The Fierce Business Babe Podcast Ep 114: Launch Your Next Course

Today we are going to be talking about all things courses. We will be diving deep into how to outline and create your course along with tips on how to prepare for your launch as well. We are also going to talk about creating your customer journey and scaling your business to serve more people. All of this and so much more!

Launch Your Next Course

By: Melissa Lin

Today, I'm going to walk you through why courses are great for your business, some things to consider when you are outlining a course, and also some things to consider when preparing for your course launch. Because when you create a course, you get to also launch it into the world so that it can help other people and really create transformation. We're going to dive into course specific stuff today and why it's necessary and why it's important and how you can really do this.

Creating a Customer Journey for our Audience

We have a few courses, we actually have quite a few courses, in our product suite. The reason I love courses is it's an easy way for somebody to enter our customer journey. Not everyone's going to be able to invest a few thousand dollars or multiple thousands of dollars into coaching with you, at least not always, not right away. Not everybody will be ready for your higher one-on-one coaching program, that high ticket one-on-one coaching, or that high ticket group coaching. And that's okay too. We want to have items available at all levels, low ticket, medium ticket and high ticket. Courses are a great way for you to create a lower ticket offer.

One of our courses has the “Hot Leads Machine”, and it's a lead-generating course for anyone wanting to create more leads, consistent leads, on Instagram, Facebook, your email, and some other spots. We have another course called “Sell Like a Sales Queen”, which is my sales course, another course called, “Profitable Product Suite”, which is a very low ticket course that we have that we launched earlier this year. And then a few more that, spoiler alert, are in the works for 2021 and 2022. So we're already planning for some more coming your way.

Scaling your Business to Serve More People

Now, something that I mentioned was for you to really scale, and I mean really, really scale your business, is to serve more people, which means serving to the masses and courses are a great way to do so. Thinking back to 2020, it's been a crazy wild year, In 2020, our coaching programs brought in more revenue than our courses, and that's what we wanted. That's how we set up our business. This year in 2020. It’s how 2019 went as well. And it's how a lot of 2021 will go. So something to keep in mind is you get to run your business and build your business into a business that you love and have it run in a way that really fits your lifestyle, what you're passionate about and what you're excited about.

I love coaching. I love my coaching clients. It's something I will always have. I will always have at least for the near future, some type of group coaching program, higher level coaching, masterminds, that type of thing, along with courses. I love having that expansive product suite. So, again, our coaching programs brought in a lot of our revenue. However, we're also, you know, heavily focused on creating an incredible client experience inside of those coaching programs and spent a lot of time really tweaking and improving and making adjustments. Always, always, always keeping things up to date and always, always making updates because things are always changing.

We're going to get into that a little bit, because that also happens with courses, but, what we get to remember is not everybody is ready for group coaching or higher ticket coaching. That's okay. That's why we have those lower ticket courses for people to hop into first and then get them ready for your group coaching program. Or get them ready for your higher ticket one-on-one private coaching, whatever it is that you've got. So there's one big reason for why we may want to create a course, why you may want to create a course if you don't have one yet, but why else, why else would you want to create a course? Well, I'm going to tell you.

Creating Courses with Low Overhead

We know that they are very scalable, right? And the really cool thing is the overhead in creating a course is extremely low, which means that creating a course can be very profitable for you. It really doesn't take much investment. So if you look at a course, you need the equipment to record your course. And what we do is, we love creating PowerPoints and creating trainings, and love just to use our MacBook and record our training and PowerPoints right here on our computer for our courses. We even do this for a lot of our coaching programs too. So there's one thing. We use hosting software as well. Our hosting software we use is Thinkific. I've been using Thinkific for over the past two years and absolutely love them. That's our course hub for all of our courses and coaching programs. That's about all that you really need. You can create a free Zoom account to record. You can even use QuickTime video to screen record. It doesn't take too much. There's not much overhead. So really keep that in mind. Courses are a great thing for you.

This is the same with group coaching programs and private coaching, and there's not much overhead. There's a bit more of your time throughout the entire program. Whereas creating courses, it's more front end time because you create the course once then make updates to each quarter, twice a year, however often that is for you, so definitely something to keep in mind. It doesn't take too much of an investment, there's not too much overhead, you create the course then maintain it and update it throughout the year. Launch throughout the year. After that, it's mostly passive income for you outside of the marketing for your course.

Now, there are some courses out there where they may include a Facebook group to ask questions throughout the week, you know, via keyboard and typing. That's what I call asking questions through non video. Through the keyboard. So some courses will include that, some not so much, regardless, there will be some maintenance and some upkeep, but it is going to be mostly passive income for you. Along with the marketing that goes into play with it. So maybe you've decided that you want to create an amazing course. But what type of course are you going to create?

Outlining a Course

So here are some things to consider when outlining a course. As you're starting to think about what you could add into your product suite next, what would make sense? Ask yourself, is there something missing in your product suite right now? Is there a prerequisite that someone could take before your coaching program or before your group coaching program that they could take to really help set them up and get them ready for that higher ticket offer down the road that maybe they just aren't ready for now? What does your audience need? Here's a little hint, do market research. We are doing market research every single day in our business. I truly mean that, every single day we do market research in our business. Then, as you start to decide on what type of course you want to offer start brainstorming.

