Lessons from my US$100k launch: The good, the bad and the ugly

The most recent launch of my Mind to Money Mastermind did not go to plan at all, but it did generate over a $100,000 revenue into my business. So of course, I’m still really happy with the outcome. In today’s episode, I want to share with you what did work, what didn’t work, and the lessons I’ve learned from this launch so that you can learn along with me and implement these learnings into your business to help you scale to your next level.

Hello and welcome to The Clare Wood Podcast, where myself and incredible guests share about money mindset, financial successes, and how to manage your money in a fun and practical way to create wealth and abundance in both your business and your life. I’m your host, Clare Wood. I’m a business coach and a money mentor. I strongly believe that money has the power to positively change the world. I can’t wait to help you transform your mindset around money, create a love of numbers, and build the business of your dreams so you can live a life of financial freedom, giving, and global impact.

Why I share my journey

At this point in time, I wanted to share why I’m sharing this information with you. One day, I’m going to be a multimillionaire. I am so sure of these. And again, this comes down to a lot of the money mindset work that I’ve done. The creation of result that you desire starts with a belief that it is possible. And I know that this is possible and this is coming for me. This is something that I want to cultivate in you. I want to cultivate in my clients. And once you have the belief, then taking the actions or the steps along the way, adjust part and parcel of the process. But at this point in time, I’m not a multimillionaire. I’m going on the journey. And the reason I’m sharing all of this information as my business grows and as I scale is because I want to bring you on the journey with me.

I want to show you what is possible. And often we only see business owners sharing about their multi-million dollar business after they’ve got there, after their success. They haven’t really shown the journey to get there. So, this is why I’m sharing along the way. I want you to witness it as it is happening. Yes, the successes, but also the things that don’t go to plan. I want to share with you the mistakes that I make along the way so that hopefully you can learn from them and not make the same mistakes on your journey. The truth is in business things often don’t go to plan. Many business leaders don’t share this side of their business. So when you are going through struggles in your business, you might think that something is wrong with you and maybe start to question everything.

I’m trying to share the good and of course inspire you and show you what is possible, but I also want to share the things that don’t go to plan. I want to be super transparent with my learnings and share the specifics so that if you are launching digital products or online courses or a mastermind or any other thing that you’re launching in your business, that you can take my lessons and learnings along the way. Okay. So, let’s get into it. A bit of a background about my mastermind. I’ve been running my Mind to Money Mastermind for over a year now. And this is the third round of the mastermind that I am running. The first round I launched a six month program at US 997, and I had six amazing humans join. It was so fantastic. It was just such an amazing space. And I really loved having a mastermind container in my business. The next round, I decided to put a minimum on how much someone had to be earning in their business to join.

This was based on feedback from the first round because some of the business owners were really different stages of business. And therefore the questions that were being asked, perhaps one is engaging for some of the people who were further on their business journey. And I really wanted to make a space where everyone felt challenged and inspired by the community. So, I decided to put a minimum income amount on the group. I was nervous to do this because I knew that it would exclude some people who were keen to join, but I decided to create it as a really premium product offering to a small and exclusive group. And then I have my membership and my course, Million Dollar Money Management, which serve people who are at earlier stages of business. Of course, I definitely want to help everyone. So this feels like a really great way to still make sure I can help early stage business owners, but also create a really premium experience for my high ticket Masterminders knowing that they are in a high ticket community.

So, I made the minimum amount for the second round six figures. People had to be turning over at least six figures a year in their business, although many of them were turning over many multiples of that. The second round I priced at 997 USD and I made it a six month container. I had the most beautiful, amazing launch, which I’ve shared on the podcast before. You can go and check it out. It’s the episode where I talk about my $75,000 USD launch. So, I share all of the details in that podcast episode. But I had 10 amazing humans join that second round. And again, it was such a fun round, so many cool transformations. And I have actually shared an example of this again on the podcast in an early episode, which I’ll pop in the show notes for today.

