How to Create a Profitable Online Course - STEP-BY-STEP

hey everybody what's up and welcome i want to start off by just applauding you for taking the time to hang out with me today we're going to go for about an hour plus a little bit of q a as well i'm here to help you out i'm here to get you started with your online course and if you haven't done so already if you're live in the chat right now first of all thank you again for taking the time but let me know where you're watching from and also what your experiences with online courses whether you've taken online courses before or perhaps even better have started online courses i know a lot of people have started and then stopped and i don't want that to be you i want you to start and keep going and keep flowing and get to the point where you can launch this thing and turn it into something that's an asset in your business the beauty of online courses is that it can become something that you create once and then it continues to work over and over again although i do want to say that it's not a set and forget forever kind of thing you still need to maintain your courses you still need to keep them updated but truly it can become mostly passive after you create it after you launch it but it happens not right away there's a lot of planning that needs to happen up front and that's what we're going to talk about today i will be talking about creating your ideas and picking a topic producing your course we're going to have a fun little activity together and then how to sell it so i'm gonna give you the rundown there's a lot more to it but i want to give you the baseline the foundation for it and again welcome to everybody here we have some friendly faces in the house that i've seen before we got john carl lewis clementina uh tina darin what's up good to see all of you and we have some new faces too so again whether you're watching live or the replay uh this should be a lot of fun so let's dive into the slides because a lot of you might know my story some of you might not but i started my first online business in 2008 that was over 14 years ago and this was a business to help people pass an architectural exam here it is at greenexamacademy.com and it was a very difficult exam that i created a resource for and i started selling some study guides for this was my first experience selling online and it truly changed my life but i knew that i could help others through all the things i was learning and all the mistakes i was making which is where i started this website the smart passive income blog now many of you might not know that it looked like this but this was the first iteration i'm almost embarrassed to share this because um this does not look great i mean there's even a picture of me on the bottom wearing snowboarding gear i live in san diego i snowboarded like twice in my life i don't know why i chose this picture i had no idea what i was doing but of course you learn and you make mistakes and you get up and you keep going and eventually we now have the smart passive income blog and spi media as most of you might know it where it's not even about me anymore it's about the community and it's about these amazing people who are taking action who are changing their lives and the lives of others including people here like maria and doug and and um deborah who are a part of our community and and they are who we need to highlight because they are the heroes of the story and i want you to be the hero of the story here too and the whole idea here is i teach by doing right i don't ever teach anything that i haven't done yet and that's the whole point here i've had a lot of experience with online courses now this is the youtube channel that you're on right now i appreciate you watching here i also have another youtube channel called deep pocket monster which was just started in early 2020 and has now amassed almost a quarter million subscribers which has been super fun so i'm kind of doing it all in addition to that i have a podcast and certain and in fact several podcasts which you might know with over 75 million downloads total any podcast listeners in the house right now uh raise your hand if you are one and i appreciate you for that if you haven't i highly recommend you check it out in addition to that i have authored several books from let go to will it fly which is a wall street journal bestseller and my latest book super fans which has gotten in the hands of some big influencers to share and i'm so grateful for that including as you can see here mr beast which is just so incredible that he and his friend darren at vidsummit a couple years ago before the pandemic we're handing this out to everybody and i do hope to attend this year too but the cream of the crop most of what we do at spi in addition to the community is online courses and here's just a few of the courses that have been created since 2017. since then we've generated over five million dollars in sales with online courses which just blows my mind when i think about it but i love that because the approach that i take is serve first as you can see with the shirt that i'm wearing right now serve first right when you serve first your earnings become the byproduct of that and that's a big lesson that i want you to take away and you'll see that theme come up quite a bit today which is really cool but i'm so proud of the team that has helped put this together but also myself because it's something that i was very scared to do i actually delayed selling online courses because i was so scared about selling out or just trying to treat my audience like a sponge and take every dollar from them but no it's not like that and i'm going to teach you how to get over the mindset stuff related to selling because that's a really big component of this you could have the best online course in the world but if you don't have the right mindset and approach to it well it's not going to help anybody and it's not going to help you so here is what we're going to learn today and a big shout out and thank you to all the people who are watching right now uh you're going to learn how to choose the right course topic there have been a lot of changes over time what once used to work does not work anymore and i'll tell you exactly what that is and what to look out for when you make the choice and how to know whether or not it's actually going to work or not number two an easy way to produce it building an online course many people have the idea to do it but they don't because it's very intimidating right i have to film it i have to like figure out what the lessons and modules are going to be well we're going to actually do something live together so i can show you exactly how simple this is and this is where the chat is going to get involved so stay tuned because i'm going to ask you for some help later and then finally how to sell it and i'm going to also share the best sales advice that i ever received from one of my mentors and i want to pass it on to you i actually have a clip that i want to share with you the the moment that could potentially change your life with regards to your mindset with selling so let's talk about your topic let's just dive in you already let me know in the chat with a fire emoji if you're ready to get started i'm just going to do a quick little stretch to get ready here hopefully you can feel the energy because i got the energy thanks to you i always love going live it's always scary right before i always get a little nervous but as soon as i hit live or go live um you all just make it better so thank you for making me feel comfortable i hope you are comfortable here too but as you can see we're just steaming right through and we're about to we're about to dive in uh and thank you linguistic discovery don and kobe tina for the fire emojis awesome still coming in daryn thank you okay so your topic in order to talk about a topic that would work today i need to go back into the past as we love to do with all my back to the future stuff that you can see behind me over there so we need to talk about what courses used to be like when they worked before and i'm i'm talking pre 2016. they used to be essentially encyclopedias full of information because that's what was valuable that information wasn't readily available before so let's put that information somewhere package it make it convenient to have access to and then sell it but unfortunately that's not what's working today so you tell me in the chat right now why do you think this approach of just everything under the sun inside of a course doesn't work anymore i've spent a lot of money on courses like that and i'm going to tell you why they don't work today after you give me some ideas because they definitely don't work and they don't work because most of us don't have the time to go through everything we just launched a course about youtube recently and the whole positioning of that course was it's not everything about youtube because if it was guess what it would be incredibly overwhelming you wouldn't have the time and you probably wouldn't get the results right firehose says lannell that's right so much information got no time to read all that bro says uh i am wengie takes too long people want results