Making an Impact with Workshops

You can maximize your impact in a whole new way by building a workshop that inspires transformation.

As a person who is drawn to healing and helping, you feel good when you see your work actually making a difference in people’s lives.

The more people you can help, the more meaning your work has for you.

That’s what is so great about workshops. Workshops can transition you from working solely one-to-one to a one-to-many approach, expanding the reach of your work.

If just thinking about this is getting you fired up and brainstorming, tune into the latest podcast episode where I’m sharing how you can make a bigger impact with your very own workshop.

CLICK BELOW TO LISTEN!

Full Show Notes (Transcript)…

Hey, risers. Welcome to episode 116 of Empathy Rising. So I am recording this on a Monday and I am super freaking tired because I stayed up all night on Friday and Saturday. And I feel like I slept okay last night, but I don't feel like I caught up on everything that I needed. 

So on Friday, I stayed up all night because I was watching the show...okay, as it reads, it's like "Sex/Life". So I don't know if you pronounce it "Sex Life", or if you pronounce it "Sex slash Life". But anyway, it's on Netflix, and it's super good. I think clinicians could have a field day watching it. But it's about a woman who has two kids and totally questioning the idea or the like identity of motherhood, womanhood, wifehood and comparing and contrasting that to her life before.

And she really does this in the way of two of her lovers: her husband, and then a lover she had before she was married. And it really resonated with me because I married a Cooper. And I definitely have, in the past, had a Brad. So if you haven't watched it, go watch it.

But it's just fascinating. And I took it... I don't wanna say I took it personally, but I was like, oh my God, someone took my life and put it into a fricking show. I would only share this with you guys because this is, you'll get it. But in the TV show, it had been eight years between the lovers. And in my case, it's been like over a decade, but it was this year. 

I'm like laughing as I'm sharing this. It was this year that I had a dream, this is like, March or April, and I broke up with my Brad in my dream. And I woke up that morning and I was like, I did it. I took back my power. I got closure. Like I did it. And, honestly, I do feel totally different since breaking up with my Brad in my dream. But I don't know, that show just really felt cool for me to be like, oh, I'm not the only one who has had this experience. If you haven't watched it, go watch it. It's super good. It's on Netflix.

So that was Friday night. Saturday night, I stayed up all night watching the Friends reunion on HBO. And I was like, I'm going to go to bed early. And then I was like oh, let me put this on. I knew it was going to be good, but for some reason, I didn't think it was going to keep me up all night long. So I watched it and then, of course, they're mentioning episodes, then you want to go search out that episode.

So I'm watching the reunion and then I have YouTube up on my phone and I'm like “Friends episode where blah, blah, blah”. And it'll show the scene that they're talking about. And Josh was asleep. And I'm like, bursting out laughing. And he'd be like, what the fuck what's going on? “Sorry, I'm watching the Friends reunion”, and then he'd go back to sleep. And then 15 minutes later, I'd do it again. 

So that was my weekend. And that's why I'm feeling a little bit tired today. Anyway, jumping into it. We talked last episode about the difference between a cash injection and a launch.One is for the long-term, one is for the short term, as far as making revenue. We're going to keep that idea running with the theme today. But instead of revenue, we're going to be talking about the other side of the coin. Instead of income, we're going to be talking about impact, right?

And specifically, we're going to be talking about how we can make that impact by hosting our own workshops. The impact of a workshop, that's what we're focusing on today. Something that's really important to all of us with our work is that it makes a difference, right? We are in our souls and our hearts and our bones, we are helpers, right? So we're seeking a way to repurpose and repackage our clinical skills. 

We want something different, right? The reason you guys listen to me is because you're craving something different. We want something that's lighter and it's more fun, creative, something that allows us to have some leisure in our lives, which we can't get if we're only working one-on-one and if our income is only based on the time that we spend with other people. 

But while we're exploring this new creative avenue, while we're exploring something different, while we're exploring perhaps a new identity as a course creator or a membership site owner, that doesn't mean we want to be just selling crap, right?

We want there to be substance and quality, whatever this new iteration of our work, we still want it to be uplifting and inspiring. We want it to have integrity and we want to have integrity ourselves as we are selling it, right? There is still definitely a helping and healing nature to the online income streams we want to build.

