S2E13: Launching a Product That Rocks with Marisa Murgatroyd
Welcome to Women Rocking Business, where we are here to help you rock yourself, rock your life, and rock the world as a woman entrepreneur, because the world needs you and the time is now. I’m Sage Lavine, CEO, trainer, unretired, camp counselor, and best-selling author of the Hay House book Women Rocking Business. We’ve had the honor of serving over a hundred thousand women entrepreneurs around the globe, just like you, who are here to do more, be more and have more by giving your gift to the planet. So let’s dive in.
Hello everyone. Welcome, welcome. I am so excited to be talking to my dear friend, colleague mentor, Marisa Murgatroyd. Marisa is the absolute guru of pioneering what she calls experience products.
Sage Lavine
00:00:44
Marisa teaches people how to design and market a brand new kind of online program called an experience product, that includes gamification, adult learning theory, psychology, and really helps people to get anywhere from 10 to 30 times the results of most industry standard training programs or products. Marisa, I love that you are helping so many people you’re reinventing the way that we learn, especially online. You’ve been on a mission. You’ve grown a $7 million company, despite the fact that your father thought that you had no marketable skills. You and I have had a jam session on how we defy all of our parents’ predictions for us.
Sage Lavine
00:01:33
I want to just acknowledge you. Thank you for being a fellow woman leader in the space who is just crushing it and changing so many lives with your brilliance. Thank you for being here.
Marisa Murgatroyd
00:01:44
Thank you for having me Sage. I absolutely adore you and for everyone listening. Sage, and I feel like we’ve been on this journey side by side for so many years and we regularly call each other up and just jam and support, and you are such a luminary. I just look up to you and admire you so much and the work that you do in the world, but more importantly, how you’re being as you do that work.
Sage Lavine
00:02:07
Thank you. Thank you. It takes a village to grow a business and you know, I think that for every single one of you, who’s wanting to make a difference by launching programs online and launching products online… It’s going to take a village and I really invite you to consider some of the wisdom that Marisa lays down today as part of the tools in your toolbox, the quills in your quiver, because Marisa understands so much about how we really learn. Marisa,I would just love to know for all the women out there that are watching, they’re thinking, “Okay, these two women are pretty shiny. They clearly have already had some success.” You know, you went through all kinds of rites of passage when you were starting your business and you were up against a lot of gremlins and prophecies from your father that you’d never be able to make it.
Sage Lavine
00:02:58
Here you have grown a 7 million million dollar company reaching hundreds of thousands of people around the world. You’ve trained over 10,000 of your students to really have success online. What would you say to somebody like, can you share an insight into your journey that we can learn from as we’re launching programs and products and getting more visible ourselves?
Marisa Murgatroyd
00:03:19
Oh yeah. I’d actually like to take you back to the moment when it all began, because I certainly did not start here. It’s a big mistake that people make is… they look at people like you and I, and think that this is where we started, or this is how we were born. Usually we get here because we were born into situations that had challenges and things which gave us the drive and the fuel to really be out there and make a big impact on the world. But I actually remember the very moment my husband, Murray popped the question, not the one that you think he popped, but we were, it was a different question. We were hiking to the Hollywood sign, which is a symbol of fame and fortune. And he asked me, well, “Marisa, why don’t you create an online course?”
Marisa Murgatroyd
00:03:59
At the time I was designing websites for people, right? The first words out of my mouth was, “Who would want to learn from me?” You know, followed quickly by, “What would I even teach?” That was my very, very first thought. And finally, he worked on me. He worked on me. He thought, you know, if I could leverage my time more that he would then have more of me, which is what he was. And I launched a course and it sold zip, zero zilch, absolutely nothing.
And then I did what any self-respecting entrepreneur would do. I actually launched another course and this one did better. Over four years, it did about half a million dollars, but I started to see a new problem emerge in that people were buying it, but they were refunding or they weren’t completing.
