#147: Let’s Map Out Your First 5-Day Challenge

Well, hey there health coaches. Are you ready to do some workshopping today? Because I feel like getting in to the weeds with you, getting into the mud and figuring out how to actually get you started with your first five day challenge. I thought we could use this time to do some brainstorming and outlining together so that you can hit the ground running and do this thing. How does that sound? If you're here, live, say hello in the comments and let me know what kind of challenge you're thinking of creating, even if you're not sure what comes to mind, what feels fun? What's something that you might like to do. These kinds of events are so much fun to offer your audience. I don't know if you caught last week's episode, but last week I shared how five-day challenges can be. Oh, so helpful in building your business for a variety of reasons, you can go back and check out episode number 146 if you miss that and coming up in just a few days, by the way, is our live create and market your first five-day challenge master class.

It is a full length masterclass. This isn't like a quickie or an overview. This is like a deep dive into all the nuts and bolts, all the logistics. I'm going to teach you everything you need to know, help you refine your five day challenge, create all the materials that you need with done for you templates. Yes, I'm making those for you and show you how to promote it. And you can sign up for the masterclass right now at healthcoachpower.com/5day. I'm going to drop that link in the comments right here, in case you want to check it out. In fact, this masterclass that we're doing on Friday is part of the fast track curriculum. So, if you missed out on joining HPUs fast track semester this spring, but you want to take part in just this one piece of it.

I'm so happy to have some a la cart tickets available for just this event. So again, the link to sign up for that is healthcoachpower.com/5day. But we're going to get you started today with a plan with the vision and with an outline. I mean, without an outline, you are sunk. So this is the most important part. If that sounds good, just hit me up in the comments, say, Hey, Michelle, I'm here. I have an idea for my five day challenge and I'm ready to rock. What sort of five day challenge might you want to run in your own business? What would be most useful for you? And remember we got to keep it fun when it comes to nutrition. Sometimes these topics can feel boring. So, we want to make sure that we're really delivering that only something informative and useful, but something enjoyable for both you and for your audience.

I think that's one of the joys of having your own business, as you can make sure that it's fun. That's not something that you're, that you're dragging yourself out of bed for, but that you want to do. And I know whenever I'm running an event like this, I hop out of bed in the morning. Cause I'm like, Ooh, I got so much to do today. I got emails that are going out. I got people I got to support. Anyway, it's all good.

Before we get into everything I have planned for you today, I want to give a big shout out to LJ wellness who wrote this five star review on Apple podcasts. She said informative and practical health coaching business. This is a motivational yet very practical podcast for health coaches. Michelle does an excellent job of inspiring coaches to just get out there and get started. She also shares her many useful marketing tips and other things she's learned from being in the business for over 10 years. I'm a new certified health coach. I found this podcast to be extremely helpful in getting started big, thanks to Michelle for putting out such good content week after week. LJ wellness, thank you. I so appreciate you for not only listening, but taking time to write a review.

This is exactly how I'm able to continue bringing you free weekly content week after week. So thank you so much for that. Your reviews help us reach more coaches and please send your mailing address to support@healthcoachpower.com and just reference episode number 147. We have a little thank you gift to send your way. And for everybody listening, I would love to read your review on the air next week. Thanks in advance for that.

All right. So who do we have here? Melissa wants to run a challenge. Melissa, I already have yours in my notes, cause I know we wanted to talk about this today for diabetics, right? Replacing carbs with more veggies, less insulin and help them lose weight. We can do all that in five days, right?

Maddie says she's here and always ready to rock. I love that. Julie says play with your food, add one new vegetable a day for five days. Okay. That's a concept for a challenge as well. Great. So you guys have some ideas here. I have one from Carolyn, Carolyn says she would like to do some sort of fitness, healthy choice challenge aimed primarily at midlife women. So before we go any further with this, the most important thing that you can do before you start before you get the idea and you're like, you know, look, it sounds like a good idea. Like Julie, Oh, Oh one new vegetable every day for five days. Yeah. That's cool. Like that's an idea, very specific idea for a challenge, but back the truck up because we want to make sure that you are going to be attracting the right people to your world and to your mailing list.

So, before we do anything, pause, pause on your great ideas, step back and go, who am I targeting? Who would I like to work with? Who is my ideal client, right? Who is my target market is really what I'm asking. And not only who, cause you want to think about who that person is, right? Like, is she a mom? Is she a grandma? Is she 20 years old? And in college, is it a 60 year old man who likes to play golf? Is it right? Like who is this challenge going to be for?