quickly exactly gareth too much time to dig through too much information nobody finishes them it doesn't work anymore and it's it's too much there's there's more than you actually need and it doesn't get you a result just knowing the information is not enough because the truth is information's readily available anywhere in most courses that are sold online today and most you could technically go out and find that information for free right now using google right i have a course on how to start a podcast it's our most successful course you could go find out exactly how to launch a podcast yourself so what does a successful course look like today well a profitable successful online course solves a specific problem it's not an encyclopedia with all the information a to z it's specifically how to do a certain thing that has a result it solves a specific problem it promises a desired result it shares a clear process that's the other thing a ton of information in front of people is literally like you dumping an encyclopedia and going here you go now go find it uh what you needed and what is actually helpful what if instead you positioned it as hey here is the process this is all you need and you're going to be able to do this in a very short period of time and that's the other thing i think garrett or somebody mentioned that it's about getting the result faster right that is what is valuable is how quickly you can get a person to a result and transform them this is the key word here your online course must transform somebody now what is a transformation mean it also means that kind of transformer if you know what i mean then you're an 80s baby like me but it also means they were once in one place or they are in one place right they have some struggle some challenge of of a particular kind and then after they take your course they will be on the other side of it in some way it can still be informational it doesn't necessarily need to be um even life-changing but it's something that was once inconvenient that is now made more convenient thanks to you right here's my all-time favorite course my all-time favorite course is from one of my mentors michael hyatt and it's called five days to your best year ever this course typically is sold in november and december to his audience he's sort of changed the method now because he has a planner now that goes along with it which has become the focus so anyway this is this is a course that i bought for four years in a row very clear on what it did it helped people like me who have a lot of goals make sure i hit those goals it is one hour and 15 minutes total there are five 15-minute videos in this course that's it one for each day that you plan this out there's a workbook that goes along with it and it's 300 bucks and it's by far the most valuable course i've ever taken and i still go back to my old work even though this course is not sold in the way that it used to be anymore i still go back to that work and i check it and it helps me tremendously i'm grateful that it's only an hour and 15 minutes right i'm grateful for that and so i am actually paying michael for the convenience of getting to that result faster i'm paying michael for the years and years of advice that he's taken over time the education that he's had the mistakes that he's make to be able to put it all into here right it's similar to like if you if that there's still this mindset of the quantity of something determines its value um how long something is right like back in the day sales pages for courses that were great were like 50 hours of videos now you see that and you walk away it's the person who tells you um you know i'm gonna charge you fifty dollars because it takes uh it it takes you know or sixty dollars because it takes uh an entire hour to change your tire if you if your tire's flat right versus i would pay somebody more than that if they can do it in five minutes because my time is valuable and so you that that's essentially what many of you are going to be offering with your courses is not just the thing that you're teaching or the process but it's saving time right thank you for the correct transformer noise what would be the incorrect noise i don't know that would be so funny to see a video overdubbing different noises for that anyway this is your student your future student they're like little mario right this is what you're selling this is this is the course right this is the thing that they're going to consume but this is not what they want nobody wakes up in the morning and goes i want an online course right nobody wants that they don't even want the process that you're teaching what is it that they want they want this they want to be the firepower mario right this is what people are paying for this is what they buy they're not buying what you sell they're buying the result the dream is this right mario's saving the princess because he's got the power to do so so think about that when it comes to what it is that you're selling and who it is you're selling to because when it comes to your audience and your target niche their dreams their desires are going to be a really important component to what it is that you're offering right thumbnail girl says dude that comparison makes so much sense doesn't it we are not selling people the course we're selling people the result now a big part of this is you need to create the thing that's going to transform them right that word transformation is used there for sure but let me give you some examples here is one of my favorite courses from my friend benny who teaches people different languages he's a polyglot which means he speaks several different language languages he has a system for learning these languages quite quickly and he has a course called fluent in three months first of all the name tells you exactly what it's going to do for you which is beautiful right but look at the promise here have a 15-minute conversation in a new language after 90 days you can't get more clear than what this offers you but what does this actually offer yes it's a course on how to learn a language there's many courses to learn a language now i know how much time it's going to take but i love the fact that benny said you're going to be able to have a 15 minute conversation that's real life exactly what a person who's learning a language wants to do right absolutely have a 15-minute conversation what does this might actually do it means that you're going to have a better time communicating be able to get around be safer in a different country that you might be in learning that language it means you're going to make new friends there's so many more components to the than just the course itself right i love this one the type 5 this is a course that's sold that basically helps you develop your best five minute stand up on set and the imagery here is good too because you can imagine placing yourself in front of an audience that's watching you well you go through through this course you're going to transform how you create your best five-minute set which then means what people aren't going to laugh at you they're going to laugh with you they're going to not throw apples they're going to eat the apples uh you know all that kind of stuff or tomatoes or what have you so this is a really great course here's one that i am very familiar with because i created it email marketing magic what does that mean well grow your list make more money automate like magic a big pain in email is like having to continually feel like you need to do things and it's not paying off well we created a course that walks you through how to do that right grow your list which is like something that everybody wants to do but then what well now you can make more money with it and begin to automate it right here's our most popular course power up podcasting step-by-step course to launch a successful podcast that gets found and does what what's the actual transformation it helps you grow your audience right so the flower in that analogy is the course that helps you launch a podcast but the power is the big mario which is now you have influence now you have authority and now you're able to do it right one of my favorite creators thanks for adding value and blessing us with great information sir thank you carrot appreciate you so your online course could be about a problem you solved an expertise that you've developed a skill that you've mastered a life experience that you've had and an obstacle that you've overcome but there's a big problem when we think about it this way when i have dove into a lot of youtube videos and other courses about creating online courses this is usually the approach what do people always ask you know what like what skills do you have or what what career do you have that you can you know now teach others to do it's like okay that's one way to start but here's the big problem this is you centric and when it comes to creating successful online courses you cannot be you centric it's very clear on a sales page whether or not a person understands this because you see the words i more than you for a person who doesn't get it but when you see on a sales page a person that's really connecting with the reader and saying you've gone