Hey there, it's Susan Peirce Thompson, and welcome to the Weekly Vlog. Oh my goodness. So it's been a while, I think a year and a half since I gave you a big picture update on Bright Line Eating, like what we're thinking behind the scenes, what's happening. Really I haven't done that since November of 2021, since Bright Ticket Week. So we're definitely due.
This week's Vlog is going to have so much great stuff in it, some context for the whole Bright Line Eating Movement and some really concrete information like what's changed with the website. And oh, by the way, a really exciting scholarship opportunity that you might want to apply for with the details at the end of this video. So let me dive in and go back. I want to give you a little bit of history.
At the beginning, Bright Line Eating was for many, many years the Bright Line Eating Boot Camp followed by Bright Lifers. And when people graduated from the Boot Camp, which was incredibly transformative, and most of our research was published showing the incredible experience and results that people were getting from the Boot Camp. Then they would go into Bright Lifers, which didn't have additional courses or content really, but what it had was a lot more connection and community and coaching, different coaching opportunities, community things like the [inaudible 00:01:33] games and the accountability call, things like that.
And then in addition to Bright Lifers, there were courses that were a la carte, so either $500 or a thousand dollars and a whole bunch of transformative course experiences that people could sign up for on a one-off basis. And the Bright Line Eating Boot Camp was $1,000, but most typically it was $500.
And then we decided to change that. We decided to fold it all into a membership and to dramatically reduce the price by like 80%. And what we were thinking at that time, this was November of 2021, what we were thinking was scale. We wanted to remove the financial barrier to entry, and we wanted to really, really grow Bright Line Eating hugely. We wanted to improve access to Bright Line Eating, and we were thinking about an app as well, like a custom amazing app to bring Bright Line Eating to the masses.
So we launched all that in Bright Ticket Week, which was November of 2021. And what happened was we brought in a couple of executives to help us scale Bright Line Eating. One of them worked out great, and then with the other one, it was more of a challenge. And it was very illuminating for us because we noticed over time that there was a big values misalignment. We really value our people. We value what we're doing here on a one-on-one basis in Bright Line Eating. And he came in and revamped our values for scale, sort of corporatized us. There was this conversation I remember where he was talking with one of our staff members and he's like, "Love is not a value. We need to change these values." And my staff member was like, "Oh, no, love is a value and we really value it here at Bright Line Eating."
And so he really wanted to commoditize Bright Line Eating in a way that wasn't comfortable for us, it wasn't a fit. And through working with him and seeing that values misalignment, we realized, oh, we really value the high-touch boutique way we do things here at Bright Line Eating. It matters to us that we know you, that you know us, that it's more of a one-on-one really deep transformative experience here. That was really helpful for us to learn. And then we noticed it wasn't working, the new model that we had launched, on a couple of important levels.
One, it wasn't working economically, so we lowered the prices by 80%. And by doing that, we thought that we would reduce the barrier to entry and people would flood into Bright Line Eating, but they didn't. And what we realized is cost is not the barrier to entry to Bright Line Eating. What's the barrier to entry is having to give up sugar and flour. And we realized that it's important that people realize the significance of the undertaking when they come in here.
Now, as a result of reducing the investment, the financial investment to doing Bright Line Eating, we had to restructure things here. We went from 34 employees to 19 employees. Now we kept offering exactly what we've always offered. As a matter of fact, we started offering a little bit more. We added an evening accountability call. We kept offering the amazing content we always offer. We rolled out Maintenance I, Maintenance II, Maintenance III, and we did all that just having a smaller team and really working harder. But we realized recently that if we keep going along this path, we would have to cut to the point where it would be difficult to offer what we have always offered to our members. And that didn't feel good. And in particular also, we want to have enough resources to carry on the Bright Line Eating Movement and the Bright Line Eating mission in areas like research, things that really take some staff.