These should be like your perfect perspective clients. And then what is the big problem that they want to solve? Like what's on their mind. Very few people are like, just, gosh, darn it. I want to eat more vegetables. Just, just for the heck of it. I just want to eat more vegetables. I'm so worried that I can't eat enough vegetables. Like, you know, people have the idea of eating more vegetables. Yes. But it's usually for a reason. And so you want to think about what's the reason that this person would want to do anything to help their health. What's their motivator is that they want to lose weight. Is it that they have been diagnosed with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, autoimmune disease, you know, what is the thing that they are really worried about? And that is the big problem that you want to wrap your five-day challenge around.

So it's not a general, hey, for anybody who wants to be healthier five days to do that, it's too vague, right? We want to do something that's really quite specific. So for example, let's, um, let's look at Melissa. Melissa says some, uh, the, her ideas were to replace carbs with more veggies so that her diabetics could use less insulin and lose weight. And, I know Melissa that you're targeting midlife women who have diabetes. Okay. So you know who you're targeting their midlife women with diabetes and what is the problem that you want to help them solve? My question to you would be is the big problem that they really want help with bring down their blood sugar, like numbers or using less insulin. Like, is that really important for them? Or is it the part where they lose weight?

Now, both are important. And like from like a health coach perspective or from, you know, a doctor's perspective or whatever we might say, well, we really want to get that A1C number down, you know, but I don't care about that. I care about what they most want and are most likely to, to say, yes, I need help with that. Yes. I want to do that. Yes. I want to work on that for five days. Right? So then you're going to choose your topic according to what they want help with. Makes sense. Cause you can tell someone all day long, you need to eat more vegetables or you need to worry about, you know, whatever, and they're not going to sign up unless it's something that they want to do. So Melissa said lose weight and get off meds again. I would choose one or the other that is the most compelling reason for them so that you can create a five day challenge specifically aimed at that where, so I think that's pretty straightforward for you, Melissa. That's the good news.

Now for Carolyn who wrote that she wants to do some sort of fitness or healthy choice challenge aimed primarily at midlife women, we kind of get more specific there. So mid-life women are like, I don't know, there's billions of those. So within midlife women, maybe we can be a little more specific make midlife women who live in Chicago or midlife women who have Hashimoto's disease. You know, so try to narrow that down Carolyn, and then yes, it will be some sort of fitness or healthy choice challenge. But rather than it being vague like that, cause a vague challenge would go like this on Monday, we're going to eat a new vegetable on Tuesday. We're going to drink more water on Thursday. We're all going to go out for a 10 minute walk. All that stuff is fine, but people are not going to sign up for that as easily as they will sign up.

If you promise them some sort of help with the problem that they want to solve. So it's the same question I just asked Melissa. We know that, um, maybe she wants to lose weight. Okay, great. Maybe we know that they want to reduce symptoms of a particular diagnosis that they have. Maybe they want to get rid of some sort of skin conditions, psoriasis or eczema or something that has been bothering them. So rather than starting with like, it's going to be a challenge about fitness or healthy eating or more vegetables or meditating. I want you to instead start with, what problem can we help solve? Asia had also written yes, I'm planning a five day challenge, helping women get clear on their health goals and ways to change their routine. Asia. What you're missing there again is what is the problem that they want to solve?

Like why would they have a health goal and why would they want to change their routine? There must be something that they want to change or fix a problem that they want to solve. Okay. So that's the first step is the targeting, who is the person and what is their big problem? Write that down. Okay. Lots of other ideas coming in here, Kristy staying or sugar detoxes and challenges. Overdone. I think it would work well with my niche. I don't think they're overdone. Although there are a lot of them out there. Um, I tend to think that again, instead of saying, Hey, we're going to eliminate sugar for five days. You want to lead with the problem. We're going to help you solve your X problem in five days. And the way that we're going to do that, we're going to eliminate sugar. You know what I mean?

But you want to lead with the pain point. That's just good marketing right there. Okay. So now that you have an idea for what your topic might be, who you're serving, what big problem your challenge is going to help them with let's create a headline. Okay. This is where it gets fun. And none of us are going to be like professional copy writers overnight. But, let's, I'm going to give you a couple of tips for how to put a headline together. By the way, I do see my video flickering in and out. I don't know why that's happening, but I'm recording over here on the other side. So I'm just going to keep going. Okay. Here's the headline formula that I have for you. You going to need this headline for when you create an opt-in page for your five-day challenge, that's where somebody is going to sign up, right?

