I was sound asleep this morning, and around 2 a.m. (not sure exactly, I didn’t look at the clock), I awoke and it was like I had total clarity on some things that I’d been stressing out about for months… actually in one case most of the year.
Don’t you love when that happens? You can’t figure something out, and eventually your subconscious gets all busy with it and presto, you’ve got a solution.
And is it coincidental that this clarity came on New Year’s Eve? I don’t know the answer to that one.
So here’s what’s been troubling me.
First of all, back around March or April, I decided I wanted to start coaching people. I had seen lots of other IM’ers, some with less experience than I have, doing that, and I said, why not?
Besides, I sort of unofficially do that inside Earn1KaDay all the time.
So I did a ton of research on what I wanted to go into my coaching program, and hired someone to write a skeleton book putting the different topics together in one spot.
My goal was to take the skeleton book and add my own thoughts, reorganize if necessary, pull in additional research and case studies and experience, and do two things:
1. publish it as possibly the last book in the 5 Bucks a Day series, probably named “Beyond 5 Bucks a Day”.
2. use it as my “black book” for my coaching program.
The skeleton was written last winter, and it’s still on my hard drive. I don’t know how many times I thought about starting the editing, but froze up, I just wasn’t in the mood.
And I don’t know how many times I thought about the coaching program, every time I saw others start theirs, every time I heard a story about an incompetent coach messing up someone’s life, every time I saw someone write about how they really needed help to get started making money online.
So that’s one thing that I’ve been going back and forth on most of the year, and I don’t know many times I’ve uttered the phrase “I’m going to start a coaching program soon”.
I even published a book about coaching, encouraging others to become coaches to share their expertise with an eager audience of people they can help.
Wow, what gives?
Then in September, after finally striking a deal with Rapid Crush (Wilson Mattos and Jason Fladlien) to provide access to their 6 in 6 Coaching webinars to Earn1KaDay members, I finally had an additional added value, and an expense, that forced me to raise the price of Earn1KaDay.
People lined up to join before the price increase, it was a beautiful thing. I knew that adding value is more important than keeping the price down, for the majority of my audience, and I wanted to do more.
I saw people that had been around for quite a while and were stagnating. That had happened to me multiple times in the last few years, and I took myself out of that pattern, but it wasn’t easy.
I knew I could help people, and I wanted to do more for Earn1KaDay members.
While at the same time setting up a coaching program.
Which should I do first? And what about people who had invested in Earn1KaDay, how could I in good faith tell them that I can give them more help, but I needed to charge them more for that help?
I didn’t like the sound of that in my mind.
So I hesitated some more.
I had actually spent time with coaches myself, getting advice about my plans. I talked with Jason Fladlien, Eric Louviere, and others, and picked up just about every course or book on the topic I could find.
And I started following Sean Mize, even licensed his 13-week coaching program, and have the rights to adapt his course to my own.
Still nothing made me pull the trigger.
Last May I opened up a Facebook group, The IM Inside Track. That was another project that I had hesitated on for at least 6 months. People told me it would fragment the Earn1KaDay forum discussions, so at first I listened.
But I also wanted to coach people, and one thought was to set up a paid Facebook group, relatively cheap, and do group coaching inside the group. I liked the idea a lot, with a price in mind of maybe $9.95/month, but at the point of pulling the trigger, I decided to make the group free.
It was intended to be another extension of Earn1KaDay, but others could join. My intent was to get more people into my sphere of influence, get them to know, like, and trust me, and then they might be more willing to join Earn1KaDay or at least one or more of my products.
That worked, but…
Some Earn1KaDay members felt that the group did indeed take away from forum activity because they saw a very active group of over 2000 people engaged on a daily basis, and a forum membership of 900 people, not quite so active.
Then along came this morning, when I woke up and suddenly had the answer, laid out perfectly (I hope) by my subconscious.
Problem 1: How to get the Earn1KaDay forum more engaged:
There has been some suggestions about doing a minor reorganization, and to me one obvious way is to set up a Coaching Discussion forum.
In it will be sub-sections where members can discuss the various modules of each of 4 different coach’s program.
I have a license to 6 in 6 Coaching, which has 60+ modules and growing.
I have a license to the 13-week Sean Mize coaching course.
I have a license to a lot of really good training from Eric Louviere.
And there will be a sub-forum for my own coaching modules (more on that in a minute).
Maybe in the future, I’ll start following someone else like Sean and Eric and Wil/Jason that I can also set up a sub-forum for, who knows?
So for example, I’ll set up threads in the 6 in 6 Coaching sub-forum, one for each module, and people can discuss the contents of that module.
Same for the Sean Mize and Eric Louviere and Dennis Becker sub-forums.