So it wasn't working economically and then really critically, it wasn't working for you. It wasn't working for the people who do Bright Line Eating. And over the last year and a half, we started to see that with our members. So with the financial investment so low, suddenly people at 40 bucks a month were signing up for Bright Line Eating while they're waiting for their friend to show up for their coffee date. And they're thinking, "Oh, maybe I'll take a look at it this weekend." And this is not the kind of transformation that's a, "Oh, maybe I'll take a look at it this weekend." This is not a magazine diet that you put into your grocery cart on an impulse as you're checking out of the grocery store. Doing Bright Line Eating is an investment. It's an investment in every way, primarily psychologically and of your time and attention. And the financial investment was no longer signaling that, so people were coming in mentally unprepared. And so we started to see a lot more churn.
Then the other way that the new model wasn't serving you is that the membership experience was too much for people to take in all at once when they came in. Even though we had the initial course really clearly labeled, "Start here, step number one," people would come in with access to all this other stuff and get really overwhelmed and really confused. And we realized that having the Boot Camp set aside upfront as an initial experience really served people better where they would go through it with a cohort of other people who were just starting off and they would really get sort of sequestered in their own little world focused on doing the Boot Camp.
So after a lot of soul-searching, we have decided to bring back the Boot Camp. And we're not actually bringing back the old Boot Camp. We are creating an all-new experience, gutted, rebuilt in its entirety from the ground up for the first time since 2015 when I first created it, an all-new Bright Line Eating Boot Camp 2.0. And this is going to be rolled out in the first week of June with the course starting on June 11th, 2023. So coming right up.
And what you'll see on the website right now is we have shut down the membership. You cannot sign up for Bright Line Eating right now at the Bright Line Eating website. And as we go to launch the Boot Camp, you'll be able to access it through the website. And there are also going to be a new series of videos, the all-new Food Freedom videos. Again, these have not been revamped from the ground up since 2015.
The Food Freedom videos explain to you and to the world the psychology and the neuroscience of how the brain blocks weight loss through creating this insatiable hunger, these overpowering cravings. What's up with our willpower and why it doesn't show up for us when we really intend to eat differently, and the whole science behind the Bright Line approach to food. Hundreds of thousands of people have gotten their introduction to Bright Line Eating through those videos since I first created them in 2015, and I'm so excited to have just redone them in their entirety. The first video will be released on May 30, 2023. So it was a really exciting time. We've created all of this from scratch and we are now rolling it out to you.
Now, the Boot Camp is going to be a one-off course, like an à la carte course at the front end of the Bright Line Eating experience. So the first thing you do is you do the Boot Camp. It's going to be $497 or three payments of $197. And then when you graduate from the Boot Camp, you'll have the option to join the membership and all the rest of the Bright Roadmap, everything else is still folded into the membership. So it's kind of a hybrid model of what we used to do and the membership model. It's still a membership with all of the Bright Roadmap in there, but just the Boot Camp is out front as an introductory experience. So people really start their Bright Line Eating journey strong, and they start it right.
Now when they finish the Boot Camp and they go into the membership, that's when they'll get to be called Bright Lifers like it used to be. And this distinction of being a Boot Camper versus being a Bright Lifer is why we decided to keep the name Boot Camp. I gotta tell you, we went through a whole thing of, "Are we going to keep the name Boot Camp?" Because it's really not a fitting name in a lot of ways. I'm not going to yell at you, I'm not going to scream at you. You're not going to come on site. There isn't a whole bunch of ridiculous exercise that's going to kill you. It's not a boot camp in that way. But then I realized that in the US Military, "boot camp" is a short experience up front that's going to take you from a civilian, from living in the civilian world, and it's going to whip you into shape, it's going to indoctrinate you. It's going to expose you to a new way of living, a new community of people, kind of a new universe. And in a very intensive period of time, you will be transformed to someone who now lives in this military world for years after that.
And those two short words, Boot Camp, really convey all of that and that transformative experience of going from a civilian into this new universe, oh my gosh, it fits so well that we decided to keep the name Boot Camp. It conveys the rigor that we want people to understand, and it tells them that there is a whole cadre of people waiting to welcome them to this new experience and in a short period of time, they will be transformed. So we decided to keep the all-new Boot Camp, Bright Line Eating 2.0.
