The Fierce Business Babe Podcast Ep 207: How I Sold Course Spots Before It Was Created

Today, I am diving into how I was able to sell spots in my course before I created it. I am going to show you what this looked like in my business and how you can do the same in your own business. I am also going to chat about some shifts that you can make to sell more in your business.

How I Sold Course Spots Before It Was Created

By: Melissa Lin

Welcome back to another episode of The Fierce Business Babe Podcast! We did take a quick break off for the holiday. I know many of you were also busy with barbecues and all of the things, so we felt it was a great time for you to catch up on any of our past 206 episodes. Today is episode 207 and it is going to be such a fun topic. First, I just wanted to say happy July. We are stepping into this next quarter, which is so exciting. I always love the start of a new quarter. Not that you’re starting from zero, we’re never starting from zero, but I always feel like it's a fun thing like the first day of school or the first day of a new semester.

I am so excited about today’s podcast episode because I have not done an episode about this topic. We're going to get into how we have sold course spots, and this can definitely work with program spots as well, before they were actually created. Yes, we have sold course spots before any content was actually filmed, and you can do so too. I really want this podcast episode to be a permission slip for you to be able to launch your course or program without feeling like it needs to be a hundred percent perfect and ready to go. You are going to be able to create such a huge transformation for your clients, even if you were to run it live without anything created. We're going to get into how we were able to sell courses before they were created, some shifts that you can make to start selling more in your business, tips and tricks to sell your courses early, what that can really look like, and so much more!

Before we get started, I want to share about a new giveaway that we are hosting for a limited time. This week if you leave our podcast a fierce and raving review, we will actually send you our launch training that our clients inside of our Academy receive. This training is pulled right out of one of my programs to help you get ready to launch. You'll learn launch strategy, caption examples, setting up your content calendar for your launch, and so much more. The module alone is valued at over $197 and it will be yours for free, all you need to do is leave us a fierce and raving review here on iTunes. Head to your iTunes podcast library, click on The Fierce Business Babe Podcast, and then scroll to the very bottom and leave your review there. Make sure to take a screenshot of your review after it is typed out and before you press submit and then send it to me over on Instagram @the_melissalin via DM so that we can see it. It usually takes a few days for it to go live and once it does we will send you your free training. We appreciate you so much for giving us a fierce and raving review. It truly does help the podcast spread so that more people like you can find us and learn how to start their businesses, scale, and really crazy that bigger impact in the world. Now let’s get into this brand new episode!

Selling With Ease

There are a lot of things I have seen hold people back from starting their online businesses over the years. Whether it is fear of failure, fear of starting, fear of success, judgment from others, impostor syndrome, the list goes on and on. Maybe you have felt some of these or are feeling some of these now. I've also seen so many hold themselves back from actually creating their first coaching program or course because of some of these stories that have been created around the work involved. Yes, you do need to put in work to launch your first program, however, you don't need to spend a hundred hours creating content for your program before you start selling it. I want to get into how things can be easier. One of the things I love doing with my clients is showing them how you can actually do things in a simpler way, and that’s what today's episode is about.

So I've got a little quiz here for you. True or false: you need to create all of your lessons in your program you’re about to sell and have all your content ready to go before selling it to your audience. False, you can start selling it today without any of that and I’m going to share some ways that you can do so in this episode. True or false: you need to have free clients go through your course first before selling it for a price point. That is false. True or false: you need to pay for expensive software and have a full website before selling your first program. Of course, again, false. True or false: you need a fancy sales page before selling your first program or course. Again, false, so you see the trend here. These are a lot of things that people are told or assume that they need before they can actually start selling their courses and programs. I can share with you that I have sold up to $25,000 packages without a sales page. The things that you may think you need to sell something are not always necessary. I want you to be able to sell with ease and get started even sooner. The sooner you actually start and take action the better, so I want you to get going ASAP.

When I launched my course Five Figure Launch for the very first time, we actually didn’t have anything inside created. I knew what I wanted to put into the program, I knew what the modules were going to be, I had them outlined in terms of what I wanted to include in each of the modules, I had a very small sales page, and we had payment links. We launched and closed doors before any of the course material was actually available or created. I want to share with you that you can sell your program before having all of the stuff created, however, it does need to be created at some point. There are ways to create that content with ease. There are so many cool softwares and new ways to create content for your courses and programs.

How I Sold My Course Before Creating It

So, how did we do it? I created tons of social media content, lots of stories and mini trainings. Again, I had the program outlined. I also wanted something for my clients to dive into once they did hop in, so I created a prerequisite section for my clients to start going through to prep for the course itself. This section was actually content that I had created for another one of my programs, so I was repurposing content so I didn't have to create something twice. In this section I included how to map out your offer, what brainstorming your offer and your niche look like, and doing market research with your audience, which gave them plenty to do before the course itself launched. The first and second time we launched this course we ran it live and created material each week and added it into our clients’ course hubs. Again, it didn't need to be completely created and ready to go. We also created a community container and we had a multiple five-figure course launch with zero content created before we actually closed doors. To this day, this is one of my best-selling self-paced courses. We created content throughout the live launch that we did and we have been using that content since, so it’s a hands-off course for me. Of course, we're going to make updates throughout the years and things like that as needed. You don't need to have everything created and all of the content ready for your clients as soon as they hop in for your very first launch.

