Building excitement, the IOFBC screw up, some lessons learnt

I love building.

Lol at my own emotional rollercoaster from “feeling like I’m dying” the last time you heard from me.

To an extent this is the world of entrepreneurship. But really I just got past the part that sucks and got support structures around me.

I have a good assistant again. Even though she just started and hasn’t done much yet, I feel a million times better knowing she’s there.

I’ve got more of my infrastructure built out. More systems in place. Things are flowing easier. And I have more time to focus again.

Getting back on the content game.

In the chaos of my life over the last few months my marketing and free content creation game fell right off.

I was buried fulfilling my clients and not having time for much else in the business.

Now things are back in order and I’m coming back stronger with the content.

I’ve not rushed to release stuff - aside from a little campaign to launch my New Grind community on Facebook.

Rather than ‘just getting stuff out’ I’ve been:

• Building content creation and distribution systems

• Hiring a VA to do content distribution

• Batch filming

So that I never don’t have content being released again. I won’t be involved in the process much apart from the original creation.

I’ve not hired editors yet. I’m focused on efficiently creating volume. The quality will increase as time goes on.

Right now I’m just making long-form videos for YouTube and using Opus.pro to cut shorts from the long-form.

I’ll do written/image posts as I feel and generally document life in stories.

I have a lot on my plate at the moment. When I have more structure in the rest of the business increasing the quality and quantity of content production will be a key objective.

Platform evolution.

I’ve always been mostly on Facebook.

For the longest time I didn’t like social media and was only there for business.

This was in the ‘run your paid program in a Facebook group’ era, so naturally I spent time on Facebook.

That’s where I’m connected with my previous clients and most people who know me.

Nowadays I’m seeing that you have to enjoy the game of content creation on socials if you want to succeed at it.

In fairness, I enjoyed blogging and YouTube since 2014. I shut those down to focus on building my previous business.

Anyway, I feel like the platforms have become more fun as they’ve evolved. Aligning with me playing a different game.

Being more focused on building personal brand, rather than behind the scenes.

I will build predominantly on IG going forwards. I think it’s the most well rounded platform.

• Organic growth is possible - it’s set up for 1-way following rather than mutual connection. Mutual connection platforms focus on people you already know. 1-way following is aligned to show you to people who don’t know you.

• Great ad platform - Meta is the best ad platform.

• Messenger - because people come into your main IG inbox. If you run ads it actually grows your profile and list of people to communicate with on messenger. Whereas Facebook sticks them off on this dead real estate of a ‘page’ and you can’t communicate with them on an ongoing basis.

This last point is key.

Running ads on IG actually builds your brand for the future. Running ads on Facebook is only valuable in what you convert right now, or take off platform (email list).

So IG is my primary home.

Long-form on YouTube. Plus writing here.

It will then be cut down and cross posted to all other platforms.

I’ll start an email list for marketing soon - when I start running ads. See more later in this post.

I’m thinking to give TikTok a crack too. Will start redistributing IG reels, and maybe be ‘on there’ properly down the road. Right now it’s not my priority, but I’d like to round my media buying skills by getting into YouTube and TikTok ads.

There’s levels to the game. As you progress the objective changes from, “be really dialled in on one platform” to “have as many channels as possible driving lead flow”.

This offers protection and security from fluctuating algorithms, account shut downs, etc.. While allowing you to reach more of the market.

A safer business with more marketing channels is a more valuable business.

(But if you’re reading and haven’t figure out getting leads on one channel yet, don’t get overexcited. Stay focused).

The only way is forwards.

I did a mini organic launch for my community program The New Grind. I opened 10 spots. Only sold 5 from the launch to my meagre audience on Facebook.

I decided to get in the DM’s a little to sell the other 5 spots.

Quickly realising that was a losing strategy. I preach about cold DM’s sucking, but warm prospects (people who already know you) in chat is probably the best place to make sales.

However, reaching out to old clients from the IOFBC days I found a few things.

• Some people were thriving working with other coaches & not in need of anything different.

• Many people are struggling, haven’t evolved and the marketplace has left them behind. It saddens me. There’s a lot of good people and good coaches, but not good business owners. Perhaps Covid gave lots of false positives for finding success in the online world.

• There’s a pocket of people from 1 specific program that were let down by me and are angry about it.

Let’s talk about that last pool of people.

My screw up.

The greatest strength of our business became it’s greatest weakness.

People loved us and stayed around for a long time.

Our upsell rate was insane. Customer lifetime value sky high.

I think a few factors contributed:

• We had a unique product attached to an identity shift. (From personal trainer to behaviour change coach). When you shift an identity you’re then attached to the new identification. We were the only people doing that.