through this you're going through this you are struggling with this and here's the answer well then you kind of know it's going to be much better so you want to start with your target audiences i always say your earnings are a byproduct of how well you serve your audience what's up eddie good to see you what pains and problems do they have what obstacles are they trying to overcome right now what skills are they looking to develop and acquire and what are they going through right now and how do you figure out these answers well you actually do the research you best of all have conversations with people in your audience if you don't have an audience yet go to where your audience exists there are places where conversations are happening right now where they are literally talking about these things and this is the way that i love doing business you've heard me say this before if you've watched any of my stuff let's remove the guesswork as much as possible if you're doing business or selling anything and you're guessing you're doing it wrong you have to know or at least have an understanding that what it is that you're putting out there aligns with stuff that you've already figured out about who it is that you're selling this to and serving right so have conversations try to get on one or two phone calls with people and ask them questions like what are your biggest challenges right now would a step-by-step process to help you through that actually be something you'd be interested in what have you tried before that didn't work and why didn't it work when you start to discover those kinds of things not only are you understanding more about the pains and problems of your audience but you're also getting a sense of the language that they're using and that's really important too because that language is the thing that's going to connect with you with other people like them so on your sales page in your emails and your social accounts when you use the same phrases that they are having in their head well they will automatically assume that you know exactly what's going on and that you have to solve the solution for that all right a big question that often comes up and this might be in your head now is well how how expert do i have to be at something like okay i find these problems and i figure out what they are but i i don't necessarily know how to solve these problems myself yet or i'm not the greatest at it maybe i've gone through it but i'm not the world's leading expert on it here's a truth bomb you don't need to be the world's leading expert in fact people like think about this what's more valuable to you sitting in a lecture hall with the number one leading sort of uh person in in your space and learning like this really high level stuff from somebody who's been in it for you know 30 years and they're a phd multiple master degrees all that kind of stuff or somebody who's just like you who's just gone through that process and could likely relate to you more is likely more at the same level you are or just one step or two steps further to me an expert is somebody who just knows a little bit more than somebody else and the same kind of person who is relatable is more valuable to me than the phd student right or or what have you the the professor and this should be encouraging because it means you don't need to be the leading expert on something to be able to serve people you just need to know a little bit more than the person who you're helping that is of value and likely more valuable because you are in it with them you actually get it you are more able to empathize with a person like that the professor who's on the lecture podium is not going to know what i'm thinking but the person who just went through that last year and now is helping others go through it likely is going to understand exactly right so i was not an expert with this website to help people pass an architectural exam in fact i had to still look up answers when people asked me but it was because i showed up and because i had that previous experience going through this exam before anybody who didn't go through this exam in their eyes i was the expert and there was a moment where the company that actually writes the questions for these exams actually published a study guide themselves to compete with mine and guess what i made more sales than i ever have before because although they were selling a guide it was more expensive so i'll give them that but b people wanted to learn from somebody just like them right somebody who had literal experience going through what a person was about to go through so keep that in mind in addition to that i want to give you another example this is my buddy adam baker from manversusdebt.com he has had millions of people visit his website and tens of thousands of people buy his products to help themselves get out of debt this website was at its peak the most popular when adam was still in fifty to a hundred thousand dollars in debt so why would people learn from somebody who was in debt he's obviously made the mistakes the same mistakes people made he was still in debt yet he was still one of the most valuable people to teach other people because he was sharing the journey he was sharing all the things he was learning as he was going through it so it was more relatable in his program which was called sell your crap which is essentially um some really really good guides on how to sell on ebay and etsy and things like that uh was really helpful because that's how he got out of debt was just selling like all the superfluous stuff in his house and then he was like wow everybody's asking me how i do that okay let me create a guide on how to do that right hey brandon great to see you pamela great to see you as well are you all getting value from this i know this is a lot of mindset stuff we haven't even gotten into the weeds yet but this stuff is really really important so let me know in the chat if you're getting value from this i want to make sure that we're all sort of on the same page here and and the fact that you don't have to be the leading expert you just have to have a little bit more experience than somebody else and to those people you are the expert and you're more relatable and they're likely going to get more inspired by you right you are their hero because you just went through that process thank you scott cool linnell nice all right so we talked about selecting your course topic now that's going to really be up to you in the conversations you have and you're going to have to test a little bit i'll show you a way that you might be able to do that uh coming up but you also might be able to test this is a great way i've been micro testing ideas on twitter i don't know if you've noticed this lately but for the past month i've been publishing on twitter and you can use instagram you can use stories you can use youtube videos you can use blog posts and and lead magnets you know little pdf files and just gauge what are people reacting to right there are certain tweets that i shared about certain ideas that i had that i thought were good crickets right actual crickets and then other ones that i thought were going to bomb absolutely crushed and that gives me insight direct insight into my audience right den says i've noticed yeah good because that's purposeful because that's research not only am i providing value right in these tweets that i'm sharing but i'm also understanding from y'all how you respond to them now the ones that get the most response i can go do something bigger with maybe end up creating a course one day or at least creating a blog post and knowing that it has a chance or a video or what have you right one of the tweets that i shared was specifically about how a youtuber might be able to actually buy a house because getting a loan is much harder i can create a how-to for that now knowing that that's going to actually help a lot of people because the tweet told me so right so these are great ways to [Music] micro test some of the things that you might end up turning into a course down the road but let's talk about production now so i have a very specific method of producing courses i've done it over a dozen times personally and i've helped hundreds of people use this process too and what this usually ends up becoming is and that's this is actually a um a shot from a workshop that i did where i taught this stuff in person i had 20 people come to san diego pay 5 000 to come and have me teach them how to build an online course and i want to show you the results of the production process here so we're going to scroll through what looks like just an amazingly organized wall of post-it notes and these post-it notes from the students that were there became their courses because this process that we're actually going to do live right now will magically turn into what your course will become the hardest part one of the hardest parts about creating course is just what do i put in it and how do i organize it what are the modules and lessons so i'm going to teach you my famous absolutely patented not really three-part brain-dump strategy called the dump lump jump right the bump jump no dump no bumping dumping we're gonna first we're gonna take a dump then