Can I be honest with you? I’ve always been a rule-follower. I’m the person that NEVER dares to stray away from a recipe. If they ask for one tablespoon of syrup, I’m pulling out the measuring spoons. 

When I first started my business, I was the same way. I’d dive into articles, resources, and programs to identify step-by-step processes to implement in the business. Spoiler Alert: this never created the growth I wanted to see for the business. Why? 

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Because business isn’t about following the rules. It’s about breaking them. 

Consider some of the biggest names of our time like Steve Jobs, Sara Blakely, or Elon Musk. Jobs introduced the iPhone - changing the way we interact with technology forever. Blakely introduced one of the first successful shapewear companies - becoming the youngest, self-made female billionaire. And Musk not only introduced one of the most popular electric cars, but he has a vision to colonize Mars. 

Talk about some out-of-the-box, rule-breaking ideas. 

Successful entrepreneurs develop this deep desire to go against the grain, break out of the molds set before them, and pave a new and unique way. And it’s their passion and commitment to their out-of-the-ordinary ideas that enables them to maintain their stamina to achieve great things.

The same has been true for us at The Awakening. 

And although we haven’t rolled out an initiative to colonize Mars, we have been able to achieve some pretty amazing results by breaking all of the “rules” in the online space. 

Today, I want to walk you through some of them. 

In late 2018, I decided to make a pretty big pivot in my business. This was when the idea for The Awakening was born, and I knew I wanted to introduce our first membership. 

Up until this point, I had tried my best to follow all of the “rules” while building my business. And it didn't work. So, I knew that we had to take a different approach in launching our new membership. Because I was ready to see growth and results. 

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1. The first thing we did was create an MVP.

An MVP is a Minimum Viable Product and is defined as “a version of a product with just enough features to be usable by early customers who can then provide feedback for future product development.” 

A lot of times, the online space tells you that you need to have your ducks in a row to launch a new product. But here’s what they don’t tell you: by creating a new offer without enough testing and real-time feedback from your customers, you’re making a lot of assumptions. And this could possibly result in a flopped offer that your customers aren’t interested in. 

Instead of spending months creating our new membership - from the noble promise, marketing messaging, positioning, landing pages, tech optimization, customer journey, and more - we created it as an MVP. 

We spent about three to four weeks creating the initial offer with as much excellence as we possibly could - but also knowing that it was being created with the purpose of testing. 

Upon our initial launch, we welcomed in about 15-20 folks at our “founding rate” in exchange for their commitment to share their feedback with us. 

Which leads us to number two:

2. We beta-tested the membership. 

There’s this crazy idea in the online space that says, “Just create the offer and everyone will buy it.” This couldn’t be farther from the truth. Not only do we have to consider how we plan to market and sell our offers, but we have to consider the very nature of the offer itself. 

Instead of focusing on the external pieces (like your marketing, messaging, and sales processes), I highly encourage you to focus on your internal pieces (the offer, deliverables, customer journey and experience) first. Work from the inside out, and you will have a strong foundation to build upon. 

This is exactly what we did with our Awakening Membership. 

Once our MVP was created and we’d welcomed in a small group of founding members, we entered the beta-testing phase: “Also referred to as user testing or customer validation, beta testing aims to ensure that end users are satisfied with a product before you make it generally available.”

I like to think about this stage as co-creating with your customers to ensure they are satisfied with your offer. We did this in a variety of ways with our membership:

• We introduced various deliverables based on request and removed the ones folks weren’t utilizing
• We consistently sought feedback through interactive polls and forms to optimize the space
• And we even hosted a handful of one-on-one calls to hear directly from our customers

With all of their quality feedback, we made consistent changes to the Membership to adapt and accommodate. 

Note: In order to meet our customers desires, we wildly elevated the Membership. This meant that along with a program facelift we also had a few pricing facelifts as well. And this was no problem for our clientele - because we were meeting their needs, providing solutions to their most immediate problems, and doing so in a way that they enjoyed from an experience and support perspective. Thus, they were able to validate our new pricing.

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3. In a later phase, we upsold our Members without a landing page

As our Membership grew, so did the desire for MORE support in new ways. So at a later date, we decided to introduce one-on-one coaching (yes, we beta-tested this too). 

Now, when you introduce a new offer, what’s one of the first things you think you might need? A landing page or sales page. 

But we didn’t even have that. 

Instead of getting all of the “bells and whistles” in order and formally rolling out our one-on-one coaching services, we sent out one email to our members. We shared that they were given first-hand, exclusive access to this offer in its beta stage. 

And we booked out in less than a month.

From ONE email. 

It’s important to note that this ONLY worked because of the level of care, experience, and excellence these women had experienced in our Membership first. This built so much like, know, and trust so that it was an easy “yes” for them. 

All in all, know this: Your success won’t come by following the rules. It will come by breaking them. 

So, what rule are you going to break next? 

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