Marisa Murgatroyd
00:04:46
That just started to devastate me inside because I didn’t feel good anymore about selling things or building a business if people weren’t getting results. I remember going up to a colleague and asking, you know, “Are people buying your programs and not completing them?”
She looked at me and said something that just put me on this path and changed everything. She said, “Marisa, maybe some people just aren’t meant to succeed.”
That felt like this punch in the gut, you would recognize this person’s name because I really truly believe that everyone, every single person is meant to succeed given the right support, the right guidance, right. The right education. The problem is that when I dug deeper, I actually discovered that for traditional online courses, that only 3 to 7% of people actually ever complete them and get the results that were promised.
Marisa Murgatroyd
00:05:36
So even though I had this belief, everything that I was seeing was questioning and challenging, whether that belief was really accurate, but I knew in my heart that everyone’s meant to succeed. So I went on this mission to reinvent online education around the world. So results and engagement become the norm and not the exception. So I started looking outside of our industry and asking myself, “Well, where in the world have they figured out how to grab and hold people’s attention for hours for days, for weeks, for years on end?”
It brought me to a really unlikely place, which is the app and game industry. And a lot of times as entrepreneurs, I mean our competition isn’t who we think it’s not other people like us. It’s all the places where people are spending their time on social media, on their cell phones for hours and hours and hours every single day.
Marisa Murgatroyd
00:06:23
So if we’re not competing with these tools, if we’re not using the techniques that they’re using to hold her attention, then we’re not going to be able to stand out. We’re not going to even be able to get someone’s time, much less, keep it through the course of a program. And so I started to experiment and I started seeing… I remember this moment in time where I saw people stampeding through Central Park and chase of little virtual Pokemons. Right? I know it was like thousands of people or they were looking running around.
Sage Lavine
00:06:54
I remember that area of people wandering around looking for Pokemon. I was like, what is going on?
Marisa Murgatroyd
00:06:58
They were like possessed. I thought about that image, if I can get people that excited, not to chase little virtual creatures, but to actually change their lives and grab their biggest hopes and dreams using the same techniques, then I’d be on to something. I started to experiment and my initial experiments went really, really well. And now something like six years later, I’ve helped over 10,000 people launch this kind of experience product and get radically better results for their students, clients and customers, 10 to 30 times the industry average, which means that we’re able to lift up the entire industry because a lot of people feel like they’ve been burned, they’ve invested and they haven’t gotten the results. Then sometimes they give up on themselves and their hopes, their dreams, their businesses, which has a huge cost, but it also has a cost to them, but it has a cost to your business too.
Marisa Murgatroyd
00:07:47
If you aren’t creating products in this way, I think you end up being left behind because as people become more and more aware that it’s not just the marketing that’s important. It’s not just the sales, but I really believe that the best customer experience and the best results when, and that when your students, clients and customers win, you win too. Customer success is the new marketing. TAnd this is where you have customers for life. I mean, my lifetime customer value went from $500 to like $15,900, 10 times. I’ve got all of these referrals coming in. So I don’t have to market so hard or sell so hard or push so hard. My courses are just attracting people to sign up and then they want to stay with me for like years and years and years and then we get to have this deep, rich fun relationship.
Sage Lavine
00:08:34
Wow, this is so cool. I love this discussion. I want to just take a pause and share something I know you guys might want to know about and that’s that we just launched a rock, your business bonus training package for anyone who buys my book, Women Rocking Business. The book hit number one when it was recently published with Hay House and the book is a 12-step system for any woman to go from having just an idea to a six or seven figure business with a simple and elegant business plan that’s based in women’s values. You know, women are starting businesses one and a half times faster than men right now, but we’re also failing faster than men. But what I’ve seen is that when we learn to build businesses that align with our innate values of collaboration, rather than competition empowerment rather than power over.
