How Laura went from no program to $4,134 in sales in 40 days with no email list
I bet you’ve had an amazing idea come to you for an online health program at least once. You got a gut feeling that it’s the next level of your business and you were super excited to get it into the world … but then you spent months (or years!) thinking about it, then came the months creating the program itself. The worksheets, the slides, the videos. They took so. much. time. to create.
Then you tried “launching”, which was really just 2 posts on social media, a handful of Instagram stories, and an email to your tiny list that resulted in a few hundreds of dollars of sales.
Then you probably felt like a failure and that “great idea” started looking like a total waste of time and energy, and so you holed up on your couch eating dairy-free ice cream for a few days while binge watching “The Office”. Totally not worth it, right?
But what if I told you that your great idea was great, and if you just reversed the time you spent creating the program with the time you spent launching it, you could have had a super successful online health program that you can use to create income for years to come?
That’s exactly what my client Laura did, and she ended up going from no program to $4,134 in sales during her 7 day launch, and she did it within 40 days of the initial idea and without an email list. Oh, and during a global pandemic, homeschooling her 2 kids, a husband with his own business, no ads, and no experience with online marketing or launching.
I’m sharing this because I want you to know exactly how quickly you could be creating income, and also what goes into a successful launch.
I want you to make more money, and I want you to be able to leave your shitty corporate job, keep your income flowing during a global shutdown, buy organic groceries, pay for your kids braces, buy a new car, or whatever else you need your income for.
Because you can totally do it, you just need to know how.
Keep reading for the detailed timeline of what Laura did to ensure a successful launch of her very first online health program:
Jan & Feb 2020: pre-launch
Before I get into the nitty gritty, let me introduce you to Laura Bourne!
Laura is a former HR executive turned Holistic Nutritionist who has spent 7 years learning the ins and outs of the human body. She's super passionate about helping busy professional women take their body and business to the next level.
I don't think I've ever seen anyone try as many different specialty food or supplement ingredients in my life (Laura's motto is she would never recommend something she hasn't tried on herself or her family first!), and I think I follow her on Instagram just to see hear her hilarious stories.
Click here to check out her website, and click here to follow her on Instagram.
Laura and I had been working together since the beginning of 2020 in my (now retired) Get Paid program (she was my first beta client). We spent the first two months working together to map out a content calendar and a 3 month, one-on-one program that was going to be Laura’s first ever offering outside of her network marketing business and existing, very busy, HR consulting business.
Laura had outlined the general content in her program, and had even come up with the price. We decided that she’d launch it in April, but before that she had to get busy growing her email list by creating some blog content so that she’d have someone to even launch to.
We had such great plans to launch this one-on-one program, and then the unthinkable happened.
March 2020: COVID-19 global shutdown
The beginning of March was a blur. Laura flew to doTERRA’s Leadership Convention in Arizona right before they announced it was cancelled, and over the course of 4 days the world went from the new Coronavirus taking over Europe, to then completely shutting down all of Canada and the US as well.
Laura came home from Leadership to find that schools had shut down, and her 2 sons were now home until at least the end of March (hah, we were so optimistic back then), as well as her husband’s new office shut down as well.
We didn’t have any coaching together during the beginning of March as she helped her husband pivot his business between taking care of her sons and still trying to support her network marketing business.
March 25
We had our regular coaching session on March 25th, and decided together that Laura would pivot her 3 month, one-on-one program into a membership, and she’d launch it at the end of April (only one month later!).
We made this decision as it was a lower price point, therefore allowing more participants to join even with the economic uncertainty that we were all feeling when the COVID crisis just started, and Laura could focus solely on launching while balancing her HR work and childcare. She could launch first to see if anyone even joined, and THEN she would create the content in the 2 weeks following the launch.
I sent Laura a copy template for a shorter sales page than I normally recommend for a launch, only because Laura hates writing copy and we needed to get this done ASAP.
March 30
Laura sent me the first version of her sales page copy to review, which I did on April 1st.
April 2020: Learn how to launch & pivoting (again)
aPRIL 6-10
Just like any new entrepreneur who writes their own copy, Laura thought her sales page copy sucked. Here’s the message she included when she sent her copy to me to review:
MASSIVE vulnerability sharing this. I think I did ok. It went better than when I wrote copy for my website. I just get stuck on certain areas. Gulp, I am scared for what you are going to say, but I feel like it is a starting point.
But then I spent a day putting her own copy (after editing) onto her sales page, and suddenly it looked completely different. That’s what design does for you, makes your seemingly boring copy look like it was written by a professional.
You’ll find the first half of the finished sales page for the Wellness Edit Collective to the right (or below if on mobile).
April 15
At our coaching session on April 15th, we chatted about what her launch was going to look like in detail. She didn’t have time to grow an email list (she had a list of 12), but she had around 1,300 followers on Instagram that she was already nurturing with highly educational stories about health and wellness, so they were primed to want whatever she was selling, especially if it was lower priced.
