#107: What You Need To Know Before Running A 5-Day Challenge

Well hello there, health coaches. I hope you are having a fantastic week. I'm in the middle of running a five day program right now with my health coaching business. And it's going beautifully. I'm so pleased. And actually I've been doing a lot of these five day challenge type programs in the past few months. And really over the past few years at first, it felt super duper complicated. Like so many moving parts. I couldn't keep it straight, but now I kind of have it down to our science, which is good because I pulled our community. And you guys all said that you want to learn how to do this. You want to learn how to create your own five day challenges and pull them off seamlessly, which is awesome. So actually, based on that feedback from you guys, I have put together a brand-new master class it's called create and market your first five-day challenge.

I've never done anything like this before, and I can't wait. It's going to be fun. It'll be a onetime live workshop with me. I'm going to walk you through the whole process. Step by step. We're going to get into the details and you can get all the information about that and register at healthcoachpower.com/5day. That's the number 5 day. Cool. But you know, when you learn something new often, it's like, I feel like I don't even know what, I don't know. That's often the case when we enter like a new stage of life or certainly when you're starting your business, or even when you take on a new project, I can't even tell you how many times I've found myself in that situation. I go, in retrospect, it's like, wow, I didn't even know what I didn't know. So today what I want to do is give you a heads up on some things that you should definitely know before running a five-day challenge.

And then that's going to help you decide, like, is this the right thing for you to do or not right now? Because I have been there, and I have done that.

So, before we get into all of those things, I want to give a great big virtual hug to Gina who wrote this five star review on Apple podcasts. And she said she titled it, health coaching 101 essential. And she wrote Michelle is quite literally dominating the health coaching industry with her experience, knowledge and valuable content. I feel like I don't listen to any other podcasts, but hers right now, she's a straight shooter, tells it like it is personable lady that I can't help but hang out with. I was Michelle's client and HPU student for about four months and do not regret any of that time. I learned so much from her and continue to access her content and continue to grow as a health coach.

Michelle, I can't thank you enough for your support, your authenticity. And of course the African dancing on Instagram stories, keeping being you. Gina you're the sweetest. Thank you so much. And yeah, if you guys don't know this, if you follow me on Instagram, you will see that I do post a lot of dancing videos. I love me some dance. Anyway, Gina, we would love to send you a little, thank you gift for taking the time to leave a review. Please send your mailing address to us at support@healthcoachpower.com and just reference episode number 107. And for all of you guys listening. I so, so, so appreciate the reviews. If you could please take a moment and leave one for the show. Hey, maybe I will read yours on the air next week. So let's get into today's topic. And if you're here with me live and you have questions about five-day challenges and running this type of pre-program in your business, go ahead and hit me up in the comments.

I have my eye on those. I can make sure to answer your questions. And this was actually all sparked from a question that Kim asked inside of our Facebook group a week or two ago. And here's what she said. What template do I use to create a five day challenge in what format do I send it to my clients? How do I make it interesting? And could the deeper teaching be on a zoom call, Kim? I like how you think you are thinking it through one thing that I want you guys to know before you even think about running a five day challenge is that you can do this in an extremely low tech way. Meaning it can be as simple as sending five emails and that's it like, that's all you have to do. And I know that's something that every single one of you can do.

So there are like no excuses here. I'm finding a challenge can really be very, very simple. So do not get yourself worked up about all the different kinds of technology that you will need to use, because that is just not true. Now you might see people out there, you might see me, you might see other people out there running what are admittedly more complicated challenges, but it is not necessary. And for your first time out of the gate, I would actually recommend that you keep it on the simple side, right? That whole KISS principle very important, just so you can learn the rhythm, get a feel for it. And then you can always make it fancy or later. This is reminding me of something though, by the way, because although what I just said is true, really, all you need to do is send out those five emails when every day here's something I didn't expect.