Sage Lavine
00:09:19
When we build businesses based in generosity, rather than using scarcity and manipulative selling tactics…I see women thrive as successful CEOs and in our community, we see 80% of businesses succeed rather than 80% of women’s businesses failing. So that’s why we have this special promo happening right now where when you buy the book, you’ll get immediate access to our full training course. That’s four video modules on how to Make Money with your Message. You’ll get our entire system to really get going. And you’ll get my Freedom Formula training on how to grow a business and make great money and a huge impact in just 12 days a month or less. So go grab the book over at www.womenrockingbusiness.com/book and get all those bonuses that we can get you going because your clients are waiting. And once again, that URL to buy the book is www.womenrockingbusiness.com/book.
Sage Lavine
00:10:06
It’s so inspiring. It’s so, you know, you and I have known each other since both of us were just, you know, we had just both hit seven figures and we met at I think one of the masterminds in San Diego, I remember you were like, you were like claiming that you’re like the shortest marketer. I was like, you’re the shortest, but the fricking most brilliant. You know, we’ve been in this conversation for years and I’ve brought so many of the experiential tools to help grow Women Rocking Business as well to be a multimillion dollar company. You’ve inspired me so much in that realm. I think one of the things that women run into is the barrier around well, digital marketing can feel so salesy.
Sage Lavine
00:10:50
It can feel so anonymous and it can actually start to rob me of feeling like I have a soul. You know, you’re one of my go-to colleagues and someone I look up to in the realm of really giving us permission to raise our standards and to hold a higher bar of what we’re asking for from our participants and how we actually get to change lives through selling. I’m wondering if you can speak into this concept of experiencify-ing something… creating an experience and how we learn and why you’ve been so adamant, and you’ve gone way out of your way. You know, you could have made a living and retired a long time ago, but you’re so committed to really bringing a product to market that doesn’t just make people money, but changes lives.
Can you share a little bit about what you’ve discovered along the way and how we can do the same?
Marisa Murgatroyd
00:11:43
Absolutely. So I don’t practice marketing like everybody else practices marketing. I practice something that I like to call experience marketing. So just like experience products are really running circles around traditional courses and information-based products. I believe experience marketing is also running circles around that kind of pushy, digital marketing that so many people are doing out there because it’s not working anymore. If it works once, it will stop working as people kind of realize that what’s on the other end of that isn’t what they hoped for.
So experience marketing for me is the process of creating the attitudes, beliefs, and conditions in the marketing process that someone needs to say, “yes,” not necessarily to you, but to themselves because all we’re really doing is helping people say “yes” to themselves.
Marisa Murgatroyd
00:12:29
Some of that relates to giving people results in advance, because a lot of marketing is about like telling people stuff. But the truth is if you get people to just take three actions before they even buy from you, they’re actually creating that “yes” loop. They’re starting to see results. They’re starting to create a new self identification as the kind of person who’s taking action and getting results. So when presented with an opportunity to change their lives, because they’ve already taken steps in that direction, they are way more likely to say “yes.” So the whole thing about five to seven interactions to make a sale, which is old school sales and then marketing at something like 15 to 30 interactions at a minimum.
For many people, it’s 150 to 300 interactions because you have people following you for years before they can trust enough to buy. Especially if they’ve been burned by all the things that we’ve just been talking about before. But when you’re actually able to get people into this life-changing action, even in your marketing, a lot of times they’re ready to sign up right away.
You know, it’s so obvious when you think about it, you just actually need to give an experience of value in transformation that helps people create those attitudes, beliefs, and conditions they need to say yes, but I also believe that marketing isn’t just that first “yes” when people pull out their wallets and buy from you, it’s actually continuing those yeses all the way to the finish line when you deliver on the promise of your particular product.
Marisa Murgatroyd
00:13:52
When that happens, oftentimes they say yes to the next product or course on the journey and then yes, to the next one. And the next one. I think a lot of people forget that, but if you really understand that marketing is this process of creating those attitudes, beliefs, and conditions that even once people buy your course, you’re actually remarketing the transformation to them over and over and over again at every touch point. You’re reminding of them, of why this matters what their life is going to look like, what will it be able to do, be, feel, have, overcome or achieve through your product.
