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Transcript
Hello there everybody. How are you guys doing today? We have a great topic for today’s episode, so I’m thrilled if you’re joining me live or if you’re going to be listening to this later or watching later today. We’re talking about how to put together basically an outline for a five day challenge. You know what I’m talking about. You see these things all over the place and I know you’ve probably thought, Hey, maybe I should run one of these. So just, you know, raise a hand if you’re here. Have you ever participated in some kind of online five day challenge? Maybe it was something that had to do with health and wellness. Maybe it was something to help grow your business, but you understand what I’m talking about. I just want to make sure I’m making sense to you. These things are great. It’s an event that you can throw like a party.
Basically. It’s like a five day party. They’re fun, they’re full of energy, and they are a fantastic way to build your list, to sell your services and to really, really connect with your audience. I mean talk about building raving fans. So I want to tell you exactly how I go about creating this type of content because it’s definitely different than like writing a blog post or hosting a webinar. I mean all that stuff is great, but the five day challenge is kind of unique and I know it’s challenging sometimes to sit down and create your own content from scratch looking at a blank page without any kind of template or starting point. Don’t worry. I have got you covered. I know, I remember actually being in that place thinking I want to run a five day challenge. Uh, what do I do? So on one hand, definitely take out a pencil and take some notes while we’re here.
But you don’t even have to do that because I’ve done all the work for you and I’ve put together a free download that you can just grab, fill in the blanks and create your five day challenge. It’ll make it much easier than trying to start from scratch. And this way you can just really listen to this episode and be present with what we’re talking about today. And download the planner at healthcoachpower.com/5dayplanner. That’s the number five healthcoachpower.com/5dayplanner.
Awesome, so now we can all just sit back, relax and have a chat without you worrying too much about writing down every single thing that I say. Okay, before we dive in, a great big virtual hug is going out to JC Mercer health for leaving this five star review on iTunes. She said, if you’re a health coach, you need this podcast. Heck yeah. She said, I stumbled across Michelle’s podcasts in the last month as I was looking for more resources to help me start my health coaching business. I feel like I found a pot of gold because this podcast and the information Michelle so graciously shares is invaluable. You won’t get fluff from Michelle. She’s very real and honest about the journey of starting a business as a health coach and that’s exactly what I need. Highly recommended. Thank you, Michelle. Thank you so much, JC Mercer. We definitely strive to keep this a fluff free environment around here. I’m so glad you noticed. That’s high on my priority list. So please send your mailing address to support@healthcoachpower.com and just reference episode number 80 we have a little thank you gift to send your way.
So let’s see who do we have live with us? If I have any or I’m sorry if you guys have any questions as we go along, just throw them in the comments. That’s what I’m here for. That’s why I do these things live. And of course if you’re listening later and you have questions, you can always ask them@healthcoachpowercommunity.com.
So, this question initially came from Merli. Merli asked in our group, I swear you guys, I pay attention. She said, how do I run a five-day challenge? It seems like such a simple task, but I have no idea where to start.
Hey, let’s do it. Let’s just do this thing. So where do you start before you start, before you even start thinking about all the details, like Oh my God, do I have to start a Facebook group or how am I going to promote this thing? Hold up. Take a breath. We gotta talk business for a second. Who do you want to attract to your mailing list and to your business? Who is your ideal client? Who is your target market gang?
If you don’t know the answer to this, by now, I’m going to have to refer you back to the episodes we’ve already done about choosing a target market. This is so, so, so important. You want to know who you’re targeting and what big problem they have that you can help solve. Because if you’re not targeting a specific person with a specific type of problem, they’re not going to sign up for your challenge. They’re just not. People are so busy, so you really need to speak to their pain point in such a specific way that they’re just like, Oh my God, I obviously need to do this right now. That’s the first thing. The next thing that I want you to think about, again, this is the strategy behind the tactic. Anybody can put together a bunch of, uh, you know, uh, five emails that go out to a list and call it a five day challenge.
But the difference between it being effective for your business and just kind of being a waste of time is the strategy behind it. Hear me on this. So what I want you to think about very, very carefully is what would my ideal client need to understand, need to believe? What do they need to know about their big problem in order to want to hire me in order to want to buy my services, not just to in this challenge, but what do they need to know to take that next leap and become a paying client.
So for example, maybe it’s, um, you know, I’m in my, in my health coaching practice, I work with women with chronic stress and burnout. What they need to know is chronic stress and burnout is not normal. Their myriad of symptoms are not okay and they’re all related. So when I reach out to this group, that’s what I need them to know. Cause then they realize the gravity of their situation and they are much more likely to hire me. Otherwise they’re like, Oh yeah, I’m stressed. Whatever. It’s fine.