When I started running five day challenges, invariably, your participants are going to start reaching out to you and saying things like, Oh, you know what? I missed day one and day two. Oh and day four. Can you resend those to me? And you're like, ah, it's fine. If it's like one person, but it gets annoying real quick because it's a lot of admin time and you may not have your email set up in a way that it's easy to just resend to like one person ad hoc like that. So what I recommend that you do is that you create some sort of archival system that sounds fancy really all. It has to be as a simple page on your website or even a file inside of a Facebook group. Or you could even just compile it all into a PDF that you would attach to an email and you would just put all your content as the days, go by, you update the archive.

So if someone asks you on day four, for something they missed on day one, you're just like, you know what? Here you go. And you just send them the archive of everything. In fact, you can even pre-empt all those questions by saying in your emails. Hey, did you miss any part of this challenge? It's all available on this archive page with a little link so much easier. Once I started doing that, I stopped getting inundated with all of these requests. So that's just something to consider. And that also points to the fact that people are not paying as much attention as you are. And I know that sounds like a bad thing, but it's actually kind of a good thing because if you make a mistake, if there's a typo, like anytime we do stuff in our business and we get all like it, wasn't perfect.

Guess what? People aren't even paying attention. They will sign up four or five day challenge and they won't even open any of the emails. They'll miss them. It'll go in their spam, whatever, you know, they're not paying any attention until like day five. So that should just allow you to breathe a sigh of relief and know that you don't have to be perfect. And there's a way to help people catch up without you spending a lot of time sending emails now, as for this idea of keeping it interesting. Here's what I have to say about that. And this comes up a lot. I see a lot of people saying, Oh, I want to run a program like this. I want to run a program like that. Nobody wants the, like let's not eat sugar for five days. Challenge. That sounds terrible. That sounds like something nobody's going to want to do.

Or if it's like, you know, the drink more water for five days, challenge. I mean, you and I both know that it's a good idea for people to drink more water and less soda or less coffee or whatever they're drinking. However, again, it's like a snooze Fest to think about how, like, so what, so I'm not going to drink water. Like I'm not going to sign up for that. And if they do sign up, you're going to have a really hard time making that interesting. Cause that's just kind of not. And anytime you're talking about the specifics, like the, how, like the eat more fiber challenge or drink more water, get more sleep challenge. It's just, it's so straight. It's boring. You're talking about the way that you help someone solve a bigger problem. Ah, that's what it is. So, if you create a challenge around like the how the more water, more exercise, more sleep, that it's a kind of a boring premise and the challenge is going to be boring.

I suggest that you instead create a challenge that helps your audience create something that they want to make or helps them do something that they've been wanting to do. And here's the big thing. It solves a problem for them. So it's not like, Hey, we're just going to do this thing for five days. You have to sell it by talking about their pain point. It makes it so much more interesting. So let's say that your target market are women in their thirties who experienced digestive issues, particularly bloating, right? So maybe in your practice, you work a lot with helping your clients avoid FODMAPs. I'm assuming you guys know what FODMAPs are anyway, you know, avoiding certain foods, you could create a challenge. And this would be pretty interesting because people generally don't like to talk about like their gas and their poop and stuff like that.

And they, they also, FODMAPs sounds like, huh, what's that? And you know, why would I want to avoid FODMAPs for five days? So instead of running like the five day FODMAP challenge, don't do that. You would want to run something called, like create a personalized flat belly plan in just five days, I would say, does that sound, I'm going to create something it's going to be personalized to me. It's going to help me solve my problem, which is that it's like summertime. And I wish that my belly were a little bit flatter. Yes. Now you have somebody's attention and you have so much more to talk about because yes, you probably will talk about FODMAPs as a part of that, but you you're also addressing their pain point flat belly. So that leads you into talking about like their bathing suit and how they're fitting into their shorts.

And they're just depending who they are and the lives that they lead. That's going to allow you to have like much broader conversations that apply to her as opposed to just making it this like boring, like don't eat gluten, don't eat this kind of email, right? So focus on helping your audience solve a problem that they want to solve. And you are going to make a much more interesting challenge for yourself. And it kind of brings me to another question that came in from our group. And this came from, and I'm going to mispronounce your name, I think, and I apologize in advance. I'm going to say Meedy, Mighdy, something like that. She said, I want to put together a pre-summer detox challenge. How would you name it to make it more catchy? So same idea. And actually inside the masterclass that I just told you guys about a few minutes ago, I am going to give you a formula for how to name these things and how to talk about these things so that they are most enticing to your audience.