So I see marketing as a seamless process from end to end before someone becomes a customer and all the way through being a repeat customer for years on end, because I’m continuing to nurture and nourish the soil, which is the attitudes, beliefs, and conditions people need to say “yes” and keep saying, “yes,” take action and keep taking action.
Marisa Murgatroyd
00:14:49
So much of what we’re about as entrepreneurs, as thought leaders is really about understanding human motivation. So I think so often people look at this as a linear process, whether it’s getting someone from point a to point B in a marketing campaign or in an online course, but it’s actually a motivational process. When you understand that motivation… it’s actually like a bank account. So you actually have to fill the bank account before you can ask for say a sale or some money because the bank account’s empty, the motivational bank gets empty. No one’s got anything to spend, but if you fill that up in marketing and then keep filling it up in your courses, then people will just continue to invest in you.
Marisa Murgatroyd
00:15:30
…not because you’re, you know, kind of twisting their arm or leg, but because you’ve actually just built them to the point where they’re able to say “yes, and yes, and yes and yes.” Does that make sense?
Sage Lavine
00:15:40
It makes so much sense. I’m nodding so much over here because I get so excited to help all of you understand that when we have the knowledge that Marisa is able to provide, you don’t have to be any of those things that you don’t want to be. anyway. You don’t want to be pushy. You don’t want to be a salesman who gets judged. You don’t want to try to convince anybody of anything. Marisa’s really speaking into, I think, a universal principle that pain pushes until vision poles and the marketing that you’re using, Marisa, it just pulls people toward what they already want. And like you said, to help them invest in themselves, right?
Sage Lavine
00:16:21
It’s not about investing in you. It’s about helping them invest in themselves by giving them those short-term wins. It’s like future pacing them. It’s like, let me get you a win now, so that you act like, why would you want to go anywhere else?
When we have this set of tools, we can show up and be ourselves. We can lead with really orienting people to their vision. And I love that. That’s what experiencification does. And I love that you teach it. And I’d love to hear just a little bit more about how we can get started. You know if we’re listening to you talk and we’re going, “Okay, this sounds great, but where do I start? How do we get started?”
Marisa Murgatroyd
00:17:11
Absolutely. Great question. There are essentially 10 core experiences that I discovered and call the experience formula that all of the great apps and games use to get her attention and keep it all the way to that finish line, so people are investing hours and hours and hours.
That starts with what I call your product mission and future self vision, which is what your product allows people to really do. Many people call this the promise of their product. So many people make massive mistakes when it comes to the promise, trying to serve too many masters, have multiple promises of their product, we’re not being clear and specific. I always like to say your product mission needs to be so clear that someone could fill your customer crossing the finish line to mission accomplished.
Marisa Murgatroyd
00:17:55
So it’s not a make-believe or an imaginary or an invisible transformation. You’ve made that transformation visible. People can see it in the context of their lives and when they can see it, not only does that make it so much more valuable, but it’s powerfully motivating.
Studies show that when people have that clear picture, that future self vision of who they’re going to become through your product, not only are they way more likely to buy, but they’re 42% more likely to follow through to that outcome, right? So this is actually brain science, all of this stuff. However, that process of getting to exactly what that product mission is, what your profitable product idea is, where your talents and skills and unique experience meet the market is really challenging.
Marisa Murgatroyd
00:18:41
A lot of people chase that for months, if not years, and many people never find it. But I really believe that every single person has a profitable product idea inside of them. You know, something based from your skills or experience with whether it’s your passions or the things that you’re good off, or the solutions you’ve developed or problems that you can solve, that when you translate that into the right promise, into the right profitable product idea, then so much becomes possible for your customers and ultimately for your business.