We just want them to be more exciting. We want them to put some more zest into our life, to be able to be excited about our work again, and to work in a different way to not be so bogged down or burdened with what we're carrying on our shoulders. Now, I think this impact will absolutely come from the bigger programs we build, right?

The courses, the group programs, the membership sites, these are akin to the launches that we talked about last week. The programs that are set up for more profit, the programs that are set up for more longevity, your membership site, especially runs in perpetuity. Your course, if you go through the hours it takes to build that thing, you're going to want to sell it more than once, right? You don't want to go back to the drawing board and make a new program all over again. 

Same thing with the group program. That's the beauty of a group program. You create the curriculum once, and then you run more groups through that same curriculum, right? So that's the long-term sustainability. That's the offers that are going to be with you for hopefully years and years. 

I'm going on year... three? Finishing up year three of Side Hustle, running it for the fifth round, and we're getting ready for year four of Side Hustle for the six rounds. So that's what we want to create with those longer-term offers. They give you the recurring full-time revenue, right? This is how you're going to make a full-time income off of it. If that's your choice, being able to make your Side Hustle or your main hustle and shrink down your case. That comes from these longer-term, bigger programs.

The other thing is that these bigger programs allow you to address larger problems and provide bigger transformations. So impact 100% is going to come from that, but impact can also happen in smaller containers, right? Similar to those passion injection containers that we talked about, the workshops, flash sales, the things like that, these smaller containers can absolutely still move people in a direction, provide transformation. 

So the best thing that I can think of for us to understand this as like an EAP or brief therapy, right? EAPs are often a set amount of sessions and quite a few, quite a small amount of sessions, usually six maybe. And they're not used in like crisis or triage, which sometimes they are, but they can also be "okay, come work with me during this EAP. And then if you want to continue to work with me, move over to my hourly rate, my private pay rate, or whatever EAPs" can be a great way to give a short term solution and then potentially turn that person into a long-term client.

That's what we can think of when we think of workshops, briefer therapies, or EAPs, where there's still absolutely getting a benefit from it. It may turn into a longer-term benefit if that person then decides to hire you as a coach, or if that person then decides to purchase your next program, or it can stand alone.

That's what I love about workshops is they're not only a fabulous way to make quick money, but they're a way to have an impact without the commitment of launching a bigger program. You can have that cash injection make the quick money come in and also give your people a quick win.

And it doesn't have to be a longer-term commitment. It doesn't have to be the investment of planning out and executing a longer-term launch. And if you are looking for a bigger offering, workshops can be a gateway to those, right. Workshops can help you segment interested people, keep track of interested people, or like I just mentioned, you can invite them off back into your bigger programs.

So I think that those big containers, of course, that's what we're mostly talking about here is how to really replicate a full-time income. But we can't discount these shorter, smaller containers and the impact that they can have on our people.

Alright, so while we're talking about this, let's talk about a few quick ways that workshops can be especially impactful and I think a super cool way to kickstart your side hustle. The first is that one-to-many offer, right? Easy step beyond one-to-one work. Offering a workshop, it gets you in front of multiple people at one time.

And if it's priced correctly, we can have it so that two people in a workshop would give you more revenue than one person in your therapy practice. And that's where it not only impacts more people, but the revenue becomes greater for you as well. But any time that you can serve more than one person, anytime that your reach is expanding, not only beyond the therapy room, but beyond one other person's ears, your impact level is growing.

So a one-to-many offer. What's great is that the lowest version of Zoom allows you to have a hundred people. And also you can always upgrade your Zoom and you could have a thousand people come to your workshop. There's no cap. There's also no minimum. So one-to-many, you can have a tremendous impact with a workshop in terms of the amount of people that you can reach.

The other thing that I love about workshops is that there's no dual relationships here, right? When we're talking about online income streams, we don't have to worry about if it's, your sister or your cousin, the friend of somebody you went to highschool with, we don't have to worry about dual relationships.

In fact, it's a way for you to help those people that... I see all those t-shirts out there that are like "if you ask me questions, I charge you" or whatever, they're like, they're commenting on the therapist's life and how our friends and family are always coming to us for advice on things.

