Hi Reader,
As we’re sneaking up on our public launch of The Breakroom membership (ICYMI: we’re launching a membership), I’ve been reflecting on how generous our community has been in helping us build it out. Even tho we only started our “Episode x of launching the membership we wish we had” series on IG/TT last week, we’ve been socially listening, directly asking people, and getting feedback for months at this point.
And everyone’s been so generous & kind!
Here are some stats that really put it in context for me of how willing people were to give us their time and thoughts:
- 32 people have attended coffee chats since the beginning of August, where we practiced facilitating calls with strangers
- 23 people joined a simple free version of what would become the weekly Peer Masterminds in The Breakroom
- 8 people, or 80% of those we asked, sat on 30-minute market research calls earlier this month, as we learned what people needed in a membership
- 6 people, or 75% of those we asked for feedback on the first draft of our membership, got back with their thoughts by the next day
- 11 people, or 85% of those we asked for feedback on our messaging as we build out our sales copy, gave us beneficial thoughts
This honestly shocked me.
Every day, we hear about how busy business owners are; they don’t have time to think or even send out proposals. But they have time to give us feedback as we’re building something with literally nothing in return…?
Why did we talk to so many people?
Over countless pivots, we’ve learned that it’s much easier to stick the landing if you know where you’re landing.
Imagine you were going to go off a jump, but you couldn’t see the landing on the other side. You basically have 2 options:
- Option 1: Make your best guess & take the jump with confidence that you’d be able to figure it out in the air before you hit the landing.
- Option 2: Ask everybody who knows about the landing; people who have taken the jump before, the spectators of the jump, maybe even the people who made the jump. And put together your best approximation of what the landing looks like.
Launching a new offer, especially something that isn’t exactly the same as what you’ve done in the past is kinda like jumping without knowing what the landing looks like - you don’t know the exact people that will buy, you don’t know which exact deliverables will drive the most impact, and you don’t have 100% confidence on exactly how much people are willing to pay.
This is where asking for people’s help comes into play - if we go with the jump example a bit more:
- Market research - learning about the jump before you take it
- Feedback - taking it slow & without any pressure, then asking people to tell you how to improve, so you can get better without getting hurt
And honestly, our Market Research & Feedback put a couple of things on our radar that we didn’t realize before:
- Hot Seat coaching was super valuable, not just a nice-to-have
- Biz Book Club was a value-add to a membership
- People would sign up for the education & transformation, and stay for the community (aka both are important for different reasons)
How did we do it?
Honestly, we simply asked, and made it as easy as possible for people to help us.
- Zero prep from them
- People who’re already invested & represented our ICA
- 15-30 mins max if a call was necessary, based on what worked for their schedule
- Voice Memo brain dumps for everything else
- Only questions that served a purpose to answer a question or test a theory we had
This was the exact script we used for our market research calls (IG DMs):
Hey __! Now that we’re entering Q4, we’re ready to start building on our bigger dreams of what the breakroom can be. As one of our most loyal attendees, would you be available for a one-on-one 10-15min call tomorrow (Thurs Oct2) or Tuesday (Oct7) to answer a few market research questions as we’re building out phase 2 of the breakroom?
When we followed up with them to review the draft we put together, we used this script (IG DMs):
Thanks so much for your time sitting on a market research call! Now that we’ve synthesised the feedback from everyone, we’ve put together a draft of what the 3 tiers of our Breakroom membership could look like. I’ve screenshotted our current draft below. Would you be willing to send us a voice memo with your honest first thought (you can even talk through as you read it)? And then can you answer these three questions?
1. What stands out to you?
2. Is there anything missing or that you don’t like?
3. Would you sign up if we launched this exact membership? (we won’t hold you to it)
Late last week, with a simple Canva PDF with offer details (before building out a whole sales page), we personally invited people to sign up and signed up a few. For many of the people who showed interest, but hadn’t signed up, we followed up with a simple feedback request on our messaging:
Hey! I was wondering if you could do us a favor. We’re working on iterating our sales copy for The Breakroom before we make our actual sales page on our website and it would be super helpful to get your take on things.
Did you have any questions, objections, or specific reasons it wouldn’t be a good fit for you once you were able to take a look at the details for the breakroom we shared last week? (It won’t hurt our feelings, hearing what people are thinking when they look at our current messaging is super helpful)! Thanks!
At every stage of asking people, we got back way more yeses than I thought we would. And I’m grateful for every comment, thought, and note that everyone gave us. Because we feel so much more dialed into what our audience is actually interested in now than we ever could be if we just sat and wrote on the whiteboard.
And the honest answer is we aren’t done.
Going back to this analogy, this was only the first jump on the trail… as every business owner knows, the first customer is somehow both the easiest and hardest to sign. The challenges just change, and we’ll keep iterating on the next part of launching, growing, and delivering on the promises we’re making with The Breakroom.
We’re honestly so excited to put this out in the world!
If you want a peek behind the curtain, and access to a free 30 min 1:1 call we’re throwing in for the first 10 people to sign up, hit reply and we’ll send you some details 👀
Where do you get stuck with getting feedback from people? Hit reply, I’d love to nerd out on feedback with you!
Lyndon