But I think even before you start naming it specifically, just like the concept of like, what am I actually doing these five days for people are, I'm just providing a detox. That's what it is. Hey, it's a detox. Sign-Up for a detox. If you ever wanted to detox, you can do it right now before the summer. I mean, that's okay. Some people are going to want to do that, but what would happen if instead of just calling it what it is, it's a detox, you focus more on their pain point and the, that they want to solve. And like the why behind, like why does it matter? Why would they actually sign up for this program in the first place? And suddenly you're not running a detox, you're running a, get your energy back five day challenge, right? Or since you were talking about like a pre-summer detox here, maybe it's something about shedding, their winter layers or the program that I'm actually running right now.

You guys, I suppose I could have called it a detox. I could have been like, it's a detox. It's a five day detox. It's cool. That's it. But instead I'm focusing on the idea of overcoming quarantine burnout. My cause my audience of women or women who are already teetering on the edge of burnout, chronic stress, that's their middle name. And so now we've been in lockdown for months and months and we are just starting to break out and everybody's feeling that drag I'm having been in the house and you know, what's been going on for the past few months. So anyway, the idea is to overcome quarantine burnout in just five days. Okay. Now you're saying something that somebody wants to hear. I literally had somebody like right back to an email about that and go quarantine burnout. I have that. I know. So, this is the check you want to lead with the pain point that a particular group of people have that they're experiencing.

And then it certainly becomes much more interesting and more catchy and much more likely to get signups from your target market. Here's some other things that you need to know about a five day challenge. I'm kind of like how people are not going to be paying attention. I just think there's some things that you don't expect. We kind of expect that we're going to put, put out some sort of process for five days, everyone's going to pay attention. Everyone is going to follow it. Everybody's going to get a particular result. And that can get a little bit scary, scary, because you're like, how can I promise results? How can I promise anything in just five days? Right? Like, so just want to like let you exhale that let's get that off your shoulders. You don't have to carry that this idea that you have to create change for somebody in five days, that's rarely going to happen.

Of course. But five days is a good amount of time to help somebody let's say map out a plan. So if you said five days to a personalized, flat belly plan, you're not promising that they're going to have a flat belly, a perfectly flat belly after five days. And so when you say you're going to help them create a plan to get it, you are being, you were standing in your integrity, right? And at the end of that five days, she is going to have a better sense of what's causing her bloating. Right. She's going to, whatever, whatever the steps are that you take her through in those five days, she's probably going to see, Oh yeah, I've been eating this kind of food or, Oh yeah, I need to do more of these kinds of exercises or, Oh yeah. I shouldn't be taking that sort of supplement or whatever.

And she's going to better be able to fix her problem or feel like she can fix her problem. And that is a, that's a huge wooden, that's a huge win. Even if you don't actually fix the entire problem. I also want to say, it's a perfect lead in to selling your services. So if you think you could help someone better understand their problem and the possible solutions, first of all, they're going to think you're a genius. They're going to walk away from your five day challenge. Like, yeah, I got what I need here. This was so valuable. This person's so great. LA LA LA and then like five minutes later, five days later, five months later, or however long it takes them to realize, Oh my God, how do I actually do this? I mean, I know what I'm supposed to do, but I don't really understand.

It's not totally working. What about this? I have to travel. I have to do like, you know what I mean, people, you can give information, but implementing it is a thing that people will pay you for. So they're still going to struggle after your five day challenge, even if they initially think, wow, this was awesome. They're going to struggle putting a plan into action. And that's why they would hire a coach. Let's see, Maradella says great ideas. I wanted to do a, create your personal anti-stress toolbox five day challenge. Now I'm thinking to make it an email program. So in fact, a challenge really is an email program Maradella. We call it a five day challenge as sort of shorthand for like something that you do over five days with people. But almost invariably, the base of that program is, is an email that goes out once every day.