we're gonna lump and then we're gonna jump all right yes i said it live everybody now this actually comes from one of my courses heroic online courses which is a course about online courses very meta i know which i'm gonna share later for those of you who are interested but this actually comes from module two so i'm just pulling out the most helpful part of the course for you and i'm just gonna give it to you right now because i think that i would be not serving you best if i didn't so let's do this together so a three-part brain-dump strategy dump this is where we take our post-it notes and i have them right here and actually like i said we're gonna do this in person right now so i want you to tell me in the chat uh what your niche is and maybe a course idea that you might have uh along with it so we're gonna actually do this live and i'm gonna show you how magical this process is um and then once we nail a topic i'm gonna ask you for just any ideas that you might have because this particular process right here this the dump that we're all taking together right you're not going to use your editing part of the brain you're just going to spew on the table all the ideas between where your target audience is at and the goal the transformation that you're going to promise and offer right that you're going to help them through so anything in between in no particular order we're just going to like leave it all out on the table because that's the first part of this process our brains do a great job of coming up with ideas but a terrible job of organizing them as they are coming out right so what we need to do is we need to separate these processes and i've used this process for not just courses but my books i've used this for blog posts i've used this for talks like this one i've used this for planning vacations i use this to plan the office that i'm in right now this process will change your life because it's just magic right so let's see uh let's see youtube youtube thumbnails abcs of bad thumbnails and how to fix them uh how to use stream labs uh cool let's go with ian with the end because he's one of my favorite people he and his son are awesome so let's go with ian and ian's how to use streamlabs as the example here so i'm just going to write that down on a post-it note real quick how to use streamlabs all right so how to use streamlabs i'm going to pop this up here this will be sort of like the basis of our course i wouldn't like this could even be the name of the course but remember this is not the transformation right this is what we're teaching but what's the transformation in the transformation is you will be able to broadcast with no problem you're going to have the confidence to go live and build an audience and all that kind of stuff right so this is let's just let's just say um go live this will be or go live with confidence so let's put this on the right side of the screen and we're going to do that right here and this is like we'll just say beginner beginner with no idea what to do now streamlabs for those of you who don't know is a streaming software so i'm going to put this on this side so we're going to use now the orange post-it notes i love post-it notes so much so we're going to use the orange post-it notes ian and anybody in here if you were a beginner and you had no idea what to do for streaming what are the things you would want to know how to do right not just with streamlabs but between here and go live with confidence on youtube or what have you right so let's let's literally just kind of brainstorm uh you would need like to know what camera to use right camera i'm just gonna we're just gonna make a mess here in no particular order we need to know what microphone to use we want to know what platforms right is it youtube are there others if you at all edit during this platform or during this process you're doing it wrong you've got to just be messy right ooh laptop like the right computer cool uh how to set up streamlabs so streamlabs specifically streamlabs software so in the streamlabs software we need to know how to like connect to youtube we need to know like are we going to use graphics and stuff what about like different um transitions what about let's see overlays yes nice overlays good canva a great tool to use again no bad ideas do not throw anything away at this point lights yes ian we're building your course right now software i had to set it up uh let's do like how to find an audience we'll just go for one more minute here uh why streamlabs great one i just clicked on something why streamlabs lighting xlr cables right so i would do this for 30 minutes any ideas just anything that comes to mind your brains are going to go like in different tangents like now i'm like camera presence i'm thinking of camera presence i can spell um camera presence trolls what about making money okay i'm gonna stop there because there's a lot that we could we could just keep going right but look at this mess it's an absolute mess so that's the dump right we just took a huge dump on the table somebody's gonna clip that and make a lot of fun with that now we're gonna lump them right so what does that mean that means we create clusters right script there's a lot of great ideas here so this is fantastic and by the way a great idea as you were doing this exercise that we just did on the table right here as you can see there's power with people right so coming on with maybe your team or a friend or having people come over and just literally maybe it's on the wall or on a table like just get all the ideas down all right so we just took the dump now we're gonna lump which means cluster these groups together so now we're gonna find patterns right so i already see some patterns there's like equipment stuff so let's put equipment all together so there's like computer um camera those kind of all go there xlr cable there's software right there's canva um there's like stream labs let's see money is over here uh this is like the platforms streamlabs software i just lost one uh this is like mindset think trolls how about like wildlife graphics while live connecting to youtube how do we find an audience so like streamlabs software camera presence okay so i'm already seeing some stuff here right look at what just happened i see a module for equipment and guess what each of these post-it notes become we need a lesson on lights here's a lesson on micro on my on the microphone to use here's a lesson on uh microphone in those go together here's a lesson on camera here's this computer probably goes before like what are the requirements what's beautiful about this too is that when you have a lesson about just this well the lesson's gonna be what a couple minutes long that's what you want you want lessons here's a big thing as you're creating this you want lessons that are tight short and sweet each lesson in and of itself is about a specific problem right you could i mean you could put all of this in in one lesson you could put all of this in one one video but that would be like a 30 minute video by a a few things happen when you have these little tiny chunks right a person is going to watch like the lighting video they're going to be able to get what they need yes you can put affiliate links in there too you got to be honest about that though and then boom they're already moving on to the next one psychologically they're making progress through the course your course software like teachable or whatever is going to say you've moved up and so it's going to be like magic so we have so this is like a module and i could probably break out the um pink one again so this might be like equipment there's there's a module but even before that i'm like now looking at the order because this is now step three step three is to jump put things in order now that we have these clusters which are the module lessons they're likely not in the right order put yourself in the shoes of somebody who's going through this for the first time and try to understand um try to understand like okay does that make sense to come first so there was some stuff in here about mindset right like um somebody was talking about where did i put it they lose it like why stream labs um maybe like now you can also add more post-it notes right like i'm like okay uh setting goals because as you start to put order you're going to notice gaps so setting goals um getting over the fear getting over fear there's a lesson um so yeah other ones you might be like okay youtube other platform no i think we all know this is gonna be about youtube so i'm gonna dump that let's let's recycle that um and then boom now within each module so okay we have equipment here we have software over here we have while live like while you're live in between i can imagine like how to set up your first live or how to like actually go into stream labs and at the end i could imagine like okay now i need to find an audience how do i make money from this how do i you know deal with trolls this might go in in what's uh while you're live so you see how like organically this comes together right so the shorter each of these become a lesson now and now what you want to do after you get the order correct which is maybe you remember the uh examples