How to Get Paid to Create Your First Online Course in the Next 4 Weeks with Andrew and Stefi

Full video transcript

And we are live. What’s going on, Jarvis Nation? Darby here, joined as usual by my partner Zechariah Stratford, and today we are joined by Steffy and Andrew Lane. We’re going to be breaking down some real dope content material on how to launch an online course and get paid while doing it, so I’m super stoked for this because obviously we’re here talking about writing books, we’re here talking about getting those books out fast, and then what? Right now it’s time to market it, now it’s time to leverage that book and what you do and turn it into more assets that you can continue to leverage to grow your business, brand, and your influence. So super stoked to be here and just soak in what we’re about to learn here. And yes, I know we’re going to be asking this question too, there will be a replay as well, it’s going to be up on our YouTube channel and our blog at jarvisunderground.com.

Zechariah, want to just break things down with what we’re going to be really diving into here today? Andrew and Steffi, I’m super stoked, I’d like to hear from the crowd too, so tell us where you’re from, wave, say hello, let’s hear, let’s get the chat going. I love a big active audience and I know a lot of people are super pumped for this training here, so say hello in the chat. Yeah, I’m really stoked to have Andrew and Stephanie on, we are actually neighbors and I would say now best friends, or close to it.

Totally best friends. We definitely became best friends. Andrew and I have done a cold swim already together and many more to come. And I’m really, it’s kind of just fortuitous, I mean you guys are, you know, so good with the design hacker, you do so well with helping people figure out how to create something that looks good and is usable and they can make money from. And with all of the people here writing books or wanting to write books, like Darby was saying, there’s such a connection between like, okay, I’ve written the book, maybe they’ve taken the challenge with us and they’ve created a bunch of amazing content inside of the book, and how do you now break that content up or dive deeper into it inside of something like a course that they can then market and sell on the back side of their book?

I mean that’s really, we work with a lot of coaches, a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of business owners, advisors, people that would benefit from having something for sale on the back of their book. And if you’re just an author and you’re not thinking along those lines, that’s definitely a missed opportunity for extra revenue and income. So everyone should be thinking about that when you’re doing all this promotion, it’s the perfect opportunity to get people at least into an email list so you can remarket them. If you’re launching on Amazon, definitely going to want to get them off of the book and into your atmosphere, so minimum an email list. But then, why I’m bringing Andrew and Steffi on is like, what more can you do? How deep can you dive into it? And these guys are the masters at it, so I’m super excited. Andrew, Steffi, thank you so much for joining us today.

So pumped to be here, this is going to be a great conversation. We have some slides we’ll go through, we’ve got some examples we could share, but most importantly I’d love to just make this relevant to everyone here who’s watching, so you guys feel free to chime in anytime. I don’t want to just ramble on and on, let’s get into some nuance, we’ll take questions, whatever it is, let’s make this really valuable for everyone who’s here right now. And I see a few people tuning in, we’ve got Sharon from Thousand Oaks, California, hey, great to see you, thanks for joining us. We got Jeff from Naperville, Illinois, used to have some cousins lived out there, I’d go out there every other summer when I was a kid, love neighbors. Nice, thanks Jeff for hopping in. Where’s everyone else? Let’s hear the chat, guys, let us know where you’re from, where you’re tuning in from, and also let us know your questions that you guys have about courses in general.

We’ve had a few come up, in terms of like, if we’re approached, for one example, from just to kind of put the scenario, for you know, partnerships for creating courses, right, because there’s a lot of opportunity once you know how to do this once for yourself, to partner with people who want to make a course but want to leverage another skill set, maybe it’s your skill set, to help them do that. What are some maybe creative ways that you can approach that? Is there some like rev-sharing opportunities, is there a fee that you guys see is generally what it takes to get a course off the ground, and what does that turn into long term? So we can cover all this obviously down the path here, but please share your questions in the chat and we can address them as they come up, everybody.

Sweet, I see them coming in. Yeah, I mean there’s probably a lot of nuance we could get into. So we’ve got a four-week plan we’ll go through, and that’s kind of a model that wherever you’re at right now, you could actually start today, and four weeks from now, have your whole platform set up. You could have people ready to go, ready to buy, and get paid before you even create the content. So that’s kind of the core of what has been working well for our audience. We’ve helped a few hundred people get their first course created, and we have one solution, but there’s a lot of ways to get this done. The one thing that we really believe in at Design Hacker is that you’ve got to create some accountability to get this done, because otherwise the idea of making a course can just linger on and on for months or years, just thinking about it, maybe a great idea.

We’re all about taking action and getting that first version put together, even if it’s just three people who buy your first course, that can really propel you in the right direction. And one example we talked about is one of the top online course creators, she started with her first course, three sales, and now she’s making, how much, stuff like hundreds of thousands of dollars a month through her courses. Yes, like a lot, I think she’s made like millions with that one course that only originally three people signed up for.

So I see from a comment that I have a number of courses but never found a way to monetize them. Yeah, like, let’s get you to monetize them and not let them collect dust, right? This is something that you created, it’s time for you to share it with people. I know you guys have some slides, let me know if you want me to pull those up and dive into give an overview. Sure, or what that is, let’s do it, I’ll take it away.

All right, cool, so that’s the plan here, let’s go ahead and I’ll just kind of move quick, and then interrupt me at any point. Our background, just real quick, we’ve been doing this for like 10 years now. I’ve never really had a real job, so pretty much anything you can think of when it comes to building an online business, I’ve tried it. The two of us together have done physical products, built software, online programs, training, coaching, kind of tried it all. What’s a real job, never heard of that. Where you actually have to wash dishes at a sorority, that was his last real job. That was my last real job, I don’t know if I’d call that a real job, free food.

