the hockey stick, so you have to believe before you have the evidence to support that belief!

This is the big mindset bender that causes most people to give up when they’re just getting started… 

So the 5 big lessons I learned from holding my first Message to Money LIVE event are:

#1 – if you have a successful online course or group coaching program, bolt on an event to drive deeper engagement and ultimately sales.

#2 – 3 day events are better than 2!

#3 – don’t commit to a large room block the first time you do an event, because ticket sales will probably be lower than you imagine.

As amazing as in-person events are, they’re also harder to sell than online courses and programs because they require people to travel and be available on very specific days, which instantly disqualifies a lot of people!

#4 – if something works — even just a little bit — do it again and again and again until you get it really dialed in! Iterate your way to awesome…

When I decided to do another in 2015, I didn’t create a brand new event from scratch, I iterated on the Message to Money LIVE event — and built on top of an existing foundation.

Then I continued to build on that foundation year after year until I had an amazing event that attracts thousands of people! Here’s what Live Your Message LIVE ONLINE looks like today:

#5 – you don’t know the true potential of something until you’ve done it a few times, so don’t gauge your future potential on your first attempts… <3Or, as I always like to tell my students, “Don’t limit your future based on your current circumstances.”

No matter who you are and what you do, you’re meant for greatness.

Here at Live Your Message, we believe that we’re ALL here to do great work. Not just go through the motions or “phone it in.” Greatness is not something we’re born with, it’s a choice we make each day.

So here’s to making the choice to be great, regardless of what things look like in the moment. 

We have students from 127 countries around the world. Students in their teens. And students in their 90s. 

We have students with every diagnosis and family situation you can imagine. Students who are paraplegics or caretaking a paraplegic. Students with special needs kids and students who grew up as special needs kids.

Here’s to embracing whatever life throws your way and doing it anyway…

Because “slow success” leads to “sustainable success” — and maybe even exponential growth!

In case you’re curious about the idea of hockey stick growth… It’s based on a book and set of research by Bobby Martin, author of the book Hockey Stick Principles.

After researching thousands of start-ups, “My study shows that [the Blade Years] usually lasts three to four years, during which revenue is often quite low, if any is coming in at all, showing up as the blade part of the hockey stick curve.”

We’re lucky in the online business and professional service world in that we can start generating revenue right away, unlike many start-ups in the world of tech, manufacturing or distribution that require more resources to get going…

But it’s still usually slower than most people expect — even with the right support and guidance — especially if you’re looking to create something sustainable.

That’s why, at Live Your Message, we’re committed to supporting emerging business owners through the entire lifespan — from the initial stages of finding the right niche all the way through to building a multi-million dollar empire — including the “Blade Year” stages that many other coaches and companies conveniently like to “skip”.

I hope this #FBF Series shows you that there is no push-button overnight success, though having the right tools, perspective and guidance absolutely can help you shortcut the learning process and reach success faster… even if it’s still slower than you imagine <3

We’ve got you!

#FBF #8: Course ✅ SaaS Next?

Guess what?

It’s everybody’s favorite day of the week: Flashback Friday!!!

Or at least mine… because this is when I get to turn the clocks back and revisit the product launches that got me where I am today (even the ones that went off the rails!)

The expression “everybody loves a train wreck” is true… but not necessarily for the reason you think!

The “wrecks” in our lives give us the opportunity to see what doesn’t work… and learn! 

And, if there’s anything I know to be true — after 13 years coaching and training almost 16,000 business owners — it’s this: learning is just as important as succeeding…

Because learning — even through mistakes — paves the way to greater levels of success.

As I always tell my students, “There is no failure, only feedback.” 

So, what was my big fail? 

It was an affordable, custom web design package called Take Flight Now. 

We designed the package to support our students in getting onto our Heroic web design platform, which we ultimately sold in 2020.

Heroic was our first attempt at building a software as a service platform or SaaS. And — unlike online courses and programs, which are relatively easy to design and launch — SaaS takes a large upfront investment of time, money and expertise to get right. 

As my friend Ryan Levesque says: “Take a million dollars, set it on fire, and, once the smoke clears, you’ll see if you have a profitable business.”

That’s the challenge of SaaS. And that’s the challenge we hit with Heroic (and Take Flight Now). 

My husband Murray and I invested several years and over a million dollars designing an incredible website builder, but we made a huge mistake: It was targeted at everyone and anyone.

In other words, we were trying to create a better solution to the same problem so many other platforms were already solving. 

But, as they say: Don’t try to be better, be different.

With Heroic, we were trying to build a better website builder, but we weren’t different enough from more established builders such as WordPress, Squarespace or Wix.

