Discussing LularRich
In this episode, I discuss lularich.
By listening to this episode you will learn how to implement good business practices.
Hello. Today we’re gonna talk about the LulaRoe, Amazon docuseries, whatever you want to call that. But it is about the company called LulaRoe. And it’s about how they had some scandals, they had some bad business practices and had some customer disappointments. And we’re going to talk today about how in your coaching business or your business, if you sell wellness products, or you do work for a company that is kind of like a direct sales type of business, some tips and tricks when it comes to marketing yourself. What we can take away from this docuseries, what we can learn from it.
Because the truth is, they this company did a lot of things that were bad, but they also really understood marketing. And marketing can be used for good and marketing sometimes can be used for bad. And in their case, they, you know, did some crappy things. But you can use marketing for good. You can use marketing to, you know, help more people make a bigger impact, attract your ideal clients, etc.
Marketing
So we’re going to talk about some of those marketing principles that they had down that were interesting to me as far as watching as, as a business coach and a marketer, this movie. So the first thing is, they understood the importance of providing incentives. Okay. So when you’re marketing your coaching business, you definitely want to think about what are the reasons or benefits of your program. And what you help people with. And with LuLaRoe, they created this whole vibe around, and this whole message and mission. Which we’ll talk about another huge thing they did, right was creating a vision and mission that they channeled their business around and not leading with the product, but instead leading with the mission, and the movement they were creating.
But anyways, they created this whole vibe that, you know, everybody wants to be a LulaRoe, awesome sales person. And they have different they had different levels. They had different prizes, and they kind of gamified the system, meaning the bigger you get, and the more you get on your team, you get a LulaRoe watch, or you get to go on this cruise or you get to do this trip or whatever. And so everybody was motivated, very motivated to work very hard.
How to Gamify Your Customer Journey
So if you’re a coach or a course creator, you want to think about how can you gamify your own customer journey. The transformative process for the client. Meaning they, they are excited to do the work. Okay, because little rose, making their people hustle, they were like promoting like, you got to have your sales parties, you got to order your materials, you got to do this, like this is gonna pay off for you and your family.
And they were they were making people work pretty darn hard, right? Or not making people but promoting that. But the reason why they got away with that was because it was so incentivizing and like motivating and high vibe. And they were coaching them through mindset stuff along the way. That these people wanted to work really hard to get the transformation to get to the next level in their business. So when you are coaching. Think about how can you get your clients to want to do that habit that they hate?
Marketing Principles to Grow the Right Way vs Scammy Marketing
How can you make them want to show up to the calls? How can you make them want to commit to the transformation that you provide. And you’re going to actually get your clients better results, when you are kind of working on decreasing the perceived amount of effort. Meaning the LulaRoe, people were still working hard, but it didn’t feel like work because they were thinking about, oh, I want to get to the next level or I want to get this watch or I want to go on this cruise. Or I want to be like my friends in this business. And they were like highly motivated.
So think about how can you with your clients. Help them make the journey feel less hard. Less effortful, that they actually are excited and motivated to show up. That’s one thing. And some of that might in a coaching program that might look like something like not letting them get access to a certain level of your course until they complete or show you that they completed the first part. So that creates accountability for example, or it could mean you know the person the top the top.
Let’s say you have a habits membership or something. The person who tracks their habit the longest gets a prize or something. You know, like having something that is incentivizing right. So that’s the first thing. The other thing that we really have to talk about I’m going to go back to is that this company led with a movement and a mission that was bigger than the product. So in other words. Rather than saying we sell leggings Whoo, they were like, we help app stay at home moms. And moms who want to contribute to their families make more money in less than less than half the time of a full time corporate job.
With more fun with while being able to be home with their kids with a proven system that we provide for them to make it easy. And you can live the American dream by being one of our reps, right? So not saying it’s right or wrong to promote that. Because there was a lot of things that in their company had some issues and false promises made. But the point is, they didn’t lead with leggings. And this is the same thing for you as a coach, or course creator, whatever. You’re not going to lead with, I do coaching. Or I have a course, you’re going to lead with. We create blank, what is the mission and the transformation that you can create by creating your community in your program and coaching your clients and that kind of thing.
So the miss the mission or miss message that they had was all about. You can live their dream by being home with your kids, and yada yada. And it was very important to their ideal client clients. They knew their audience extremely well. Right? So Katie says so true. Yes. And I’ve talked to a lot of Kate’s and Katie’s today, for some reason. I don’t know what’s going on there. But like three, Katie’s three kids have booked calls. Anyways, so that’s the first thing. They also again, knew their niche and knew what their niche wanted. So and here’s the, okay, we’re gonna move on.