We decided on a 5 day Instagram live blitz, with the cart opening to special, first time launch pricing for the membership and closing 6-7 days later.
Laura had decided that this special, one-time only launch pricing would be $39 a month Canadian, plus the option to join for 6 months and get one month free, which worked out to $195 Canadian every 6 months (recurring payment).
Based on this pricing, we chose a launch goal of $1,000, and a stretch goal of $2,000. Here’s what Laura had to say about her goal:
Put numbers to it - how will I define success, $1000? $2000? $4000 scares me and made me want to puke.
She had no problem charging $200+ per hour on the HR consulting side of her business, but when it came to charging for her health and wellness knowledge, Laura clearly had some major hangups.
Her homework after this call was:
Pick the launch date of your collective.
Brainstorm and start writing down what you want your 5 days of livestreams to be about.
Instagram story design (Laura is totally tech challenged - although working on overcoming this mindset block - so I knew it would take her a bit to design some stories in advance that she could use while the cart was open. I sent her a link to a template I had in Canva so she could copy that and not have to start from scratch).
After our call, I designed a social media marketing strategy calendar for her to follow so she would know exactly what to talk about and when, and in an Instagram post or on her stories.
This way, Laura could design, write, and schedule any Instagram posts before the craziness started to get those out of the way and minimize her energy during launching, as I knew she’d be tired after her week of live education.
We were all set for Laura’s launch to start April 27th … and then doTERRA announced they were doing a BOGO week from April 20-24, the week before Laura’s launch.
Since most of Laura’s Instagram followers are either her own doTERRA customers or customers from other teams, we knew that launching the week after such a huge sale, when many customers are on social media a lot more to find out what the daily specials are and receive extra education on them, might run the risk of buyer fatigue.
So we decided to pivot again (for what felt like the millionth time), and Laura chose the date for her livestreams as May 4-8th, with her cart opening for only 4 days over Mother’s Day weekend, May 8-11th.
April 22
We were getting closer to the launch starting and we had another coaching session to make sure we had covered all the bases of what Laura needed to have in place before her launch started.
Again, a post or two on Instagram plus a few scattered stories weren’t going to work since Laura didn’t have the advantage of an email list, so we had to get strategic.
Plus, the sales page wasn’t totally complete yet, as Laura hadn’t gotten her checkout pages set up yet or even decided what platform she was going to use to have new customers pay.
The sales page needed to be 100% complete with functioning payment processors by May 8th, the day the cart was opening, but the week before I knew was going to use up a lot of Laura’s energy from the 5 days of lives.
We also needed to make sure that her current doTERRA customers didn’t feel left out, and that Laura would still be continuing to support them outside of this membership if they chose not to join. However, they were invited to join by email, as the content Laura was going to be teaching throughout the membership was going to be above and beyond what they would get from her just about oils.
Laura’s homework after this week’s call was:
Notes for all 5 days of livestream (May 4-8).
Decide on platform to host your membership.
Set up payment in platform of choice (Ashley to link it to sales page).
Marketing strategy for social media (the screenshot I showed above).
Write email to current doTERRA customers to go out beginning of May.
Create content that they receive as soon as they join (welcome video + 1 page worksheet).
We made sure she had ample time to do these tasks, as this coaching session was right in the middle of BOGO week, and Laura was going hard in her education of her current customers, as well as enrolling new ones.
The last week of May, Laura worked on creating her Instagram stories for when her cart was open. Like I’ve already said, she self-admittedly isn’t very tech savvy, and learning how to use Canva has taken her months (even for the basics), so she wanted to get them out of the way.
She had all her notes created for her 5 days of livestreams by April 27th, and her email to her doTERRA customers ready for my review by April 29th. On April 30th she started creating the worksheets and handouts for when her soon-to-be members started joining on May 8th.
May 2020: Launching!
The time had come for Laura to finally start launching! This is why it takes so long to plan a successful launch, because there are many moving pieces that need to be in place and marketing that needs to happen before the cart opens.
Everyday from Monday, May 4th to Friday, May 8th, Laura went live for 30-45 minutes to educate her audience on some of the basics of wellness. Topics included sleep, digestion, understanding their symptoms, and the basics about nutrition, which are questions and topics that her audience asks her about all the time.
Much of the marketing that week on her Instagram stories was drawing attention to the lives, which of course only stayed up for the following 24 hours.
On Thursday, May 7th, Laura hinted that tomorrow she would be opening up options to work with her.
Now I knew that Laura would be exhausted, I kept telling her to reign it in and not spend all her energy on anything unnecessary … but Laura was excited and didn’t listen 😂. Also, there were issues with downloading the recording immediately after her Instagram lives were finished, so she re-recorded all of her livestream content so she could reuse it as content inside of the membership.