What made this launch different

So after that round finished up, I was looking down the barrel of the third round of the mastermind. And for this particular launch, I was so stumped at how to move forward. People had been reaching out to me, asking how they could join the next round of the mastermind. So I had a wait list of people who were reaching out and saying, “I can’t wait to join. When’s the doors opening? Tell me all about this mastermind.” And I got really stuck. I was trying to work out, do I keep the price point the same? Do I put a limit on the amount of people that can join? Because the last round I kept it at 10 and I filled all 10 places, which was amazing. So I was really weighing out, do I keep it capped to 10? Do I open up the numbers?

Do I increase the price point? What do I do? I was also really weighing up, do I keep it as a six month container? Or do I extend the period of time that the mastermind runs for? The reason I was looking at extending the length is that I felt like in the six months, it’s just at the backend that people were really starting to get the mindset work, just at the backend of the six months. And I’d really wished I had another few months to really expand it out. And for the Masterminders to really take all of those learnings to the next level. So for the next round of the mastermind, I decided to make it a nine month container. So, that was the first thing that I decided on. The next challenge was the price point. And, oh my gosh, this was challenging. So in terms of a lot of the masterminds around, at 997 USD a month, mine was really on the lower end of the scale.

And this was definitely not where I want to position this mastermind. Inside the mastermind, there’s Voxer. There’s voice messaging access to me and to the community. There’s the call so you get free access to my membership, to my course. And also I’ve created this really cool online hub, which has meditations, hypnosis, all of this really amazing manifestation tools in there. So, I know that it’s a really premium product offering. So I decided to get really uncomfortable and priced this round at 1497 USD. I knew this would affect the numbers coming in, but from a mindset perspective, it was really important for me to position the product at what I know it’s worth. And it was really interesting observing in myself what came up for me with this pricing increase. You guys will know. I support people all the time to confidently increase their prices. And yet all of the fears that I observe in my clients were popping up for me.

I started to ask myself all of the usual money questions. Will people be happy to pay this price? Will I be excluding people that need my help? Will people think that I’m getting greedy by putting my prices up? All of these things were going through my head. And I did a lot of mindset work throughout the process. And I just kept asking myself whenever a story would pop up, I would say, is this a truth? And then I would do the work to rewrite that and create a new belief. So, an example around the pricing. One of the first things that I was asking myself, will people pay this price? And straight away I knew that people would because I had paid more than that for the last mastermind that I joined. So I already knew that if I myself would pay more than that, I know that other people out there would.

And leaning into the worthiness of it, am I worth charging those prices? And again, this was a great opportunity for me to look for evidence at the transformations that I have deluded for clients of mine. I know it’s worth their price point and probably much more to be honest. So, that was something that I was able to reprogram and rewrite in my mind. Then thinking about, am I excluding people was a big fear or limiting belief that came up for me. And at that point in time, I reminded myself that even at 997 USD, I was probably already excluding a lot of people from joining. But the reason why we can have premium price points or product offerings in our business is because it allows us to be able to create lower price point products in our business as well, as well as all of the amazing free content that we create.

Even this podcast, my social media posts, my newsletters, all of the free content that I put out in the world that I know helps people and they don’t have to pay for, I’m able to do because I do charge a premium price point on some of my product offerings. So, that can be something to weigh up or consider if you’re feeling really challenged around having a price point that feels a little bit exclusive. And if you’re feeling like you’re leaving people out, remind yourself that you’re actually doing it so that you can help even more people. One of the things that my higher ticket offerings allows me to do is to create lower ticket products. And an example of that is my course, Million Dollar Money Management. And I’m actually opening the doors up for this course again very soon. So if you do want to learn the money strategies that I teach, both my private coaching clients, my Masterminders to help them scale towards seven figures, make sure that you jump on the wait list for this course via the link in my bio.