So incentivizing and knowing your message. Your mission. And like, what is the movement you’re creating lead with that lead with your why. Same thing on your sales calls. You guys, so many of you, I hear, start with, well, I have a coaching package, it’s 12 sessions. It let him law, rather than leading with the reason why I do this. And what the why is, is you know, and I’ll use my other business Power Player. Nobody can change the world on their own. You’re probably a coach. You’re probably feeling like, you want to just coach people and do what you’re best at.
And things are getting in the way. You’re trying to do your own marketing, you’re falling for shiny object syndrome, you’re doing all these things. Rather than doing it on your own. And feeling like you have no help, we want to be a team around you. To help you live out your vision. Live out your mission. Do what you’re good at what we do what we’re good at. So that’s powerplay, that’s my other company. But anyways, so that is really important. The next thing is they created status within their own culture, they had this whole culture thing going on.
Now. Some people call it a cult, because they were kind of telling people like how to dress and, you know, you have to wear the leggings all the time, and all that. Which is not super cool. But they created this culture around, like, within their own community. They had like celebrities. Because the people who were higher up in the company. Meaning they have more reps underneath them, or whatever, were were seen as like celebrities and all the other reps, follow them and have this whole thing. So the point is, don’t do that, in your own company. Don’t create a cult don’t tell people what they need to do. But do think about people are status driven. People want to be seen as cool by their friends, people, whether you like to hear that or not, is true, okay? s
People want to be seen as successful people care about what other people think, unfortunately, right. And. So. When you’re posting on social media, or when you’re promoting your program or whatever, you want to keep this in mind. You don’t want to name your program. Something that makes somebody feel like a loser. You don’t want to and I firsthand because my programs called Zero to Hero Coach Inner Circle. It is taking you from you know, starting out as a coach and struggling to hero like rock in your business. But I thought many times about changing the name because I’m like, does zero I don’t know, what does that make people feel bad.
So I’m, I’m going off on a tangent, I’m thinking about that. But I’ve used the name too much on my pages and stuff right now to change it. But that’s just the thought. So the whole point is. You want to if you’re going to post something on social media post something that someone would feel cool sharing. Not something that makes them feel really insecure and like they’re never going to want to comment on it or something because you’re pointing out their fault or whatever. So if you want something to be shared, if you want something to be promoted, create a community around it. Create hype around it. Create excitement around it. Make it something that somebody would want to share with their audience or their friends or whatever. Okay. And then the other thing is, they had totally
a What did I write here? Oh, they milked opportunities. Okay, so we’re going to talk about the entrepreneurial spirit that they had. So first of all, they had a, okay, two things, they created scarcity. And then they saw opportunities around that scarcity. So I’m gonna bet up first and talk about scarcity with their leggings. Sometimes the prints, they didn’t really have a structure around duplicating certain things. So if they bought a fabric once, and they made some leggings out of it, there was no guarantee that you could get those leggings ever again. Because they just bought the fabric and made them and what you what you get is what you see, right.
And so they created this urgency. Which is another marketing principle. When you’re promoting and when you’re launching, they created this urgency of if you like this print, you better get it now because we don’t know if it’s ever going to be back, we don’t know. And they genuinely didn’t, because they were making things kind of randomly buying these fabrics and stuff. So that create a real urgency. And people would buy on these Facebook Lives, because they’d see it and they’d be like, I like it. And I never know if it’s going to be back again. I need to get it now. So how can you and your business create more urgency? Do you have a limited amount of coaching spots?
Do you have a deadline that everybody enrolls by, do you have, you know, a waitlist? So there’s pent up demand and use, you know, whatever that looks like for you. And the other thing is, um, with with the urgency, they actually not only milked having customers who represented the product, and you know, built a team underneath them. But they had this waitlist of people who wanted to join LulaRoe. So much.
So this waitlist was huge. And, so much so that they were like how can we leverage the waitlist, there’s people sitting and waiting, and we can’t onboard them all at once. And they had a and I’m not saying this is good or bad. I’m just saying this is like, Wow, what a way to milk, like to see something that wouldn’t have been seen. They had an event to invite all of their waitlist to and select
one person to join LulaRoe and get off the waitlist. At the event, they call it like a Golden Ticket. Someone’s going to get the Golden Ticket, we’re going to call out the winner, there’s going to be so much excitement at this event one of you is going to get to join yada, yada. And can you imagine having a waitlist for your program, and having people so excited that they would fly to an event, they’re not even a part of your company yet, just for the chance of being recruited to your company that is wild, okay, that shows that they knew their audience.
