April 8, 2015 by Jesse Koren

Behind-the-Scenes Lessons from our BIG Launch

The past month has been amazing, insane and fulfilling all at the same time.

Nearly 25,000 people opted in to see our video series and attend our webinars.

And we welcomed in new clients from 19 different countries and 5 continents. We are so grateful!

If you followed our launch, we hope the experience was valuable, inspiring and beneficial for you. The comments we received were heart-warming.

And Sharla and I (Jesse) feel so fulfilled by this launch, that we have decided to offer you a HUGE gift that we are preparing for you now... look for an email from us next Thursday about this gift. We think you’ll LOVE it!

Why was this launch so amazing, insane and fulfilling?
Sheesh! We knew this launch was going to be a ride, but we didn’t realize how much of a ride it would be.
Behind the scenes, we learned TONS!

Whether you’re planning to launch your business (someday, maybe) or on the verge of launching something REALLY BIG, we hope you can learn from our experience and not repeat our mistakes.

The Top 5 Lessons from our Launch

1) Plan Your Success and Celebrate (no matter what happens)

It’s embarrassing to admit that in our first years of business, we were so busy “working hard” that we never stopped to plan or celebrate. Can you relate?

We prided ourselves on “flying by the seat of our pants,” LOL! Not so funny for our team...
We used to drive them crazy with our last minute changes and never-ending work ethic.

This time, we knew the launch could get really ugly if we didn’t gather our amazing team together to plan our success and to make sure everyone was on the same page.

We met with our team many times throughout the launch, to stay on the same page.

It was so inspiring to feel that our team was genuinely excited for the Thrive Community to grow, even though the launch meant there would be some long days and late nights approaching for them. We are SO lucky to have such an amazing team.

Yesterday we gathered with our team again to celebrate and acknowledge the great work we did together! While it was our biggest launch ever, we were excited to report it was also our smoothest launch ever. And it was really sweet to see how fulfilled our team was to see our Thrive Community double in size, practically overnight...

One of our Thrive Coaches, Erin Delaney, said it was great to hear so many different accents from all over the world, on our teleseminar we led yesterday.

No matter whether you have a team or not, we encourage you to plan your success and then celebrate (even if it doesn’t feel like a success!) You do this enough times, and you’ll need a big team supporting you.

2) Make Your Commitment BIGGER than your circumstances

We set a launch schedule that was barely attainable under the best of conditions. 6 weeks to create 4 value-packed videos, a webinar, 22 emails, and all web pages, etc.

If you read our last blog post, we were on the brink of disaster, you know that our whole family got sick, including nannies, which threw everything off...

Our #1 commitment is to our boys, so Sharla or I stayed with the boys during the day, and we worked late at night to prepare our content for the videos.

Did you see the amazing videos Sharla released? She recorded them with a burning fever, stopping only to quell coughing fits. You might have been able to hear it in her voice. But Sharla’s spirit shines so brightly, that if you watched the videos, you would hardly know she was sick.

This is because Sharla lives what we teach:

When your commitment is BIGGER than your circumstances, you become magnetic.

The world is starving for people who kick the back door shut, and say “I’m in, no matter what happens and no matter how I feel. I’m in!!!” Nothing was going to stop us. “In sickness or in health, ‘til death do us part.”

Many Coaches and Holistic Practitioners are not magnetic because they never fully commit to their business. Or if they do commit, they are committed, unless X happens. Or, unless they feel Y. Then, they back out. Magic happens when your commitment is BIGGER than your circumstances.

3) Don’t Let One Part of You Sabotage Your Entire Effort

This month, I worked harder than I have in a long time. A part of me LOVED it. I felt like I was in my 20’s again, unstoppable, superhuman, and ready to change the world.

But another part of me was not having it. This part wanted to play and rest and roll around in bed with Sharla, and didn’t give a flying *$#@ about the launch. I shoved this part to the side for weeks... finally, during the last week of the launch, this part of me got super pissed off. And very whiney! And made my lower back ache like crazy.

So I took about 15 minutes to journal with this young part of myself. And it wasn’t until I promised him video games, and spaghetti dinners, and long cuddle sessions with Sharla that he finally backed off…and I felt “normal” again. But I’m telling you, had I not done the journaling, my little guy would have ended up sabotaging the whole launch.

So before launching anything, we recommend you gather your “inner team” together and literally get them all on the same page.

What this means is: journal with the various different parts of yourself. Chances are that you have a part of you that is EXCITED to expand. And another part of you that is scared to expand. And another part of you that wants to work really hard. And another part of you that just wants to rest or play. You can add more parts and invite them into the “part-y”. Name these different parts of you, and let them have a conversation on paper... because one part of you who is not on board, can sabotage the whole thing. And, it pays to get everyone on the same page.

