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AMY PORTERFIELD: “Because when this has finally passed, I want you to look back and say, ‘I was the kind of person that showed up for the challenge.’ I want you literally to not even recognize yourself in six months down the road because all the work you did now to show up, even when you were scared, even when you didn't know what to do, but you showed up like a boss and you frickin’ surprised yourself. And you have to do that, not caring what everyone else is going to think.”
INTRO: I’m Amy Porterfield, ex-corporate girl turned CEO of a multi-million-dollar business. But it wasn't all that long ago that I lacked the confidence, money, and time to focus on growing my small-but-mighty business. Fast forward past many failed attempts and lessons learned, and you'll see the business I have today, one that changes lives and gives me more freedom than I ever thought possible, one that used to only exist as a daydream. I created the Online Marketing Made Easy podcast to give you simple, actionable, step-by-step strategies to help you do the same. If you're an ambitious entrepreneur, or one in the making, who's looking to create a business that makes an impact and helps you create a life you love, you're in the right place. Let's get started.
AMY: This episode is in response to the current coronavirus pandemic, COVID-19, and many of you have asked me to share my thoughts, insights, and learnings, even over the short period of time, with how we've been able to pivot our online business in order to resonate and meet our students and our audience where they are right now. And I am on a mission to help you sustain and thrive in your online business and with your digital courses, even though we are going through a time of crisis and uncertainty.
And so what I did is I jumped into the Online Marketing Made Easy Facebook group—it's totally free. You are all welcome to join me there—and I did a Facebook Live. And I addressed two mindset shifts that have helped me immensely to continue to move forward during this scary time and three very valuable, specific, and detailed strategies that you can do inside of your online business right now in order to make sure that you are continuing to build your list and to make money in your online business while being compassionate and serving your community, your students, and your customers. And so I share a lot of examples and what we're doing in our own business, and I also share with you how we launched this last week and why we did it, even though it was a very crazy week. If you've been feeling stuck, distracted, scared, worried, if your head is just buzzing with everything that's going on, this is the episode for you.
I want you to remember that you, my friend, are not alone. We're in this together, and we will come out of this stronger. You just need to keep moving forward.
So here is the Facebook Live that I just recorded. I hope you find it valuable.
Because we are all building businesses, growing businesses, managing businesses in a crazy, crazy time, in times of uncertainty and times that days are changing by the second, in times where we are not sure what tomorrow looks like, and we're really afraid of what tomorrow may look like, when we are building our businesses and sustaining our businesses during a time like that, we have to look at things a whole lot differently. And so I wanted to create this podcast episode for you today and talk about what's going on and what you can do in order to navigate your business through a crisis, because we are in a crisis, and I don't use that word flippantly, and I actually was not going to use that word. I was going to say “in uncertain times” instead of “in a crisis,” because I don't want to be an alarmist. And I'm actually not one of the people that looks at every single doom-and-gloom stat and thinks that the world is ending. I actually am trying to stay away from too much media and trying to stay focused on the good that we can do while still being very realistic about what's going on in the world. At the time of this recording, the governor just said that we have a mandatory lockdown in California. I know that's already happened in other areas of the world, and it likely will happen in other states, moving forward.
We don't know when that's going to be lifted, we don't really know what's going to happen, and yet here we are with online businesses, and here we are creating courses, and here we are with plans to launch very soon. Many of you have told me, “Amy, I have a plan to launch next week. Do I still do that?” Some of you have asked, “Amy, I was planning on launching in April. Should I just give my stuff away for free right now? I feel so guilty for people losing their jobs.” Many of you asked, “Should I even be talking about this right now?” And I'm going to answer all of those questions with my personal opinion, but my personal opinion as an online-business owner who has been in business for eleven years creating and selling digital courses, and somebody who is very aware of what's going on and is making decisions in her business in order to make pivots so that I can then share what's working and not working for me with you. And so you all know, whether you're inside any of my courses or not, I hope you know this by now, I never teach what I don't know, and that is still true at a time of uncertainty.
So this week, at the time of this recording right now, we have launched a program called Momentum. And Momentum is just for my Digital Course Academy®️ students, and it's a membership experience, so once you are in DCA, you get invited to Momentum. And we decided to launch it this week, even though people are feeling scared and uncertain and not sure which way to turn. And I did that for two reasons, and I'm going to use this as an example, but I want you to apply it to your own business. I launched Momentum with my team this week. Even though it's not an inexpensive experience to sign up for and even though people are scared, I launched it, one, to be an example of what is possible.
We have had many people join us in Momentum this week, even though they're scared, even though they're not sure which way to turn, and even though they're holding onto their money tight, they still invested with us this week. Not everybody does not have money right now. Not everybody is unwilling to spend money. Not everybody has been personally touched by this in a monetary way. So if you think, “Well, people aren’t spending money, they don’t have money,” that's a limited belief, but we'll get into all of that in a moment.
But we launched this week to show what is possible, meaning we are not going to put the pause button on our business. So I wanted to show up, I wanted to continue to move forward, I wanted to invite people into the program if they wanted to join. So I did it, one, to be an example to my students of what is possible and what it looks like to keep moving forward, even when you're scared, even when you don't know what the right decision is. You just make a decision and you do it.