So maybe you need to emphasize to your target market how important it is for them to solve their problem or maybe, well, you’re going to have to think about it. What’s going to make this person feel strongly enough about their problem that they will want to work with you because inside your challenge, the goal is not to try to solve their whole problem. It’s not like you know, I’m going to help you lose your 50 pounds in the next five days. Like of course not. First of all, that would never happen and if you promise anything huge like that, it would look like you were selling snake oil. So don’t over promise, but you do want in your challenge to move them sort of one or two rungs up the ladder closer to their goal at the top.
You want them to see movement because that makes them trust you, that makes them know that you can help them. Oh, there’s a great quote I put on my Instagram recently. What is it? Do you guys follow me @healthcoachpowercommunity on Instagram? It was like if you want to tell, if you want people to believe that you can help them, help them, duh. Right? So like that’s what we’re doing in a five day challenge. You do actually want to help them. However, you need to very purposefully leave a gap between what they’ve learned in these five days or what they’d taken away from these five days and where they need to go next. Like as in by working with you. Okay, so you’re not giving away the whole kit and caboodle. You’re not going to try to support someone from start to finish, but you are going to try to move them one or two rungs up the ladder.
Make good sense? Okay, so hopefully now you’ve got some ideas in your head and if anybody’s here with me and you have ideas about what you might like to do with a challenge like this, I would love to hear your ideas. I see guys running programs like this and I just always, always hope that you have a strong strategy behind it because they can be a lot of work, a lot of fun. But a lot of work, so the most important thing I think you can do to number one, be able to promote this challenge and number two, really wrap your own head around what you’re doing. What you need to create is to write a headline. I always start here, I write by creating the headline that’s going to attract people to sign up and it frames my thinking for, okay, now what have I promised?
This is what I’ve promised. This is what I have to deliver and I have a little formula you. It’s going to help you get to that headline faster because like let’s say you’re running like a, I don’t know, like five day cut out all the sugar of your diet challenge and you just create a page that says five day cut the sugar challenge sign up here. Nobody’s going to sign up for that. A couple people are going to sign up for that, but most people are not going to sign up for that. It sounds like work and not that many people really want to cut sugar out of their diet and this is why you end up with a lot of health coaches signing up for your stuff instead of the people you really want to reach. Okay, so just trust me on this.
The first part of your headline is to pick a verb. Are you going to be creating something during this challenge? Maybe it’s like by the end of this challenge you will have created a family meal planning template or something like that. So you might use the verb create or maybe the verb is discover or learn or whatever. Pick a verb that describes what they’re going to be doing in this challenge with you and they will say it is always quite effective to not just give somebody a five day experience like, Oh, every day we’re going to meditate for 10 minutes. That’s kind of nice, but it is more effective to give people like sort of a project. Each day is different and each day gives them one little step at a time. They’re more likely to stick with you for the five days because they want to finish this project of sorts, whatever it is that you’re giving them.
So, at the end of the five days, they’re going to have like their personalized family meal planning template. I’m just making that up as an example. Then each day you’re going to give them a little bit and a little bit and a little bit. So you would say create. And the next we want to pick a noun that describes what your offering. What are you offering? Are you offering to create a tangible thing like a meal planning template? Are you going to be offering solutions? That’s a noun. Uh, are you going to be offering a process? Are you offering secrets? You know, so what exactly are you giving? And then you want to name the specific results. Can I underline that again? The specific results that a participant can expect in five days.
Okay. So let me give you a couple of examples here. How about this one? Learn. That’s the verb. A step by step process to stop 3:00 PM sugar cravings. That’s the noun. The noun was process. Learn a step by step process to stop 3:00 PM sugar cravings in just five days. Okay, so now here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to learn something with me. You’re going to get a step by step process and just five days and I’m talking to people who have that 3:00 PM sugar crash and speaking to their pain point. Not telling them that we’re just going to sign up and stop eating sugar for five days cause that’s a real bummer. I’m telling them I’m going to help stop their cravings. That is their point. Here’s another one. Discover very exciting verb there. Discover my secrets to losing the baby weight in just five days. So of course nobody’s going to lose their 40 pounds of baby weight or whatever it is in just five days, but they can certainly get all of your secrets to how to do it.