• A big part of our program was personal development. The personal transformation in people’s lives made up even for subpar results. Because they felt so much better and found value in so many different ways. This meant a much greater percentage had a good experience than other programs who only offer results. Inevitably not everyone gets results, but the majority of our clients still felt positive about what they got.

• We had a great community. No competitiveness or bitchiness. Genuinely supportive. I see people many years later with lasting connections who met in our programs.

This is all good.

But it also gave us (the business) power, and power can be abused.

Whether maliciously or unknowingly.

We definitely didn’t do anything malicious. But we did abuse the trust people had in us.

Not just any people. Many of our best, most loyal clients. The ones who should be our biggest fans were the most letdown and hurt.

We oversold and underdelivered. There were a few factors at play:

• We were growing fast, excited to be playing at higher levels and wanted to drag our clients with us. But we’d developed a baby-steps program with handholding every step. This is what they were used to from us. To then switch to ‘high-level thinking’ and telling them to have quarterly projects to go do. Treating it as high-end consulting felt completely underwhelming for them. They weren’t ready, and that wasn’t what they expected from us.

• Things were delivered late and thrown together. You could make the argument the value is there. One of the core parts of the program was teaching the transition from 1-1 coaching to group coaching. Removing the biggest block to scaling a coaching offer. This one transition could unlock multiple 6-figures a year for the right person. But it looked like shit, probably was only half coherent. Didn’t have the thought and care put into it.

• I’m not sure exactly what people were sold as the outcome, but I am pretty sure we didn’t deliver. Probably because it was too far, too fast. Even with a better program, most people only grow a couple of levels. Then need bedding in time before growing again. It happens in stages. We were trying to accelerate right through. Without the years of experience, nuances picked up, mindset fortified, etc. that comes with time in the game.

• We were spread way too thin. Our own operational inexperience meant we had a million things on our plate. As we grew the team we created more work (in managing, overseeing, training) than if we did things ourselves. The systems were not in place and we did everything too quickly and not thoroughly.

The worst part.

The worst part is I knew this was going to happen.

I knew we didn’t have the capacity and couldn’t fulfil. I knew the clients for the most part weren’t ready for that leap.

But I didn’t dig my heels in. I allowed myself to be swayed to keep the peace and move on. Was in too much of a rush to get a thousand other things done, to slow down the entire company arguing about this.

That’s a regret I have today. My own goals clouded my judgement.

Now I hear that the first programs were “life-changing” whenever I talk to clients… and get told it was a borderline scam for the latter offer.

The real problem was that we hadn’t figured out our market-message fit. Signing new clients always felt difficult relative to the experience people had in the program.

With the quality of experience people had, it should have been selling itself. But it wasn’t. So selling more stuff to our existing clients was easier.

I made the same mistake 2 years earlier when we completed the first iteration of our program. Selling clients into a 6 month upsell.

Banking a measly 20 something grand month and creating 6 months of pain. Having to build an entire new program while spread far too thin. The opportunity cost was 10-fold the money we made. It took our focus away from marketing and sales. I knew it and said it at the time. Again, I let myself be swayed.

Bringing it around.

The point I’m coming to here is that the idea of going back to my old audience was short-sighted. It felt like ‘easy money’.

But it doesn’t prove anything. Even if I got a load of sales in, people were buying because they trust me. It doesn’t prove whether the offer is strong or the message compelling.

To actually build the new business I have to take it to new audiences. I’m better served building methodically. Rather than trying to do too many things at once.

I’m finally learning my lessons.

I don’t need to spend hours in the DM’s to get 1 client. I could spend the time building the onboarding system or scripting the VSL. That will let me bring in 100 clients.

I’ve always known this. But starting something from the ground, the temptation is to go back to how you built before. Do everything and juggling trying to maximise short-term income while building long-term infrastructure.

It’s a bad idea.

Systems scale. Leg work doesn’t.

I slipped for a couple of weeks, but I’m back to being focused on building something to grow.

I’ve worked backwards from launching ads as the first goal.

Outcome goals are a trap.

I’m not sure goal is the right word.

Had I said, “I want to do at least 6 figures this quarter” I would be running around in a tizzy hustling to get sales.

That is not helpful at all.

My current project is to get everything set up operationally to full-scale launch ads.

• Program core content complete

• Onboarding & support systems

• Marketing messaging and VSL developed

Once I’m there the next goal will be a cost-per-acquisition goal. I won’t be working on anything else at the same time.

After that it will likely be building the community and client experience inside the program.

Methodical. Focused on one thing at a time.

I will do better than I did in the past.

I’m excited to be building again. It feels like the very first phase where you have to juggle a million things at once is coming to a close. I can settle into methodically growing this thing.