But there’s more.
In order to start off the discussions, I realize that a lot of members haven’t actually listened or watched the coaching modules, and there are a lot of them. I haven’t watched all of 6 in 6 myself, but I have listened or watched all of Eric’s and Sean’s work.
To listen or watch them all would take 100′s of hours. Well worth it to be sure, but still a lot of work to expect all 900 members to do.
So the next step is to create a sort of “Cliff’s Notes” version of each module.
Lots of modules. I personally don’t have the time to do that, or the energy.
So I’m hoping someone would like to be sort of an intern, perhaps paid to make it worth their while, to compile the notes, post them to the forum or somewhere else, and give everyone a high level overview of each coaching module.
I’ll find that person, or multiple people. I know they’re out there, but they’ll have to go through a rigid application and screening process because I want the job done right. This is one case where I don’t think “good enough is good enough”.
Problem 2: My coaching program.
One of the reasons that I said caused me to hesitate in opening up a coaching program is I couldn’t figure in my mind where my responsibility to the forum ended. Could I in good faith ask members for more money to learn some of the things they probably expected to learn when they joined?
I didn’t think so.
And for new coaching clients, did I want to duplicate everything appropriate inside Earn1KaDay to deliver to them, or would I have to say to them, “hey, we have this great resource inside the forum but you’ll have to join it and pay more to be able to access it”.
I didn’t think that would be right either.
So to solve the problem, there will be no separate coaching program and Earn1KaDay membership.
There will be only Earn1KaDay.
A coaching client will automatically be a member, and all existing members will automatically be a coaching client, regardless of how much they paid to join (some joined at a price of $9.95/month, and the majority of members have purchased lifetime access already).
That enables me to not have to reinvent the wheel. A new coaching client will have access to some of the great ideas from Wil and Jaosn, from Eric, from Sean, and soon from me.
My task will be largely organizing things so that someone needing training in one particular area will be able to find it relatively easily.
There will also be my own training modules. Some will most likely be podcasts where I discuss a particular subject. Some will likely be regular teleseiminars or webinars or hangouts, which will be recorded, and where people can ask questions live.
And those too will have notes made by the intern or whoever ends up doing that for us.
Now there is one limiting factor to this combined forum/coaching. It will obviously be group coaching. If someone has questions, it’s expected that they’ll post the questions in the forum (which will increase forum activity, which was a problem, remember?). I can’t reasonably offer individual one on one consulting to 900 members, which I suspect will grow to over 1000. There aren’t enough hours in my day.
If someone wants more private access to my time, that will come at a higher price to a very limited number of clients. Most won’t need that or want that, and I don’t have any price in mind at the moment.
Hey, it’s going to take a little work just to set up this group coaching and find the intern, remember?
Problem 3: Adding enough value to Earn1KaDay to justify a price increase.
You see, I don’t worry about the money, so I’m not doing this to earn more (really, you laugh, I hear you).
I figure that additional value will drive the price to its own level.
I could still be charging $9.95/month and have a whole lot more members, but I’d be unable to do all the things I’ve done, like licensing 6 in 6 Coaching, putting over 1000 products in the download area, and now the extra expense of paying the intern enough to keep him or her happy and do a good job, and creating other content behind the scenes.
That takes money, that takes time, and I sense, from over 6 and a half years of running Earn1KaDay that if I want to get more success stories of people actually reaching that 1K day at least once, I need to provide more help and tools.
Many members have had that day, multiple times. We have lots of 6-figure annual income earners among us, even multiple 7-figure annual earners.
There have been some absolutely huge success stories, and when I’m on my deathbed I’ll be happy as I remember them.
But I want more of them. My intent when I started Earn1KaDay was to give every member enough training, tools, and encouragement to reach their first 1K day. I never promised or thought that the statement would mean they’d make $1000 a day every day.
Just once, and that will start a pattern. It will tell your subconscious that you’re able to do it, and it will be self-fulfilling after that.
But anyway, I digressed. The price increase. Beginning at a date to be decided, the price of Earn1KaDay (which will include coaching by that point) will rise to $97/month, which is really a low level price point just for group coaching alone.
I’m not sure if I’ll even offer lifetime access to Earn1KaDay at that point, but if I do, it will be substantially increased.
And I’ve said before, at some point, probably at around the 1000 member mark, I’ll stop accepting any and all new members. People will have to go onto a waiting list, waiting for an open spot after a cancellation, or they’ll have to be referred by an affiliate.
I love making affiliates more money, you know?
So anyway, I’m putting this New Year’s Eve epiphany out into the world, I really can’t go back on it now, can I?
I wish you a safe and happy holiday, and a spectacular new year.
Print 
PDF