They can certainly start changing a few things, right? You could do want to over promise. You want to be truthful to what you’re going to be gift giving them. They’re also really appealing to a big pain point. Like it’s really something I need. Here’s another one. Uncover your path to feeling like yourself again after a divorce in just five days. So did you notice that all of these I’m saying in just five days because that’s really cool. That makes people think like, Oh, this is fast. This is easy. I can do anything for five days. It’s free. Why wouldn’t I sign up? So definitely include the part about in five days or you can put it in the beginning. You could say something like, get five days or five days to create 30 freezer meals for your family. Hey, that’s cool. By the end of five days, I’m going to have 30 freezer meals in my freezer.
Awesome! Sign me up. Okay, so I hope you see where I’m going with this. You want to create a compelling headline and a compelling headline needs to have those three elements that we talked about. Now, of course, once you get into the challenge, whether you’re referring to the challenge to the participants or if you’re saying, Hey, did you sign up for my blankety blank challenge? You need a title for it. But I like to write the headline first and then create a shorter headline that I can use, like as I need to refer to the, to the event itself. So, um, you know, for the ones that we just discussed, maybe we would call it the five days sugar cravings, challenge the buy, buy baby weight challenge, the five day, feel like yourself again, challenge or the freezer meals challenge. Pick something short because you’re going to want to have that as like a little tag on all of your emails.
Or if you’re running this inside of a Facebook group, you know you’re going to want to have that title lying around. So just this is what we’re talking about today. This is a challenge post. Alrighty. Let’s see what some of you guys have to say so far.
Kelly says last week I did a six day autumn health reset challenge. It went okay. A well worth while process. Kelly, we’re going to talk about in just a minute how to measure success, right? Because on one hand kudos to you just for pulling something like that off is a win. Absolutely. And anytime I can pull something like this off and not have any major technical problems or like embarrassing like Oh my God, I sent the email for day three on day one, I just Pat myself on the back right away for that. But I do want you guys to have a goal in mind when you set out with these things so that you can measure your success and you can figure out if this was worthwhile or not.
Andrea says, I’m thinking of doing a five day challenge for weight loss following a five day anti-inflammatory diet. The meal plan, we’ll have all the info on secondary foods and a five day emails will be all about primary foods. Learn how to meal prep step by step for weight loss in just five days. Okay, so that’s a lot. That’s a lot. You got to think like people are signing up for five days and they’re giving you an email address and no money. So like they’re not super committing very much to the process. So I would advise against doing anything too complicated and try to make it something, and this is a great lead into what I wanted to talk about next. Try to make it something that people can accomplish easily in like 5 to 15 minutes a day. Because if it’s any more complicated than that, they’re just not going to do it.
And they, it’s not that they’re going to think badly of you necessarily, but they’re going to start feeling bad about themselves. Oh, I couldn’t even do this five day thing. I couldn’t even get through day one and then they’re just going to quit before they’d even started. So you don’t want to overwhelm anybody. You want to keep each days work or each day sort of, I can usually call it a mini challenge. So each day sort of has its own little piece of work or many challenge to something that will take them five to 15 minutes and no more than that or you will lose them, I promise. Yeah. So the next thing that you want to do, once you know what you’re going to be delivering, is it appropriate as the scope of your idea appropriate to the scope of the five day challenge? Again, keeping it simple, I like to really map it out for myself very explicitly.
Okay, I know by the end I want to give them X, Y, Z. How do I get them there? And I think what a lot of people do is you approach it like we’ll everyday for five days we are going to do like the same routine and you’re going to give everybody like a, you know, drink lemon water, use your tongue scraper, eat dark leafy greens and you’re going to give them like a list of things to do every day for five days. But again, I want to suggest that you don’t do that because instead if you build, you can tease them about what’s coming next and they are going to want to stick with you for the five days to learn everything as opposed to kind of getting it all on day one and then it’s just like, Oh yeah, I’m supposed to do that again.
In which case they’re probably just not going to keep showing up for you or for themselves. So on day one, think on, day one, I’m going to teach my challenge participants and think of one thing, one thing that you want them to get right off the bat. One simple idea, one simple trick, whatever it is, and I’m going to solidify their understanding by asking them to X, Y, Z. So what I don’t want you to do in a challenge is just send, like, just send a tip like Hey, it’s day one of the challenge and my tip of the day is to chop all of your dark leafy green vegetables as soon as you get home from the grocery store and put them in the fridge. That way they’ll stay fresh, period. Because people will read that and they’ll go, Oh Hmm. And they’re not that interested.