Business Shifts to Increase Sales

I want to share a few different shifts that you can make so that you can sell more in your business and take some action a little bit faster. If you're on the fence of starting your business or launching your program or course, I want you to think about some shifts that you can make. Whether this is your sales mindset, fear of failure, fear of success, imposter syndrome, or judgment from others, we want to make some shifts. For example, I have done some secret menu items over the years. These items are usually not available more than once or twice a year. I may do a month of Voxer support for our clients or for clients that reach out when I announce it on social media. Again, those do not have a sales page, just a payment link, so you don't need to have a ton of stuff created to sell something to get started. You don't need six months to launch your next program or course.

Now, when it comes to that program creation, a lot of the time perfectionism is really procrastination. Trying to make something perfect before launching or selling is really just pushing your start date back and it's hurting your business. You're leaving transformation on the table, you're leaving money on the table. For the longest time, years and years and years ago, I always thought that everything needed to be perfect and 100% completed before I could really sell to anybody, until I saw that it was actually preventing me from helping people. I continued to tell myself the story that my program had to be perfect and complete before announcing it to the world, but really my fear was holding me back from sharing it. I was afraid that it wouldn’t sell. I was afraid that nobody would want it. I was afraid it wouldn’t make an impact. All of these fears prevented me from getting out there and selling it. Even though I was telling myself a story that it just needed to be finished, deep down I was worried about all of these other things. It's just another way for us to tell ourselves that we're not going to make moves, that we're going to stay in our comfort zone.

If you tell yourself that it's not the right time or that it’s not the perfect idea, it’s you pushing your start date back and it’s another excuse you’re giving yourself to procrastinate and avoid taking action. Life is so short, so you get to get started today and go create that impact. All of the time that we're spending trying to make things perfect, is time where people are missing out on your gift and that impact. You are ready and you can get it out there. Ask yourself, how much longer are you going to push your own start date? I am giving you that permission slip today to embrace messy action, because messy action beats no action every single time. Embrace selling your program before you finish creating it. Start having sales conversations, even if it doesn't feel like the perfect time. The timing will never feel right, your program will never look perfect. There's going to be updates that you want to make over the years. It's not like you make your course once and it's done forever. You'll continue to make updates and improve as you continue to get more feedback from clients, so go take action anyway. Your services are needed. There is no right way or wrong way for it to look and the sooner that you can push past that, the sooner you can start selling even more in your business.

Tricks for Selling Your Courses Early

Let’s get into some tips and tricks to sell your courses early. Let's say that you are creating a course for the first time, you can run it live for the first time and then take the recordings and use that for an evergreen course. What this can look like is you run it live in a Facebook group or on a Zoom call and record the training itself so you can turn it into your future trainings for the evergreen version of your course. That's one way that you can do it with ease so you're not needing to create tons and tons of content beforehand. You can start to sell right now as long as you have an idea of what your course is going to be.

Another thing that you can do is you can also drip material to your students. So let's say you create the first two to three weeks of course material before you launch, and this is what I typically recommend if you're not going to do it live. Life happens, things happen and you may be unable to record content for a week, so you want to have some buffer room in case you do need to give yourself some of that time back. Two to three weeks gives you a great amount of flexible time to put out that content. Then you can drip the rest of the content weekly while you continue to record the remaining weeks. You can also run the training sessions live and then drip the material for anyone who couldn’t make it live.

Let's say it’s a coaching program and not a course that you're running. You can make the first half of your coaching call with your clients a PowerPoint session where you're teaching your content to your client or clients. Then the second half can be open Q&A. You can take that teaching section from the first half of the call, trim it, bring out the PowerPoint and use that as your video training module for your next set of clients and then shift calls into Q&A calls only. Then you can trim your call time down as well depending on the size of your groups.

You can also host your program inside of a Facebook group. What’s really cool about that is it's completely free. You can make a private Facebook group, and send the link to the group out with the initial email when somebody has purchased the course. You can record the training inside that Facebook group on a live. You can also share your screen on the live in the Facebook group if you have a PowerPoint. Again, save it and repurpose it for when you turn it evergreen in the future.

I mentioned this earlier, but you can also host calls on Zoom and then you could even upload it right into your Facebook group or a Google Drive folder and share it with clients. That is actually what we did the very first time that we launched The Fierce Business Academy, it didn't wasn't hosted inside of a course hub like it is now. We had everything in a Google Drive folder for clients.

So again, you don't need all of the fancy software. Keep it simple and easy. Then as you continue to grow you can shift into the higher tech things if that's going to make things easier for you. There are a lot of different things that you can do without creating hundreds of hours of content for your course before selling it. You are allowed to sell things before you have everything created. I wanted to give you all of those ideas so you can start to brainstorm what that can look like for you for your next launch. We have touched on how we have sold courses before they were created, shifts that you can start making in your business to start selling more, tips and tricks to sell your courses early, and so much more. You know we are already getting ready for next week’s episode and I cannot wait to share it with you. We will see you next week in another brand new episode of The Fierce Business Babe Podcast bright and early Monday morning!

Topics we cover include:

Fear of failure
Stepping out of your comfort zone
Taking messy action

And so much more!

Times to check out:

(09:58) Program launch quiz

(14:56) My launch experience

(17:15) Shifts to increase sales

(22:48) Tips and tricks for selling early

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