In 2012 I built a software tool that helped people generate leads on Facebook, and it was really fun. I learned a lot about marketing and also had a chance to work with a lot of entrepreneurs who are trying to promote and grow their business. So that gave me a good insight into a lot of the common struggles that people have when they’re trying to get online and promote themselves. So I’ve been working with entrepreneurs for about 10 years now, and Steph has worked at incubators, she’s worked with some of the top online coaches, so we’ve had a chance to see behind the scenes.

And if you’re feeling like a little bit stuck or lost, like you’re not alone, this is a huge challenge, and especially with the technology changing and evolving so quickly, it’s really important to create momentum and just take one step at a time. Yeah, you have this big long-term vision, but can you create momentum today by taking little steps? It’s probably the same thing with writing a book, I think there’s a lot of overlap here with writing a book and creating an online course. If you’ve already written a book then you’ve already done a course, you’ve broken through those barriers that prevent you from publishing. I mean it’s probably the same thing in launching a course as well.

We have a question from Jeff Scott too, Darby toss that up there, just ask them, if we sell these types of courses on Amazon. I haven’t yet, so I haven’t seen anyone doing that yet, but I’m sure it’s happening. Have you guys seen that? I have not, and I would warn against doing that, just because I mean Amazon does a great job of giving you an easy platform, they don’t do a great job of sharing any information. So anytime you’re selling a course or selling a book, it’s the same thing, you don’t get to see who your buyers are, you don’t get to retarget them, you don’t get to use them for anything else or try to upsell them, down-sell them in any type of way. So selling a course, especially if you’re putting as much energy into it as you are a book, you’re definitely going to want that on your own platform, and to bring your own traffic to that platform that you own, run, and control, and can do with the data as you please. I think that’s going to make you a lot more money in the long run. Actually, I know it will make you a lot more money.

Yeah, there’s kind of like the debate, where do you host your course content, and you might consider putting it on these third-party platforms because they have the traffic, they have people searching on those platforms already, so it could be a great place to put free or really low-cost stuff as a way to get your brand out there. But like you said, moving them over to your own platform would be a much smarter move long term if you want to have your own paid courses and programs. A free ebook, a small ebook that gets people from your ebook into your course or into your email list, great, 100%, do that on Amazon. But I would not recommend doing a course on Amazon, it’s just like, think of it like if you build a Shopify, and you build a course on Shopify, and Shopify says nope, you don’t get to see who bought your course or who bought your book or anything else, it seems a little crazy to me. So you’re definitely going to want to keep that info, guys.

Perfect, so our background again, switched from helping people to marketing, we ended up doing some Kickstarter stuff for a while which was really fun, but then it moved into graphic design, so I’m very visual, I’m a graphic designer by, my background is in design. So we started creating templates and trying to solve these common problems when it comes to online business and marketing, and that kind of shifted naturally into course creation, because there’s so much visual content you need to have in a course, from creating your sales pages to creating your video content, your downloads, and then just making everything look branded and professional. So we’ve kind of tied the two together, having a good visual brand and templates to create your content and then hosting that online. We’ve been trying to hack away at this, make it as easy as possible for the do-it-yourselfer or freelancer to make this streamlined and really fast.

So let’s get clear on the goal, I’ll go real quick through this stuff, but it’s kind of foundational. Your online business, you wanted to grow your audience, you wanted to help more people, deliver value on autopilot, very similar to a book, right, diversify your income, simplify your life, have more freedom. We find a lot of service professionals or just experts who are very good at what they do, but they’re kind of stuck trading time for money, so that’s an obvious reason to write a book, get an online course, I think there’s a ton of overlap, and the course can help you scale faster. So what we found, yes, there’s a way to make money as like a passive course, but very few people actually have a course that they create and then it just makes them a bunch of money on its own, it’s more of a piece of the puzzle to your bigger online business picture. So we find people who use their online courses to train their own team, so if you want to replace yourself and get VAs on board or people doing some of the work for you, you can turn your course into a training program for your team.

Yeah, this is amazing, because I call myself a lazy entrepreneur and I just want to record everything and then have my VAs understand what we’re doing, because you don’t wanna repeat yourself over and over and over again, you just wanna be able to duplicate yourself and be like, this is what I want, let me put it into a course and you can give it to your team. And if you just started there, that could actually turn into a paid course, because that’s probably valuable information that maybe you’d want to package up and sell at some point, if other people want access to that. You don’t have to though, but it’s a good way to start if nothing else, just start getting used to recording the processes that you’re doing on a regular basis and trying to help someone else go through that and do it themselves. I mean, I would buy the course, “How a Lazy Entrepreneur Trains VAs.”

I think something, just from our experience in creating our first course over this past year, has been the exercise in recording and re-recording and going through the process very intentionally helps refine that process more and more. And I know especially a few years ago, when I was just getting started in entrepreneurship, it was go go go, yes I can go fast, yes I can do it all myself, and then you look back and like, I’ve done the same process like 37 times and I hate my life, and I do want to quit business now and go back to. Yeah, burnout is real. Oh yeah, absolutely, burnout is really, it’s necessary. Well, it’s a process you have to go through to train yourself, like going from knowing something to teaching it is a huge leap. So this could be a great way, if you know a friend or family or a VA, just try to show them what you do and see if they could replicate it, or find a way to simplify it enough to where it is possible for someone else to get similar positive results without you having to do it for them.

