Photo by Jessica Hill Photography
I’ve now been offering the same business coaching program & methodology for over 3.5 years. We’ve iterated & improved the program every time we launch it. We even changed the name once.
But the program and message have remained consistent.
This spring, we had our best program launch ever. It also fell far below my expectations based on our preliminary data.
When we surveyed potential clients who had not signed up, we got the usual answers–but more than anything else, people told us they were tired of taking courses they didn’t use.
When I originally created the Quiet Power Strategy program, I had this objection in mind. I wanted to create something that wasn’t a course and was more akin to 1:1 coaching but helped you create a wider entrepreneurial network at the same time.
But that selling point had gotten lost as the program scaled, the market was flooded with courses, and our audience grew.
I wanted to remain consistent because I believe in the power of the QPS work to solve your business challenges–but I also knew it was time to change things up, to get creative.
I needed to change things up to keep our work relevant, forward-focused, and supremely useful.
So I got really specific with that core objection:
- Why aren’t people using the courses they buy? (They’re not making time.)
- Why aren’t people getting results? (They’re not completing the courses.)
- Why aren’t they executing? (The course teaches but it doesn’t help them plan. It’s focused on lessons, not implementation.)
- Why are people feeling so burnt out on learning and even their own businesses? (Courses try to solve surface level problems, not core challenges.)
Then I rebuilt our offer to combat each of these objections:
- What if you had to make time for the program you purchased?
- What if the format of the program made it easy to complete?
- What if the program ended with a customized plan in your hand?
- What if the program was designed to dig deep into the core problems of a business?
What would it look like to fulfill all of those constraints on the program?
I took my initial concept to my mastermind groups: a 2-day virtual planning retreat that took a group of clients through the process from start-to-finish, with support and coaching from me along the way.
They loved it.
We talked about how to make it even better and then I set the first experiment in motion.
Last week, we ran that experiment.
20 clients worked with me for a total of 16 hours over 2 days. We went through the entire process from start to finish. The energy, peer support, and depth of work were astonishing.
We finished Day 2 with 100% completion by our participants.
Inside our 2-day Quiet Power Strategy Virtual Planning Retreat — that’s my buddy Tanya Geisler laying down wisdom about the Impostor Complex!
The feedback has been effusive:
While it’s too early to know for sure, I have a feeling we’ll see more results for more members of this cohort than we’ve ever seen before.
I’m not telling you about this so that you want to join us for the next Virtual Planning Retreat–though I’ve got more on that soon.
I’m telling you this because, when things are “working,” we wait to change course until we’re forced to change course.
We grow complacent about our strategy because it’s what always worked.
Consistency does propel brands.
But complacency can ruin brands–even if you’ve grown complacent around something great.
If you’re feeling any part of your business or life constrict around you, there’s a good chance that making a fundamental change could pump new life into the whole endeavor.
This doesn’t mean you change something on a whim, it doesn’t mean you adjust course because you’re bored, it doesn’t mean you do something different because the shiny object over there is calling to you.
Change it, intentionally, when it’s no longer serving you or your customers.
Use creative constraints to discover a new opportunity.
Engineer a new path forward.
In this week’s episode of Profit. Power. Pursuit., Jennifer Lee gave us an example of necessary change, too. She’s no longer running her popular video summits and she talked about why and how she made that change. Click here to listen or read the interview.
And, if this whole 2-day virtual planning retreat idea sounds pretty cool, click here to learn more about it and sign up to get information on the next enrollment. When you do, we’ll also send you some exclusive free training opportunities.