The second reason I launched Momentum this week is that I feel like it's the perfect solution for where people are right now. They need to move their business forward. They need to decide on how to change their messaging and their pricing and their offers. They need extra support, and Momentum has now become that extra support, that daily check in, that place to get insight, questions answered, troubleshooting. So I’ve pivoted Momentum to be that for my DCA students.
So I don't tell you all this to sell Momentum, because most people listening right now don't even qualify to get into Momentum. I just tell you that to say I am walking the talk, and that's why I'm showing up today to share some of the things I've learned, even in just a very short time, with the world changing as rapidly as it has. And so what I wanted to do is I wanted to give you five ways to navigate your business through crisis, and I wanted to start by saying that we cannot ignore what's happening. We actually have to talk about it on our social channels, to our audiences, to our students.
Now, how you talk about that, we'll talk about that in a moment; how you put together your messaging, we'll get to that; but I want to tell you that you cannot ignore it. One of my students asked, “Amy, I don't want to talk about COVID-19. Do I have to?” And I told her, you do, you do if you want to make sure that you are relatable to your audience, that you are resonating with them, that you're not tone deaf. You do need to talk about it, but how you talk about it is up to you, and we'll get to that.
The second thing that I wanted to point out is that there are words that are becoming buzzwords in the most beautiful way that I wasn't even using a week ago, that you'll start to hear me use a lot more because they mean something right now. And so before I went live today, I wrote these words down, and I want to read them to you. The words I think we're going to start hearing more, that we should start hearing more, that will actually benefit our businesses are resonate, relate, recalibrate, resilience, and pivot. So I’ll say those one more time. I mean, I really ruined it with a P word because they were all Rs. I wasn’t really paying attention to that. So resonate, relate, recalibrate, pivot, and resilience. There are words that over the next few months you're going to hear me say and use and relate back to you a lot because they're important, the fact that we need to resonate with our audience and we need to relate to where they are right now.
One of my students, Stephanie Mitchell, she serves salon owners, so hairstylists, and their salons are shut down. They cannot work right now. No matter if they wanted to or not, they do not have a choice. So now she needs to find a way to pivot her business, to support them where they are at, to relate to them where they are at right now. And she was afraid of this. She's very nervous to pivot her messaging and her business and her brand right now, but she's also resilient. And I know that she will do it, and I know for a fact because she’s in my Momentum program, and I got to interview her yesterday, and she's like, “I'm here for the challenge.” And she already started to talk about how she's going to show up for them different, how she's changed her offer so that she can be of service to them right now. She's still promoting, she's still making money, but in different ways for them right now. And I've heard story after story after story of people that are making those pivots so that they can, one, serve, but, two, survive. They want their businesses to survive, so they have to get nimble and change things up.
So with today's episode, I wanted to talk to you about two areas: mindset and strategy, mindset and strategy. And we have to talk about mindset first because if we didn’t, all the strategy in the world wouldn't matter. And when I talk about mindset, I'm not going to tell you anything you haven't heard in one hundred social-media messages that are flying by in your newsfeed right now. But I want to slow down for a moment and really make sure that you hear me, and I pray you apply this. And this is how I'm getting through with managing my mindset around what's going on.
So remember, I'm just giving you the real, raw, “here's what this week has looked like for me, but here's how you can apply it to your business” kind of conversation. And so when it comes to mindset, the number-one thing is that I believe you can feel all the feelings, and they're all valid right now. They're all real. They're all raw. So if you say, I'm scared, I'm uncertain, I'm angry, I’m frustrated, I'm just exhausted, I'm worried, whatever it is, it is all valid. It really, truly is.
I got to do an interview with Rachel Hollis this week about coworking and how to work remotely in a more productive way, whether you're the business owner and how to manage your team, or you're coming home from a nine-to-five job, working from home for the first time. We talked about it all. But one thing I love about Rachel, that she said is, “In one minute, I'm thinking, oh my gosh, what is happening?” She has an event business, of all things. That is really scary. And she's like, “I'm scared, I'm worried, and then I get into action, and I'm able just to stay focused on that. But the minute I get out of action, my emotions are everywhere.” And I love that she was so honest about it, because it's the truth. But she said something so profound that I want you all to hear, and that is, when she gets into action, that voice quiets a little bit.
And that's the best advice I can give you. If you felt distracted this week, frustrated, pulled in a million directions, but not getting anything done, if you felt just out of sorts this week, I want to encourage you that it's a new week now. You can start over at any time. And if you get into action, you can really quiet that voice. So I'm not saying don't be scared; don't be worried. Those are just things that we’re all going to feel. But I am saying you cannot live there. You cannot stay there. You are choosing to be stuck if you are stuck.
And so I want you to make a different choice if you felt distracted or stuck this week, and that is to choose three things that you're going to get done in the next seven days, come rain or shine. Come coronavirus or not, you are going to get these three things done. And the three things that you choose, I hope, are leading you toward the goals you've set for yourself or the goals that you've recently recalibrated because of what's going on. I'll help you with some new recalibration when I get into the strategy part of this episode, but I'm really encouraging you to put together three—Michael Hyatt calls it the weekly Big Three—three things you're going to get done this week, no matter what. Of course, you'll get done more than that. But three things that no matter what, they're the highest priority, the most important to the bigger health of your business, and no matter what you feel, no matter how stuck you might feel in this moment, no matter how worried you are, you're getting these three things done, and they're related to moving the business forward. I'm actually not talking about personal stuff right now. I’m talking about your business. Three things that will move your business forward. What are those three things? And you're going to do them in the next seven days. That is so incredibly important. And I'm actually giving you this challenge to help you quiet your mind.
