The $43,856 Coaching Blunders I Made My First Year

Welcome to the 8th edition of my Launch behind-the-scenes newsletter. Last week I reviewed a $96,000 mistake I made my first year in business.

You all seemed to like that mistake article and I’m so glad. Here is a sample of one of your email responses back:

I agree that we learn more from failures than wins.

Most 'gurus' only show you their wins.

Today, I'm going to show you a massive risk I took my first year.

And why I’m repeating it again.

Here's exactly what I did, what I’m doing, why I think it'll work, and what I'll do if it fails spectacularly. Use them, learn from them, and maybe avoid the mistakes I'm probably making...

Ok, here goes:

As soon as my first online course started generating a profit in 2021 I had $9,000 in my business bank account and was feeling on top of the world.

I wanted to earn more and be influential like the industry leaders I saw online.

So, I was ready (and honestly over-eager) to fork over money to anyone who said they could help.

• I met a marketing guy on LinkedIn who promised he could set me up with a CRM (customer relationship manager, like HubSpot or ConvertKit). I signed up for a cool year contract of $1,488/mo + $297/hour of extra help gulp!

• I also joined a $26,000 5-month mastermind with a prominent pharmacy leader. It was broken up in $4,500/mo payments and I was starting to sweat

•Both of those combined were $43,856. A huge bill for a first year in business!

I knew that I had a good business idea because I’d validated it with early sales in a private community + course. But, the mistake I made was pouring all my extra earnings right back into vague help that I probably didn’t need, but helped me ‘feel’ like a business owner.

Why were these mistakes?

• Marketing guy mistake: I needed to learn how to do this myself. I got set up with a complex system that I didn’t understand. I was forever tethered to this guy & his team both with a permanent contract & the inability to understand my own system.

• Mastermind mistake: Ouch. This one really hurt. I mean, I could have bought a car with the money I paid this personality. The worst part was that there was no specific outcome. It was a vague, vain offer “be in the room with experts and achieve more” and I watched that whole 2-hour pitch and fell for it. Just because someone is well-known online doesn’t mean they can help you in a meaningful way. I was far ahead of the group and didn’t get anything specifically helpful out of the whole experience.

How these mistakes helped me immensely

• I was able to go from a $500 offer in February to a $1,497 offer in June and a $2,497 offer in October with the help of skilled professionals. They helped create landing pages, checkout forms, and all the Zapier links I needed. I was able to scale my pricing very quickly and efficiently.

• I was stuck with a stupid payment, so I had huge incentive to make my first offer a big success. I didn’t want to dip into my personal accounts to pay that bill off. No way! As a result, I posted every single day for 6 weeks about my course launch. I reached out to 1,789 people directly on LinkedIn and invited them to my event. I created a beautiful post event email series that was good at converting. And I practiced that webinar out loud every day for 10 days in a row. The result? A $96K launch.

What I’m doing now:

• Marketing: I’m not hiring out all the building of all my backend systems. I need to build those myself and understand them well. But I will soon hire a VA to manage all of them for me. I’ve had a wonderful VA in the past that I lost when I sold my company. She will be my first hire when I’m profitable with my current company. I need experts in my life, but will never become dependent on one like that with a stupid contract again.

• Coaching: That experience really burned me with coaching for a long time. I think there is a lot of hype that is vague platitudes, hyperbole, and pontification that isn’t actually helpful. I don’t want advice. I want to learn strategy from someone who has rocked what I want to do. I have never hired anyone again without a crystal clear transformation that I can expect if I’m willing to put in the work. Now I’m very quick to hire someone to teach me something. I’ve joined 3 private communities ($87/mo, $500/mo and $4k/yr)in 2024 and they are all helping me move leaps & bounds faster than I could go all by myself in 3 specific areas of my life. I am so happy and feel like I’m in the right place, with similar peers, public accountability, and the exact strategies I need to grow.

What if it fails spectacularly?:

Then I’ll learn what doesn’t work and keep going. It’s just money.

I’m not making another cross-your-fingers-and-hope-this-$26K-investment pays off-otherwise-I’m-seriously-sunk decision.
I invest enough to make me show up and be serious about what I committed to, but that won’t put my finances at serious risk.

I love learning from other experts and getting into their world. It helps me learn quickly and be inspired to work with more of a fire underneath me than if I was doing it all by my lonely self. Plus, as a business expense it feels easier to invest in myself and my future.

I’ve learned the only way you can buy time is by learning how someone else did something. By doing that I’m not only buying what worked for them, but I’m also buying their failures and what didn’t work. It is the fastest, most efficient way to build online.

Years of someones validated experience PLUS a small, like-minded group building alongside of you is, in my opinion, a little bit of magic and what works well for me. That’s why I want to build this for you guys. I’m serious about your success.

Ok, let’s talk about our upcoming live meeting!

Ok, now my favorite part of this email: I want to meet you guys. I’m hosting a live event on Wednesday, August 7th at 11:30amMT/1:30pm ET. I’d love to have you join me for 1/2 hour. I’ll show you what I’ve built so far, answer your questions, take suggestions, and generally meet this amazing group of forward-thinking PharmDs who are serious about making the internet work for them.

2 things for you to do:

1. Please hit reply to this email and say, “I’m in” and I’ll add your email address to the calendar invite so you can have the link and remember to come.

2. I’d like to be prepared for your questions during the event, so please hit reply if there is a specific question/suggestion you’d like me to address.

Can’t make the live event? No worries. I get it. I’ll share the replay in the follow week’s email.

Can’t wait to see you there and meet many of you who I feel like I already know from these behind-the-scenes emails.

👋🏻 Jamie

You’re receiving this private “behind-the-scenes” newsletter because you’ve joined the waitlist for the Launch Community.

Missed any of my previous behind-the-scenes updates? Here they are:

• May 17th : Welcome

• May 31st: Why I’m Building The LaunchCommunity

• June 7th: What Makes a Great Community

• June 14th: 9 mistakes I see new creators making

• June 21st: How I'm Using Feedback Loops

• July 5th: What I’m Charging For Launch Community

• July 12th: How I lost $96,000 on my second digital product launch (and what you can learn from my mistake)

I’m now in the final stages of prepping this community for release, and it will be available to buy on August 23rd, 2024.

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