Hi friends,

Thanks for the overwhelming response to my email last week. I so appreciate the outpouring of love and really kind notes from so many of you (If you missed it and want the backstory, you can read it here).

I'm super focused in this season of my life and business about following my excitement, and I thought I'd tell you some of the newer approaches I'm taking as I grow Once Upon a Roll, my new venture focused on using games in team building.

One thing I've learned over the years is that business is really just a series of experiments. You come up with a hypothesis, test it, collect data, and decide what to do next.

Sometimes the experiment works. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it needs more time.

Conducting these little experiments is really great because it take the pressure off of me to "be successful" (an ever moving goal post) and just free myself to try things. I try to do experiments as quickly as I can. I like doing stuff I can get off the ground in a week -- so they start pretty small, and from there I test and iterate.

So I thought I'd give you a peek inside my May experiments.

Experiment #1: Running Paid Ads

I took a training with Zach Spucker about running FB ads, which was just phenomenal. Thirty days in, here's what happened:

Ads are working.

Believe me, I'm as surprised as anyone.I've made several attempts at paid advertising over the years with my business coaching work, and it was usually expensive, frustrating, and difficult to make profitable.

Not so with Once Upon a Roll. I'm in a very unique niche, and the Facebook AI has gotten pretty good at finding my market.

I've been spending about $8 per day and have added nearly 600 subscribers to the Once Upon a Roll newsletter in the last month.

Those ads have led to:

• Growing my email list
• Several business inquiries
• Multiple podcast invitations
• Growth on social media

What isn't working

I've had a few inquiries as a results of these ads, but most of these leads coming through ads are completely cold. That means they're much harder to convert. I've had a tough time getting some people to respond after their initial inquiry to actually book a call.

What I'll do next

Nurturing takes time. I'm going to keep following up, and start testing retargeting ads to help move people further along the funnel.

Experiment #2: Seeing Who Shows Up

One unexpected outcome of the ads is that they've revealed demand I wasn't looking for.

I'm getting a surprising number of inquiries about:

• Working for Once Upon a Roll (I get about 5 to 10 resumes a week)
• Learning how I use games with teams

That tells me there's interest from an audience that isn't my ideal corporate client.

Which raises an interesting question: Is there another offer I can make to this audience? More on that further down...

Some Wins From May

The CDC

Next week I'm headed to work with the CDC. Yes, that CDC. After being on paid furlough for the last year, teams are returning to the office and need help reconnecting. So we're going to play some games.

I am ridiculously excited about this opportunity! It was a BEAST to go through the process of becoming a prime Federal Contractor, but it's done! And now that I'm in the system, it will be a lot easier for me to work with the government moving forward.

Migrating my blog

I also finished migrating the Once Upon a Roll blog and newsletter to Beehiiv. Anyone who's ever done a website migration knows that finishing one feels less like an accomplishment and more like surviving an endurance event.

With the help of my buddy Claude, I was able solve all my tech issues, including one problem with the URL forwarding. Claude said it would take time for the URL to forward so I just had to wait it out. When I kept pushing back would you believe what it told me?

"You need to relax. Go pet Teddy and you'll see it's working in a few hours."

THE ATTITUDE (but it was right) 🫢

My first brand partnership!

This game straight out of the blue, but I made a video for a gaming company about their service and I'm getting a little chunk of change for that.

The Next Experiment for June/July

The biggest question I'm exploring right now is what to do with all the people who are interested in what I do at Once Upon a Roll, but aren't a fit for corporate team-building.

So in June and July, I'm joining Zach Spuckler's training on building a low-cost membership. I've talked about Zach a lot here, and I'm a big fan. If you're also looking into memberships, join me! Here's my affiliate link that will give you $100 off his 6 week membership summer camp.

He also has this cool calculator I've been futzing around with to see what my revenue could be at various price points.

If you read last week's email, you know I previously ran a $47/month membership and had a pretty miserable experience with it.

So I'm approaching this experiment with healthy skepticism and genuine curiosity. Maybe there's a better way to serve this audience. Maybe there's another revenue stream here. Maybe I'll discover all the reasons I hated memberships in the first place.

Either way, I'll learn something.

And that's the point of the experiment.

On a personal note

I have a very busy (and exciting!) June, I'm heading to D&D in a Castle for FOUR DAYS of gaming. I can't wait. I am obsessed with Dungeon Crawler Carl and I'm going to play Princess Donut (my boyfriend is going as Carl). IYKYK. A friend of ours who is a professional dice maker, just gifted us custom-made Dungeon Crawler Carl dice. How cool are these?!?!

Until next time,

Laura

P.S. My favorite unexpected moment this month was a conversation with a pastor from a conservative evangelical church who wants to use D&D with youth to build leadership skills. I think hell has officially frozen over.

P.P.S. One hour's work with the CDC will pay my bills for the month, which is a pretty great feeling. If you're curious about how I've learned to land larger contracts and position my services at a higher level, check out Elevate.