Because if you do jump on the wait list, you will get a $100 off the cost of the course, which is a massive discount. So, make sure you check that out. If you do want to learn more about money mindset, manifestation, and of course, money management, how to actually manage the money that you were earning. I digress. So, the reason why I keep my prices low is because I am able to use the revenue that I generate in different programs to be able to support people at different price points as well. And that feels really great for me. So as I promised in the title of today’s episode, I’m going to be sharing the good, bad, and ugly of this launch

The good

So good, I had seven amazing business owners join this round. I was celebrating each and every one of them. And it was really beautiful to be welcoming such beautiful people into the mastermind and so exciting that they had chosen to invest their hard earned money to join this program and do this work with me.

And it’s definitely not something that I take for granted. So, celebrating all of my amazing Masterminders. The next thing that was great was that this launch was not at all stressful. It was a very easy breezy, flowy launch, a couple of emails. I spoke about it a bit on social media, but there was no rigid launch plan or any stress that went into the mastermind process. I felt that the right people were attracted to the offer and were reaching out to me to find out more about it. The other thing that I’m celebrating from this launch is that five of the seven people who joined had worked with me before. So several of them had done the last round of my course, Million Dollar Money Management, and that had some wins from that and wanted to jump into my mastermind and take those learnings even deeper.

And a few of the people who’ve joined this round were actually in the previous round of the mastermind. And I’m celebrating this as a win because I think it’s such an incredible compliment that clients of mine trust me to work with me again and again. So, this was a lot of the good that came out of this launch.

The bad

The bad, okay. I had a couple of big learnings from this launch. The first one was that I’ve been leaning so much into my feminine energy lately and being really flowy about the way that I’m attracting money into my business, that I perhaps haven’t been doing as much of the masculine work that I need to be doing in my business. So, let me just talk a little bit about feminine versus masculine. So I’m a female, but I still have quite a high what’s called a masculine energy.

And that doesn’t mean that I’m manly necessarily or anything like that. It just means that there’s a real doing energy about me. I’m very numbers driven. I’m very statistics driven. And I get in and make things happen. But one of the things that I learned from working with my previous coach Ruby was how to really lean into the feminine flow in business, how to learn to trust my intuition more, how to lean more into spirituality, and how to have less hassle and more flow, how to generate wealth from a place of ease and alignment. But I have been leaning a little bit too much into that space and not actually taking the aligned actions that I need to get the results that I desire. So, an example of this is between launches I had not been doing much in the space of proactive marketing.

Yes, I’ve been showing up for my audience, but I haven’t been actively growing my audience by reaching out for PR opportunities and speaking opportunities. I hadn’t been running Facebook Ads, which in one respect was great because it meant that essentially all of the revenue is profit as there were no incremental investments into my business for this launch. However, I definitely think that I’ve been playing small by not getting out and actively marketing my business. I am still selling to the same size email list that I have been for a while. And so, a big takeaway for me from this launch was that I really need to start leaning into a bit more of that proactive outreach and getting in front of more of my dream potential clients. As much as I’m such a big believer in mindset and manifestation, there also reaches a point where we do have to actually take action.

And I have to say this launch was probably an example of where I wasn’t taking enough of that proactive action. So, that is something I will definitely be taking into my business moving forward.

The ugly

So, the last thing that I want to talk about is the “ugly.” In this launch I had, I can’t remember the exact number, but I think it was eight discovery calls that didn’t convert into paying Masterminders. In the past rounds of the mastermind, nearly every single person I spoke to joined the mastermind. And why is that? Well, firstly, I think it’s because I’m really transparent about my pricing. A lot of masterminds out there have a big long application form, and you have to fill in the form, and get on a call. And then eventually on the call, they’ll tell you the price. Whereas, I personally share my prices really upfront.

I want people to know exactly how much the investment is before they get on a call with me. So the fact that people are coming into a call already knowing what the investment is, it usually means on some level that they’ve bought in because they knew the price point before they even got on the call with me. So, I think that’s one of the reasons why in the past my discovery calls have converted at a really high rate. The other reason is because people know me. Usually when we jump on a discovery call, they’re either listeners of the podcast or perhaps they’ve got friends that have worked with me. So, the discovery call process is usually just a check-in. So this round, when I had people who were having a discovery call with me and not joining, all of these money mindset blocks started to pop up, fear and scarcity started to pop their ugly heads up.