They knew what their audience wanted. And they milked an opportunity that most people just see, well, they’re on the waitlist, they can’t there’s nothing to do with those people yet, we have to wait until they can join the program. So they had an event. And people paid to come and get called to be on the cusp of being the company, which is just wild to me, but it worked for them. So the other thing that they did wrong is that they had shaky foundations. So they were growing so quickly. And they were hiring their children rather than like people who people who they their children didn’t have any experience in event planning for example, one of the guys who was their child was the event planner, etc.
And so that led to shaky results meaning they started to grow so fast that they couldn’t keep up with the demand the legging quality went significantly down they hired all these designers for the leggings that had in the designers had like no real systems or processes. I mean I’m sure they had some but they were taking things off the internet and just drawing it on these leggings, and then getting in trouble for copying somebody else’s design. So as you can see by not having these processes like Hey guys, we don’t do that. Here’s what to do, here’s what not to do.
Here’s our process for creating the leggings. Also. You know. Looking for the best talent. Taking the time to slow down before you speed up the growth in your business. They didn’t really do that they just kept growing and they just kept saying hey figure it out like host this event child and good luck. And it led to very unsatisfied customers, very unsatisfied distributors who were on their team. People starting to post online like hey, these leggings have gone downhill there’s holes in them there’s like it’s really weird.
They smell bad because I they couldn’t put their leggings in the warehouse they had to put them outside because they were getting so big, like lots of problems and when you damage your reputation, this was another huge lesson they started to damage their own reputation by growing too quickly and letting the quality go down. And they got away with it for a while which is not cool but they you know they did get away with it for a while. But it did backfire and you have to understand that reputation and setting up strong foundations and not building your business on a house of cards and taking the time to develop systems and processes, even if it slows you down a little bit, when at the right time, I don’t think you need to do that right as you’re starting your business.
But at the right time, that is so important. And this actually, this year, for me has been a big year of slowing down before I speed up. Because I’ve kind of been developing a lot of a lot of foundations, a lot of systems, a lot of processes, outsourcing certain things, trying to get that fit, right, like all of that. And it did slow me down from marketing and promoting quite a bit. But I’m really glad I did it, because otherwise, I wouldn’t be ready for huge growth.
And if I did grow larger, it would be frightening to me. And this is also why I think a lot of people fear success, because they think I can’t handle it. I don’t have the systems, I don’t have the right people, I don’t have the right resources. If I grew too fast, I would be screwed, right? And so you do need to set yourself up for success with those foundations.
And it’s not a waste of time. It’s actually slowing down before you speed up. And it’s a good thing. Yeah, it’s hard in the moment. It’s like delayed gratification, but it is worth it long term. And there’s so many things I need to slow down to, to set up and whatnot. But you have to do it at the time. That’s right in your business. So if you’re struggling to know when’s the right time, and like, what’s the order and structure and process, feel free to reach out to me, we’ve helped a lot of clients take more things off their plate, we’ve helped a lot of clients create systems or a scalable program when they max out on one on one coaching, things like that.
So anyways, the next thing is they hired the wrong talent, as I said before, so if you are somebody who is making costly mistakes in your business, because either you’re like, let’s say you’re creating a website or something, and you do it before you’ve had any proof of concept before you know your niche, before you really feel confident in what you offer, and what the offer is, you probably just wasted your money.
Because what would be a better route is to learn from your audience have at least a little bit of proof of concept, like make your first couple of sales without a website, figure out what what it is that trigger people to join you and want to work with you and use that messaging for your website and that kind of thing. So they would they did or what I’m what I’m saying to you is don’t don’t make costly mistakes by doing things out of order.
And/or hiring the wrong people at the wrong timing. This company put their family in charge of things, which is I mean, family businesses are awesome. But they didn’t really hire based on talent, they hired me sound like oh, you probably be good at this, let’s let’s try this. And it. It’s somewhat worked. But it’s also didn’t work right.
The other thing is the, they were a product of the product. And this is really big. So if you are a coach or consultant, and you are talking to him about it you are and your message and how you show up aren’t aligned, this can be a challenge for you to attract the right people because this company, they would be like, okay, you have to wear the leggings, they even taller, they even you know told their audience, you have to like should look a certain way you need to look nice and presentable, and wear makeup and blah, blah, blah. And again, it was a little culty. And it was a little much.
