I thought I had it nailed.
I’d done my homework.
I’d learned from other’s mistakes.
So, when I created and offered a free 5-day challenge during my launch a few months ago, I was confident it was packed with incredible value without being packed with too much overwhelming information.
Uh… I was wrong.
I made a cardinal mistake… without even realizing I was doing so.
Which is why I made the above video for you. So you won’t make the same mistake. It’s a mistake soooo many entrepreneurs make when they offer a free multi-day challenge.
Watch and be forewarned!
If you’re wondering why you’d even want to do a free challenge, I’ll simply say that it’s a fun and very effective way to attract new clients, inspire your current clients, and ignite more meaningful conversations and engagement between you and your tribe. Basically, a free challenge consists of “challenging” your audience to accomplish something or learn something within a set period of days. Something that moves them closer to some goal or outcome. Like… a 7-Day Detox to Rev Up Your Energy and Well-Being. Or 5 Days to Reboot a Troubled Relationship. Or 21 days to Become Slightly Famous Online.
The reason challenges are fun and tempting for your people is they’re time limited. They promise a cool outcome in a certain number of days. And they get to do it in a community of people who are doing the same thing.
The reason challenges are fun for you is they give you an opportunity to engage more deeply and more often with your tribe, show off your expertise, and get more people opting in to your list.
So, hey! I encourage you to create and offer a Challenge.
Just don’t make this mistake if you do!
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Video Transcript:
One very cool and effective way to wake up your peeps, attract new clients and get more engagement is to do an online challenge. This is where you challenge your audience to accomplish something or learn something within a set period of days, something that will help them achieve a goal or move closer to what they want.
Usually in these types of challenges, the participants who opt-in to take part are given a certain task or challenge to do every day of the entire challenge. For instance, my friend just did a 7-day visibility challenge where every day she gave the participants a certain task to do that would allow them to come out of hiding, develop a fun way of getting their message out there, engage with their prospects or just get known online.
The reason these types of challenges are fun and tempting for your people is they’re time limited, they promise a specific outcome, and your people get to do it within a community that is also going through the same tasks and challenges they are. The reason they’re fun for you is they give you an opportunity to build your tribe, to get more people opting in and to show off your expertise.
A challenge also gives you the opportunity to engage with your peeps every day for a certain period of time. So they really get to know you and like you and trust you. So yeah, challenges are cool, but if you’re going to do one, don’t make the big mistake I see so many entrepreneurs making, one that completely sabotages the success of your challenge. And that mistake is giving people too much content or too much to accomplish in one day.
You want to be sure not to overwhelm or overburden your participants by loading them up with too much to do or accomplish in any one day. Because if you do, guess what happens? Your peeps will either immediately feel overwhelmed. Or they will try to keep up and when they can’t, they’ll feel like big fat failures.
Either way, you lose because they don’t get to have the benefit of working with you. They don’t get to experience that soft, fuzzy feeling of satisfaction you want them to feel in working with you. On the contrary, their experience of working with you will be one of disappointment, overwhelm, and feeling left out.
Over the last two months, I’ve participated in two different challenges. One was a 21-day challenge and one was the seven-day challenge. In both of these challenges, I was given so much to do on day one that I was behind before I even got started. And all my initial excitement about doing the challenge quickly became a feeling of disappointment, discouragement and disconnection. Do not make the same mistake because the whole point of your challenge is to give people a strong positive experience of what it’s like to work with you. You want them to feel inspired and excited about what they’re accomplishing and what they’re learning, and you want to keep them engaged.
You want to keep them eager for the next day’s task. So give them small but significant tasks or challenges they can do in 20, at the most 30, minutes a day so they can complete it and they can feed off the joy of that completion. When every day of the challenge feels like a small success to them, it will feed their desire to continue to keep at it so by the end of the challenge, they’re going to be hooked on you and your ability to make things happen for them, so much so that they’ll want to continue working with you.
So try on a challenge, go ahead and do it. It’s a great way to engage your people, to kind of wake them up, to get them excited about what you do, to attract new clients. Just be sure you don’t load them up with too much to do on any one day. You don’t want to overwhelm them. Cut it down into mini challenges so they have that feeling, that satisfaction of success every day. Give it a go, I know you can do it.