So you need a headline for that page. I think you should start with a verb. A verb is actionable. A verb says do this, right? So first pick a verb, like create or discover, right? Write that out first, you know, and we're going to, we're going to create something. We're going to discover something. We're going to plan something. We're going to uncover something, right. All verbs, very actionable. And then next you want to pick a noun that describes your offering. Like, are you giving them a solution? Are you giving them a process? Are you giving them a blueprint or secrets? Right. So it might be like create a blueprint to, or discover the secrets to... right? This is going to make for sort of an exciting, actionable headline. And then lastly, when a name, the specific result that a participant can expect in five days.

So for example, um, let's say for Melissa's example, with the diabetics, it could be, learn a step-by-step process for diabetics to lose weight in just five days. That sounds so much better than like the five day diabetes challenge, right? Like, can you see how the first option was so much more specific and exciting? And it feels more like something that you want to join, learn a step-by-step process. Wow. For diabetics to lose weight, I'm a diabetic. I want to lose weight. And in just five days, that's a no brainer. So there you go, Melissa, if you want to run with that, you can, here's some other examples like, um, maybe you have moms who have, you know, two and three year olds at home and you want to run a challenge for them. It could be discovered the secrets to losing the baby weight in just five days.

Or maybe you're working with women who've gone through a divorce, right? This doesn't all have to be about weight loss or dealing with medical diagnoses. It could be something like five days to uncover the path, to feeling like yourself again, after a divorce. Nice. All right. Just hit the thumbs up if you're with me. And this is all making sense so far, love it. You might have to go through several iterations of your headline. Don't get me wrong. This is not something that just flies off the top of your head. I'm just making some up on the spot here, but you're going to sit with this for a while. You're going to try this formula and see if it works for you. Like I said, a verb and then, and now, and then what the result is going to be. And like I said earlier, you will use this headline on your opt-in page, which I'm going to teach you about during our create and market, your first five-day challenge masterclass this week, I'm mostly going to be teaching you how to promote the challenge, how to get people to that page so that they actually opt in and join you.

That part is so super important. I don't want you to spend hours and hours and hours creating the content for your five day challenge, but then not promote it effectively. I actually would prefer you did it the other way around. I almost always promote things and get people to sign up before I've really created any of the content because nothing will motivate you faster than knowing that you've got a bunch of people who just signed up for this thing. So if you want to learn more about how to actually create that opt in page so that people will sign up and get people there are classes happening in just a few days. So go sign up for it. Now is that healthcoachpower.com/5day.

Okay, good. I see lots of thumbs ups, which means that first of all, my video is still going. That's good. And second of all, you guys are here with me. You're understanding what we're talking about. Melissa says I like the lose belly fat in five days, because number one problem, that midlife women with type two diabetes, that's what they want to solve. Okay. And that's great to use the words that they use. Like if they talk about belly fat and how much they hate their belly fat, then like you're going to want to use the words back to them so that you are speaking their language. If they use the term muffin top or love handles, or I don't know, whatever else they might say, like it's, whatever you hear often, those are the words that you want to use back. Okay. So there are two kinds of challenges. Now that you have an idea or a concept for what your challenge is going to be about, how will you actually structure your five days?

Is anybody wondering about that? All right. So I think there's two different ways to go about it. This is what I see. Uh, you know, all the different coaches that I've worked with, they tend to fall into these two categories. One would be, you're going to have five days of doing the same thing, five days straight, right? So, this would be like a sugar detox or some sort of detox where we say, okay, you're not going to eat this, this and this. And we're going to do that protocol for five days. Okay. So that's pretty straightforward and you can absolutely do it that way, the other way to go about it. And this is the one that I usually do is I think about the five days as a project. Like if you said we're going to build a birdhouse in five days, you know, the first day it would be like cut out the shapes of the wood that you will need.

And the second day would be like, put the walls on the bird house. And the third day you would put the roof on, right? And at the end you would have completed some sort of projects. So that's another way to go about it, where you would have a small task or a mini challenge each day, that when you kind of add them all together, by the end, you have the result of the challenge. So what I would like you to sketch out for yourself, and I always do this when I run a challenge is day one day, two day, three day, four day five, and think, okay, how can I break down my topic into five pieces? Right? Cause you get, you get five opportunities to share something. So, if I'm going again, build a bird house, we'd start by cutting out the pieces day one.

If Melissa is going to help her diabetics lose belly fat in five days, well, what's going to be the first step there. There's no one right answer, you know, but perhaps through your own experience or your experience with your clients, you know what the most impactful thing is that they can do first. So maybe it's something like, um, on day one, we're going to focus on adding more protein to breakfast and that's going to be that day's challenge. And then on day number two, we are going to swap out, you know, dessert, your normal dessert for this healthier low-glycemic dessert. I'm just making this up, but you would want to sketch out for each day, what you're going to teach or what you're going to share. And not only that, but have that action for them to take, have that mini or mini challenge for them to do in addition to learning whatever you're teaching them.

