Integration Central (00:01.678)
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Ask an Integrator audio edition where I break down business strategy into clear actionable steps. In today's episode, we're going to be talking about launching a course. So if you've been wondering how or what is the best way to go about launching your course, stay tuned because we're about to dive in. Okay. So.
As an integrator, one of the questions that I get asked the most often is I want to launch a course typically in the same calendar year. Sometimes people tell me next month, I've heard it all, but how do I get started? What's the best process? What's the best way to do it? And what I can tell you from my experience is that launching anything, whether it's a course, a membership or a program, it's very exciting.
But the biggest problem that I see is the focus on building versus focusing on selling. And I'm sure there's a collective groan in the audience because the fun part is building it. I would say most of us think, right? But I've seen this happen so many times and it's actually really sad. People spend weeks, months. I've seen people actually spend over a year.
recording, editing, perfecting the content only to have the course membership program come out and flop. Nobody wants it. So today we're going to make sure that that does not happen for you. We are going to go over my three tips and I will include a bonus tip and I also have a special gift for you. So stay tuned to the end and we're to go over the three tips.
to develop a course or whatever it is, it can be anything that's actually going to sell for you. Okay. Tip one is to validate before you build. This is an absolute non-negotiable. I know that many of you will tell me, oh my gosh, I have the best idea for a course. I have the best idea for this. I have the best idea for this. I know everybody's going to want it. And while I am positive that that is true,
Integration Central (02:28.908)
We need to validate that. We need to make sure that we're not just gonna spend, like I've just talked about all of this time creating something that's not gonna do anything for us. So the first thing to keep in mind is when we're thinking about a course, a program, anything, your course should solve a real problem for a specific person. So you need to talk to this person first.
And let me clarify, when I say real problem, I want to add a few more lines there. It's not just a real problem. It's a real problem that matters to the person. Nowadays, we're inundated with all sorts of solutions to all sorts of problems. So you have to think, I need to create something for people that's gonna stick out in their mind as the solution to their problem.
so that they whip out their credit card and buy it right away.
And if you think about it that way, it's actually kind of a tall order, right? Cause we, we've got to make sure that we do the background work. So I want you to do some market research. No, that's not always the most fun thing to do, but it is essential. Here are some questions that I want you to ask. And I want just to clarify, this would be for anyone that you would consider an ideal client for your course or program. And.
Getting a hold of these people is completely up to you. You can find them on social. Maybe they're people that exist in your real life. You have to find them. So just look at that as a non-negotiable. You have to find these people. You have to get feedback from them before you proceed. Just think of this as like Jackie is holding up a big red traffic light in front of you and telling you, can't do this until we have this information. So.
Integration Central (04:24.236)
Your mission is to find these people and here's what we're going to ask them. How do they describe their problem? This is, my gosh, this is so important. Typically we describe our ideal clients problems so much differently than they actually will describe the problem. Having that language, obviously if you think about it, if I'm scrolling through my feed and I see the way you describe my problem versus how I would describe my problem.
That's scrolling versus stop my scroll. So we want to make sure that we know how they describe the problem that they have. Then we want to ask what would they pay to solve it? Would they pay to solve it? And how much would they pay? So, and I know that some of you may think that's a little bit of a personal question. You have to ask it. We have to know, right? Is this a problem that people would pay to solve? That's another, I mean, hurdle that we have to
jump. Now I'll tell you that I've seen successful courses in the most bizarre areas. problems and the way that they affect people are much different, right? Like, so you may not think that learning how to bake a perfect apple pie is a real problem for some people, but it actually really is. And there's actually a course that
to walk people through it and it's made hundreds of thousands of dollars. So don't go into this thinking, well, nobody's gonna pay to solve their problem. They are, but it's typically about how they describe the problem. And then the next thing that I want you to ask is what format works best for them. And your people will typically learn the way that you do.
But if you are expecting to attract hundreds of thousands of potential customers, we need to have an idea of how these people would want this set up. Do they want this as a live thing? Do they want it to be self-paced? Do they want a hybrid? You know, and hybrid would be part self-paced, part live element. Without this feedback, you are guessing. You are not strategizing. And when we guess,
Integration Central (06:51.606)
I'm sure some of you will get it right, but unfortunately the vast majority of us will get it wrong. So validate before you build. The next thing is sell before you build. And I know that this scares a lot of people, but this is the smartest move that you can possibly make. What I want you to do is go back to those people that you interviewed for your market research because you interviewed for your market research, right?
and invite them to be founding members at an exclusive rate. This can be whatever you want. It just needs to be discounted from what you intend on selling it to be. Then we want to sell through social media, email, YouTube, wherever you're already showing up, right? And get some founding members. And when I say some, it's going to be different for many of you, but I would say I would love to see all of you enroll 10 people into your founding member promotion.