And I really started to question, is it the price point? And then I started to wonder, is it my sales strategy? Now if you’re a regular listener of the podcast, you will know that I didn’t really believe in selling per se. When I jumped on a discovery call, I ask questions, I share my offer and we both see if it’s a fit. But after I had all of these people who weren’t converting, I started to really challenge the way I was having these discovery calls. And I started to say, I hate to say it, but almost a little bit pushy. And I found myself having conversations with a couple of people who were sort of in and out, and they weren’t sure whether to join or not. I started really encouraging them to join in almost a pushy way. Now, this is the ugly that I am talking about for couple of reasons. Firstly, it didn’t work because the people that I was really starting to heavily encouraged to join the program didn’t actually end up joining.

And the reason for this is because my energy is not behind a hard sell and really it’s not the way that I want to do business. I remember getting off one of these phone calls and I just felt gross. This is so not how I want to run my business. I have clients who love to work with me and who love to pay me. And I decided in that moment, I was no longer energetically available to energy like that. Moving forward, I want to attract clients who are so excited to pay me and who can’t wait to jump into my programs. So rather than do anything physically different, I just set an energetic boundary. And it feels so amazing that I’ve now defined that boundary. Of course, I don’t mind if people want to jump on a discovery call and see if it’s a fit, but I’m certainly not going to be going down the path of convincing people to work with me again. So, that was a great lesson I took from this launch.

Overall, the mastermind landed at seven Masterminders, which fell quite short of my target. Did I make it mean anything? The previous me probably would have. I would have defined this as a failed launch. But all of my mindset work has really paid off and there are quite a few silver linings here. Firstly, this launch was actually 25% higher than my last launch because it’s over a longer period of time. So like I shared, the actual total launch revenue is a $100,000. Even though I didn’t hit my target, I am celebrating that there has been growth on this launch again. Another thing to celebrate or recognize is that often Masterminders upgrade to private coaching sessions. I run these 90 minute calls like a one-on-one private coaching call, which is now only offered inside these mastermind program. So, I know that some of the Masterminders will upgrade and do some of these calls throughout the time of the program.

And the other thing is that I’ll be opening the doors and relaunching this program again in a few months. And when I do a second intake, I know I welcome even more people into the mastermind when they join then. So as much as the launch didn’t go to plan, I am pinching myself that I’ve now had my second a 100,000 Australian dollars launch. So, my last launch that was $75,000 was actually over a 100,000 Australian dollars as well. I literally dreamed about this. And I’m so excited that my business is continuing to scale. And importantly, that I’m showing all those what is possible when you believe in yourself. The mindset work really is everything. My decision to become wealthy came far before the results started flowing. And this mindset work is continuing to help me grow and create results and happiness in other areas of my life too.

Money is my jam. I help people both with their mindset and with the actual management of money in their business, such as setting targets, achieving the targets, and staying across their money. If you would like my help in this area, doors to my course, Million Dollar Money Management are opening in the next few weeks. So if you were even considering it on any level, please make sure you jump on the wait list via the link in the show notes for today’s episode, as you’ll get a $100 off the price of the course, which is a massive discount, something I haven’t offered before. Inside this program, I teach you how to create an unshakable money mindset, how to identify your unique scaling strategy to grow to the seven figure mark in a way that works for you.

I also teach you the money management strategies I have used for years now to help my clients scale from $20,000 months to a $100,000 months. If you want in, jump on the wait list. And make sure you keep listening to the podcast because I’m going to be sharing more about it in coming episodes, along with sharing a couple of the people who’ve done the program before and sharing some of their core transformation stories. Thank you so much for tuning into today’s episode of the podcast. And as always, if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your biz buddies and make sure you tag me on Instagram @clare_wood_coach. Have an amazing week and I’ll chat to you soon.

Thanks so much for listening. If you love this episode, please share it with your audience and don’t forget to tag me on Instagram @clare_wood_coach. And also make sure you hit subscribe, so you never miss an episode. Have an abundant week. And I look forward to talking to you again next week.