You can also grow your audience with helpful free content, as you mentioned, even if it’s just a freebie, that’s a really great way to grow your brand online, it gives you some content to send people to. When you’re interviewing on a podcast, you know, you can provide value really fast, build your email list, you can also just add it to your current products or services. So we see a lot of people who will create a course and then maybe they don’t get the systems in place to automate it, because after you create a course and sell it, it doesn’t just sell itself, you’ll have to find a way to sell that. But even if you don’t automate this and run ads to it, it can still be a valuable long-term asset for you, because you can throw that in as a free bonus for people who buy your other products or services. Have you guys seen that, like you work with someone one-on-one and then they throw in like a foundational course, where you’re like, oh cool, now I have a starting point, or you get people up to speed much faster, so that also saves you time in programs that you’re doing, or one-on-one consulting or coaching.

Yeah, I think there’s the shift that I’ve made over the past 18 months probably, and creating these like assets that can be leveraged basically infinitely, right, in info products, is like, you can make the thing eight months ago and it could just be as relevant now, or even more relevant, if you’ve put the right kind of thought and intention behind it. And it opens up the conversation for you to plug your product and your business into other partnerships and other joint ventures that you could approach, saying hey, I built this asset, easily worth 500, I’ve sold it before in the past, you could throw this in as a free bonus to people that are buying your products and coaching, and now everyone that’s buying into their business is seeing your face in their platform, right, you’re just multiplying yourself in a lot of different ways, and really only limited to how creative you want to get with it.

Bingo, and there’s so many doors that unlock once you get good at doing this and get in the habit of recording and putting content somewhere, it just makes you so much more valuable, because now the same questions keep coming up, you can just send them to one place to go get that content. Those partnership opportunities are great as well, to just package that into someone else’s product and basically just give a link to get access to it if they buy other packages, so that could help you grow your network, tons of benefits there. Passive stream, that’s really the long-term dream, and I don’t want to sell that as like the quick win here for why you should initially make a course, because that’s really much more down the road, to automate that sale, passive is not so much passive in the beginning. It’s possible, it’s possible, yeah, but it takes building it up, and foundation and refining it over and over again. And the other side of it is, it could just become a foundation, if you ever dream of having a membership subscription program or even a high-ticket mastermind, building up these assets over time can help you eventually package all that together as like a several-thousand-dollar package, where they’re not just gonna get the content but they’re also gonna get time with you on a regular basis, coaching, group coaching support, maybe even one-on-one. But over time, you create content for a couple years that could become a whole entire package that you sell together.

So I made this up today actually, it’s kind of fun, why doesn’t everyone build an online course? I had to come up with an acronym here: commitment, accountability, structure, and hustle, it’s a different kind of cash, because it really doesn’t cost much to get your course set up, you can basically do it for free, they’re super low-cost platforms, the tech is actually really cheap and easy now. And even a platform like this you guys are using, this Restream, you’ve got these video tools, Loom.com, basically for free, the technology is so cheap now to record your content, to package it up and even upload it and host it, it’s less than 100 bucks a month and you can have a super premium online business.

I think with Loom too, like I’ve bought courses that were strictly like, it was like a 30-minute course that was clearly filmed on Loom, but that’s not the point, the point was, like I got a lot of value from it, right, and it doesn’t need to be this gargantuan 25-hour beast of a master class that you’re doing here, like if you can solve somebody’s problem in the most efficient amount of time, right, that’s gonna make your course that much more valuable, right, because you know, you’re talking about the cash involved with it, everyone has their own currencies that they’re paying with, it doesn’t always need to be money, it can be time, energy that you’re investing into it. Like if you say, oh buy my course, it’s only a hundred dollars and it’s 30 hours of content, I’m like, I think that’s, like, I’ve got time to do that right now, like no, it’s a two-thousand-dollar course, three hours of very specific content to help you scale Facebook ads, to what level might be a different story, it all depends on your audience, and I’m sure we’re gonna talk more about that, like how you market and how specific you are is really a big success factor.

I like that you said that, because I noticed that a lot of people, when they first start wanting to build a course, they’re like, okay, I need a higher production team, okay, I need to have a glam team, I need to have the background and the cameras, and I need to make sure that everything looks so polished. But some of the best courses and the most transformation I’ve got are people just talking to camera, just filming themselves, phone calls, Zoom calls, yeah, it’s just very, very basic, and you don’t have to be this perfect, overproduced person anymore, you can just be real and give people a transformation, and you’re giving them that micro content where they’re like, okay, I’m getting a win, I’m getting a win, I’m getting a win, and then the course becomes valuable. Right, our course now is also all Zoom, so it definitely doesn’t, that would be crazy, we hop on live. It’s about how you bring value, that’s it.

So let’s get into that, those are the things that we want to focus on, is getting, creating this in your life right now. If you want to create a course, you do have to commit to it, create some accountability, have some structure as to how you’re going to do it, because there’s a million different ways to make your course, and it’s not like one is better than the other, I’ll share some recommendations of how we do it, but again, keeping it simple, actually getting it done, and then hustle, you have to just commit to it and go, because I still have not cracked the code on making this super easy for anyone to make their course. It’s probably like writing a book, you’re gonna have to roll up your sleeves at some point and just do the dang thing. There might be tools that make things easier, but it still comes down to you figuring it out, so there’s tools and possibilities, but you have to be committed to figuring it out, and for me it’s always come down to compressing that into a time frame. So I think that’s where we jive so much, as you guys are doing the same philosophy on book writing that we do with courses.

So here is the four-week breakdown, we’ll get into this, I think this will help us dive into some more nuance and bring up some other questions that are probably coming up. So first we tell people to outline their course and then engage their audience immediately, we’ll get into that in just a second, but it’s part of the commitment, and the accountability is putting something out there and setting the date, and then telling even if it’s three or five people that you know, get it out there on your calendar and commit to doing something, it changes the game real quick. And then set up your course platform, so then you’ll have to start figuring out how to put this together, how you’re actually going to deliver on some value, then create some free content, and then pre-sell your course.

