#8: How I Had a $500k Launch with 3500 People on My ListApril 8, 2020 / Business, Inspiration, Podcast

(1:30) The Bali Mastermind 2017 actually sold out on day one… We had to double the number of spots.

It was $18k or $20k, and we weren’t even engaging with our list that much! 3,500 subscribers might sound like a lot – but for reference, people having half a million-dollar launches usually have a list of 20k or more.

(02:13) What’s also crazy is that we hardly even used email marketing for this launch. We sent out maybe 3 or 4 ‘apply now’ emails… and that was it. It really happened organically, through social media.

So, how did we structure that launch? We’re going to go in DEEP.

(02:48) First of all, my desire with this program was to line up my income for the whole year. I wanted monthly recurring income, through payments plans, from a fully-booked program. I wanted to run the retreat in Bali, where I actually lived. I wanted to make sure people actually experienced Bali, the Bali that only the locals knew.

(04:06) Secondly, I was branding myself in a unique way. I’d just been in Forbes and there was a ton of hype around me, I wanted to leverage it and really make my programs next level. Beyonce was the inspo…

(04:55) WWBD… What would Beyonce do?

(05:05) At that time, Beyonce was dropping albums at midnight and not telling anyone. I didn’t want to do a hype phase, I literally wanted this to come out of nowhere and totally freak people out – except I wanted it to be so well put together. 

We really focused on the authority piece.

(05:55) Authority

This is the first of three pieces that I’m going to dive into today. We zoomed in on my success and what made me qualified to host such a retreat. To make this information stand out, production quality had to be insane.

(06:20) First, we invested in video, a class A drone video of the beautiful Bali landscape. It was probably $1,500.

(07:01) Next, was the high-quality sales page. This was the first time I’d hired a copywriter and a web designer. That was another $1,500 on each.

(07:27) Then it was Facebook ads. We spent around $16,000 on ads for this launch.

And how do we know this paid off? Well, 50% of the interest we had in this program came from people who had never ever heard of me before. Being seen as an authority literally sold this program and the production quality delivered this.

(08:36) We also had this cool messenger bot that we linked to a post. The post basically encouraged people to comment to say they were interested in this top-secret, super exciting program I was launching. The messenger bot would send them a message in Facebook messenger and a link to the drone video, encouraging them to sign up. The next day we dropped the video everywhere – you couldn’t be on social media and not see the Bali Mastermind video. 

(10:10) An irresistible offer

(10:13) The program was $18,000 paid in full. With a payment plan, it was around the $22,000 mark. The program was structured around twice-monthly 90-minute group coaching calls and once monthly private group coaching calls. Then we had the Bali retreat to top it all off.

(10:42) The program is scheduled a little differently these days. There are twice-monthly 2 hour calls and regular office hours where you can get access to my team to ask them about everything from design, to copywriting, to blog posts. We still have the monthly guest experts, but they are focused a little more on the education side of things, such as PR etc. Then you have 3 private coaching calls a month and the Bali Retreat… it’s still a huge program and an irresistible offer.

(11:36) Live events are a great way to make offers irresistible. Wherever possible, throw in a live event. You could end a 6-week coaching program with a VIP day. It helps people to feel super connected to the program, but also to you.

(12:55) You have to remember something… people aren’t buying the programs, right? They’re buying the transformation – the belief that I can help them scale. When you’re marketing, it’s not about what’s included and it’s not even about you. How is what you’re selling going to make someone’s life better? It’s all about them. You have to know what the issue is that you’re solving for them. 

(15:20) An exclusive feeling

(15:30) People were super excited about wanting an invitation to The Bali Mastermind. This meant that the applications were amazingly detailed – all 300 of them. We only had 30 spots! 

(16:24) The process was that they’d see the video and head to the sales page. The sales page had all the info about the mastermind that they’d need, plus it was beautiful. Then they’d submit an application, which I would sort through myself.

The applications were split into green, yellow and red. The greens and yellows were reached out to and invited on a discovery call – I did all of the discovery calls myself. If they were a good fit, I would invite them at the end of the call and they had 72 hours to accept.

(17:09) This feeling of exclusivity really created a lot of hype and scarcity. Scarcity is one of the most important things when it comes to launching anything. It’s making people understand that “if I don’t take action now, I’ll miss out”. Urgency is the other side of scarcity – “this won’t be open again until next year”. 

(19:55) This just goes to show you that the big thing here isn’t the platform with which you market, it is how you market. 

(19:59) Sales is not about how many posts you put on social media. It’s about how seen and understood people feel and whether or not they trust you.