I think meditation is important right now. I think getting quiet, I think being honest with how you're feeling, I think journaling, all of that is valid, important, and really just came to the top of the list for us. But also, getting into action will quiet your mind. And I mean intentional action, which is where the weekly Big Three comes into effect. So that's the first thing. With your mindset, get into action to quiet your mind.
And the second thing is with your mindset to get very intentional. And I've already hinted at this a little bit, but I want to be more specific. So for your mindset, when you're more intentional, you do better, and you feel more in control, and right now, all of us want more control, and there are too many things we cannot control. You can control your little, little world right there in your house right now. You can control some things there.
So two weeks ago, how you'd start your morning, maybe it's hit and miss how much you stuck to it, but I bet you had some kind of morning-ritual plan. Recalibrate it. It's going to look different now if you have kids at home, if your spouse just came home to work right alongside you and you're not sure if you're loving that. You also have to recalibrate your morning rituals if you're your head is just swimming right now and you're scared. So for those of you who never had morning rituals, create them. For those of you who have had morning rituals, let’s recalibrate them.
Do you need to add ten minutes of meditation that you weren't doing in the past? I do. I was not doing that. That needs to be added to my morning ritual. Do you need to have coffee with your husband because now he's home every morning, and you never got the opportunity to do that because he was out the door by 7:00 a.m., and you were still trying to get the kids ready for school? So now do you get to stay home together in the morning and actually have a morning coffee date? If you know me, you know my husband, Hobie, loves those. He insists on those. And so do you get to do that more? What does your morning look like? And set it up in a way that you're going to take advantage of the fact that you're not commuting or no one else in your house is commuting, that your kids are not going to school. I know that can be a huge disadvantage for many of you who work from home and are trying to build your business. But where is the silver lining there, about how to change your morning ritual?
So, recalibrate or create from scratch your morning ritual. It could be thirty minutes, it could be one hour, whatever you want it to be. Don't get elaborate here. You won't stick to it. Don't make it be ten things you have to get through before you sit at your desk and start your workday. But that typically is what it is. What you're doing before you sit down at your desk and you start your work day, that's your morning ritual. Now, your morning ritual might end with doing something related to reviewing your calendar, reviewing your tasks before you jump in, but I'm talking about the things you do before you get to your desk. Do not go overboard here. I say that from personal experience. I think I could do a million things in the morning before I sit down. I can't.
So think about what time you’re going to wake up in the morning. What are you going to do in the morning? What are the things that you would love to do that you never had the opportunity to do before? Think about that this weekend.
And then your workday shutdown. So what does the workday shutdown look like? This is for your mindset. This is actually not a strategy, although it is. We're still on mindset here. Next step is three strategies for you to help you thrive in your business, but we're still on mindset, so stay with me here. What does a workday shutdown look like for you? So for me, it includes going into my project-management tool, Asana. I go into Asana to make sure I got all my tasks done. If I didn’t, I have to rework when I'm going to get them done the rest of the week, and, hopefully, there's not a lot of reworking. And I go into Slack to make sure I have communicated with my team and all the questions they might have had there. I go into my email, make sure I got back to anyone I needed to get back to. And then I plan for the next day. So that's what a workday shutdown looks like for me.
And I plan for the next day in my Full Focus Planner, what meetings I have, my daily Big Three—I do a weekly Big Three, and every day I do a daily Big Three, Monday through Friday. And so I’ll say, okay, for tomorrow, before I shut down, what are three things I’m going to get done tomorrow, no matter what? It takes me about thirty minutes, and that's what my workday shutdown looks like.
And so I want you to do a morning ritual and a workday shutdown to also ease your mind and allow you to control something in a very uncontrollable world that we're living in right now. So I just gave you two things for mindset: one, get into motion, get into action. Two, morning ritual and workday shutdown. Those are going to help your mindset. If you’re feeling distracted, overwhelmed, confused, freaking out, let’s just do those things first.
Okay, so, now we're going to move into strategy. So I'm on page two of three. So we're moving into strategy. And I'm really excited to share with you three strategies that you can do in your online business right now. So no matter when you're listening to this, I'm going to give you three things that you can think about and kind of journal about, brainstorm about, in the next twenty-four hours, is my challenge to you, because these three things, this is exactly what we're doing in our business right now. And really, if you're not part of Momentum, which a lot of you don't qualify to be, but for my DCA members who aren't part of Momentum yet, this is what we're doing in Momentum, but in a really big way. So to give you a little hint of what that might look like.
So strategy is, specifically the strategies I put together, are specifically to help you assess where things are right now in your business and what you might want to change. So the first thing I want you to think about is getting clarity, and to get clarity, what I mean specifically in terms of strategy, is to craft your crisis messaging. Craft your crisis messaging. Now, again, I don't use that word crisis to scare; we have to be realistic where we're at.