In fact, there's usually six emails. I'll be honest, you guys, cause you're going to send an email when I call day zero. So the day before, just to remind everybody that you're going to be starting and make sure they have what they need and just giving them a heads up. And then days one, two, three, four, five, you would have those emails too. So six emails total. So if that's all you did, right, all you did was send those six emails then yeah. You can still be calling it like a five day challenge. That's fine. You're going to help somebody do something. And just by BS or sometimes it's just like you know, for five days I'm going to be providing such and such some value. You know, you can, you can run this however you want. But anyway, the difference between a challenge and a five-day email program is it's basically the same thing.

Okay. So keep it at that. And then she said maybe she needs a more catchy title. So what did you have here create your personal anti-stress toolbox five day challenge. It's a couple words too long, perhaps, but usually what I do, if I have a headline that goes on my opt in page headline can be a little bit longer, right? So it's going to have like a verb in the beginning. It's going to be like, you know, sign up to create your plan, like exactly what you have here, your plan. So I have to create your anti-stress toolbox in just five days. And then for short, you might call it the anti-stress five day challenge, right? Like sometimes you just need to be able to say it quickly. So I think that could be fine. Alrighty. Oh, I see. So Maradella was saying she was maybe going to do this with videos, and you know, more complicated materials, but likes keeping it simple just to email.

Yes. You can always add more, but start with the basics please. You guys, please don't overwhelm yourselves. One other thing that I think you need to know before running a five day challenge is that as I mentioned, people don't always pay attention and sometimes they do not participate at all. And that doesn't mean that you've have failed. That doesn't mean that your challenge isn't working or that you're not doing good job. I want you to make it okay. If people don't participate, right. We just have to honor that like everyone's at their different place, like on their own path, some people are going to be hanging on your, every word and other people are not even going to open the emails. And then a lot of people will be opening them and reading and maybe even, you know, clicking through. And if you had a video, maybe they're watching it, but they're not actually doing anything.

They're not taking action in their life. From our perspective as coaches, it's like, Oh, this isn't working. You know, people aren't making progress, but I want you to know that as a business, it's still working because if someone ops in, first of all, that means now they're on your mailing list. If you've done it. Right. So now someone is on your mailing list. When that right there, it could be like the marker of success for your whole challenge. And also they're saying, yeah, I want to hear from you for the next five days. They're like, please, who wants more emails? This person is saying, yes, I want to hear from you for five days in a row. That also is a win, right? So they're saying, yes, please market to me. Yes. Please tell me more about you and what you do. That's terrific. So even if they literally don't take a single step that you've outlined for them, you have gotten somewhere like you are achieving what you need to achieve with your business, at least in some way.

Okay. So you can feel really good about it. This somebody might have a bad week or for whatever reason, they're not able to participate at a hundred percent. I never expect full participation from people. And I try to cater to that idea. So like on day two, I might say, it's okay if you didn't get to the thing on day one, here's what you can do now. Right? So you really want to like, not make people feel like they have failed and you want to be able to still give them a small win, even if they're only able to like dip their toe in on a couple of the days. So just thinking of it as a chance for you to showcase yourself, showcase your work, you're showcasing your personality. Like what I love about five day challenges is they're, they're kind of casual. It's not like a webinar where we tend to get like a little bit stiff when we're presenting, you know, where's our microphone, they're a little more casual and you have this whole five day span for people to get to know you.

And that goes a long way. It's like building that whole like no like, and trust factor. So even if you get people who don't do the challenge, they are coming to you. And it's very possible that on the side, maybe they haven't participated fully, but I've had this happen quite a bit on the side. They'll be like, Hey, by the way, can I hire you privately? Or like, Hey, by the way, do you do consultations? Like I like to just work with you. Maybe they don't even want to participate in the challenge that has happened to me a number of times. So that's another way that you can win and you're going to have past clients participate. Cause they already love you. And here's a chance to do something with you again. And it's very likely that they're going to share this challenge with a friend.