4) Fail Gracefully

“The more you fail, the more you succeed.” You may have heard this before, but how do you let yourself fail? Especially if you’re a perfectionist and often beat yourself up for not being perfect. And how do you fail gracefully?

Well, one thing that’s helped many of our clients is a distinction we introduce at the beginning of the Client Attraction Summit. When you make a mistake (which is inevitable) instead of saying “I’m so stupid” you can just switch the words to “I’m so Sexy!”

Here’s how it works in real life:

During one of our webinars, the slides that we had spent thousands of dollars to design (and Sharla had personally spent at least ten hours working on) did not upload correctly.

With about 700 people on the webinar, it wasn’t a great time to have a big breakdown like this. And she couldn’t say, “Give us about 10 minutes to fix the slides.” So instead of freaking out, Sharla said “I’m so sexy,” (and then explained what “I’m so sexy” really means) and then did the webinar without slides.

During several of the other webinars, the slides continued to get messed up in the uploading process, but Sharla did not let that stop her from staying in her heart and delivering the content we had planned to deliver. Even if she was super sexy in the process.

5) Make Connection with Your People More Important Than Marketing Advice

Sharla got hundreds of beautiful, positive, inspiring comments on her videos... everything from her clothing selection, to her radiance and beauty, to how valuable the content was. But we also got a surprising number of negative comments about one thing: The timeline! People were frustrated they didn’t know how long the video was and couldn’t rewind if they wanted to hear something again.

Many marketing studies state that video engagement is higher when you don’t have timelines. So we initially defended our decision by saying that we didn’t want people to skip through the videos and consume them fast food style... but the frustrated comments kept coming.

So after releasing video 3, we emailed our launch list with a heartfelt letter, sharing that we finally got it... and we were adding the timelines to the videos.

We got MANY emails and comments thanking us. And funny enough, the engagement with our videos actually increased after we added the timelines!

If we had it to do over again, we would have put the timelines in much sooner.

Okay, that sums up five of our biggest lessons. If this was valuable for you, share it with friends. And, leave us a comment and tell us your thoughts.

Let us know what you think in the comment box below.

March 18, 2015 by Jesse Koren

We’ve been on the brink of disaster...

Whew!! What a ride this last month has been.

We are about to do our biggest online launch ever! We have 38 JV Partners who are going to be sending the people on their email lists over to learn some of our hottest tips on attracting clients.

Together, these partners have a collective reach hundreds of thousands of people. It's VERY exciting!

So, we want to do this launch REALLY well, right?

We plan to lead with generosity, share some of our best content and create an amazing relationship with a whole new group of people...of course!

Well, with our event schedule (and two young boys) it was already going to be nearly impossible to pull this launch off.

And then Zachary, our 3 year old, got sick...Really sick. He didn’t want to leave Sharla’s side for 3 days.

Being the amazing mother that Sharla is, she made Zachary our first priority and I stepped in to help create the launch content.

It was still nearly impossible (but still possible) to prevent this launch from being a disaster...

Until Sharla got sick...Really sick. The day before the first video shoot, she had a fever. She took all the Chinese herbs she knew to take to help kick it out, but she woke up still not feeling great.

But being the amazing woman that Sharla is, she stepped into the recording studio with a burning fever, sweating the whole time...

And she still recorded some incredible videos.

As I looked at the footage, I could not even tell that she was sick (besides her sounding just a teeny bit nasally) because her Spirit shines through so brightly.

How does she do this? I wondered.

She practices what we teach, which is to make your commitment bigger than your circumstances.

We’ll send you Sharla’s first video tomorrow.

But before we launch into the launch, we wanted to acknowledge that you may have been on someone’s email list when they launched something.

We have...Many times.

When a launch is done well, it can be inspiring. And, when it’s done poorly, it can really turn me off to someone I had previously really appreciated.

So we’ve committed to doing our launch in this most generous and inspirational way possible.

If you ever launch anything in your business, it’s a great idea to avoid these mistakes.

Mistake #1: Being stingy with your content

Some mentors we worked with long ago taught us to teach only the "what” and the "why it's important”, but not give away any of the how (in any free content). We have decided to buck this trend.

We will pack as much hot content as we can into the three valuable videos in the series, and also on the webinar. Our intention is to give away so much valuable information that you are blown away.

Because of this, we have decided to give away a few of our most prized templates in this launch. Templates that, up until now, we've only shared in our Client Attraction Mastery Program.