So remember, at the very beginning of this podcast, I said that—or Facebook Live—that I said you need to make sure that you are talking about this, but you get to choose how you talk about it? Well, now that's where we are right now, with strategy. So you might be the voice of inspiration or motivation or entertaining. You might just bring some comic relief to this crazy situation, or you might educate right now, or you might do a little of all of that. But I want you to decide on your crisis messaging. And so let me tell you how I did this in my business.
A couple days ago when I realized, holy cow, I feel called to speak up and support in a bigger way, so I better get clear on how I want to do so. So I sat down at my computer, Google Doc in front of me, and I just started typing like crazy. And I titled it How to Lead in Turbulent Times. Very original, I know. I bet everyone and their brother’s using a title like that, but for me, that’s what I wanted to journal about. And so I started to just write out, how am I going to show up? What am I going to say to my audience in the simplest form? What am I going to say to my audience right now? What do I need them to hear? What do I want them to hear? How do I want to position myself and my business during this time of crisis? Those were the questions I was asking. And I just type type, type, type, type, type, type. And so for me, because I have the luxury right now, I have the finances to work with a copywriter, I called up Chanti, one of our copy writers, and I said, “Here's a bunch of notes. Can you help me kind of put this together?”
But I almost didn't tell you that part, because you don't need that part. I was going into a launch for Momentum this week, so I needed help really quickly. I could have done it myself, without a copywriter. So once you just like do a brain dump, go back and clean it up. And so that's what she helped me do, just clean up my thoughts. And with that, there were some golden nuggets that were taken out of my brain dump.
So that's what I want you to do. Take some golden nuggets out of that brain dump, and that is your crisis messaging. I'm going to share mine with you so that you can see what I mean, but I want you to come up with your own. You and I are likely in very different businesses, doing very different things, on very different journeys. So yours will likely look dramatically different. You don't have to educate right now. You don't have to be their leader in building their businesses right now if that's nothing what you do. So please make this align to your brand in what you have to offer.
But what I said—and I've said it already on this podcast. You actually probably already heard it—I said, I have three golden nuggets that you will hear me weave into conversations and say over and over again in different ways. And before I share them with you, I want to tell you the only reason I'll say these over and over again and weave into every conversation is that they feel right to my core. When I say them, I know it’s truly how I feel. So when you put your crisis messaging together, it has to be true to your core. You feel it, you’re not even questioning it, you don’t even care—this is how you know it’s right—you don’t even care what anyone else would say about this. It’s right for you because you know it’s right for your audience.
And so mine, three golden nuggets. The first thing I told my students right away is that you did not come this far with creating a digital course and launching it, you didn't come this far working so hard on it—or right now, many of you are in the trenches doing that—you didn’t come this far to build an online business only to stop when things got tough. That is not you. And so we're living in an uncertain world where we don't know what tomorrow looks like, but I am not going to let you stop only because things got tough. And that is part of my crisis messaging to all of you. I won't let you stop now.
Second golden nugget that I want to share with my entire audience is that we are not going to hit the pause button on our online businesses just because we're scared or uncertain or even afraid to spend money or afraid we won't make money. All those things might be real for us in our head, but we are not hitting the pause button, which will lead me to the next two strategies I'm going to teach all of you because it's how not to hit the pause button. But that was one of my crisis-messaging golden nuggets. We are not hitting the pause button.
And the third thing that I shared is that I said in a world where we're encouraged to distance ourselves physically, we need an online community now more than ever. And that was really important for me to share because I know that I have the Insider's Club for all my students; I know that I have the Online Marketing Made Easy Facebook group for all of you podcast listeners who are not yet students of mine; and I have Momentum, which is my smaller, more-intense community, or people in the trenches, getting it done, where I show up every day for them right now, talking about how to navigate in an uncertain world. I've got three Facebook communities, and I think they're the most-important places to be right now. It's important that I'm showing up for you in a bigger way, and it's important that you're getting into these groups, whichever one you have access to, so that you do not hit the pause button so that you continue even when things get tough.
So that is my crisis messaging to all of you that feels right to my core. And now it's your turn. So the strategy I have for you is to create your crisis messaging now, in the next twenty-four hours. And remember, how you do it is you just sit down and you brainstorm from your heart, what do you want to say to your audience right now? and you go for it.
Now, I want to point out something so interesting that I saw yesterday, and I think you'll find it valuable. Remember how I said at the beginning of this podcast that everybody should talk about the crisis in whatever way feels right to you—educate, entertain, inspire, motivate, whatever it is for you? But I think you have to acknowledge it, but maybe your audience just wants you to continue on how you've been continuing on, like for weeks leading up to this. Maybe they want some normalcy. And I don't think that's too far off for many of you.
So here’s what I mean. I have a photographer I frickin’ love. Her name is Kat Harris, and she's my favorite photographer. So any time if I have to do a big photo shoot for a product, I’m like, “Where's Kat? Can she come?” She lives in New York. But she also has another business where she mentors single Christian women through the dating experience. She talks about love, sex, intimacy, spirituality, loving God, praying. She has this whole other side of the business that has nothing to do with photography. And so I follow her on Instagram, and she posted the other day. She said, “Guys,”—and I love her honesty and vulnerability. She posted on IG Stories, and she said, “I'm struggling with how to support you all right now. I don't know how to support you all right now. And I just want to ask you, do you want me to create content around what is going on in the world and help you navigate COVID-19?” That's exactly what she said. And then she said, “Here's five ways I could help you.” And she listed five ways, like I could give you prompts to pray during uncertain times, I could give you self-care techniques and strategies, I could—and she just went on. She just listed five things, like I could do this, I could do that. I could do this.