All right, so we’re going to go and do this a little bit more detailed here. So the first part, which should be easy for anyone who’s written a book, maybe, maybe not: identify your course topic. What we usually recommend is anyone who has already worked with people or solved problems for people, take that knowledge and experience that you have in your head, take those case studies and success stories that you have in your head, and just look at the starting point that people started at and the end point of where you got them to, and that right there could be the most obvious first course that you create. And if you can’t do the whole thing, is there a piece of it that people run into a lot that they struggle with, can you identify some part of the journey that you’re confident you can help someone through, by teaching them, showing them things, giving them resources so that they can do it themselves?

How do you guys think that overlaps with a book? Do you see a lot of people who educate through a book and have already done this process? Yeah, I mean, it’s just like starting a book with your outline, that’s what the very first one of the very first things we teach in day one of our course is, to start with the outline, start with the journey, the customer journey, right, we call it the reader journey, who are they when they start reading, what happens when they finish, what problems are you solving in between, or what one big problem are you solving? It’s very similar. Yeah, it’s very cool, so I’m seeing this and seeing how this translates exactly into writing your book, so if you’re in the process of writing your book, literally, I’m seeing you can take your outline and maybe just expand on those pieces, or add talks, at a one-hour talk on each chapter, a 10-minute, 20-minute talk on each chapter, and boom, you have the workings of a course. And we see people that have a course in mind and say like, first I want to write a book to really refine the idea and force myself to get it down into this, like, okay, I have it in book format, it’s 150 pages, it’s well thought through, you can take that and then flip it over and now you have yourself a course, but also you’ve got vice versa, you’ve got like, oh, I’ve got like five courses and I want a book that can help bring people into the courses and what else I offer here as well.

So it can happen a lot of different ways, guys, and I think at the end of the day it’s just figuring out what’s the problem you’re solving and who are you solving it for, and what’s the cleanest path that you can provide to them that is not filled with fluff, that can get them a result and tighten that feedback loop up, because if you can do that effectively, people are going to come back for more, because that’s going to prove that you’re an effective teacher, and that you can actually help people get that desired result, which is huge, as opposed to just selling a pie in the sky, like here’s my course on how to make an eight-figure business, but you’ve never even started an e-commerce brand before. There’s sometimes these courses that are just such a wide gap in the time it takes to get the result, that, you know, it might be exciting to get into, but your drop-off rate and your course non-completion rate, how many people don’t actually even finish the course, how do you guys like keep your people engaged throughout, like this entire journey?

We’ll talk about that, maybe I’ll go through this real quick and then we can kind of pause and dive in, because some of that, I’ll point out this one, we’ve got an example we’ll share in a second, but what we usually teach people to do, and this is how we started teaching course creation, was we first helped a private client build their course, and then we looked at that process that we went through. So you do this for any industry, any business, who did you just help, you got to have confidence, like you said, that you can help someone overcome a challenge and get a good result, so if you’re not confident yet then you probably shouldn’t make a course, maybe you need to write a book, maybe you need to go offer your services, help someone for free first. But you don’t need a ton of experience, you just need to prove that you can go from A to Z, whatever that looks like, and get it done.

And so now you want to chop that up into a couple of steps like you were saying, and then we like to put a time frame on it, so the courses that are really working right now are either like seven-day, like you guys do 30-day programs are good, you see 60 or like eight-week or 90-day programs, having some kind of time frame, so that puts in the mind of the customer that that actually sounds more valuable than 300 videos, right, they want to see what’s going to happen in this time frame, how fast can you get me from A to Z, and the more that you can compress that down and then prove that you can actually get in there, that becomes more valuable to your audience, or targeting one specific problem that you’re solving, I’m going to help you with one thing.

Yeah, one thing I’ll say, a mentor of ours, Ron Lynch, will say no one cares about whatever you call it, your program, your course, your challenge, your intensive, they care about what it’s going to do for them, so you say, I am Amazon bestseller or best-selling book, that’s what they care about, they care about the result, not about whatever it is that gets the best. Exactly, you’re selling the outcome. Exactly, and then your value is, really the goal of your course is, if you can do that in like one template, in one video, then bingo, that’s fine, no one cares. We’ve bought some really expensive courses that are super short, but it’s like, I’m paid just for that script that they wrote, or that template that they gave me, and then the video of them explaining it, because a lot of people give you stuff that’s like a written thing, and I just love when the person who wrote it actually gets on video and walks me through it and shares some examples. So your examples, success stories, you pull those up and now you bring these ideas to life and you show them different ways that they could implement it, it doesn’t have to be long or drawn out, it’s just right there to the point.

So Andrew, get through this and then pause. All right, yes, I’ll go quick, yeah go quick, everyone take notes. So create the outline of your course, all right, so that’s what we just talked about, we dove into that pretty good, and now set the dates, this is so important. So when Steph and I sat down, we wanted to teach people how to build their first course, we mapped it out and we broke it into a four-step process, and we said hey, we could probably get someone through that in four weeks. And then we set the dates, we said all right, when are we going to go through that four-week process? So here’s the big shift, you’re not going to sit down and say, all right, well I’m going to make all these videos for my course, let me think about buying it, hiring a video guy, no, you’re going to think, when on the calendar are you going to create module 1, 2, 3, 4, when is that gonna happen, and you’re gonna do that with your audience, and you’re gonna promise that it’ll be delivered on Monday at noon, or whatever time that you promise, and guess what, you’re gonna show up and you’re gonna do it. So this might be a month or two months into the future, you’re gonna look at your calendar, is it Monday, is it Friday, we were doing Sundays I think, so by the end of the day Sunday we’re gonna have this uploaded and delivered for you, or emailed to you, however you deliver the content, you set dates that you’re going to deliver this content.