We have done this because we wanted to lead with generosity and value. And from a business standpoint, we trust that when our people get a taste of our templates, they’ll want more.

Mistake #2: Making the short-term sales more important than the long-term relationship.

We expect tens of thousands of new people to join our email list in the next two weeks. This means that we get to make a difference in the lives of a small city of people.

Of course we want to make money (we are running a business, after all), but we have consciously decided to put money in the back seat and let our true intention drive us.

Our intention is to equip this new community of Coaches and Holistic Practitioners with the tools, inspiration, and confidence to attract the people who are truly waiting for them.

Because we know that when your people fail, more people suffer.

Mistake #3: Not letting them opt out of the launch list

We know that some people will get clear that the program we will eventually offer is the next logical step to have them attract more clients and make 2015 their best financial year ever.

Others will know that this program is not right for them right now. And they won’t want to get a handful of emails about a program they’ve already decided not to do this year.

Usually, the choice is to:

A. Get a bunch of emails that are no longer relevant or
B: Opt out

But when people opt out, they lose out on all the valuable articles and blog posts we’ll send after the launch is over.

So we’re providing a third option which is to opt out of the launch list, but stay on our regular email list so they can continue to get valuable articles and videos from us.

We hope you join us for our launch and take a front seat as we do our best to inspire you and deliver the best content we can to your inbox.

Let us know what you think in the comment box below.

July 17, 2014 by Sharla Jacobs and Jesse Koren

How to Get Big Influencers to Promote You

Have you ever wanted someone with a large email list to introduce you to their people?

If so, you’re not alone (and you’ll get a TON of value from this article).

We’ve had hundreds of well-meaning people ask us to promote them.

And we can understand why. Because we’ve grown our email list to over 20,000 people and we get around 1,000 people coming to our Client Attraction Summit each year, we are in a position to double, triple, or even quadruple someone’s business, practically overnight.

But you may have noticed that we only promote 10-12 of our friends and colleagues to you each year via email.

We are extremely careful and highly selective about who we introduce to you.

We thought you would like a window into our thought process around…

How do we decide who to promote?

What are the 3 biggest mistakes we see people making when they ask big influencers to promote them?

And how can you avoid these mistakes to get big influencers to promote you?

We look for three things in the people we promote:

Value
Generosity
Integrity

Let’s start with Value…

Are your free giveaways and programs high-value and high-quality?

The mistake that some people make is that they ask big influencers to promote a program they don’t yet feel fully confident about.

Honestly, we are fans of launching “imperfect” programs that you improve over time (as one of our mentors once said, “Every master was once a disaster.)”

But if you ask a big influencer to share your work with the world, make sure you first feel very proud of what you’re asking them to promote…both the free giveaway AND any programs their people would purchase from you.

Quality really matters in this day and age of people being bombarded with so many offers. The last thing you want is someone coming back to the person who promoted you and saying they weren’t happy with what they signed up for.

As an example of high-value and high-quality, our friend, Callan Rush, wrote an ebook called “Wealth through Workshops.” I (Sharla) read it and even though we’ve had over 10,000 people sign up for our live events, I still got a TON of value from it.

So when they told us that they would let anyone on our email list have a free copy of their ebook, we got really excited and jumped on the opportunity to share it.

Your first step is to make sure you feel rock-solid about the value and quality of what you’re offering.

Next, let’s talk about Generosity…

Do you lead with what you can give or what you can get?

The second biggest mistake is to make the short term gain more important than the long term relationship.

Many people have emailed Thrive, asking us to promote them. They think that offering us commissions would be enough of an incentive for us to promote them. Honestly, that’s the last thing we think about when promoting someone.

Commissions are nice, but there is no amount of money we would take to promote someone we don’t know very well.

We only promote people who we have a relationship with. Our Joint Venture Partners are friends before they are partners. They are people we call when we are having a challenge in our business. They share their best advice, business systems, and resources with us. And we do the same for them.

Our best partners don’t do tit-for-tat. They lead with generosity. So much so, that they inspire us to be generous with them.

As an example, Callan and her business partner, Justin Livingston, have been friends for years. Callan served as a trainer for our company when our son Jacob was about to be born. And Justin was a big part of our marketing team during this same period. After working with us here at Thrive, they moved on to start their own company and we’ve stayed in touch all this time.

They know we offer high-value and high-quality work, so they have been endorsing us every other month at their “Magnetize Your Audience” live event. They share stories about how we recognized Callan’s talent and believed in her when she was getting started.

And she shares about who we are and the results our clients get. And then they offer our Client Attraction Summit to the people at their event. After the event, they have been sending us 50-70 registration forms, filled out by their participants who want to attend our live event.

How generous is that?