And then the next question she asked on an IG Story was, what do you want me to talk about and engage with you right now during this time? And then the next IG Story was a poll, and it said, do you want me to stay with the normal stuff I always talk about, or do you want me to pivot to more “crisis in uncertain times” type of content? So she said, “Normal, or do you want me to pivot?” And over twenty-four hours, 66 percent of her audience—because I watched it closely—said, “Normal. Go back to the normal stuff. We need a little normalcy right now.” So she said, “I don’t know what you need right now. I don’t know how to talk to you right now. But I want to support.”
It’s kind of like—this is so random—but when Hobie’s struggling with something, and he’s being really difficult and he’s not communicating, I’m like, “Babe, I want to support you, but I don’t know how to support you right now,” that’s kind of like what it felt like. She’s like, these are crazy times. I don’t know how to love you up. Tell me. And then she said, here’s some suggestions. And they said, keep doing what you’re doing. How cool is that?
Now, two things I want to point out with that example. Number one, she didn't ignore what's going on. She addressed it with vulnerability and then asked, “What do you want from me?” Number two, they said, we want the normal stuff you always give us. Now, do not assume your audience wants the normal stuff. Mine, 1 million percent does not. You guys do not for me. You've told me already. I've gotten the emails. I've gotten all the questions. I know you want me to talk about this because your online businesses are changing. They have to change, and I have to shop for that. But you're in a whole different world than I am. You're in a whole different niche. What does your audience want? Something to think about. Ask them.
Some of you, they might say, “Just be normal. Just go back to how you were two weeks ago, because it gives me a sense of calm.” And that's cool. Lucky you. Anyone whose audience says, “No, we want you to address this,” we've got more work to do. I'll be working this weekend to get ready for you all next week to add more value. But if they said, “Normal,” you should kind of celebrate that. That’s an awesome silver lining.
So there you have it. Okay, so, that's the whole thing about crisis messaging. You need to get it together. You need to figure that out. And it took me a few hours, and then I fumbled over the crisis messaging as I started to say it, and now it's just like boom, comes out like second nature because I believe it.
So that’s the first strategy. Get clarity around your crisis messaging. And it doesn’t have to be doom and gloom at all. You now understand it’s yours. It’s aligned with what your brand is all about. It has nothing to do with my example. It's everything to do with what you believe, what you know they need, what they want, how you can show up in a bigger way.
Number two, strategy number two for you, is to show up. So I do believe that we all—well, I take it back. If your audience tells you they do want you to address what's going on, related to whatever it is you've been teaching them or offering, then I believe you should create some free content around that. I think giving right now is important. And so if you can make a video that will help them, a cheat sheet, a PDF, what can you create for them? And here's my challenge to you. I want you to create something, related to the current times of uncertainty, that is aligned with your brand.
So everyone and their brother can create something like I created, which is “how to work from home,” because everyone and their brother’s working from home right now. But that is aligned with what I teach. I teach online entrepreneurs. Ninety-nine percent of my students are already working from home, so if I can help them do that more productively during uncertain times, I will.
But maybe you teach knitting. I have two quilters in Momentum, my highest-level program, that are doing great, for the record. And so if you teach quilting, I don't think you need to create a PDF of “how to work from home smarter.” But you could create something of value to say, “Look, I bet you've been so busy driving everywhere, traveling everywhere, commuting to work, and all of that has stopped. And I bet there's this one stitch all my students say they want to learn. So now is the time. You have a little extra time. Here’s a free video to teach you how to do that certain stitch.” That would be so cool.
What has your audience been putting off? What do they want? What do they need? What do you think—or ask them. But if you already know, what do they want—have wanted to do forever but they just haven't done. Answer that question. Create a freebie around that. So I'd love to see you create a freebie in the next week or so around something that resonates with your audience, but it's still aligned with what your business is all about.
Which leads me to the third strategy, what your business is all about. So the big question is, “Amy, should I stop selling right now? Should I pause my launch? Should I take my offer off line? Should I stop selling during this crisis?” And my answer is no. Now, this is my opinion, my educated, “based on eleven years of an online business and where I see the world going” kind of opinions. I'm paying attention. But I do not think you should stop selling. Now, we'll get to the question of moving a launch in a second. But just this idea of selling.
Something that's really important that I want you to hear, and I believe this to my core, is that if we all stop selling, we will crush our economy, and it's already suffering. So if we just give all our stuff away for free, what will that do to our economy? We are making it worse, not better. And so I want you to really hear me when I say you have an opportunity to help our economy heal faster if you will start putting valuable offers out into the world that people are willing to pay for.