And then you set the date, so there’s two things, you want to set the date for when you’re going to sell this. And here’s the thing, I know we get a lot of resistance, and maybe some people are like, I don’t want to do this with people as a group program, I understand the resistance there, you want it to be perfect, you want to record it all privately, but you’re missing an opportunity. Well, has it happened, that’s the question, if you’re here watching this it probably hasn’t happened yet, and that’s the reason, it’s you need that accountability to get this done, and it actually you’re going to get a better result for your future customers if you do this with people at the beginning. So you got to set the date for when you’re going to sell the course, which means when’s the day that the sales page is going to be ready and they’re going to buy, and it’s actually the same day that you’re going to deliver some free value. So this could be a date that you say, hey, come join me for a Facebook live, or come join our YouTube live stream or a webinar or a Zoom call, you want to have some kind of date that you’re pushing towards, and that’s the one that you’re going to share publicly, because now it’s just free content, so if nothing else, the whole thing flops, you can still show up and give some free value to your audience. And either way, you want to have something that you can put on a calendar right now and say, on that date I’m going to have a sales page ready, I’m gonna have a way for people to pay me money, and then they’re gonna be able to join this program to help me build this course.

The next step is, when will you start the course, so as I mentioned, you need to have some clarity around that, doesn’t have to be super ironed out at this point, but some kind of idea of, mid-January we’re going to start the program, so maybe in mid-December I’ll do a live stream to sell it and get people on board, and then I can see, at the start of the year we’ll go through that with those paying customers. So you’re looking a little bit in the future here of when you might deliver the course content, and then rewind back to, when can you have free content ready to introduce this offer to them, and that just looks like a simple promise. So a lot of people overthink the freebie, I think the easiest way is if you have some case studies or examples that you can share, to just break that down and show them the possibilities. So the freebie now is you’re trying to gauge the interest of your audience, so if you’re promising that in your course and your program you’re going to take them through this journey and get them this outcome, your freebie should just introduce them to the idea of this being possible, like you want to overcome these beliefs, like I don’t think it worked for me, or I didn’t know that was even an option. Like today we’re talking about how you could build a course in four weeks, we’re overcoming some of the beliefs that you might have around that, or how complicated it is, or what it would look, some kind of content to share, break down some value, and the best, easiest way to do that is just show an example, here’s someone that I just helped go through this, see what we did here, kind of break down your process, and now boom, you’re ready to sell your program because you just showed them you have a plan.

And then you got to put it out there, and this is the hardest part, if you don’t get past this step, just forget about the rest, because if you can’t even start inviting and engaging your audience, it’s probably not gonna be a good idea to go sell a course. So all you have to do is just go invite people and say, hey, would you be interested in learning about this topic, I’m thinking about doing a training on this date, you can just ask a question and say, hey, would you guys be interested. So again, before you go create your whole course content, see if you can have dialogue and conversation with your audience. If you don’t have thousands of people, maybe it’s just a small group of people, friends, family, just see if anyone would be interested in learning about it first off. And through those conversations you also get a lot of feedback and ideas, so you’re building momentum towards ultimately creating a program, but if you do have an audience already, this is really valuable, because now you can start to fine-tune what they’re looking for, what they need, you can ask questions around this, and so you’re building up the marketing momentum right away.

And while you’re doing that, week two, you can start to set up your course platform, so now that you have some confidence, you’ve taken that first step of putting it out there, you got to get your payment stuff set up. Now this is where we can go into a lot of detail, but the big picture is, I would recommend getting a Stripe account, PayPal is a good option as well, those are the two best options, do you guys use anything else? We use Stripe. Yeah, okay, perfect, all right, PayPal, there you go.

Now your course platform, probably a lot of questions about this, we recommend Podia, we use Podia, it’s similar to Kajabi or Teachable, these all-in-one course platforms are super powerful because it just does everything for you, and it makes your life way easier. If you want to have it hosted on your own website, I initially tried doing that because I’m like, hey, I built software, I know this stuff, I want to have a super custom premium thing, I spent six months getting plug-ins, tinkering around, never, like this endless figuring around, like trying to plug in different things, it was a total mess, I didn’t feel confident in it, I didn’t feel confident sharing my links because I didn’t know what was going to happen. [Laughter] But we use ClickFunnels, there’s a bunch of others out there, I would just say grab one and stick with it, they’re all amazing, Thinkific, there’s so many popping up and they just do so much, and having built software, I’m just amazed at these platforms, how much they do for you out of the box, you’re rocking. And I think don’t overcomplicate it, right, it’s not about the tech, it’s about what you’re providing through it, don’t try and think it needs to be perfect.

We go off the idea of writing a minimum viable book, yep, build it with your founding members, your advanced readers, grow it as it goes, you can release different editions of it and grow it as your platform grows. Here we’re talking about a minimum viable course, in four weeks how can you validate an idea, so you’re not spending six months banging your head against the wall and then launching it out to crickets, it’s gonna be a hard day, and so don’t let that happen to you. Yeah, this is the best, I mean just get it up and running, I’d love that philosophy, and 100% agree, and the cool thing too is if you set up on a platform, a lot of the platforms allow you to export all your stuff over to another one, they’ll make that easy for you, so if you do have to switch in the future that’s fine, but this is not your goal, don’t be one of those people who hops around from platform to platform, you think it’s gonna make you a millionaire to stick to one platform, I know people on all the platforms and they all have the same struggles in different ways, so there’s not one perfect platform. So we’ll go past that, you guys get the idea, but that’s a big recommendation, is find these all-in-one tools that just handle the whole process, it makes your life easier and they look beautiful, and usually the customer experience is going to be really premium.

