Thursday, March 29, 2012

I have learned something about sales pages this week. They are not as evil as I used to think. They are not long because people want to keep you baited until they finally reveal the price (at least, most people aren't that way). They are long because there is a lot of information people need to know to figure out if what you're doing is right for them. Most people won't ask questions if they don't see what they're looking for; they'll just go away. (Luckily, you guys have been super-open with me about what specifically you need to know. Thank you.)

One of the things people have been asking is about my vision for the direction of the curriculum. I am going to share some of that now. With one caveat. During this tour, I am adjusting things as I see what is working/what is not working. I rely on questions and feedback from everyone taking the tour so that I know what areas will be most useful to explore next and where we need to spend more time. I have worked hard to develop the curriculum that I have, but I am a designer. If I see something that could be improved, I am going to try to find a solution. (This is why the feedback/questions are so important to me; I need to be connected to your experience to help my grand vision for this -- and for you -- happen.)

The Tour de Bliss is not going to be information overload. We are covering a lot, but we have an entire year. That's why I gave us that long. This is a whole new system and experience of business development, and I want it to be a part of you by the time we're through (and hopefully much sooner than that).

If you took the Weekly Dates with your Website (with Mo), this is not going to be like that, where you have an exercise to complete every week and then we move on to the next exercise. We are learning a new way to think and interact with our businesses. And for BOTH the group and solo tours, I'm going to be asking for feedback from you to shape the direction we need to go to accomplish that.

What to expect from this experience (a wide-angle view)

We start by creating our own versions of The Manifest. Whether you use the downloadable book I've designed, or create your own (if the word "Manifest" doesn't work for you, for example, or if you want to do it in Scrivener or if you want to use index cards in a photo album or something), we are going to create this tool for observing and documenting our businesses.

This tool is designed to be a natural extension of your current workflow. We are going to continually hone it so that it doesn't feel like something "extra" that we have to add into what we're doing; it's a tool for capturing information in an intentional way (even information you discover outside of the Tour de Bliss...all information you explore this year in developing your business is going to be a part of this experience). Whether it's a class you're taking elsewhere or an ebook you purchase or a blog post that really hits home, we are capturing that information and experience and using it intentionally. No more ingesting piles of advice/strategy without having a system for implementing what is closest to your very next intention.

Learning how to use this tool will take time. We will be doing strategic experiments to help us learn how to use it best for ourselves (while simultaneously learning things about our businesses that are entirely new to us). The more the tool becomes a part of our workflow, the less we'll be focusing specifically on the tool.

Next, we set our very next intention(s). This is what makes big dreams doable...knowing clearly what you are doing next. (This doesn't have to be what product you're launching next; it can be what you are focused on exploring/experimenting/changing next. Some people might want different intentions for different projects they're working on. Some people might want to have only one intention that they're working on at a time. Either way is valid.)

Then, we explore possible ways to meet those intentions. If you're going on the group tour, we'll be doing this interactively. If you're going on the self-guided solo tour, you'll get to do this within the experience, as you discover the different destinations we'll be traveling to.

Then, we experiment. Here is the way I see business. Business is not about success or failure. It is about a series of experiments and refinements. It is about playing with concepts and trying them out. It is about being vulnerable enough to do that (and shucking your pride out the window from time to time). So we experiment. We make observations. We see what happens. And then if we don't get the results we expected, we try something else. We record our results, and we keep going.

Through all of this, we'll be exploring destinations that include specific strategies and how-tos for the things we need to know for our experiments to work. This experience is not primarily about strategy, though there is going to be a lot of sharing about my personal strategy and experience, as well as "strategy at large" (i.e. what the experts say to do). Since this is not a one-on-one experience (though the group tour is intimate), some of the strategy may not be related to your very next intention, but will need to be filed for later use. In other words, you do not have to do everything on this Tour, though you are welcome to enjoy everything. What I want you to do is focus on your very next intentions and what you need to experiment and find the results you are looking for.



Man, I love writing ridiculously long emails (I think I just love writing, period.). Thanks for letting me share with you about this thing I made. I'm very excited, and I hope that the weekend getaway kindles your enthusiasm for working on your business. And if you're coming on the year-long Tour, you can register here.

- Sarah