Now, something I want to remind you is that not everybody is hurting financially. If you think, “Right now, people can't afford what I'm putting out there,” be very careful with that thought. It is a limiting belief, and there are ways around that, or ways to be compassionate while still selling. So don't just go to the extreme for anything. You would never say, “Everyone can afford what I'm doing, and everyone can't afford what I'm doing.” Don’t go to any extreme right now. Instead, focus more on what value could you offer that people would be willing to exchange money for right now. And the first thing you do to answer that question is you look at your current offers. Is it a digital course? Is it a service? Is it a coaching program? Whatever it is, look at your current offer, and ask yourself, “Is this still relevant, or more relevant, or less relevant, right now in our current season?” That's what you're going to ask. “This offer I have, is it more relevant, less relevant, just as relevant in our current season?”
And even if you don't have your course created yet, I told all my DCA members how to pre-sell. So you got an invite to a free training I did, how to pre-sell your digital course. You don't even have to have it created. But the idea, the topic, is this still relevant? And if the answer is yes, it's relevant; or heck yeah, it’s even more relevant, then you get that out into the world. You sell that, and you sell it next week, you sell it two weeks from now, whenever you're planning on selling it or if you're planning on launching six months from now, you move that up.
Let me give you an example. My weight loss coach, Corinne Crabtree, she was planning on opening the doors to her weight-loss membership on April 1st, and she's opening it up earlier, so days earlier. By the time this recording hits the Online Marketing Made Easy podcast, it will be right around that time that she's opening up the doors. And she decided to open up the doors now because her crisis messaging is lose the weight, not your mind. Lose the weight, not your mind.
Do you know how many people have been emotionally eating through this whole thing? Many, right? You can give me a yes in the comments right now, those listening through Facebook Live, if you've been like, “Why am I eating five cupcakes right now? because I cannot stop. My hands are just shoving them in my mouth,” because you’re worried, because you’re scared, because you don’t know what’s happening.
So emotional eating is alive and well right now. And so she knows that, and she said, “I've got to open the doors to my membership because people need me now.” She even said this morning, when I had a coaching call, she's like, “I don't want them gaining ten pounds because I waited a whole other week to open up the doors.” I’m like, “Yes, yes, and yes.” So PNPTribe is opening up early. And for those of you who are interested, we’ll, in the show notes, post the link to all of that, because it's amazing, and it's truly how I've been able to lose my weight. So she knows there's a need right now, so she moved up her launch. What a bad ass, right?
She’s not saying, “I’m scared to sell.” And there, people will say, some people will say, “Oh, Corinne, you're trying to capitalize on a crisis. You're trying to make money when people are losing their job?” And she can just let them say what they want to say, because in her gut, in her heart, in the deepest places inside her, she knows she is serving women so that they are not emotionally eating through a time when they need to be present to make better decisions for their family, their life, their businesses. She knows she is doing something that is going to serve and help in a time of crisis.
So I don't mean sell to take advantage of people's hardships right now. And you know me. I feel like I don't even need to say that. I would never do that in a million years. But there's ways to look at your offer, and if you need to move it up because people need you now, show up for them, because when this has finally passed, I want you to look back and say, “I was the kind of person that showed up for the challenge.” I want you literally to not even recognize yourself in six months down the road because all the work you did now to show up, even when you were scared, even when you didn't know what to do, but you showed up like a boss and you frickin’ surprised yourself. And you have to do that, not caring what everyone else is going to think. And this is coming from a people pleaser that worked really hard on not caring what other people think. And when I opened the doors to Momentum, I could give a crap what anyone thought about me selling right now because I knew Momentum was going to help people keep a business instead of shutting their virtual doors. So you have to believe in what you're doing at the deepest level to have the thick skin to sell when some people will just shame you for it. And I do not pay attention to people that will shame.
This is what Michael Hyatt said this morning. I’m in his mastermind, and I was on a call with him this morning. And he said, “You know, it's really, really different to be on the football field as an athlete playing the game and making decisions in the moment, not knowing if they’re right or wrong, but just going with it, having the courage to move forward on the field than to be in the stands with popcorn in hands with a lot of opinions about what they should have done on the field. Totally different. And I want to be on the field.” And you're going to make decisions that are not going to be turning out as you had planned. You'll make decisions, and the results are not what you wanted them to be. So guess what. You make another decision. We don't look back. We don't say it's right or wrong. You make another decision. The people that are going to win right now are the people that are making the hard decisions, truly, and not judging themselves if they don't turn out as planned. So I want you to sell.
Speaking of Michael Hyatt, he's got this great free training that I would be doing you a disservice by not mentioning right now. I’m not an affiliate or anything. It’s free. Amyporterfield.com—oh, I’m such a dork. Michaelhyatt.com/crisis. It’s this free training to help you continue to move forward if you feel stuck in your business, kind of like all the stuff we're talking about right now. He's got this great training that I got on last night and, again, totally free, and I loved it. So if you want more of this, if you're like, “Amy, this is speaking to my soul. This is what I needed to hear,” check out Michael's free training. It's really good.
Okay, so, here's the deal, because we've already determined that our economy needs you to sell now, and we've already determined that selling right now is the lifeblood of our economy, we need to be showing up in that way, the question is, how do you sell during crisis? How do you sell when people are very fearful and not wanting to make any financial decisions right now and are afraid to spend money and are afraid to do anything right now? How do you sell during that time? Well, there's three things you do. Number one, you pivot your message; number two, you pivot your offer; and number three, maybe, maybe, maybe—I'll give you some specifics—you pivot your pricing. You pivot your message, your offer, and your pricing.