from my students at the live thing that i did where it's like nice and neat boom now you put them into a template you use a template to organize your modules and lessons because what you just did actually turns into your production checklist modules lessons lesson one lesson two let's just go through it and so you wanna put these in a spreadsheet and i have a gift for you if you go to smartpassiveincome.com course outline smartpassiveincome.com course outline you're going to get the template that we offer in the course for free to be able to and you'll see an example of there in there of the beginning parts of power up podcasting which you see on the screen right now but this will be a nice way for you to begin to organize this so you can put it in and you can start to see like okay but you only go to this step right you only start putting it in the template once you've gone through this exercise here so dump lump jump brain dump find the find the patterns the clusters and then you put them in the order and then you put them on this spreadsheet here cool are we good are you guys caught up because we just did a live demo and i never know how that's going to go so hopefully that went well because it's kind of i knew that was going to be good if it went well and hopefully it did hi pat from sharing boston nice so ian i hope that helped and i hope it helped all of you to kind of see that happen live but could you imagine how you might use that process for writing a book from the beginning to end okay what's in the middle okay let's just brain dump it all let's figure out what goes together and now let's create our chapters and parts right uh vacation uh here is what the goal is of the vacation we here are 50 things that we want to do okay well that's too much let's start putting order to them monday tuesday wednesday thursday what can we do or what should we do what makes sense and then let's go do that this process is absolutely crazy right absolutely crazy so when you go here smartpassiveincome.com course outline you want to make sure that you click make a copy or you make a copy of it because it's a template right and so you can have your own version cool great let's keep going let's keep going because now we're going to talk about selling selling can be very overwhelming can be very difficult it can be very stressful uh as you can see on the screen there's a lot of things market research seo engagement and you know all that kind of stuff there's a lot but i want to break it down to the most important thing which is your belief in what it is that you're creating right lydell says confirming what i'm doing right nice what if you didn't want to make a paid course and just wanted to make a youtube series uh actually it's funny that uh woman who was sitting in the chair in the last example ian of the ones that were uh there in person her name's kristin over at barefoot theory and she is an outdoors person and she created this course thinking she was going to do a paid online course and then she was like wow um i think i want to offer this for free for my audience on youtube so that's exactly what she did it's become one of her most popular series she was creating a course about van life because she lives out of her van and so everything from equipment to how to you know go to the bathroom to you know how to park and reserve spots and maintenance all that kind of stuff was in this course she's turned that into into basically legion because her course is now freely available essentially as a video series on youtube and it's done very well so you could use it for that as well if you just wanted to put it on youtube for sure right i say good show says fit over 50. hey thank you so much we're still rocking here so let's get back to selling and i wanted to share with you uh uh a little video from one of my mentors i interviewed my mentor uh shaleen johnson she's basically my selling mentor right i have different mentors for different things michael hyatt's sort of like my uh family mentor he lives life with his family in the way that i want to live life with my family chalene is my marketing mentor and she's somebody who's done it in a way that has been very honest and and i appreciate that and so when i play this clip for you i want you to just keep in mind your thoughts about selling and this will be about a minute to a minute and a half and so let's let's uh let's play it uh let me know if you cannot hear the sound but i'm gonna hit play right now but when it comes to especially skills or we have services or we're coaching somebody how do you recommend we get comfortable putting a price on that and charging people for stuff when yes we do want to serve but we also need to get paid too what are your thoughts around money and asking people for money money mindset's huge man it is huge and i think a lot of it is instead of asking people you know it's how we frame it right like i i'm never selling i'm always serving or i'm helping people make a decision that could change their lives that's it and when when it comes to pricing ourselves it's funny like you said when you're reselling something you're like oh i have no problem selling this thing for 50 because i know i bought it for 400. and i know it's like a steal i'm almost like annoyed that they're buying it for 50 right and for whatever reason we discount ourselves because we're thinking of ourselves as selling and what you need to do is think about the same thing like how much did i have to invest to get this knowledge how how many hours and what is my time worth how much how many years of experience it take for me to get to this point how much have i invested in terms of my own education and my own development and what would it take for somebody to have uh to be right where i'm at today might be tens of thousands of dollars in in thousands of hours and so now when i'm thinking about offering this at you know five thousand dollars it feels like a steal because i'm giving you my mba which i spent 120 000 on you know so you want to feel like in my opinion you want to feel like this is a no-brainer when you price something i'm sorry the volume was a little low there but uh i hope that makes sense it's people paying you not for the information they're getting the transformation but they're paying you and you're putting a price on it because you've spent years or you've gone through a ton of stuff you've you've spent the time you've done the research you've listened to podcasts you've watched videos all that should be taken into account with what a person is paying for it's fast forwarding that result for them right so that's chalene johnson uh an amazing friend of mine and mentor uh i would not be selling courses if it wasn't for her uh as david i think was mentioning here yes we hit five million dollars in online sales now he's like you're a millionaire pat david there is a difference between total sales and the money you get to keep at the end of the day i will say i mean there's not just taxes but you know um your team and anything like that that you might have to pay for as well and the the software i mean yes we've made millions and and we've we've done that but you know i've also invested some of that money into other things as well but uh i'm very very proud and happy that i finally was realizing that selling is service yes you could offer your course for free but think about it if you were to offer it for free people who get access to it haven't invested anything there's no reason for them to finish there's no skin in the game there's no reason for them to to go through with it this is why charging is actually the right thing to do and it's such a weird mindset shift because we've all been sold crap to right that's that's the thing we're we're relating our experience to selling our thing to how we've just been mistreated and miss sold things and misunderstood in the past and so it's it can be difficult to now be somebody selling something and not feel like you might be fitting into that same boat so very very big mindset thing but i hope that that helped so back to selling um you know there are many different ways to sell your course uh it depends on your size of your audience and just your comfort levels and there's some things that you can do inside of our course and module four instead of heroic online courses also pay attention to the length of these videos right remember i was saying like little chunks one minute seven minutes five seven five ten um that's how it should be now there are some lessons like in the podcasting course there's a lesson on editing that's like 30 minutes because that's just how long it had to be um but we're trying to save time right we want to help people through transformation so this is what i want to talk about right now lesson two because this is my favorite way to go about it and i know a lot of people here are online course creators for the first time and it can be very scary so i want to talk about this idea of getting one person one result and this is a strategy that i've been sharing with a lot of my beginner students that has been totally transformational so let me go over this one person one result before you create your course yes go through the outline process