Create a basic sales page, so I’m gonna show you an example in a minute, what we recommend for your first sales page, again a lot of people get stuck here, overthinking it, stressing out, really all you’re doing is writing out what they’re gonna get and then how that’s gonna go down. So you’re actually selling a group program here, you don’t first off have a lot of the content done, if you have some tools or templates or things that are going to be included you could put that in there, but the basic sales page is going to be, a four-week program to help you go from this to this, or a seven-day program to help you do this and this, and then you’re going to put down when that content will be available, because you’re selling this as a group program to begin with. And it’s as simple as doing a four-week thing and then saying, week one on this date you’re gonna get this stuff, we’re gonna go through these topics, and boom, week two, that’s it, that’s all you need on your sales page.

Real example from our experience was we used Google Docs and a Stripe link, hey, are you guys interested in it? Cool, that’s still how I write most of my sales pages, literally in a Google Doc. Yeah, and for the first challenge I think we delivered everything inside of a Google Drive folder for the content, yeah, my first group was in a Facebook, yeah, my first course was in a Facebook group, so you don’t have to use a platform in the beginning, yeah.

Andrew, could you go through these pretty quickly? All right, all right, I know, we could go into all the details, all right. So create a beta program discount coupon, you don’t need to get that complicated here, you can just say, look, we’re thinking of selling this at 500 bucks or a thousand bucks, but for this beta program we’re doing a special deal since you’re going to help us create the content, all right, so you want to give them a big discount usually to be a part of this group. Continue to engage with your audience and invite them to get the freebie, so you’re still, while you’re building this out, you’re still engaging with your audience, you’re still asking questions and trying to see what questions they have around this topic, and then you’re gonna do your best again to deliver value on that day, and that’s gonna be a great way.

Go ahead quickly, Andrew, just, is there a recommended, how many posts that you do talking about the course, is it one a day, maybe three a week, what is your recommendation there? Yeah, that’s, I mean I wish I was better at that, I do like one post and one email. Yeah, Andrew doesn’t do anything, but we have an example we’re going to show you of one of our case studies that does it, but ideally once a week would be the minimum, if you can, like asking questions, polling, you don’t have to show up as the expert here, you’re trying to figure things out, so I’ve done facebook group polls, just asking questions, doing surveys, you’re kind of trying to figure this out at the same time. And even, another thing you might do is one-on-one consults, you just put it out there, hey, I’m doing 15-minute consults on this topic, who’s interested, that’s a good way to just really dial it in, if you’re really just getting started or you’re not comfortable doing a lot of promotion, just start helping people one-on-one, and that’ll give you so much more confidence and help you figure out what should be in your course. So that could be a form of engagement, like just again talking to people, getting the momentum going.

Now week three, create your free content, so you’re mapping out some free stuff, but this is actually going to help you build your course too, so you’re looking at what kind of the big takeaways are, what struggles they might face, how you help them overcome that, recommendations they might have, so you’re figuring this out, that you’re going to expand on that in continue to engage again, continue to refine your sales page and course offer. So through this process you haven’t told them that you have a course yet, no one knows that you’re selling something, so you have like this period of exploring, engaging with people to figure out what should be in your paid course.

And then week four, you’re going to pre-sell it, so you’re actually going to deliver the free content you promised them, now for a couple weeks that something’s going to come, some kind of free training or discussion is going to happen, you show up, you deliver some value, you help them out, and then you let them know that you’re running a group program, so they have a chance to be the first, you got this discount for them, and you’re just, it could be three people again, I would say minimum three people. If it’s a hundred bucks each, like hey, you got 300 bucks, and it feels a lot better to make your course when you get paid something, if you want to sell it for 500 bucks, a thousand bucks, the example we’ll show you today, she did it for 250, and that was a good middle ground, right, a four-week program, 250 bucks, they’re gonna get all this value, as long as you can articulate what they’re gonna get, the experience they’re gonna have. And some of the benefits of being part of this beta program, you might just upload the content or send them the content standalone, and then throw in bonuses like a follow-up Zoom discussion to help them with any questions or help them implement it. Then you close the doors, all right, we’re closing it for now, those are the people who are in, and then you’ll create that content with them, so you just got paid, you’ve got your beta testers you’re working with, and through that process you’ll collect feedback, case studies, testimonials, and that feedback’s so valuable as you create the content, actually building it with them. So now you’ll be more confident to promote it in the future, and then you just refine it, and then launch it again when you’re ready.

I would like to hear from the audience, is there any questions, does this make sense? I mean this is really a simple, but I know there’s a lot of stuff in there too. Well I like that you said it can be as simple as a Google Doc, using Zoom, using Google Docs, a lot of our clients use that stuff and it gets the job done. If you want to be more beautiful, you’re ready to build that brand online, starting with a course platform and just creating your first course with it, it’s not that hard to figure out, there’s videos on YouTube, the stuff is not that complicated.

So Leila, is it Layla or Leela Cogan, had a question, got a couple lead magnets but don’t think that’s helpful unless it’s part of the ladder. Yeah, if it doesn’t feel harmonious with what you’re gonna promote, maybe just throw those in as bonuses, so think of all this content you’re creating, these assets that you have, it may help them in some way or another, maybe it’s not the main thing you promote, but you can throw it in as something they’ll get if they buy, or if they join this free training that you’re doing.

Another question from Laurie here, is Moodle a good, or Noodle? I haven’t heard of that one, have you guys, nope, never heard of it, couldn’t tell you. Yeah, a lot of platforms out there that you guys can use, like you said, Podia is what you guys recommend, whatever’s easiest for you at the end of the day, to just get it up, like I said, our experience was Google Doc to pre-sell it, get people in with the payment link with Stripe or PayPal, and then start dripping the value that you’re providing in terms of videos, and something as easy as a Google Drive folder. Right, we delivered our first course on Zoom and continue to, so yeah, don’t make it complicated, in our first, I think our first course was either 47 or 97 dollars, guys.