Laura also had to still figure out Teachable, which was the course hosting platform that she decided on. She had to create her course home page as well as create the 2 different priced products ($39 every month, and $195 every 6 months), which when you’re tech averse pushed her to her limits.
We finally got her sales page completed with working buttons to the checkout page and payment processors (hosted by Teachable) at 10 pm on May 6th (36 hours before the cart opened).
The morning of May 8th was here, where Laura was going to announce her membership to the world with founder pricing … and then she found out that all the videos that she re-recorded didn’t have any sound. All we could do was mutually commiserate about all the time and energy she put into them when they couldn’t be used 😭.
Her livestream was done and membership announced on May 8th by noon, and by 12:31 pm she had her first sale. And then another one, then another one.
Within the first 24 hours, Laura had already made her goal of $1,000 for her entire launch!!!
Now she was officially going for her stretch goal of $2,000. I asked her the morning of May 9th what her new goal was, and she said “$2,195?”. Laura always picks the strangest numbers for her goals.
She also chose to extend her cart open period until Tuesday, May 12th at midnight EST, as she quickly figured out that due to Mother’s day weekend, maybe her audience wasn’t online as much.
Laura went hard on marketing over her Instagram stories, and by the afternoon of May 12th she had hit her stretch goal of $2,000, which I think she got to while doing a huge Costco shopping trip (now that’s what I call making money while you live your life!).
She continued to market all that day, and by 10 pm she was at 26 members. I challenged her to get to 30 by doing a last minute Insta Story about how 26 women had said yes to themselves, and that she’d love to get to 30, so if there’s someone still on the fence, she love for them to join.
At 11 pm Laura was still messaging me that she was only 2 people away from her goal, then I went to bed. This is what I woke up to:
Laura had one last 6 month member join the morning of May 13th before I was able to go in and change the price from founding member to regular, bringing her 38 members and $4,134 in sales.
She had 17 people purchase the 6 month option, leaving 21 people who joined with the $39 month-to-month option.
This meant that not only did she make $4,134 in May, but if no one cancelled their membership, she would make $800+ in June as well.
Since memberships are new to me as well, we’ll have to continue to monitor her churn rate (the number of people who quit) as well as the average member length, but her income in June turned out to be $858, so she actually gained a few members.
Of course, after her successful launch, Laura had to get to work actually completing the content. Other than the welcome materials, we purposely didn’t spend time creating any of the monthly content in case she had a very low number of people join (in which case she could refund them, pivot again, and try launching a new program that would hopefully be more successful).
Since she knocked it out of the park and we knew this was working, Laura spent the rest of May creating that monthly content, and in June the only thing she had to focus on in her business, while continuing to provide full-time child care and also supporting her husband’s business during this new and ever-changing COVID world, was her June monthly content.
SummarY
5-6 weeks from idea (March 25th) to launch (May 4th) - 40 days. Global pandemic. Homeschooling. Husband has his own business. 2 kids. No email list (well 12 people), no ads, no experience with online marketing or launching.
4% growth in followers
17 people bought the 6 months for the price of 5 @ $195 = $3,315
21 people bought monthly @ $39 = $819
Total May revenue = $4,134
Total June revenue = $855
I’d say this isn’t too shabby at ALL, Laura!
She also shared with me today that she’s had 2 new members join in July totally on their own without having to ask Laura any questions beforehand via DM’s, and she doesn’t recognize their names, which means they’re total ‘strangers from the internet'.
Laura said to me “your system works”, and I’m so glad that it’s not only me that it works for!
Going forward
Now we have to get strategic with Laura’s marketing efforts on a consistent basis to draw attention to the membership and get people to join on autopilot, which is what our coaching calls will be about going forward.
We’ll be achieving this with a combination of blogging + content upgrades + email marketing, paired with social media, which will slowly come together over the next 3-6 months (especially depending on how school looks for her 2 boys in the fall).
Not only will her membership be a way of generating revenue, but we’ll design a strategy for converting a small number of those members to her one-on-one program, which most likely will be a better fit for later this fall (in terms of how the economy is looking and how Laura’s schedule and energy is feeling).
With the pricing that we were going to use for her one-on-one program, there’s a possibility of Laura generating several thousands of dollars of more income with not much work. She’ll be able to reuse some of her resources within the membership, and most of her time investment will simply come from the actual one-on-one meetings themselves instead of extra time making handouts and customized resources for each client.
I wouldn’t hesitate to bet that Laura could generate a total of $20,000 in revenue in this first year of her nutrition business, which is a huge step in the right direction.
Next year can be spent scaling the successful programs she already has, and focusing on a few more launches that can generate more income in a short period of time.
I hope that by hearing what someone else has done behind the scenes, that you’ve learned a few things that can help you develop your next paid offering and launch it successfully.
The strategy that I helped create for Laura isn’t the same for everyone else, but the key takeaway is spend less time creating your offer and more time marketing it.