so you know like the sequence of events you would take a person through but before you sell it find one person who's willing to get some help from you for a certain number of weeks to just have you guide them from where they're at now to this transformation that you're offering and will eventually offer to many many more people down the road it is so much easier to wrap your head around finding one person and getting them a result then feeling like you're gonna have to pitch this to a bunch of people and you've never really even tested this before this makes it a lot easier to go and find people to because you just need one and if you can't get one then you can't get many so let's start with one find the communities find the different groups find the connections that you already have where there might be a person that you could serve and then when you focus on getting them just that one result right that's the goal get them the result they may go through the same sequence of events that you've had and put out in your course here right or what likely is going to happen is that there's going to be some hard times for them and they're not going to know exactly what you're talking about or they're going to need an extra push or they're going to ask you like hey but what about this i i'm i'm a little confused here isn't this isn't it amazing that you know that now before you sell this to everybody else and this person is going to be so happy to get this help from you that they're going to be more than willing to help you make this great for others right and here's what happens at the end two things happen at the end when you help this person get a result or you've at least got them in the right direction and and their their mindset's blown because they've just wow i've spent years trying to do this and now you're making it happen for me right so for ian who's helping people use stream labs find one person and help them go live for the first time then two things happen number one you've got them a result which is which actually three things happen you got the result and that's awesome that's important number two you're gonna get a testimonial this person is gonna be more than happy to tell you all about the experience that they've had and you don't even need a name for your course yet at this point you might not even have it like built at all you're just essentially helping a person one to one through that process and now you have a testimonial and now when you create the course and you sell it guess what people are going to see that you've already helped a person through this that's what a person is really looking for when they're on your sales page is well how for real is this and yes you can write all the things about what what you're going to do for them but they're always going to look for proof right they're always going to look for proof so really key that transformation is going to happen but here's the third thing you transform you transform because you now know that what you're teaching actually can help people and when you get over that hurdle oh my gosh you've just opened it up right because that's the thing that's usually stopping people from selling is i i don't know if this is necessarily gonna work but now you have proof and you've proven to yourself in your head that this thing can sell now go out there and get them right now you can pre-sell this thing which is what we teach in the course how you might be able to actually sell to a group of people founders group and then make the course with them and then now at the end you have this course that's readily available or you can start filming it and then release it bit by bit or you can launch it all at once we we teach kind of all the ways depending on how you want to do it so i want to ask you what was the number one thing that you learned today we talked about a lot of things we talked about uh the idea the topic for your course which hopefully should be more inspirational now because you don't have to put everything under the sun about something you're choosing something specific and you're helping them through that problem you're making it convenient for them to go through right people pay for convenience all the stuff in my architecture program that i sold was freely available online in forums and different places but i conveniently laid it out into a step-by-step sequence in one place and that was of value to people so they didn't have to go and hunt around it was all right there for them right cesar uh i will answer that question at the end here and any any other questions that come out but what was the number one thing that you learned structuring your course was super helpful how to organize my ideas the dump lump jump uh person on your sales page is looking for proof says amanda uh thank you keep the lesson short that's right mary um the same lesson can be broken up into multiple parts and it'll be much much easier to go through and a person's gonna feel like they're making more progress through it for sure how to lay out your course program in such a logical way the system uh emphasis on the transformation if they take the course absolutely people don't wake up in the morning and want a course in fact the course is probably the last thing they want but it's the transformation and if you focus on that and the result right the flower power mario and the dream of saving the princess that's where they become the hero right how to start how do you how to start a how do you streamlabs course says ian within i love it creating an organized curriculum brain dump separating from organizing short lessons for me tuning in from nice thank you i'm having trouble with the short course idea again don't think about the course think about the promise and the transformation that you're offering right i've bought a course on how to punt a football i was in flag football with my friends and i was the punter so of course i wanted to help the team out so i could have found a how to um you know play football and learn all the things about football but no i just needed help on specifically how to punt a football and it was a very short course it was two videos one was how to hold it and drop it on your foot and two is how to get more power there wasn't anything else i needed and guess what i took that information i paid 79 for that course for 99 and i became the best punter in the league totally worth the money right i love the walkthrough style of this workshop and i believe a workshop style course would be really successful nice not having to be the expert to stop imposter syndrome cool well i'm so grateful that a lot of you have gotten value today um may i have your permission type yes in the chat if so may i have your permission to talk a little bit more about heroic online courses the course that we have to help you through online courses in case you might be more interested in that we have a small window that we reopen this course for for those who are interested the reason why we wanted to do this now is because we had a huge milestone we just hit five million dollars in online revenue from our courses and we've had a lot of people say pat can you just give me the rundown how do i do it and this workshop is part of it you are more than welcome to just take the information here today and use it however there's obviously a lot more parts to it and the marketing the getting traffic the production of it and all that kind of stuff yes absolutely cool thank you everybody um i want to share with you some courses that were created as a result of this course that i'm about to share with you heroic online courses this is a course called compose with clarity with uh brenda she is one of our heroic online course students and she has a brand called outdoor photography school but we helped her with a course slash workshop called compose with clarity specifically a course about a small thing composition i mean it's not a small thing but it's a it's it's one of several components of what makes great photography right composition and she's created this course and she's sold it and she's going to be reopening it very very soon but it's been very successful for her and she's she's one of our amazing students this is andrea's course and brand better screen time she is a mom who helps other parents with managing screen time a very big pain for a lot of parents especially in this day and age of course but she has a unique approach of not doing it as far as like a um like in a commanding type of style but kind of like with your child helping them understand the importance of getting off the screen and whatnot so she's actually created two courses as a result of her learnings in heroic online courses and um yeah it's done very well so she has a tech healthy family and then recently she's niche down even further untangling teens and tech which is really cool mary thank you so much for that uh testimonial about the youtube course again i just always try to make things simple because i've taken courses before that have been overwhelming and this is what i'm trying to teach you when you create your courses keep it simple here's josh josh's courses have uh helped over uh 1300 people and he's got many many courses now about