It's one thing for a past client to say to their friend, Oh, I just paid a couple thousand dollars to work with health coach. You should do that too. But if someone's like, Hey, I used to work with Michelle. She's awesome. She's running this free thing. Isn't that so much easier for people to share and their friends are going to be like, Oh, you had a good experience with her. I'll totally do it. It's free. Why not? I just had this happen. Actually one of my past clients emailed me this week and said that she had referred my program my five day program to her friend. Who's now doing it and loving it and having a really great experience. So now that person's on my mailing list and because she came through a word of mouth referral, like this is how you create lifelong raving fans. And it does not matter how much of the challenge they actually complete. So I just wanted to put that expectation out there because people are busy obviously. But if they're open it open to hearing what you have to say for five days, that's a huge win.

Our says, I like how you made the connection to join your podcast. I have a Facebook business page so I can go live there. Okay. So what Maradella's talking about is like, right. I think what you're talking about is that right now, inside my five day lift challenge, not really a challenge, but I find the Lift program, same idea, one email one on days, one, two, three, four, five. And when I, when I had the concept for this in my business, the business goal was to drive more traffic to my podcast, not this podcast, but my she's got power podcasts. And to get reviews on that podcast because it's newer and it just needs some extra love. So one thing that I have been doing, and this is totally optional is each day of the week, I am providing a link to a, to a podcast episode that I recorded specifically for that day of the challenge.

So you can link to a podcast, you can link to a Facebook page, you can link to a Facebook group. You can link to blog posts. You can like no where at all, but it is an opportunity for you to kind of get your audience involved with more of the things that you're doing in your business. It's a lots of ways to win with a five day challenge. That's really my overall message for you guys. Like there's no one way to do it. And you can customize the way that you prepare your challenge so that it really meets like the goals that you need to meet in your business. So again, I'm going to walk you through the whole process of creating your own challenge. Like these are the emails you need. These are the graphics that you're going to need here. If you want to do a Facebook group, here's how you do it.

Like if you want to do a giveaway, how you do it, we're going to be talking about not just the pieces, but the strategy, right then those pieces, the content, and then the promotions. You don't do all this work and then nobody signs up. We're going to go through that whole process so that you feel confident and you're able to make it happen quickly for yourself. So you can get details about that. And you can sign up for this masterclass happening June 24 at healthcoachpower.com/5day. That's the number 5 D A Y. All right. Awesome. I'm going to answer a couple extra questions since I have a few minutes. You guys, if you're here live and you have a question for me, just throw it in the comment area, but here's some that came from our group in the past week.

Amanda said I'm one week away from wrapping up with my first practice client in her 12 week coaching program. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to close out a 12 week program? What does session number 12 look like? This is not something we reviewed in WellCoaches module one and I would love some advice.

It's always interesting for me to hear what you guys learn or don't learn inside all the different health coaching programs that are out there these days. So, anyway, thank you for that, Amanda. Here's what I always do on a last session. If it's somebody that I think I'm done with, I think they're done with me. I think we have achieved what we meant to achieve, and that is usually the case. I use that last session for a future pacing. We call it right? So future pacing is when you ask someone it's a little bit of a meditation, or you can do this, however you want. It could be on paper.

I tend to do it a little bit more like a meditation, where I asked my client to close her eyes and breeze. And then I will ask them to imagine themselves in the future. And we start with like one year from now, one year from now, where will you be? Where are you in this vision? What are you doing? Who are you with? What, you know, how do, how are you feeling? You know, just really imagining for herself where she's going to be in a year, how old she's going to be humbled. Her kids are going to be, if she has kids, that sort of thing. And it's always pretty interesting. Then I go, okay, we're going to go further into the future. Let's go five years from now. How old are you going to be in five years? What's going on in your life? Then just close your eyes and imagine the scene.

And then we do it for 10 years and let me do it for 20 years. And it can be a really powerful exercise and allows people to see the future that you've helped them begin to create kind of get goosebumps, just talking about it. So that's an exercise. I always say for that last session. And then if it's somebody who has not fully reached their goals, or as clearly found out that there's more that they could be doing, you know, this is also the session where you would offer for them to re up with you and either repeat that 12 week session and a 12 week program in this case, or sometimes you might have, you know, shorter chunks, like four session packages or whatever you're going to offer to people who already been clients in your full program. Anyway. Good luck with that, Amanda.