And they’re probably not going to it because they don’t have a head of kale in front of them right now. So what I want you to do is really think about what action can they take each day. We are coaches, right? We are not educators. We’re not here to just give out tips and tricks. We are here to help people take action. And if you can help them take small actions every day they’re going to start thinking again, wow, this person can help me. They already have helped me. They’ve proven that they can help me. So obviously I’m going to want to hire them now.
Okay? So if you want to teach your participants, let’s just say it’s about dark leafy greens and you’re going to solidify their understanding by… Maybe today you’re going to ask them to buy one type of dark leafy greens that they’ve never purchased before.
That might even be too much. They may not be able to get to the grocery store today. Maybe today all you’re going to do is send them a list of like 15 different dark leafy green vegetables and have them pick out the ones that they’ve never tried before. Just to bring their awareness to the fact that there’s so much out there that they could be exploring that would be very appropriate for day one. It’s easy, it’s a quick, when they learn something and they’re going to be able to do it, so they’re going to feel good about themselves and they’re going to feel good about you. And then to repeat that for each day of your challenge on day two of the challenge, this is what I’m going to teach and this is how I’m going to solidify their understanding. This is the action I’m going to ask them to take day three, day four, day five and of course by day five you really want to have built up to the ultimate goal of like, okay, now you came, you came, you got what you were promised in this five day challenge and.dot, dot.
You still have a ways to go. Not that you would say it quite like that, but that would be the feeling that everybody gets. Oh wow. Now I’ve created this, but what about that? How do I get there is really what you want them to be asking you at the end. Cause then it’s very easy to get them into that consultation with you to take that next step. Makes sense? Give me a thumbs up if this is making sense so far. This is feeling helpful for you so far.
I know it’s a lot today. I don’t even know if we’re going to get to on any other questions because here’s what you have to do next. After you have outlined your five days, and again this is all written up for you inside the freebie that I created to go with this episode, I knew it was going to be jam packed, so would make sure you download that at healthcoachpower.com/5dayplanner.
You’ve got your five days outlines what’s next? Okay. Gotta set some dates, right? You gotta look at calendar, you gotta set some dates. It’s got to work for you. First and foremost, I usually like to run my challenges Sunday through Thursday and the reason is that if you’re going to sell anything at the end or if you want any chance of people paying attention at the end of the five days, it’s tough. If you end on a Friday, right? People are just a little bit checked out on Fridays so you could do anything you want. You could start a challenge on a Wednesday. You could however works for you, but usually do Sunday through Thursday and then of course you need to start promoting your challenge. You need to give people a way to sign up something very easy. You’re going to use that headline that we created earlier and we will be collecting signups.
Of course, these names are going to go on your mailing list or you are building your list automatically and then on each day of the challenge, Oh gosh, even before the first day on day zero on the day before, I usually send an email that reminds everybody we are starting tomorrow. Here’s what you can do in order to prepare for tomorrow. I give them a heads up of how it’s going to go so they’re not left wondering, and then day one and every day of the challenge, here’s what I usually do and you can do it differently, but I usually have a bit of an agenda for every day in the morning. Everybody gets an email from me, so they’re going to get that day one email. It’s going to describe what the lesson is for the day or the tip or the trick or the whatever, and it’s going to tell them what I want them to do, so it’s going to give them a very, very clear action to take.
I will also post about this inside of the Facebook group. You can have a Facebook group that all of your challenge participants join. You could also just use your Facebook page. It’s actually really nice to do something that’s more public because anyone who hasn’t signed up already, we’ll see that there’s an event going on, Oh gosh, it’s day number one of this thing and I didn’t sign up and they’re going to want to sign up too, so you can continue to collect signups throughout the whole week. Anyway. I usually post something to Facebook about each day’s mini challenge because it’s easier to hit people in multiple locations. Maybe they didn’t check their email, but they’re going to see it on Facebook or vice versa. I use both mediums and then in the afternoon I suggest that you get into that group or you get on that Facebook page or whatever medium you’re using, whatever group it is, and do some sort of live video content because this is going to be again, um, more of a party for everybody to get together and really feel like they’re seeing you and they’re doing something with you actively.
It’s a chance to go deeper into that day’s topic and it’s like a chance to do a demo. For example, maybe you do a cooking demo, maybe you show them a product that you had been talking about. It’s an opportunity to use the visual medium. So if it makes sense for your challenge, definitely take advantage of that. It makes it a lot more fun than just talking at the camera. So anytime you can include visuals or a demo, a demo, do so. And then in the evening, every day of my challenge, I am definitely checking in with my group. I’m answering their questions, I’m cracking jokes, I’m helping them make connections where maybe they’re not making the connection. And I’m very, very active in the comments. You know, I’m not necessarily showing up, again live in video, but I’m checking in with the group and making sure that I’m supporting them every step of the way.