But they definitely had people who were so thrilled about the product and so much a product of the product, that people it was infectious, it was infectious to other people who aligned with that message and aligned with that mission and felt like I want to be like her or ask. It created the aspiration among people. So being a product of the product and asking yourself, how would I show up as a coach and representative of this message in this movement? What would that look like? How can I demonstrate the value of my program and be a be embodying it as a coach is just as important as having your message and your program? And, you know, sometimes people don’t go as far as how can I embody it?
How can I be promoting if you promote freedom of lifestyle and you’re working 24 hours a day that doesn’t see how that doesn’t necessarily align? Right. And then the next thing is they change their promises. This was a huge mistake. Okay, so what happened and this also goes back to creating an okay, creating an irresistible offer. So I have a podcast about how do you double the value of your offer so you can charge more for it. And if you want to check that out, you can go to the health coach nation podcast, but one of the things they did was they created when they started to lose interest because their reputation was not doing well, they created a guarantee that lowered the barrier of entry for distributors.
Okay, so what they did was they said, Hey, if you join, you can buy the clothes, and you can return them if you don’t like it or if it doesn’t work out for you. And I think it was like you can return at any time, this, this policy is not going to expire. yada, yada, which is sounds great, right? And it did trigger a lot of people to sign up because they were like, Oh, it’s pretty low risk, I can return it if I don’t want it. But then they changed the rules.
They were like, Oh, nevermind, sorry, you got to keep the stuff, right. And that led to huge customer trust issues, right? Who would trust them after that, when they say one thing, and then they completely change their mind. So this is why it’s very important to deliver on your promises and look into before you make a promise, what are going to be the ramifications, is this going to change anytime soon, and setting the boundaries and then clarity around that policy or guarantee your thing that you make.
And I’m not saying don’t make guarantees, I actually am a big fan of guarantees. I think having some kind of guarantee or having something that lowers the risk or perceived risk for somebody working with you or joining your program is a good thing. Because people do need to trust you, they need to feel comfortable working with you. And it’s really hard in a world where a lot of people online do are kind of sketchy.
But you have to pick something that you can deliver on and keep. Right. So thinking about how can it here’s one thing I also want to highlight they the perceived when you’re making an offer, there is the dream outcome which they promised, Hey, you guys can be stay at home moms sell these clothes, have so much fun doing it not work all the time, be home with your kids, yada yada create financial freedom, contribute to your family, they had the purse, but when you when somebody says that period, and never adds anything else to it, people are like, well, what’s the catch? That sounds so hard that sounds like how do how does this even work?
They took away the perceived effort to do that. And the perceived risk to do that by saying risk. First of all, it’s risk free, because you can return your thing if you want it. And then the perceived effort they kind of took away because they were like, we have a system pre made all these women have already done it. Look at all these awesome women who’ve been successful. We know what to do you have these home house parties, it’s like this whole system, you’re going to be fine, right? So they did so the moms were like, Oh, I guess I guess it’s probably gonna be pretty easy. And then, and then they had the
I don’t know, I lost my train of thought. So see how they took away risk and perceived effort quite a bit with their marketing. So the thing you want to think about in your coaching business or your product based business is how can number one, you start off with strong foundations lit live with integrity, this is the biggest thing a little LulaRoe was struggling with was integrity because they changed the promise. They didn’t really legally look into like what are the ramifications of what we’re doing.
They didn’t set up those strong foundations huge, huge loss. Number two, how can you gamify or create incentives or make it easier for your clients to get the transformation that they’re paying you for wanting? Right? making that irresistible offer? Number three, knowing your clients knowing your movement, you want to create a brand around or your why for your brand, and then milking opportunities. They did milk opportunities meaning that weightless that they had they milked that be by having that Golden Ticket event whatever right? Not saying that was a good idea or not. But though the principles of marketing at this company did were the principle the timeless principles of marketing, right? So do you have any questions? Did you watch this show I would love to hear.
And if you are a coach and you do feel like you have shaky foundations right now meaning you don’t really have structure, you are moving pretty fast by hustling but you’re not really seeing the results. And you feel like you know you want some help and guidance with your message you want to get an irresistible offer that you feel you can deliver on and put it out there to the world and make some sales. Go ahead and DM me I have my four step framework to booking more clients and adapting to current times, which somebody just told me this morning that she watched it and it totally made her realize the gaps in her business and what she’s going to focus on for the next six weeks.
So that was pretty cool to hear. And other than that, I will talk to you guys soon. I hope you have a great day and thanks again for watching.
Resources
- Complimentary Business Consult
- Health Coach Nation: Marketing, Business, & Mindset for Health Coaches
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