Behind the scenes: How I filled How I filled half the spaces for my programme before launch

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Today’s talking point:

If you’ve been listening to the podcast, you will know I have been preparing to launch my new Abundant Boss Mastermind. The mastermind started this week and in this episode, I want to share how I filled half the spots before my public launch. I'm going to talk through three main principles: strategy, embodiment and community. You'll also get tangible things you can start applying straight away.

If you’ve been listening to the podcast, you will know I have been preparing to launch my new Abundant Boss Mastermind.

The mastermind started this week and in this episode, I want to share how I filled half the spots before my public launch. And I'm not going to pretend that there's a hack or that there's a secret or that there's something special and I'm definitely not going to sell you something at the end. There's nothing like that.

The truth is, it’s a combination of a few things. Today, I’m going to talk through three main principles: strategy, embodiment and community. I want to give you tangible things you can start applying straight away.

Let’s get started…

Strategy

Build trust

I have been in business since 2017 and I've been online since 2013. I've been building my brand pretty consistently and intentionally since 2017. So that's nearly five full years of building this trust.

The first part of the strategy is: just sticking with it. People need to trust you. If you just started your business, or you've been in it for a few months, or even a year, you might not be at the point yet where you can book out your programmes right away without launching or with one post. That's purely an exposure thing.

So I want you to think about how much exposure you’re getting. How much are you talking about what you do? Or what you're selling right now? How much are you sharing your client wins or customer reviews? How much are you contributing to your audience with free value? And we don't have to contribute free value all day every day. But are you being consistent with it?

The first four people who joined the mastermind came to me after years of being part of my community. This didn’t happen overnight.

And part of building trust is consistency. Now, it’s not the amount of stuff you’re putting out but the quality. So if that’s one podcast a month or two Instagram posts a week, it doesn’t matter. Try to commit to that now.

Life happens, of course, and you can change things, but you can establish that trust with your audience so that it's like that almost episodic content that people can look forward to.

create a realistic content plan

A lot of time I see people lacking in consistency because they’re trying to do too many things. And they think ‘Oh, I can't do it all’. And so they end up doing nothing.

Start small. Just start small, with what you know. Meet yourself where you are at, especially if you have a busy life.

Create a realistic, consistent content plan. And another question to throw in here to ask yourself is: what are you excited about? For example, I love recording podcasts. I love doing lives. And I can do both at once I can go live and record it for the podcast at the same time if I wanted to. But you know, if I do that people who are tuning into the live or listening to the podcast, neither person is getting any less value.

And, when you're trying to show up more consistently with your audience and give them value, repurpose. Don't create totally brand new things every single second for every single platform. You have good content, take that and put it somewhere else.

So that is one of the biggest pieces in this first principle the strategy is that I have just been so consistent with the value that I put out.

Serve your clients

Another strategic reason why I was able to sell places in the mastermind before the public launch is my focus on serving my clients and client retention.

I deliver what I say I'm going to deliver and I am very responsive in Voxer, which is the messaging app I use with all of my private clients. I still set boundaries, but I am there I am very present on the calls. And I am continually investing in my education. So be there for your clients.

Don't spend more time marketing yourself if it's going to take you away from serving your clients. If you're in a launch, but you're ignoring all of your paying clients, that's not good. We need more of a balance there. So you can serve your clients and do your launch. Maybe you have to tweak some things, maybe you need more help. But for me, that's always number one.

So to create more client and customer retention, there are three key things to focus on.

Creating a strategic product suite with offers that lead to one another.
Clear customer journey that creates a pathway for your clients to continuously upgrade to the subsequent offers after seeing results or getting results out of their first investment.
Timing your launches so that the subsequent programme starts after the previous programme has finished.

Send private invitations

I sent private invitations to women I had worked with before who I thought would be a good fit, or women that I have spoken to multiple times and that I kind of saw a lot of potential in.

Now, a disclaimer here. This is not the same as cold pitching. I created a private invitation email template for the mastermind that I used and customised to each individual person that I sent it to you. This takes a lot of time.

The email lays out the details of the programme, what they can expect, and why I specifically want them inside, which is very, very, very important. I don't send these out to everyone. Some people that joined didn't get a private invite, that doesn't mean that I didn't want them in the mastermind.

But from that email, if they were interested we had a call to talk about why the mastermind might be a good fit for them. This was purely just a space to talk it through and answer any questions that they had.

Create sales funnels

Two of the people who joined prior to the launch came from a clear organic launch funnel. And again, this is a big focus of the mastermind in terms of how can the business bring in leads while you are working on other things.

So I started planning for this at the start of the year and I intentionally set up a funnel, starting with a freebie, leading us to hop on a call together to map out their strategy for the next six months.

If I thought they were a good fit, if we gelled well together and if they gave me permission, I would pitch them the mastermind. This was different to a discovery call in that they got something out of it, it was a strategy call. So that was definitely a return on investment for me.

Embodiment

That now leads me onto the embodiment side of this episode. And this is really something I've been doing a lot of work on with my mindset coach Chloe, I'm really just stepping into my leadership as a coach in this space. I consider myself both a coach and a strategist.

Strategy is giving advice and working with you to find a solution to your problems. But coaching is asking powerful questions, guiding people to make the decision for themselves, empowering them to work through blocks.

And so, because those are two things that I do, I invest in both. I work with a mindset coach and have been doing a lot of mindset work around how to get me ready for this next level. Part of this is because I want to be so in on my calls that I can show up for them in that moment.

And this is the power of investing that is actually a perspective that not a lot of people talk about. When you're investing in the mastermind, you're not just getting my experience, you're getting the experience of the other women in the mastermind.

But even if you're invested in me, for 1:1 coaching, you're getting the experience of every single person that I have invested in, and all of their experience.

Community

The final thing was community. Now, there are two ways that this fits into filling the mastermind before the end of the launch.

The first is me having my community, having people to lean on creating that community having that support system. My Busy to Boss Academy students have been so incredibly supportive sending me love, and good vibes during this launch. It's been so incredible. I also have my own coaches to lean on.

I cannot tell you how incredibly important is to make sure you have people there that you can lean on. Both in the moments, when you think ‘Oh, my God, no one's going to join’ and ‘this is actually going well, what do I do?’

The second part of the community piece is how much I really make a point of listening to my community and listening to my audience. I am constantly doing market research on my content, especially during this launch.

I actually had a conversation with a 1:1 client recently in Voxer. She was asking me ‘how do you make sure that your content is providing value without getting caught up in all of the algorithms and the noise’? And the only way it's possible is by really listening to your people and creating for your person. It's just so incredibly powerful.

A final word

So those are the main ways I have filled my mastermind. I'm not going to pretend that there's a secret sauce. Those were the main things in terms of a top-level overview.

You might be thinking ‘but Holly, I just want that one thing’. That's not actually what gets you to this point where you can sell your programmes without launching. It's because you over-deliver in your coaching. It’s because you work on your mindset. It's because you continue your education to get better.

But that mindset work and showing up consistently is so important, and showing up consistently so that your people are thinking, ‘wow, I need to keep coming back to this page’.

But this really does take time. So please give yourselves grace. Give yourself time.

And the other thing that I want to leave you with is: to find joy in this process. Because if you're just going through the motions and you're not enjoying the way that you're getting there and enjoying the process it won't matter when you hit your goals. So try and do something every single day that you love, something that helps you enjoy the process, and have a community of people to lean on.