So when I first jumped onto this Facebook Live, many of you were asking me should you cancel your launches. Many of you had lots of March and April launches planned, which, go on with your bad self. And so you’re asking should you cancel the launch. I do not think you should. If the offer, remember that question, does this offer resonate? Now, remember, I said if it resonates even more, launch it faster. If it does resonate, get it launched whenever you're planning on launching it. Or if you didn't have it planned, get it on the calendar. But if it does not resonate, you just know, like, “Amy, this offer is not right,” then you change the offer. And we'll get to that in a minute. But most of your offers will resonate with a pivot in the messaging and a pivot in the offer.
So, first of all, I’m going to give you an example. We have been selling Momentum all week, and people have been buying. So it has been working. But before I opened the doors to Momentum—this is literally this last weekend, and on Monday, we've made some changes since then—I pivoted my messaging around the golden nuggets I shared with you. We're not pausing your business; you didn't come this far to quit when things got tough; and in a world where we're isolated physically, we need community. Those three things came out of, first, Momentum, of how I was going to position Momentum because they’re all true for Momentum, and then I took them out into my bigger audience. But I started with when I sold Momentum to my DCA students, that is what I stood behind. And so the messaging changed for Momentum. We had to change some things on the sales page. We had to change every email we were sending because I didn't want to be tone deaf, but I knew they needed the message now. And so we did the work fast. We were exhausted. We've been working all week on this. But we did it.
The second thing that we changed was the offer. And so when you change the offer, what I mean by that is either change the offer in terms of what you're including or add layers that you weren't expecting or you weren’t planning on including but it makes sense now.
So what we did with Momentum—and all my DCA members that are actually on this Facebook Live now—you can join Momentum. It's still open until Tuesday, when the doors close, and I don't know how long they're closing for. We’re reassessing everything after that. But you can join Momentum until Tuesday, when the doors close. And so just to be very specific on dates so that I don't confuse anything, the twenty-fourth, March 24, you have to join Momentum.
But here's what we did with the offer. We added thirty days of me going live in the Momentum group every morning, 8:00 a.m. Pacific, where I only talk about what I'm talking about here, but on a deeper level, and then so much more. So we talk about mindset, strategy, pivoting, and what it looks like to be resilient. I'm giving them tons of ideas on how to pivot next week. So I've collected, like, ten ways people have already pivoted in their business and seeing success, so I'm introducing those in the early morning, 8:00 a.m. calls. So I'm showing up in a bigger way. Was I planning to show up 8:00 a.m. every morning for the next thirty days? No. Actually, this was my downtime to do less video. But I knew I needed to change my offer so it would resonate and relate. So I did a recalibration, got with my team, asked them what they thought, they liked the idea, and now that's what we've been doing.
I also changed the April training for Momentum—every month, I do a training. The April training we already scratched, like actually did scratch. A lot of stuff that you have had in the works, you can just put to the side for a moment. Don't think you can never come back to it. We will get back to some normalcy. So things that might not work, like here's an example of what didn't work. The training I had planned for April in Momentum would not resonate right now. It was not right. People would look at it and be like, “You really want to talk about that right now?” So that's an example of something not working that I had to shelf. And the training we're putting in its place is talking about literally how to change your business in changing times, with lots more examples than I'm giving here. And Corinne, who owns the membership, a multimillion-dollar membership, she's doing it with me so we can show a membership experience and a course experience of how to pivot your business. So that's Momentum’s training in April.
So we changed the offer as well. And so you can change the offer by—well, specifically, how I changed the offer is I added in the thirty days. So that was an extra bonus on top of everything else I was adding. And what that did for my old Momentum members, my O.G.s, is they also get the thirty days. So I added something to super serve the people that are already paying for what I have to offer. So that is a really important thing, too, to remember that you have to support those who are already paying to be a part of your community. Okay, so that's how we pivoted the offer before we sold it.
Now, pivoting the pricing is really what you guys want to hear from me, I think. I get this a lot. Should I charge nothing? Should I give it away for free? I think we already know the answer, right? You're doing a disservice to yourself, to your business, to the people that you employ, your contractors that you can't pay any more if you give it all away for free, and the economy. I have fifteen people full time on my team. If I don't sell something of great value that people need and want right now to relate to where they're at, if I don't figure that out, fifteen people won’t have a job. And you might not have fifteen people on your team, but you do have a family you're supporting. You do have other people relying on you, whether it be contractors or yourself. You've got to find your bigger why in that. And it looks different for all of us.
So with pricing, we know that we are not going to give it away for free, but you can change your pricing. What I don't want to see is deep, deep discounts. I'm not a fan of that. I think it undervalues your knowledge and your skill set and your positioning in the market, and I think it's not sustainable. So not sustainable is free or deep, deep discounts. However, you can discount and still be sustainable in your business, giving $100 off or whatever that might look like for you. You can discount.
Definitely add payment plans. So adding payment plans is so important with any offer you go out, especially with a digital course. Offer payment plans, for sure.