Yeah, I saw Kajabi, you’ve heard Kajabi is the way to go. I do think on that point, I’ve had clients switch over from Kajabi because they found that a lot of what they were using Kajabi for, you could get for a lot less with Podia, it’s going to be very similar. Kajabi definitely is like the industry leader right now, they’ve got all the bells and whistles and some really fancy stuff, the problem is a lot of people don’t take advantage of all that, and for me, even being a designer, I’ve made a living building websites, and I hate the customization options on Kajabi because I can just sit there all day tinkering around with it, and you end up trying to make the most beautiful website instead of creating valuable content and engaging with your customers. So that’s, I know myself, so Podia is really simple and basic, but boom, I get it done.

Yeah, and then there’s a question from Desmond too, but you’re going to need that, Desmond, you’re going to want to get in touch with the Jarvis AI chat, you’re not the tech support team, guys. I built a Facebook application in 2012, the one I mentioned, and man, we just became Facebook tech support, it was like I didn’t sign up for this, but it’s kind of part of the gig, you start to, you love to help as much as you can, but there’s gonna be a line drawn somewhere.

So this is our example here, Meg is a really good example, she went through this process, so again she mapped out her plan, and this is really cool because what I like about Meg is she was an established photographer, brand photographer, and she found that a lot of people were asking her how she was running her business. Kind of like you mentioned, Darby, people would love to learn your processes behind the scenes of how you run your business, or how you outsource, how you hire VAs. You could find anything that you do well, and other people probably want to learn that, it might not be your normal audience, it could be your peers, so you can create a whole new stream of income educating other people who are doing what you’re doing. So she mapped out a four-week plan here, and this is pretty much it, like what I said, sit down and write out a four-step process, what topics can you go through, get kind of clear on that where some value will be, and then go promote it. So she went and promoted on her Facebook group, “Three Ways to Make More Money, Magic, and Impact as a Brand Photographer,” so she just wanted to have a conversation around showing people what’s possible, and then sharing some of the behind-the-scenes insights on how she’s running her business, to get their interest, and then on that call she did a discount, she actually had a bonus, so the first 10 people signed up got a bonus 90-minute group coaching call as well. And then from there she promoted that, “sign up below,” pretty obvious stuff, and then she said, hey, awesome, welcome to all these people, so this was in a Facebook group, if you don’t have your own Facebook group, find another way to communicate however you normally do that, but this is how she did it.

And then she got those core people in, I think it was something like 15, 20 thousand in sales, just pre-sales, she went from, she was stressing over this for like a year, I want to create this course, I want to create this course, we were like, right now write out a plan, go share it, put a date. She didn’t have the accountability, and so she kept overthinking it, she kept telling us she was going to hire a video crew, film crew, yeah, she kept saying, I’m going to hire a video crew, I’m going to do this, it’s going to be perfect, blah blah blah, never happened, and she just needed to sit down and create it. And she did it during, right at the beginning of the pandemic, yeah, so after she sold it, then it was like the hustle side, because now you actually do have to create the content, and this is not easy, I mean it’s just like writing a book, it’s going to take some work, and it’s going to bring up a lot of fear and uncertainty. But again you can keep it really simple using simple tools, it can be Google Docs, it could be just basic things, just get it out of your head, version one, and this is the beauty of positioning as a beta program, as a group thing, you can make it more collaborative, you can fill in the gaps by doing these follow-up group calls or discussions to make sure that they’re getting the information they need.

A quick interjection here, a question about Jarvis recipes for building course content. I don’t have one specifically built just yet, but when you guys are using tools like Jarvis and looking at what is involved with your course, I would challenge you to rethink about what is the problem again that you’re solving, who is it that you’re serving, and what’s the most efficient way that you can create that content to deliver it. In a lot of cases, with how we provide our content in our course, we’re answering questions live and we’re building it inside of these live Q&As, after bringing in experts to do their content. But another way that I’ve seen people very effectively build like YouTube courses for free, or mini series, is just like, you might find like the YouTube video script, for example, like what’s the big idea topic that we’re having here, what’s the problem that somebody’s facing, what are a few key bullet points that you’re gonna cover here, then what’s the conclusion, right? If you’re solving a thing like how do I start an online photography business, who’s your customer avatar, what’s the problem that they’re experiencing right now, what are the top three things that you’re going to cover in this video to help them get set up with starting their first whatever for photography, and then a call to action could be, go and do X, go and do Y, and go into Z, all right, I’ll see you next week for the next video. That itself could be week one for your course, for example, but you know, for something out there that’s our already existing recipe, I don’t have a particular course recipe other than that.

That’s amazing, that’s the fun part, is you’re gonna figure stuff out through this process, that’s just know that when you have that accountability and you’ve got people waiting for this content, it’s gonna push you to develop these new skills, to figure things out, to find ways to write that copy, to find ways to make your video, and it condenses the time frame, you just have to look at it as an exciting opportunity. Like I love getting paid to figure stuff out and learn new things, because you know that these skills you develop through this process are going to last you for years, I mean these are like the most important skills to have right now in the digital world, and you could just go through that instead of always dreaming of what would it take, how would I make it happen, or overthinking or overstrategizing, just do it, go through the process, figure it out, and then you can improve it going forward. Yeah, setting the date was always the scariest thing, right, saying oh shoot, right now there’s a date on the calendar, it’s real, I have to make it happen, and that’s where growth happens, guys, we get uncomfortable. Yeah, I challenge all of you, just look at your calendar, circle it in, and commit to something.