Okay. And I'm going to do one more here, although Maradella is asking for that link again. So, for that masterclass, you guys on how to create and market your five-day challenge, it's healthcoachpower.com/5day.

Okay. Heck yeah. Our last question is from Tatiana. Tatiana says, how do you break the ice in that first coaching session? So I like this one, cause Amanda was asking about the last coaching session and then Tatiana wanted to hear about the first coaching session. So what again, what I do and you know, as you coach and how did you get more experienced? You're going to come up with your own way of doing things. So it's not like what I do is the right way, but what I like to do with my first session is review the intake form and the food diary that I've had, somebody fill out ahead of time. So as soon as somebody signs up for my program, they are automatically sent a pretty extensive intake form or health history form. For those of you who are familiar with that phrase.

But I ask a lot of questions about a lot of areas of their life. And then I also ask them to complete a three-day food diary. They complete that. They send it to me and then we use that first paid session to go over all of that information. And I don't mean go over it like, okay, you said your name is Kimberly. Is your name Kimberly great. You live at one 35 grand street. Not like that, but you know, I'm going through it. And I'm like, Oh, that's really interesting that you mentioned you have an allergy to, you know, whatever nuts, like tell me about that. Or if I notice that there are certain topics that seem to sort of be like hot topics for them, we'll spend a little bit more time there. I'll dig into those areas a little bit. I will tell you, in many of my first sessions with my clients, somebody is in tears sometimes it's me.

No, but like, like, like we're touched, you know, or it's like, it's emotional sometimes to dig into these important parts of our lives. It's not usually just about the food. Like tell me how much fiber you're eating, but it would be like, Oh, why is it difficult for you to get breakfast in the morning? And then they start talking about their schedule and their routine and how overwhelmed they are. And you know, it, it can be, can be really powerful if you have these conversations, like really getting deep into the conversation. So we do that with intake forum, and also with the food diary, which allows me as a practitioner to not just see what somebody's eating, but like step into their life, you know? Oh, I see here that you ate this same thing for dinner three days in a row, like what's that about?

Or I see that you're waking up at four 30 in the morning and eating breakfast at five, like you only went to bed at like 11. Like how is that working out for you? So convenient, like a really interesting way of better understanding a person's life through the tool of a food diary. Anyway, that's the first session. And I find that it breaks that ice real, real quick. Also most of the time your are going to be most excited on that first session they've been waiting for it. They just paid you like, that's like the most important session, in my opinion, no pressure. I'm not saying not to put pressure on you. I'm just saying it's that, you know, they're really excited in that session. So if there was ever a time to like ask the questions or get into it, like go for it, don't feel like you'd have to tip toe around and break the ice in a, in a quiet, polite way they want to be there.

Amazing. What's Pamela saying over here? She says we'd love to participate in your masterclass. Yes. Thanks for doing this. I am seeing results from your make money now program, your energy and experience are very helpful. Oh, Pamela. Good. I'm glad you brought that up. Some of you participated. When did we do that? Maybe last month it was a five day. Make money now challenge. Boom. That was a five day challenge. So if you liked how I ran that, that's what I'm going to be teaching you how to do in the master class. And then you can use it to grow your own mailing list. You can use it to sell your sir your services and products, you know, at the end of that. And you will be able to benefit from it for years to come. I've run five-day challenges now for like on a consistent basis for, I'm going to say like three or four years now, and I've made hundreds of thousands of dollars as a result.

So I definitely want to pass on that, that format, that structure, that like formula to you so that you can start applying it in your own business. It doesn't it's. I think it's the easiest. I think it's the easiest thing. We get so much easier than a webinar and it's so much more personal and fun. At least it is for me. Anyway, can't wait to go through all of that with you again, if you guys want to sign up for the masterclass it's healthcoachpower.com/5day until then keep asking great questions in our Facebook group. And I will be back next week to answer them amazing. Have a great day. You guys. Bye bye.