And one thing we did with Momentum is we usually offer an annual membership. So a monthly or an annual—remember, Momentum is a membership. So we do a monthly or an annual. Instead of doing the annual, we did a nine months to take them to the end of the year and gave them a free month. If they bought the nine months, they actually only buy eight months; they got a month free. So we've played around with our pricing a little bit.
And so I didn't deeply discount. I don't believe in that. But we did tweak things a little bit to support. And actually, in my revenue planning, we're going to take a hit because we had planned on increasing the price of Momentum to $347 a month. Yeah, you heard me right, for those of you who don't know anything about Momentum. It's an elite program, for sure. And so we were going to increase the price to $347, and I thought, in a time of crisis, I don't feel comfortable increasing a product, the price. So we kept it at the old price, which totally threw off all of our revenue goals. But it was needed and necessary.
So there are different ways you can look at the pricing, but what I don't want you to do is deeply discount or give it away for free.
So getting back to if you do not have something that is going to resonate to sell right now or a lot of you listening weren't planning on launching because your course isn't done and you're not ready to pre-sell, here’s my challenge to you. Create a workshop course. Create something new. A workshop course. All of my Digital Course Academy®️ students know how to create a workshop course. It was a bonus for you. So you have the bonus. Create a workshop, which is, for those of you who are not a student of mine, it is a one- to two-hour live or prerecorded—you choose—training that people pay for. It's not a webinar where you sell something on the live training. You're not selling anything on the live training. You're selling the workshop before.
So let me give you an example. It might be a one-hour workshop on how to plan out your food—food prepping—for an entire week. So you can make it relevant by saying, “I know you have limited produce. You have random things in your pantry. Let me show you how to use some of that stuff in your pantry, also figuring out what you've got in your fridge, for the next week so that food will last longer, but you're feeding your family, and you’re planning ahead.” So that could be a workshop that you charge a hundred dollars for, forty-seven dollars for, whatever makes sense to you, and they pay for it, and then you deliver it for free on a certain date. Whether it's prerecorded or live, you can say, “You buy it now. I’m going to deliver it in a week,” whatever that might be.
So if you don't have an offer right now, you can put together an offer to rise to the occasion of where we're at right now. So that is an option, for sure. Doesn't take a lot of technology. You don’t have to run ads to it. You don't have to do a lot of email marketing. You might not even have a list. You only promoted on social, whatever you want to do. You can keep it really simple. You don't have to have a big audience. But if you want to try something, here's the beauty, and this is where I'm going to a wrap this up and leave you with this. The beauty of all of this is that nobody is expecting perfection right now.
Some of us are barely hanging on by a thread, in some moments of the day. We are not looking for perfection. The people that are rising above right now are showing up, even though they've never worked a video camera before, even though this is their first workshop course they put together, but they know their message and their offer is strong. We're experimenting right now. We're making decisions, not knowing what the outcome will be, and the world is welcoming that right now.
I've never seen a time in eleven years of building an online business where your audience will be so forgiving if it doesn't work. The world needs you right now. Your audience needs you right now. So vow to not be perfect, but vow to show up. Show up in ways to put out free content, show up in ways to sell what you have. Don't cancel your launch. Instead, pivot. Pivot your messaging, your offer, your pricing, whatever that might look like, show up.
And maybe you don’t hit your goals. La-di-da. Maybe you don’t hit your goals. And that's coming from a girl that really loves to hit a goal. A financial goal, I bring it on. I’m all about it. But this week, when we launched, I said, we probably won't hit our revenue goals, but there are people that need us. So every person that shows up and signs up for Momentum right now, we are literally celebrating, acting as though they are our family member, and we’re like, “Where have you been? Come into the family.”
Something has shifted in me at a bigger level. Every person that spends money with me, I'm able to slow down a little bit and appreciate it even a little bit more. And I thought I appreciated it before. But I just saw two more members had joined in the last few hours. And I saw Chloe, on my team, post it in Slack. And she's like, “I'd like to tell you all that we have two beautiful new souls that just joined Momentum.” And everyone's like, “Yes! I love them already.” I think that’s what Kylee said, “I love them already.” Oh, my gosh, this is the coolest time. My perspective has changed, and I hope it's changed forever about how to get excited, about every single person that is spending money on your business right now, you love them a little harder. It's so important. The perspective changes I’ve had, I hope I never go back.
So, there you have it. I wanted to remind you of some mindset shifts that you have the choice to make right now; and some strategies that you can make, strategies around crafting your crisis message, creating something for free that literally resonates with your audience right now; and continue to sell because the economy needs it, your audience needs it, you need it to keep your business afloat. But you've got to find new ways for your messaging and your offer so that it really meets people where they are today.
All right, guys. I feel like the luckiest girl in the world to be able to talk to you now in the most uncertain of times and still connect with you this way and hopefully add some value so that you can continue to move forward. If you are just starting your business, do not stop. You didn't come this far to give up when things get tough. Think of all the other things you've gone through in your life that you've gotten through—divorces and deaths of loved ones and disappointments and being fired from jobs and horrible breakups and the things that all of us as humans have gone through. You have done hard things already; you can do hard things moving forward. You, my friend, we, my friend, are resilient. I love you to the moon and back. And I will talk to you again soon. Bye for now.