This is how they really start to feel like you are there for them and you are a person that they can trust. Oh that was a lot. Right? But I’m not even done. So business goal, and we started to talk about this earlier with Kelly, the business goal behind your challenge. And you should, you should know what your business goal is. Before you get into any of this, do you want to build your mailing list? In which case if you added 50 names to your mailing list a hundred names to your mailing list, a thousand names to your mailing list, like what’s going to be success for you is the goal that you want to sell. You want to sell something at the end of this year, going to be actively making an offer and selling your services. You don’t have to, but if that’s the business goal, great.
And again, how many sales do you want to be making? How many sales is going to make this feel like a success for you? And then of course you could be doing this with the idea of building trust and loyalty within your audience. That’s harder to measure, but I would measure it based on engagement. So all of those are possible business goals. You could be trying to do all three of those. Build your list, build loyalty and engagement and sell your services at the end. But decide for yourself what’s going to make this a win for you and then if you don’t meet your goals, you can rejigger the way that you held this challenge in the first place. Huh? What did I need to do to get more people to sign up so I could grow my list? That has to do with your sign-up page and the headline.
If it’s like, oh, I didn’t sell enough. Everyone was so engaged but they didn’t buy my thing. That has to do with how you pitched your services at the end. So, know what you’re going for so you can always post game and see what you can do better next time. That’s, that’s the only way to do it you guys. It’s like trial and error. Trust me. Trust me. I hope you guys have wild, wild success with your five day challenges. I do have like four minutes left so I’m happy to answer any questions that have come up so far. Let’s see what we have here. Kelly says, I see I could have structured my challenge to be a lot more simple and strategic probably because it is easy to make it too complicated and it’s easy to just kind of throw the kitchen sink in everyone and not think about what do you want the outcome to be.
Andrea says create a weight loss mindset in just five days. Could be the title of her challenge and in my emails I’ll talk about primary and secondary food, ba, ba, ba and the goal would be to get people on my list. 50 people would be beyond success. That does sound more simple than what you initially described Andrea. Just make sure in each of those five days you’re giving everybody an action, like a small step that adds up. If you took all those five steps and put them together, adds up to a goal, adds up to that weight loss mindset. Okay. So that they know they got what they came for and it doesn’t feel like a fluff piece.
You remember the iTunes review that I read at the start of this episode that was really like, wow, I love this podcast. There’s no fluff. It is so easy to deliver fluff when you’re not sure what the strategy is. You’re just like, Oh, like eat healthier and like drink more water and then people just tune out. They’ve heard it all before so you definitely don’t want to do that.
I’ve got a question here that I thought fit pretty well with this topic even though it’s slightly on a tangent. I’m just going to hit it right here at the end. It came from Heather and she said, has anyone found a system for determining what you give away as freebies in either a Facebook group or an email opt-in… Or Heather, I would say a five-day challenge, and what you reserve for paying clients?
It’s such an interesting question. Honestly, this is the standard advice and I am telling you it’s true. Give away your best content for free. You can give away everything. People, will take it. They will take the information. they will do your five steps. They will read your downloads, whatever it is. And that is the best way to get them hooked into what you’re all about. And if you don’t get them hooked, they’re never going to become a paying client. So you really want to start by giving away your best content. And don’t worry about giving away too much. Just worry about not solving their entire problem. Solve a little bit of their problem at a time and they will keep coming back for more. You’re paying clients, they are paying you for a certain level of support and accountability. They’re paying you for how to actually make it happen for themselves. So another good piece of advice is give away the what people pay you for the how. Give away the what people will pay you for the how.
How many times have you signed a client who’s like, I know what I should be eating. I have all the books, I read all the magazines, I know what I have to do, but I’m just not doing it. And that is why people hire a health coach. Not because they need tips and tricks from you. It’s because they need to actually make it happened for themselves over the long haul. So give it all away. Give it away, get away, get away now. And with that, I want to thank you guys so very much for joining me for this. This is very much been a mini training on this whole idea of how to run a five day challenge. Again, you can put yours together in a snap because I compiled this whole episode into a downloadable planner for you and just get that at healthcoachpower.com/5dayplanner. Please keep asking all the great questions and I’ll be back next week to answer them. Take care of you guys.