We don’t even have to travel to their event to speak. They make the offer for us. We love how easy they make it for us.

We recommend you lead with generosity and make the long term relationship important when trying to get other people to promote you.

Lastly, let’s talk about Integrity.

Do you follow through with your promises?

And if you break your word, do you find a way to get back into integrity?

If we introduce a joint venture partner who makes a promise they don’t keep, it damages trust.

And while we can’t control what our partners do, we can get to know the character of our partners so that we can make the best decision as to whether or not they’ll deliver on their promises to our clients.

This is why it’s important to get to know your partners before doing business with them. You get to witness whether they keep their promises or not.

Miscommunication happensand everyone breaks their word at some point. But not everyone takes the time to clean it up and make it right again.

We’ll use Callan and Justin as an example again:

Several months ago, they promised to promote us at one of their events and there was a misunderstanding and it didn’t happen as we expected.

Instead of just apologizing, Justin offered to send an email out to their entire email list of over 70,000 people, introducing us to them. This restoration of integrity actually had us trust them more, because we got how much they value our relationship and the keeping of their promises.

You know how relationships just get deeper and more solid as you deal with the tough stuff? It’s HOW people deal with the tough stuff that shows you how much they value the relationship.

You will certainly have misunderstandings with your joint venture partners. And how you deal with these places where it feels that the integrity is out of balance will determine whether or not you will continue to stay in partnership with them.

A bonus tip: Most joint venture partners care more about reciprocation than they do commissions.

Your ability to reciprocate is a key factor. So you’ll find that most of the people you “play with” in the realm of joint venture partners will have promotion power that matches what you have to offer.

But reciprocation can come in lots of different forms. So don’t overlook other ways to reciprocate.
What resources can you support them with (can also be personal resources)?
Who can you introduce them to?

The bottom line is this: It’s all about the relationship.

And most relationships start by meeting someone in person and leading with generosity.

We recommend you start attending more live events to get to know people you want to connect with. And lead with generosity whenever you can.

We want to model this for you now…Because we know Justin and Callan provide SO much value, they lead with SO much generosity, and because they are such high integrity people, we decided to surprise them by writing this entire article that showcases why they are one of the best partners we’ve ever had.

If you’re inspired by Justin and Callan and would like a free copy of their ebook, “Wealth through Workshops,”

Enjoy! And please let us know what you got from this article in the comments below.

Tell us what you think...

January 16, 2014 by Sharla Jacobs and Jesse Koren

Teleseminars that Get You Clients-Part III

In our last blog post, you discovered the three keys to simultaneously GIVE VALUE and have your participants set up to say YES to continuing to work with you, if it’s a good match. They are:

Use the biggest building blocks of your offer as the key points in your teleseminar.
Provide are actionable tasks.
Give the right balance of information so your participants don't feel full with information overload, nor do they feel like they wasted their time.

In our final article in this series, you'll discover our formula for crafting teleseminars that keep people engaged and lead them to say YES to your next step.

Jesse and Sharla together We have a template for creating teleseminars that will help you accomplish all 3 of these keys. It's helped us make hundreds of thousands of dollars leading teleseminars and millions of dollars leading live workshops. We call this our I-S-O-S template and you can design your teleseminars using this template to bring in tons of new clients.

The I stands for Introduction.

After you welcome them, make sure you include these 3 very important points in your introduction:

1. Tell them what they're going to get during your teleseminar and how their life is going to change when they get it.

2. Share your personal story. When you do this, you let them know how you have personally overcome the challenge that you are going to help them overcome. We call this your hero's journey story.

3. Tell them that in addition to giving some of your best secrets, you'll also let them know how they can continue to work with you. This way they won't be surprised by your offer (and may even look forward to it).

The S stands for Secrets.

In this section, give them just a few pieces of content they can put into action right away.

For each secret you want to share 3 things:

a. What it is

b. Why it's important

c. A simple step on how to implement it

You can use examples from your own life or you can use your clients' successes as an example of each secret.

You want your participants to leave the call with at least 3 things they can implement right away to improve their lives.

The O stands for Offer.

No matter how badly you want to serve, you can't solve all of their money, relationship or health challenges in 1 hour...

Your Offer allows them to take the next step to continue working with you. Your offer should feel outrageously generous.

We've led teleseminars where we've done really well, selling $2,000 programs during the call, but the value of the package was close to $5,000. You want to make sure whatever you're offering on the call has at least twice the value of your price.

And if you're just starting out, it can feel really uncomfortable to sell something on the call. So we recommend you offer a limited number of free (or paid) consultations with you and use your Heartselling skills to sell a package during those consultations.