all kinds of things related to web development and what's really cool is when you begin to build a library of courses you can do this you can create a bundle so he sells a bundle of courses now for fifteen hundred dollars which of course is a um savings and i am totally not sharing my screen and that's my bad uh so here is josh's uh but this is um outdoor photography school there's brenda right there we'll just speed through this here's andrea creating a tech healthy family untangling teens and tech and then josh's stuff 1325 students and he's now created bundles as a result of the stuff um which has been just absolutely incredible uh these are just some of the students that we've gotten together with who have taken heroic online courses successfully and have launched their courses for the first time there's andrea right there on the lower right hand corner there's a few people have created courses about health related issues uh sobriety um technical things painting artistry all this kind of stuff anything could become a course when you understand why a person might want to take that course right so i want to introduce heroic online courses with you this is your ability to create an online course that converts step by step and it's open again for the first time in a while until friday august 26th and that's the link to go to if you want to check it out smartpassiveincome.com hoc for heroic online courses the mission here from our company is really to just equip and prepare you for an upcoming course launch that you can be proud of right so after the program you'll have your completed outline including exact modules and lessons and the names of them that you'll be teaching a sales page we walk you through the components and how to build a sales page step by step a personalized launch and marketing plan so when this thing's ready to go how are you going to market it how big is your audience well it depends and that will change and inform your particular personalized market marketing plan you'll also be ready ready to film your course as you might know if you've taken my podcasting course or video course um we don't want you to spend a ton of money in addition to what you already spent to be able to do what you need to do so there's a lot of i mean people are creating courses with their phones and that's it and so we share with you different ways and different levels on how to do that so when you get in here it's step by step it'll keep track of where you're at and we want you to take it at your own pace you get access to everything all up front you also get access to these things so the spi academy on circle which is our community of course students that you can get access to to meet each other to share wins with each other to ask questions with each other we also have some of our team spi in there to help out too and then every week you get access to me in office hours so in office hours for two hours every single thursday we change the days every once in a while but if you have a hang up of any sorts you come on you ask a question and i will answer it for you there live that was what was most helpful to me when i took courses was just a teeny bit of access to a course creator i just would have sometimes have a question or two that would hold me back i get the answers and boom i'm off and running and i want to offer that to you with no additional cost as a part of that and during this program you're the hero this is why it's called heroic online journey you have this desire you have this want to be able to help your audience but you're not quite sure how to do that well we're the guide you are the luke skywalker or princess leia i am the obi-wan or yoda right if you will in this scenario but what we're teaching you to do here is to have you become the guide your students are the hero of their journey what do heroes go through it's not an easy path right they have challenges they have struggles but they come out on the other end better off and that's why it's a heroic journey to go through and build an online course and take an online course so your course becomes the way and you become the guide where to help you we're here to help you uh guide others and and realize that you're the right guide for them so remember this analogy right your students are the little mario your course is the flower and what you're selling what customers want what they buy right it's not actually the course it's the result that the course will offer them and their way to their dream so smartpassiveincome.com h o c the retail price for this is 599. one-time payment of 5.99 but because we have this open window we reach this amazing milestone of 5 million sales we wanted to open it up for those who were really interested in this so you can get it for as low as 199 today all access up front right now for just 199 and that's one of three payments in a three month payment plan just fyi or you could save an additional hundred by getting the one time at 4.99 and savings in the cart closes this friday everybody so this is the opportunity right now it's exactly noon so we went for exactly an hour just like i planned this is awesome because it's the brand new presentation that i just created so i hope this was uh incredibly valuable for you um and there's also a 30 day money back guarantee so if after 29 and a half days you're like pat i'm just not it wasn't for me um well then i failed and i don't deserve your money so you can you don't even literally have to ask um anything other than just can i have my money back you don't need to give us any details i believe in this course so much it has helped transform the lives of hundreds of people and my goal is to get into the thousands with this because this is the ripple effect i'm helping you help more people who are then going to help more people who are going to help more people right and the idea and the beauty of this course is there's a very clear roi related to this right like some other courses like even our podcasting course doesn't necessarily have a clear roi yes it transforms you into a podcaster who's confident and can build an audience but the monetization part of it is not really the driver there this is this is you generating a course that makes sales that builds authority in your audience that helps you change lives so smartpassiveincome.com hoc and that'll only be available through this friday do spi pro members get a discount uh yes there's a discount code that you might know that is shared often with previous course students and with spi pro student spi pro members so i'll have jillian uh remind you inside of spi pro what that is um yeah but thank you for asking something's off the sales page it says enroll for 599 499. so it should say actually let me go to the website now just so we can take a look at it real quick if you go to smart passive whoops smartpassiveincome.com hoc oh i typed that wrong i said snart slash smartpassiveincome.com that will take you and it says enroll for 599 499 the 599 has a slash on it that that's why it's kind of hard to see if i zoom in i could see the slash on there but yeah it's it's kind of hard to read but it has a slash on it that's what it is i confirmed the money back i was in the first wave of spi pro and ended up not feeling right for where i was at the time sure enough got a refund without even asking for one a plus uh thank you uh thumbnail grail appreciate you i'll be back someday yeah no worries no worries whatsoever um on mobile ios cool thank you for letting me know uh mandy says uh thumbnail check out the new learner community might be a better fit for your current phase that's true we have a much lower price community now that we just opened up called the learner community where you can now still interact with the members of the community who are more at the beginner level already there nice will there be a previous student discount available for this course yes if you are a previous student use your usual student discount if you don't know what that is we'll send you an email about that likely uh mandy says thanks pat this was great thank you mandy appreciate you hey pat i'm currently on the process of launching a podcast with my brother and i'm reading sbi blog and watching your videos what's one advice to make the podcast successful yes so we'll take questions for the next 10 minutes or so here so again thank you so much and again the link is on the screen right now for you if you want to take advantage of the special offer that's there through friday so uh to answer your question rayne actually let me pop it up on the screen i think i can do that yes there we go look at that technology baby um currently process launching a podcast what's one advice to make the podcast successful i mean there's a lot of things i could say right um dive into the stories stories are really where it's at in terms of especially a podcast what it lends itself to is that deeper connection and that storytelling that you offer is the thing that's going to engage and hold people and really transform people and get them to want to share it right people people share stories more than they share like tips and things like that in my opinion or at least i do uh or or i feel like i i i'm actually more