So the big objection we kept getting was: “How is this different from Wordpress?” or even “Does this work with Wordpress?”

And we didn’t have a good enough answer. So we struggled to get people on our platform.

That’s when we came up with the idea of creating Take Flight Now, a done-for-you web design package that used Heroic to deliver the finished product.

You see, I had gotten my start in business by designing websites for other businesses and — as my expertise grew — I was getting bigger clients and charging up to $50K for a done-for-you branding and web design package. I was able to charge these rates because I was doing a lot more than just designing a website, I was really supporting my clients in finding and expressing their authentic message and brand.

So, we thought we could replicate the success we were having with our larger clients in a much more affordable way that could really help our earlier stage clients by using Take Flight Now to create leverage through repeatable processes and customizable templates — to make beautiful, high-converting web design accessible to them too, without the $50K price tag!

We had the best intentions and created a sophisticated, self-paced intake process — using everything I had learned over the years with my high-end clients — where people would self-select their branding preferences and submit their materials to us online, so we could build their sites for them, without needing to charge for consulting time, which was the most expensive part of the process.

But we didn’t realize that our more beginner clients would need a lot of training and coaching before they felt comfortable making the kind of messaging, branding and positioning decisions we were asking them to make.

So they’d postpone and postpone and postpone the process — for months (or even years) — until they got crystal clarity on their niche and their marketing…

So, while we were able to sell 95 Take Flight Now Web Design Packages priced between $2,997 and $4,997, plus some consulting, branding and copy upsells — for a Grand Total of $373,507 over the course of a year…

AND deliver some amazing websites for our clients…

We realized we didn’t have the ideal message-market match and that a self-serve, yet highly-customized package — like the one we had created — would work best with more established business owners who already had clarity on what their business was all about.

The early stage business owners we were serving either needed a cheaper do-it-yourself solution or a completely done-for-you service, which we couldn’t effectively deliver at a price point they could afford.

So we ended up pivoting to offer a 3-day event, Your Website in a Weekend (which ultimately turned into my 12-week Website ATM program), to walk our participants through the process — as a group — of making each of the key decisions they needed to get their sites done and out, with support and guidance each step of the way.

I’ll share the stories of those products in a future #FBF, because that’s when I really discovered the power of LIVE, guided implementation, which now forms the basis of our most powerful programs — Success School, Experience Product Masterclass and Momentum…

But I do want to share one big marketing breakthrough I had with Take Flight Now, which is something I still teach and practice today!Because, remember, learning — even through mistakes — paves the way to greater levels of success.

It’s well known that webinars work best to sell products in the $500 to $2,000 range ($3,000 tops) and live events are great for products in the $5,000 to $50,000 range, but we were selling Take Flight Now for between $3,000 and $5,000 — which required a phone call.

So, we combined what I call a Reverse Webinar Campaign, an Application Campaign and a Consultative Sales Process.It worked like this:

We used a webinar to attract potential buyers and educate them about the 4 things their website absolutely needed to have to be successful.

It was called, 4 Quick Fixes to Turn Your Website Into a Lean… Mean… Conversion Machine.

At the end of the webinar, I invited attendees to submit an Application for our Take Flight Now Web Design Service, which included all FOUR of the things I just taught.

The Application consisted of a $97 refundable deposit, so we knew they were serious and could add them to our design and development queue, and a questionnaire.

From there, we got them on a discovery call where we answered their questions and sold the package.

We sent a replay and Perfect Email Campaign to follow-up with those who signed up for the webinar but didn’t show up, or who attended but didn’t buy.

And this Campaign Stack worked beautiful…

The first time out of the gate — in July 2014 — we had 300-400 people on a live webinar. That resulted in 101 $97 deposits and 49 sales at $2,997 for a grand total of $146,853!

That’s when I really discovered the power of Campaign Stacking to drive HUGE sales… and it’s something I now teach my EPM & Momentum students how to do.

So, I hope you can see why people say that “the road to success is paved with failure”… 

And that all failure is really feedback in disguise!

P.S. If you’d like to turn my 13 years of trial and error into your shortcut…

And discover how to know whether your first (or next) idea will be profitable before you go through the effort of creating it…

Get Instant Access to my FREE Dopamine Button Guide!

Inside, you’ll discover 3 little-known brain hacks that skyrocket your course engagement & sales…

Here’s the thing: the “old way” of designing and launching courses just isn’t cutting it anymore.

If you want to attract students who buy and keep buying (not to mention send referrals your way!)…

You need to do things differently.

Enter the Dopamine Button — the super-secret button in your students’ brains that you can leverage to create incredible results for them AND repeat sales for you.

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