And if you are going to tell me that you're not marketing yet, but you're intending on building this course, we have to back up. You need to be active somewhere where you intend to sell this product unless you want to spend a lot of money on ads. But even if you spend money on ads, what do we typically do when we find somebody that's an ad? We go click on their profile and then we go check them out. So make sure that you are marketing this.
and that you have that idea of where you will be selling this. And then we want to gather these founding members together and sell them a course program, whatever that is not yet built. And that is going to lead us into tip three, which is to consider either running a live cohort or dripping your modules. So instead of pre-recording everything,
sitting down and creating a course outline and then recording zillions of modules. I want you to release a module per week and that can be live or you can drip it through your course platform. Dripping just means that a module becomes released. So that gives you some time to record weekly. I think a week is more than enough time to start getting some of these modules out there.
Integration Central (09:09.206)
So if you have something like Kajabi, we can set it up so that a new module opens up every week. I'm in every course platform that you have, or even if you just intend on releasing a course through your Google Drive folder, which I've seen many people do and you can do, we will just upload a new video every week or we will teach it live.
which some people may prefer to teach it live and that may be more of their teaching style. Or maybe you've done your market research and gathered that your people would prefer live teaching. So that's what you do is you run a live cohort and how that would work is let's say I intend on this course being 12 modules every week, I'm going to go live and I'm going to teach it instead of dripping it out, instead of just uploading it or dripping it out. That's your personal preference, whatever you want to do.
Now, why would you want to do something like this? The biggest reason is to adjust in real time. Again, even if you do the best market research, we're probably going to encounter hurdles when we're trying to do this, right? We're going to encounter bumps in the road where maybe you're delivering content that they weren't expecting, or maybe they want something else. So you have that opportunity to adjust it.
You can refine it as you go and you can come up with a product that is exactly what your ideal client is looking for. And the bonus is you get built in engagement, right? If you, especially if you run the live cohort, you can get feedback, engagement, all the things. And when you're running this founders member group, so to speak, asking for feedback is a very important part of this, right?
Actually, that's a huge part of any courses you want to always be asking for feedback, but that's a topic for another day. We're talking about launching this. So these are the three steps that I really recommend. My bonus tip for today is prioritizing the customer experience. If you are going to do anything ahead of time, I want you to consider how you can make this experience for people something that they will rave and tell their friends about.
Integration Central (11:26.198)
Maybe it's a bonus worksheet with every module. Maybe it's text reminders added into their email reminders for your live cohort sessions. Maybe it's if you're dripping the modules, you're also sending them encouragement to, you know, actually show up and do the module that week. All of these things, like we want to surprise, delight, wow our ideal client. So everything that we should be doing.
should be involving an incredible customer experience because that will enable this course that you're making to sell itself. So let's run through these again. We want to make sure that we're validating before we build. We need to validate our idea, make sure that people really want what we're doing. And so to do that, we're going to do some market research. Then we're going to sell partially to the people that we did.
market research with, and also to our audience, whether it's YouTube, social media, email, any, we're going to sell this and we're going to try to get at least 10 founding members. And then we're going to either drip the modules out or run a live cohort and all while creating an incredible customer experience for our ideal client so that this thing sells like crazy right when it hits the runway.
Okay. So to help you with all of this, I am going to include a market research checklist. So I want you to go back to the email that you got this episode from, or in your podcast player, you'll be able to scroll up and see the link to the market research checklist. That should give you a jumpstart on the questions that you're going to want to ask. It involves more than the three I went over here today. And if you are looking for
more help. Maybe you are looking for some more hands-on help with your course launch. I've personally helped launch an incredible amount of courses and I am happy to share that expertise with you in one of my business intensives. Now I only do a few of these a month, so I do encourage you to apply and reserve your spot so that we can plan your course launch out fully.
Integration Central (13:51.386)
And with that, we're going to wrap up today's episode and I am excited to see you guys back again next week where we are going to tackle yet another question that I am always asked. Have a great week.