into it when it's relatable right um when you are creating your podcast uh start listening to a bunch of podcasts and consider like well what do i like about this one what do i not like what is holding my attention here what's not holding my attention i would recommend the same thing if you're getting involved with youtube as well watch a lot of other youtube videos and study and learn and just consciously pay attention to why did they make that cut there and why am i not interested in this right now what are they doing oh it's just been their face for four minutes and i haven't seen anything move yet right already have a course would love to hear how to get more traffic with ads says cesar so ads are interesting right we need to know who it is we're targeting and there's different places to have ads right you could do facebook instagram youtube uh what i love about ads is you can test you can test for as low as 10 15 a day to start to see some results but ads there's sort of two layers they're sending ads to cold meaning people who have never heard of you or found you or don't know much about you and they're sending ads in a way where you retarget people who have for example already come on your sales page and that's where i would start is the retargeting because you're going to get a lot higher conversion rate there and you don't have to work as hard to just build a relationship and teach people um doing an ad directly to a course from colt for cold traffic is very difficult because you're asking people basically to go on a date without having even met yet right or if it's a very expensive course you're asking them to marry you without having gone on a date at all so you want to have some dates first and what i mean by that is maybe you're offering a um advertisement to something of value first like a training session like what we just did or um perhaps a lead magnet or something else that way a person gets to know your style and that you are already providing value a quick win of sorts and then they'll want to dive deeper like kind of like what this webinar and training was today uh pat who do i contact to resolve an account issue uh help at team spi lynnell um i have two accounts under two different emails but unsure how to resolve i can only access one of them yeah sorry about that linnell it might be because there's two different emails or something uh i'm not exactly sure but help team spi.com and we'll get you set up and if you are in one of our communities like spi pro or inside of the learner community then you can just go directly to the community manager there it was a great presentation thank you clementine i appreciate you thank you all the way from south africa thank you uh luff appreciate you thank you chris question from the thumbnail grill which i love the name of that channel by the way can you help us figure out how much information of a course to give for free as a funnel this will be my first course so i don't have an old one to give yeah you don't necessarily need to give away a course first to be able to sell another one but you need to offer some sort of value and so what i imagine would be offering for something that i'm imagining for you is like you know a course to help people through thumbnails right i would say that if you offered a uh a mini course like a three-day email sequence of just three of the best tips and by the end of it a person will be able to know how to to to you know critique one of their older thumbnails and change it well then what's going to happen is they're going to see a result and then they're going to want to come to get everything right so you don't have to give away away everything although i will say what's been really amazing is when i have given away everything people still want it in a course format because it's convenient because they get access to you and and and they want it all in one spot so you can give away probably a lot more than you think but i do understand that okay well i don't want to give away everything because then why would they need the course people will pay for convenience just just keep that in mind and they will pay you when you've already provided them value but at the same time focus on one or two issues that they're having one problem or one pain uh or or one specific win that you can offer them as the what you give up front and then you can um like for example in this webinar today right i gave you some really really high value tips on how to do certain components of this right um maybe you teach specifically how to use canva for free and and then people are going to go oh my gosh canva amazing i love it how do i how do i like and then it's like okay now that i'm here on camera and i know how to use it what do i do about my thumbnails well come join the course right um let's see did you get my email ian thank you for the reminder can you resend it to me please um and tell me which email address you sent it to uh any advice on write hosting platform for course creators in africa struggling with payments options with thinkific interesting i didn't know they had the international problems thinkific is typically a great platform i would also recommend teachable teachable is the platform that we use currently and i know that they have for example paypal and and some other options that you might be able to use as well so check out um teachable thanks so much john thank you thank you thank you uh do you share the webinar script somewhere um i don't and this replay will be uh immediately available when i hit end here in just a minute uh let's see amanda help team spi.com we'll be able to help you out with that um okay oh chris says ads is it better to build a blog to drive traffic to the course um there are two ways to do about to go about it right ads help you get in front of people like more immediately right blogs and podcasts and youtube channels and such they will take time but they help you build something that will be evergreen right as soon as you turn ads off for example your sales will stop and that's the problem with ads what i love about the build an audience approach which maybe you go through this process and you're like you know what i'm actually not ready to build a course but i know exactly who i'm going to sell it to and i need to build that audience first and i know the kinds of stuff using this sort of sequence that we did here earlier i know the kinds of things they're going to be looking for so this approach could be useful in that regard as well thank you heather i appreciate you um okay i think that's it thank you everybody for an amazing day again make sure to check out this link right here smartpassiveincome.com hoc only available through friday at the discounted price and with the payment plan so again thank you so much for your time and attention today this was great um i'm super happy for those of you who are getting in the course i see some coming in right now which is awesome and uh looking forward to seeing the next one and again friday's last day big opportunity online courses are are amazing and people are looking for your information right now right people look looking for your information right now uh final question here i'm going to answer from like kane and that is what's the difference or disadvantages uh or advantages or disadvantages of offering your courses knowledge through a youtube channel for free and going subscriber based model versus modules on kajabi um that's more of a membership type model right like offering them for free but then having memberships come in the memberships come in when you can help people through that process when you were like okay you got the information but now you need like the community and the membership to help you through that that's a very common way to go about it you can have both like what we do we have the course information and then sell the community on the side on top of that and some people don't want the courses some people don't want the community so we offer both but i think it's really going to be dependent on what your audience wants so definitely have a conversation or many with who it is that you're serving and begin to understand the kinds of things that they've already tried because then you can do the thing that's actually going to work right it's obviously not working for them yet if they're still looking for help so try to take the best of what has been working and then remove or don't use the parts that aren't and then you'll be able to better hone in on what it is that you're doing and then the final tip here is for everybody as you are building your course and as you are selling it and still having new students come in you can always continue to refine it and every time you add a new thing or you update it with a new thing because your industry changed a little bit that's another great excuse to launch it and let people know that yes it's fresh but also that it's here so good luck everybody i appreciate you take care and i look forward to serving you in the next one bye everybody you

Channel: Pat Flynn

Views: 157,741

Keywords: pat flynn, smart passive income, spi

Id: MCmoaBCDpkA

Length: 72min 25sec (4345 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 23 2022