Your offer becomes meaningful when you take the time to find out what your people are looking for.

In November last year, 530 people responded to a survey on what they want when it comes to teleseminars. Based on their feedback, we designed a program to give them EXACTLY what they asked for. This makes our offer feel so meaningful because we put hours of thought into how to give them the exact training they need to get started leading teleseminars.

So, the key is, find out what your people want, and then design your offer for them.

The second S stands for Secrets.

Most people end their call with the offer, but our recommendation is to leave your 2 best secrets for after your offer. Why?

Because some people will hear you start your Offer, and think, oh, the free part is over, I'm done... and they may miss out on the perfect thing that will help them get the results they want. So, by saving your 2 best secrets for last, you're making it more likely that everyone will stay for the whole call.

When you use this I-S-O-S teleseminar template to design your calls, you'll find you're able to give great value AND get tons of clients from every teleseminar you lead.

Now, you've got the formula for creating teleseminars that get you clients. Tell us how you're going to use this by commenting below.

Tell us what you think...

December 18, 2013 by Sharla Jacobs and Jesse Koren

Teleseminars that Get You Clients-Part II

In our last blog post, you discovered how to pick a topic for your teleseminar that immediately grabs their attention and has them think, "That's for me!" Because if you don't have an engaging topic, they won't even register for your teleseminar.

Photo of Jesse and Sharla Now that you've got an engaging topic, you want to make sure you simultaneously GIVE VALUE and have your participants set up to say YES to continuing to work with you, if it’s a good match.

So how do you do this?

There are three essential elements you must put in every teleseminar where the intention is to get you clients.

First, make sure you use the biggest building blocks of your offer as the key points in your teleseminar. One of our mentors used to call this "reverse engineering." You start with the offer in mind, and then work backwards from there.

Here's an example:
Let's say you are a weight loss coach who specializes in helping pre-menopausal women lose that last 10-20 pounds. And the work you do is around discovering the hidden blocks to weight loss, specifically, hormones and other biochemical imbalances that keep women from losing fat during this time of life when their hormones are fighting against fat loss.

Let's suppose that the offer you're going to make during your teleseminar is to work with you in a group program where you take clients through a series of lab tests to determine which hormonal imbalances are in the way.

The building blocks of your program could be the different hormonal imbalances that cause excess weight in pre-menopausal women. And you can talk about the five biggest hormone issues pre-menopausal women have that are keeping them stuck with that excess 10-20 pounds. You can explain, (in layman's terms, of course), the different imbalances and talk about how each one causes the problems it causes.

This gives you a really easy formula that leads right into offering your program.

The second thing you must provide are actionable tasks.

An actionable task is a piece of valuable how-to information that your participants can take action on right away in order to experience some relief from the pain they have been in. One of our mentors calls this a "results rush." When they can do something that gets them immediate results, they will trust you immensely.

Yet, when you don't give any actionable tasks during your free teleseminar, your participants won't trust you. And they won't get anything of value that shows them you can truly help them.

I'll take the example above a little further. Let's say that you know that thyroid imbalances are a major disruptor of fat loss. And let's say you use an alternative approach to thyroid imbalances that is pretty sophisticated, but there are some simple things someone can do at home to determine if their thyroid might be a problem.

You might explain that thyroid hormone lab test panels only give so much information. And that actual body temperature says a lot about their metabolism. You can invite them take their temperature three times during the day at set intervals and record the results. You can teach them how to do a mini self-diagnosis. And if they get negative results, give them one thing they can do to try to combat the problem with a supplement or food.

When you do this, you strengthen your role as a "trusted advisor" in their lives and they are much more likely to want to work with you further.

The third element is to give the right balance of information so your participants don't feel full with information overload, nor do they feel like they wasted their time.

When you give them too much information, they walk away feeling too full to take anything else in. And they aren't likely to say Yes. They also are unlikely to take action because they will feel overloaded.

If you give them too little information, they will feel like they just got sold to during the entire call and will not trust you to move further.

It's easy to find the balance by not teaching more than five keys during your talk (and three is even better). And then spending only 4-5 minutes on each key.

You must make sure to cover the basics for each key, which include why it's important and a little on how to move forward with this key. You may also include examples of how it works.

Now that you know how to simultaneously GIVE VALUE and have your participants set up to say YES to continuing to work with you, you'll be excited to read Part III in this series. In the next blog post, you'll discover our formula for crafting teleseminars that keep people engaged and lead them to say YES to your next step.

We would love to hear from you! Visit our Facebook Fan Page and share with us how you (plan to) use teleseminars to get more clients in 2014. We'll be sure to comment on your plan and successes!