This is a way that you could say, Hey, you know what? I have a workshop coming up about that. And I think it'd be perfect for you. It's a hundred bucks or whatever. And we'll do it where it's planned for this Saturday or this evening, or whatever's at the time to host it. And that person who's always asking you for free advice could then turn into somebody who pays you for that.

You can start making money for your expertise that they're trying to take from you or exploit from you. So it's a great way to offer help to people who do know us and who might not be the best fit to be a therapy client but can certainly learn from us. Could certainly co-work with us and could certainly get some impact from us. 

The other great thing about workshops is they're at an accessible price point. So I think that's something that is really important. Pretty much everybody listening to this show is thinking about equity, thinking about accessibility. Sometimes a person just might not be able to afford our bigger program.

However, they could definitely come to a workshop with us and still take steps forward. Let's say you've got a six-month program on self-love or self-compassion or something like that. That person might not be able to take your entire program, but they might be able to take your workshop on boundaries and that boundaries workshop could be just the thing that they need for them to start their own self-compassion journey, their own self-love journey. So there's definitely ways that a lower price point can give people an opportunity to work with you that might not have been able to work with you in your big program.

And the last thing that I think is great about workshops is that they're a one-off, right. It's that short-term work piece, right? The EAPs, people come in for four or six sessions and then you can convert them to longer-term or they can just be done. So it's shorter-term work, which means it's focused on one solution and it's focused on one thing at a time to see results.

A lot of times people might not want a bigger program. And so if that's all that you offer, they might say, oh, I'm going to pass that person by. Because the only way I can work with them is with a heavy time commitment or a heavy financial commitment. Offering a workshop gives them that short-term solution-focused container where they can get one thing done and they can see tremendous results from that.

So we don't have to drag on our work with them. Sometimes someone just needs one little piece. And if we can offer that one little piece, it's an opportunity to have the revenue come in. And it's also an opportunity to have the impact on that person that we might not have been able to impact had we only had a longer-term.

I also think this one-off idea is great for introductory work with you. Sometimes people want to see how you work. Sometimes people want to experience you before they commit to a bigger program. And because the price point’s accessible, it feels oh, why not? If it's terrible, oh, it was a hundred bucks.

I'm not that worried about it. But also I'll know for sure whether I want to work with them or not. Whether I do want to take their bigger program or whether I do want to have them as a coach. Being able to have that introduction to you can go a long way and them having the impact they name.

The other thing is sometimes people are further along than your big program, right? So we have a certain niche. We always attract ripples out from that niche. And so somebody might not quite be a fit for your big program, but the workshop, the one-off little container, the one-off smaller way to work with you could be the perfect fit because it might just be the one piece that they were looking for when they didn't need the whole program.

These are ways that workshops can help you have an impact without necessarily having to be an investment in creating a huge container, without necessarily having to be an investment in a full-on launch, and in a way that can inject some cash quickly into your Side Hustle but could also be then utilized to set you up for longer-term. Whether that's longer-term revenue, longer-term impact with bigger programs.

Awesome. So if you're ready to make an impact with an easy-to-sell offer, make sure you grab your ticket to our final workshop of the Summer Slowdown Series. This is where you're going to learn how to plan and sell your first workshop. If you've already grabbed your ticket, you're good to go. You'll start getting details.

You were going to send over your sales scripts and your workbooks and all that stuff in just a couple of days. And if you haven't already gotten your ticket, you definitely can still join us. When you buy your ticket now, you get instant access to the replays of workshop one and workshop number two. You also get the assets, the spreadsheets, and the workbooks, and things that came with those.

And then you'll be able to still attend live for workshop number three, where you can learn to plan a workshop and sell the workshop. So there's definitely still time to unlock your Side Hustle this summer and you can still address these three bite-sized action steps that are going to help you have huge momentum, whether you do those through the replay or whether you join us live.

Tickets are still on sale for Summer Slowdown, and this series is just about to wrap up. We're on our last workshop. So if you want to get a piece of this, hurry over and grab your ticket and head on over at marissalawton.com/summer. All right, guys, it's been a pleasure and I will talk with you next week. Until then, keep on rising. 

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