Sage Lavine
00:20:33
It’s so inspiring. If you are someone who wants to move beyond being a dancing bear and your business, and you don’t want to always do everything live, having a product and learning these skills is really going to help you dial in what you’re doing and how you’re doing it, and making sure that people get results so that you can leverage your business.
Sage Lavine
00:21:21
You can scale. You can get into evergreen funnels if you want to. You can create more passive revenue.
Marisa, I know we have a few minutes left and I actually would love to ask just a little bit more of a personal question, because I think when we start talking about launching products and programs and selling tens of thousands of copies, I just think that people can sometimes fall into that level of discomfort, right? Fear… who am I to do this? And you know, you and I both had fathers that didn’t really understand who we truly were and that didn’t know how to nurture us.
Sage Lavine
00:22:01
And so I’d love to just see if we can get in there a little bit more in terms of the mindset piece of this, and you know, who you’ve become, just impresses me like being on this journey with you. You know, Marisa, I’ve called you up at times when I didn’t quite know what to do in my business. You gave me the best advice, and I’ve gotten a chance to support you through some of those crunchy moments as well.
I wouldn’t want to be on this journey without you. I’m so proud of who you are… and you know, what advice do you give? What do you say when women are still having those voices of naysayers or, you know, mentors or parents who didn’t fully get behind them in the way that you’ve been able to get behind your students and your community?
Sage Lavine
00:22:46
What’s your advice? You know, I know what I would say, but what’s your advice for getting, especially the women, the kind of women that, you know, we work with who are so talented and so gifted and who are oftentimes empaths and feel the energy of the world feel the uncertainty of what’s happening on the planet right now… how do we get through?
Marisa Murgatroyd
00:23:06
Beautiful question? I got to say that I feel it. I feel all of that. And I think that part of it is this recognition that you are not your business. I say that in a way, but your business comes through you. So many people I feel in my life saw who I was and not who I’m capable of becoming. You know, you already have that pool in that tug that longing, that deep, knowing that you are capable of more than you may be doing, or being, or experiencing right now. And we all have that combination. That’s kind of push-pull of who we want to become, who we know we can be and the conditions that we were born into.
Marisa Murgatroyd
00:23:53
I think that in some ways is the greatest opportunity and challenge of life. It’s this human condition, because, you know, we feel most safe and comfortable when we know what tomorrow’s going to look the same as today, which looks the same as yesterday because that’s how we survive, right? And we’ve got like hundreds of thousands of years of evolutionary biology to support those circuits. So does keeping us safe, but we feel most alive and free and liberated and in our purpose and potential when we’re moving into the unknown. I think part of it, for me, it’s all about making risking forward feel as safe as possible in the sense that there is community, there are proven roadmaps.
Marisa Murgatroyd
00:24:35
There are mentors, there are people who can see who you are becoming and not just who you are. I think sometimes it’s all about seeking out opportunities, environments, experiences that can allow you to risk forward in this way that feels so safe. Because if you’ve got that feeling inside of you, I mean, why wait any longer?
I know it was not an easy process to get from that girl who wasn’t seen or heard or understood. You know, sometimes even the things that were said to me, I mean, could destroy someone’s soul, right? But then at some point, I mean, I took responsibility for my life… of how much longer am I going to blame my parents, my family, my situation, my circumstances for who I am today.
Marisa Murgatroyd
00:25:26
At that point, it’s not shame on them… It’s shame on me… for not stepping forward, not answering the call of who I was becoming or who I could be, because all of that was simply there to teach me, to give me the strength, to give me the resilience, to give me the perspective and insight that I need to be a better leader for the people that I serve, who have gone through the fire before me, just like I’ve gone through it and to show them what’s possible on the other side.
Because I think in order to be that light in the world, you know, you have sometimes having some of those experiences in your past… what’s going to give you that understanding and that strength, like if everything was always easy, you know, why strive at all?