So let's say Melissa's going to say on day one, okay. Today, as we aim to get rid of our belly fat, we are going to look at breakfast and I want you to incorporate more protein into your breakfast. Here are some different ways to do that. And then you would say, now click over to our Facebook group and share a picture of your breakfast. It almost doesn't matter what the action is. You just want to give them some way of being held accountable for taking the step. So it could be, share a picture. It could just be tell us what you're going to eat. It could be share your favorite breakfast idea. Um, whatever, whatever makes the most sense for your audience. Okay? But each day has a teaching, a small teaching component, something bite sized, and then some sort of task for them to complete something for them to actually take action on that's related to that day's task.

And then you will continue for days two day three day four and day five. Sandy says, how often do you recommend running a challenge? I just wrapped one up, but now I want to try another one using your formula. You could be writing a challenge all the time. In fact, inside of our masterclass on Friday, I'm going to be teaching about evergreen challenges, which means you can literally be offering it all the time. It can always be working for you, but if you're running something live, I mean, if you're doing it back to back to back to back, people might get a little bit like, Oh boy, there goes Sandy again with another thing that she's running, I can hardly keep up. So, I would space them out, give yourself a month in between or something, give yourself especially time to promote the next challenge.

If you're running something different than what you ran last time, you don't have to wait as long. If you have a really great challenge as you just ran and you want to do it again, I would wait a good three, four months before you do that. And this is so that your warm audience doesn't get bored with your offerings. Doesn't get like, Oh, I just heard about this. You know? Um, and if you're So, offering the same thing to the same group of people, you do want to space it out. However, if you just ran your challenge for like a group at some, uh, corporation that you've been working with, and now you want to run it with a yoga studio, those are two totally separate audiences. So, you don't have to worry about them being too close together.

Let's see here. We also had Susan comment that she would like to do a five day challenge about preparing yourself for a healthy pregnancy. So if you think back about what we've talked about today so far, the first would be who are you trying to serve? And what big problem do they have? So in Susan's case, obviously we're speaking to presumably women of childbearing age and her big problem, or the thing that she wants to solve is making sure that she has a healthy pregnancy. Susan. I was wondering if maybe there was a way to be more specific around this challenge because you know, again, there are billions of women who want to have a healthy pregnancy. Maybe this is for women who have PCOS. Maybe this is for women over 35, right? Like why would they be worried about having a healthy pregnancy and potentially that could work better for you versus a more broad, you know, all women who want to have a healthy pregnancy.

But anyway, if we used our formula of having a verb and noun and a result, a title for Susan's five day challenge could be, create a plan to set yourself, to set yourself up for a healthy pregnancy in just five days. Sounds good. Right? Sounds doable. Oh, it's just five days. I can do that. What other questions do we have here? Terry says that, Oh, I'm sorry. You guys, I know the video is starting and stopping. I can't do anything about that, but I promise you, we are recording it. On the other side, Kelly says women in my group say they have a sugar addiction is kick the sugar habit. Five day challenge to simple as a headline. My audience also says they struggle with consistency in eating healthy. Well, when someone says they struggle with consistency and eating healthy, I'm always like, well, why does that matter?

Because that's not the real problem. Right? And even same with sugar, you eat too much sugar. Well, why is that a problem for you? And then you're going to get to what the real problem is then it's like, because you know, it makes my skin breakout when I eat too much sugar. Or if they say that they struggle with consistency, eating healthy well, that matters because they keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over. And I would frame the challenge again around the pain point, instead of making it about eating consistent, eating healthy in a consistent way or kicking sugar addiction, I would always lead with the pain point. Makes sense.

Okay. So I want you to remember that in just a few days, I am hosting a live masterclass. It will not be live streaming on Facebook like this. So we will not have to deal with any of this Facebook nonsense where the video keeps cutting in and out. We'll be live on zoom together for couple of hours, because I have a lot to share with you from the planning and the strategy to the actual logistics of running the thing. I'm going to teach you everything I know about five-day challenges and you can sign up to join us healthcoachpower.com/5day.

Thank you so much for joining me today and sharing your ideas so that we could brainstorm and do a little bit of generating titles and headlines for you. And even starting to come up with some content ideas. I appreciate you being here because I could sit here and tell you all about five day challenges, but it's so much more helpful when we're using your examples and I'm going to be doing that during the masterclass as well. So I hope to see you there and I will see you back here next week with our next episode, have a great week. Everybody take care.