So the beauty of this too, like I mentioned, you learn these skills, you do it, she didn’t just stop there, she ended up making all these programs, right, so she got through that first one and now she’s off and running, and she’s, after that first program she built, she ended up turning that into a mastermind, I think she ended up selling one-on-one coaching, does she have that on here? No, but she took some of the students in the course, ended up paying her more, time for one-on-one coaching, she had more people reaching out, so she built a mastermind, launched that with I think 12 people. She turned some of the content that she created in her one course into smaller programs, so she had, some of the email templates from that bigger course that she did, she turned that into a smaller product, standalone product. She also created some freebies, so some of the content that she gave away in her free group, you saw that video, she turned that into a freebie to collect leads. I think this was another freebie from that she made in her course, so that content she made from her course is now spiraled out into all these other programs and offers at different price points, and the one she just launched recently was this one here, another standalone product for a few hundred bucks, and she went through the same process to launch that. She’s actually in the process of building out this course right now, “The Pose Method,” yes, so she’s doing the same process again, so you don’t just do it once, you can repeat this for new products you want to create.

And can you show the Pose Method real quick and then we’ll get to the end? Yeah, here’s that outline, so again she started with, what is she gonna offer, again she went through the same process, what can I do for people, how can I provide value, and then she mapped out the dates here, it was, she wrote out the dates, okay, yeah, and she made that clear what to expect on the sales page, that’s pretty much all she needed on her sales page. A lot of times we think we need like a big grand sales page, literally this is all you really need, you need what’s the promise, what’s going to happen, boom boom boom boom, the end. Then she shared it, promoted it, set a date, see you tomorrow, she’s engaging her audience, she’s doing the same process, here’s what you’re gonna get on this free workshop, which is the same kind of branding and packaging as the course, but she’s just giving it away for free, some value there. She went live again, “How to Direct and Pose Even Your Most Awkward Clients on Camera,” she had a quick outline of what the value was going to be, and she used that to sell her course, same process here with a discount, price is going to go up, this is our first initial launch of this program, and right away, was that the first day she had 30 people sign up? Wow. So it works, if you follow a strategy.

Yeah, I think, what was this one, look at the dates, just giving an example, yeah, you can just see kind of the content she’s sharing and how she’s promoting it. And then could you just overview the whole strategy? Yeah, this was a slide that needs some help, right, there’s the big picture, like long term, what this can turn into is now you have a place for all that content you’re putting out there publicly, you can drive the traffic into these free courses or mini courses that could be built out of some of the content from your bigger course. So she repurposed that content into a freebie that allowed her to get them on her email list, move them over to her main products, and then from there she can upsell into one-on-one, group coaching, or mastermind, all that good stuff.

Cool, any other questions? I think that’s pretty much it, it’s a really solid overview guys, anyone, we’re going to have a recording here, but this is, you know, to a T, just like the high level of how to do this, take a screenshot of it right now. And if you have a course in mind, I challenge you to set a date, right, set a date, could be a month from now, it could be a year from now, but it’s not playing that far ahead. If you know that you have a course in mind, and you know that you have a problem that you can solve very directly, in a result you can get for someone, then let’s make it happen, right, we want to be taking action, we want to be building momentum, and you’re never going to learn and you’re never going to grow if you don’t just go out there and do it and start getting it done. So I think this is an incredible presentation, guys, thank you so much for breaking it down at this level, and there’s so much opportunity now, and the barrier is so low for people, for creators to get out there, provide value, solve problems, make online income, that can support yourself, your family, your business, amplifying your message.

People want to reach out to you guys and connect with you, chat with you about more detail about courses, ask any more. Yeah, the last thing here, we put together an offer for you guys, you can check it out, I mentioned we’ve got the templates, we’ve got some in-depth training, if you are looking for more details on how to build your course, all the behind-the-scenes nuance of how we do it and how we get our clients up and running really fast, you can check that out. We’ve got a really special deal for you guys, a bundle of some of our templates and training, that will show you behind the scenes of a lot of this stuff, give you the templates that we use, and that link will also, at the bottom it’s got a link if you want to reach out to us, you can just email us at contact@designhacker.com, that’s the best place to get started if you want help one-on-one. We do offer some VIP setups, but check out this deal, it’s got a package of some of our most popular programs, our 30-day course builder bootcamp, and our online brand workshop, where we can help you get your visual content dialed in, streamline your whole brand identity online, and then it makes it way easier to create your content and get your course created.

Awesome, that’s awesome, again sorry about that, I love it, the old school, phones are ringing, dial in now, call in now, 1-800, act now, act now.

This is so awesome, and the correlation between what this takes and what it takes to get your book done is just, it’s all there, and we’ve had so many people ask, what’s next, what’s next, what’s next, when writing a book, so I’m super happy you guys can come on and chat about this, and I’m sure what you guys provided at that link is really super valuable, if someone’s already feeling the overwhelm of writing a book and they’re like, Andrew, Steffi just helped me with the course piece, are they able to get in touch with you for that too? Yep, definitely, email us, contact, and either way, I’d love to chat with some of you if you’re ready to go, we’ll see if we can work with you one-on-one, or what might be the best next step for you, happy to take any emails that you have. Awesome, for sure, thanks for having us, thanks for coming on, thanks for everyone joining, Anna, C. Laurie, C. Frank, Layla, Leela, I hope I’m getting that right, Desmond, thank you all for hopping in, you guys are great, and look for more of what we do here at Jarvis Underground, everything to help you guys get your books done and beyond, Melanie, Steffy, there, yeah, thank you guys so much, and we’ll be seeing you.

All right.