I want to take a second to just say, what does this mean for the big picture vision. A year and a half ago, I was thinking, "We're going to scale this thing. We're going to blow the roof off of this thing." And I said, "We're going to get 1 million Bright Transformations by 2025." And yeah, I'm pretty clear. I mean, I don't have a crystal ball. I don't know what the future holds, but I'm pretty clear that that's not what we're gunning for right now. We are actually to the contrary, really enjoying serving people in this high-touch way that we do. And yet I don't think that a million Bright Transformations is off the table. And I'm a big fan of goals that you have about a 50-50 chance of achieving. I think it's fine that old saying, aim for the stars... shoot for the moon, and if you miss, maybe you'll end up among the stars or something like that.
So we're going to keep a million Bright Transformations. We're going to push the date back again to 2030, and we are getting our ducks in a row where we're starting to understand more and more the brilliance of how we serve people and what makes us so special and so unique.
And having the Boot Camp out front as the way that we introduce people to Bright Line Eating, it's so effective. Our research shows that. And so we'll see if in a couple years, few years, something happens to really give us more exposure, and we might hit a million Bright Transformations by '23. So we're going to keep that on the table.
I mentioned something at the beginning about a scholarship opportunity. We're trying something we've never done before, which is to have 10 full scholarships available. Full scholarships on a need basis, application only, and these scholarship applications are due this week. So before Boot Camp launch week. We want you to be thinking now, "Do I want to be in this cohort of Boot Campers? And is the financial investment absolutely out of reach for me, without question?"
If that is your situation and you are super clear that you need to be doing Bright Line Eating, you are willing to do what it takes to do Bright Line Eating, please apply for a scholarship. There's a button down below this video, or I don't know what kind of device you're on. It might be off to the side. Look for the button to apply. You'll need to provide some financial details, some financial information, and you'll need to sign something saying that you are willing and able to provide supporting documentation if asked.
The week to apply is May 17-24, 2023. Those dates are firm. Again, May 17th to May 24th, 2023. So if you're watching this vlog or listening to the podcast in real time as it's released, it's this week. After that applications will be closed and we will be giving out 10 full scholarships.
Please share this with your family and friends if you know someone that would be an exceptional fit for that scholarship opportunity. And we are doing this because we care and we want to provide access to those who are truly in need.
Now, if you have missed the window to apply, just know that it's our intention. Again, no promises. And we are aware that we're doing this for the first time. So we always learn something new when we launch something for the first time. But at the moment, it is our intention to offer this again in the same way when we launch the Boot Camp again, which will be in the fall, is what we anticipate.
So that just means stay close, stay close to the Vlog, stay close to the emails that I send out, that the team sends out. And if you have missed the scholarship window once or twice or multiple times, or you've applied and your application hasn't been accepted, just putting that in your next application that you have been trying and you're still here will only strengthen your application.
Okay. Oh my goodness. That is the lay of the land. So we've got scholarship application week happening, May 17th to May 24th. We've got the first Food Freedom video explaining the science in a way you've never heard before, with all-new science. So exciting, starting May 30th, and then going until, those will be available until June 10th. We've got registration week for the all-new Bright Line Eating Boot Camp 2.0, June 5th through 10th. And we've got the course starting, the new Boot Camp starting June 11th.
So much fun stuff. And this cohort of people going through this new Boot Camp, we have learned so much about how to serve you over the years, so, so much. And the Boot Camp is all-new redone, with all-new science, and things like inner work woven in from the beginning, helping people unpack their resistance before they even start. We just know how to bring people through the Bright Transformation now, and this Boot Camp has all of that folded in.
So we evolve, we grow, we learn. That's what science is about. That's what personal growth is about. That's what Bright Line Eating is about. So thank you for being on this journey with us. I'm excited to share with you what's coming down the pike and what we've learned. And if a scholarship is right for you, please apply. And please keep your eye out for the all-new Bright Line Eating Boot Camp. It is coming soon.