What's the point A of my ideal client who is going to want this? What's the point B, after they take my course? What will you need to teach them and guide them through, to go from point A to point B? Then as you start to really map that out, start to brainstorm. What do I need to teach them in each module? How many modules do I want to break this into? What will be video trainings? What are going to be worksheets? Will your course be drip? Is it going to be something where you have all the modules ready instantly right away when they purchase? All things to consider as you create a course.

Something else that I love to do, because I love teaching things that I've already overcome myself, things that I've already really mastered done over and over and over. Think back to when you were going through that for the first time. Now, this is not always the case, however, most of the time you are the future version of your ideal client. So usually you're teaching your clients and you've already overcome something you're highly experienced in and really know your stuff. So think back to when you were first learning that and going through that experience. What did you need? What were the things that you were going through? How much did you need? How much training material to really learn and understand everything that you needed to, to create that transformation, that point B.

So, really put yourself in their shoes and that point A of them. And again, decide on what's going to be inside and then start to create it, create the deliverables. I have done a few courses where it's been drip, where we created as we go, just because we wanted feedback from some of the students, “Hey, what is it that you really, really want more focus on?”.

We've also created some courses where we've created everything beforehand, then once we launched, everybody got instant access to everything. Those are usually our smaller courses. The bigger courses we do usually create as we go. So really up to you. However, I usually recommend some type of create as you go, or at least like biannual updates and go throughs because you're always going to be updating.

The reason I usually recommend that you create as you go is, you may create half of your course material, or if you create all of the course material, your students may get through to the halfway mark and you may realize there's a ton of stuff that you missed, or you may realize the stuff that they needed in module 10 or week 10, they actually needed week six. Then you've got to rearrange a ton of stuff, and that's a ton of extra work for you. So you might as well get feedback along the way or make iterations, you know, twice a year and make improvements and continue to improve because as you continue to improve your courses and the things inside, you are going to continue to improve your client experience as well, which is really important.

Prepping for Your Course Launch

Now let's get into some things to consider when you're actually prepping for your course launch. Typically when launching a new program, you want to create a ton of awareness and I mean, awareness, awareness, awareness, really tease, really hype your audience. This is something that we teach inside of our launch course, which is called, “Five Figure Launch”.

The step-by-step to launching a program or a course. What you're going to want to consider is what type of value do you want to add during your course launch? So for example, anytime that we do a big launch, we will usually host some type of live stream series, some type of challenge. If it's a lower ticket offer, we may host a free workshop instead. So start to ask yourself, what are some of those things and start to map out the actual launch for your course, the more that you have planned, the easier it's going to be for you.

Beta Clients

Also ask yourself, do you want to put some beta clients through your program first, through your course first? Something that I have learned over the years is that we will always spend time making tweaks and improvements to our programs, even our courses. Ask yourself what maintenance may you need to do? Maybe put it into your calendar or your Asana, your project management tool to go through your program and make improvements. Create some kind of post-course or midway course survey to see what people are enjoying, what they're not enjoying. Maybe there's some tech errors that you weren't aware of. Always ask for feedback and continue to tweak, continue to improve.

It's not necessarily that you create the course once and boom, you're done. You always want to make it better. You always want to create a better client experience. So we definitely recommend putting some beta clients through. Ask yourself what maintenance do you need, if your course is around social media, then this is something that's always, always changing. So, you may need to make even more updates to your course as social media changes too, and makes their tweaks and adjustments.

Action Item

So today I will be leaving you with an action item and your action item is to brainstorm what your next course could be. Or if you already have a few courses, can you add any updates? Can you add any bonuses for when you relaunch your course again, whenever your next launch is going to be. So go ahead and send me a message over on Instagram with your biggest takeaway. My Instagram handle is @TheMelissalin. I can’t wait to hear all about it!

Topics we cover include:

Creating a Customer Journey
Scaling Your Business to Serve More People
Creating Courses with Low Overhead
Outlining a Course
Prepping for your Course Launch

And so much more!

Times to check out:

(6:22) Creating a Customer Journey

(8:30) Scaling Your Business to Serve More People

(10:46) Creating Courses has Extremely Low Overhead

(13:22) Outlining a Course

(17:13) Prepping for Your Course Launch

GET IN TOUCH WITH MELISSA:

Hot Leads Machine (new course):

https://www.themelissalin.com/hotleadsmachine

Are you ready to take your online coaching business to the NEXT level? Have you been wanting to start coaching, finally start making a full time income doing what you love? The Fierce Business Academy might be the right fit for you! Head to the link below for more details and to hop on the waitlist!

The Fierce Business Academy:

https://www.themelissalin.com/academy

The Caption Capsule

https://www.themelissalin.com/caption-capsule

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Sell Like A Sales Queen Crash Course:

https://themelissalin.lpages.co/sell-like-a-sales-queen/

Five Figure Launch:

https://themelissalin.lpages.co/five-figure-launch

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