Marisa Murgatroyd
00:26:09
Right? So that fuel, I’m so grateful for everything that happens in my life. Cause I know it happened for me and it didn’t happen to me. I think we all have that day of reckoning. And we can have that day, any time we want, where we get to give ourselves permission to be the person we want to be, to do what we were born to do what we’re designed to do, what we’re being called to do and to stop making excuses or giving our power away to the people and the situations and the circumstances of our past and present moment. Because if anyone, you know, based their future on a current success, no one would ever become who it is that they’re meant to be.
Marisa Murgatroyd
00:26:55
So we all, at some point, have to make that leap of faith, that there is something more and that we have it within us to do it. I call it flipping the switch. That moment where we flip the switch from, “I can’t, I’m not sure I don’t want to, I’m not ready. I don’t have enough experience to say” to, “You know what, I’m doing it. I’m not waiting for anything else, not waiting any longer.”
I think so often people have like, you know, they have this thing where they’re flipping it both ways. “I’ll let me do it, let me not do it, let me do it. At some point you just kind of say, you know what? I’m tired of that. Yes, I’m doing it.
Sage Lavine
00:27:30
I am. Once again, reminded by you are by the fact, and I’m reminded why I believe you are one of the most inspiring women on the planet. I am reminded why I love you so much. I’m reminded that for every single one of you, you know, I’ve watched Marisa and I both push up against circumstances that would cripple a lot of people and it’s in that pushing up against and being willing to push through…nd I think it’s, it’s actually because we’ve had those contrasting experiences, not in spite of, but because we’ve had them that we have a launch pad into who we’re really here to be and how we’re really here to make a difference.
Sage Lavine
00:28:15
Because without that contrast, without the pain, without the sheroes journey, without the naysayers, without the belittling or the abuse or whatever loss isolation you’ve been through, it’s actually because of that, that you have a burning desire to get this message out into the world and to get your work out into the world. Marisa, your experience product framework that you’ve created is I think one of the most brilliant tools for aspiring and established entrepreneurs who want to really take their business to the next level. So it is an honor to be here with you. I’m so freaking grateful.
Marisa Murgatroyd
00:29:10
I just wanted to say, when you say things like, “Oh, one of the most inspirational women on the planet.” The thing that immediately comes to my mind in what I see is that you and I are here in this journey where our goal is that every single woman that we meet is the most inspirational woman on the planet. Does that make sense? Because they are really living their inspiration and all it really takes is that aligning with your design, doing the work that you’re meant to be doing, that you’re built to do, designed to do, born to do. And then you become the most inspiring woman on the planet, right? And every single one of us can hold that moniker.
Sage Lavine
00:29:55
Oh, I’m picking up what you’re laying down again and again, and Marisa and I are holding that every single one of you says “yes” to being the most inspiring version of you, because there’s so many people out there that are actually waiting for you, they’re waiting for your message, your solutions, your gifts, and you have those because of what you’ve gone through.
Sage Lavine
00:30:36
Thank you for showing up today for this conversation. You’re incredible. We love you. Bye everybody. Bye Marisa.
00:31:12
You’ve been listening to Women Rocking Business. I’m Sage Lavine. The next step is to join our private Facebook group. The Women Rocking Business Sisterhood and introduce yourself over there for the real and vulnerable conversation of what it really takes to launch and scale a business you love in that Sisterhood group. We have each other’s backs, each other’s sides and each other’s fronts. This is true collaboration. So go grab a seat in the Sisterhood because we can go so much further when we go together, you’ll find a link to the private Sisterhood group and do our upcoming events in the show notes.
And if you have a woman in your life, who’s growing a business or starting a business, please share this podcast with her so she can create her big dreams and take a moment to subscribe and rate and review the podcast, because at the end of the day, we go so much further when we go together. I’ll see you on the next show and don’t forget, your clients are waiting. They’re not just waiting for someone like you. They’re actually waiting for you.
