Episode #044: How I'd Go From 0 to $10k With My First Course...
How I'd Go From 0 to $10k With My First Course...
Have you ever found yourself asking, "How would I do this if I was starting from scratch?"?
That is exactly what this episodes answers - how to go from 0 to $10k on your first coaching or course offer in just 90 days!
When you tune in you're going to learn...
How many people you REALLY need to generate your first $10k
The path I would take if I was starting at zero
The steps to launching a course the EASY way to a small audience
And more...
I can't wait to hear what you think of this episode!
Links Mentioned on the Show From Zach:
Full Transcript:
This is Not Your Average Online Marketing Podcast episode number 44. And in this episode, we're talking about what I would do if I had to start all the way over from scratch to build my business to its first $10,000. So, if you have been sitting on a product, an idea of business, and you're trying to get to that $10,000 mark with a core offer, this episode is going to be perfect for you. So stay tuned.
Hey, hey, hey, not so average marketer. Welcome to another episode of the podcast. Now, I am super stoked. I do these episodes every once in a while, kind of about what I would do differently knowing what I know now and the way that things have evolved in the market. And I love to do these episodes because I think sometimes it's nice to hear from someone who has done this already, but with a different perspective on what they would do differently knowing what they know now.
So before we dive into this week's episode, I want to start by talking really quickly about the evolution of the landscape, the evolution of the digital marketing landscape. And the reality is that these days, it's not as easy to just post on Instagram or Facebook and reach thousands of people. It's not as easy to just go live every week on Facebook or even Periscope, which is where I started, to see really great results. You can't just do the things that you used to do.
That being said, there's always new platforms. TikTok is a big up and coming platform where it is easier to go viral. But there's so much uncertainty around that, not in that it doesn't work, I have lots of people I know that are crushing it on TikTok, personal friends, acquaintances, professional contacts, but it's different. And every platform is different, and we have to learn how to use these platforms to actually generate results.
So I just want to share with you that just because things are different, it doesn't mean you can't still see success. So this episode is, if I had to start from total zero, this is what I would do step by step over the next 90 days to make my first $10,000 as a digital course creator or coach.
So first things first, You need to identify your niche. And I think people get really tripped up on this because they think that identifying their niche is like, oh, I'm going to work with busy moms who are 25 years old and drive this and have this and do that. For me I don't think that you need to niche down to that level to get started. I think you need to ask yourself, what am I going to focus on as an educational tool? The big three interests or areas that people tend to focus for, not easy, but targeted growth are health, wealth, and relationships.
So we think of health coaches, weight loss coaches, we think of business coaches, we think of Instagram growth marketers, relationships. I've worked with people who teach boundaries, people who teach finding the love of your life, people who teach marriage and relationship counseling. It's not necessarily important that you have, I work with busy people, 20 years old who do this and drive this and read this magazine and watch this TV show. What is important is that you clearly identify what niche you're in and how you're going to serve that niche. That's number one, you've got to start there.
Then I would create a freebie as a PDF around my expertise and a result that people want to achieve. So I have a whole episode of the podcast where I talk about freebies. So I won't dive too deep into it here, but I do want to reference that my PDF freebie, the opt-in that I'm going to give away in exchange for a name and email, I want it to be results driven. What is a specific result that I am helping people achieve? So this kind of comes back to what we were just talking about with the niche conversation, is you don't need this perfect customer avatar, but you do need this perfect customer outcome that you're helping people achieve. So , in my niche, I might say, how to get a hundred new subscribers to your email list using Facebook ads in 30 days or less? That's a pretty strong freebie. I might even make it 1,000. But that's a much stronger freebie than how to use Facebook ads, how to grow your coaching business, how to sell more courses. I'm going with a really specific outcome, and that's where I'm nicheing down. I'm nicheing down in my outcomes.
Once I have that freebie created, I would start running Facebook lead ads to it. Now, if you've listened to this show for a while, you've heard me talk about lead ads. If you're newer to this show, hi, welcome, how are you? But a lead ad is where people opt in with their name and email on Facebook. Instead of you having to create a separate landing page and an opt-in page and a thank you page, you do it all inside of Facebook. And my goal would be to get 300 to 500 leads in two weeks, which is very, very doable at the time that I'm recording this. In fact, we have a freebie that we're running right now, and in the last 14 days, we generated 309 leads. So very, very doable.
What I want to say for a second is I know that some people are going to push back on this and they're going to say, well, why do I have to run ads? I'm just starting my business. I don't want to invest a lot, or I don't want to spend money until I know that I can make money. I always like to say, look, I get that. I really do. When I started I had a very limited budget, I had limited reach, I did a lot of organic stuff, but knowing what I know now, it would've been faster to just run some ads and test out the marketing.
The reason that I say this, and the reason or thing I want you to think about is that if you were to start a business 20, 30 years ago, you had to create a business plan, get a bank loan, rent a space, do marketing, do advertising, do all these things to get people into your storefront or into your practice or looking you up online even in the last few years. It's cheaper than ever to get three to 500 people paying attention to you. And so I'm not going to sit here and pretend like it's the cheapest thing in the world, or you're not doing it right if you're not willing to advertise. But what I am going to say is you've got to be willing to invest a little bit of resource into starting your business, and you have to take calculated risks for sure in life and business. And so all I want you to think about is are you willing to take a calculated risk and spend a little bit on ads to grow an audience that you can market to?
Because here's the thing about organic marketing. You can do it. Whether it's TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, it doesn't matter, you can do it but it's going to take time and refinement to get it right. And followers don't equal sales. But email marketing, we tend to see a really high return on investment. We tend to see that when you spend money to get somebody signed up for your emails, they're more likely to buy your product. We just know that. We've seen that trend. There are various studies and surveys and analyses about this that just show people who sign up for emails are more likely to buy than people who follow you on social. So you want to get people on your email list.
Now, the next thing that I would do is once I start running those ads, I would send up a simple five email sequence that invites people to get on the phone with me to chat about their business and how I can support them. Now, before you go pump the break, Zach, I'm not ready to get on the phone. That's okay. You don't have to get on the phone, but I recommend it. Why? Number one, it's a good skill to develop phone sales in every space is a really good skill to develop because if you can get comfortable at looking someone in the eye and telling them about your offer, you're only going to get more comfortable at writing and sending emails.
So I would set up a simple five email sequence that gets people on the phone. Now, this is kind of where there's the split in the strategy. If I have a service or I'm looking to add one-on-one coaching, I will explore if people are a good fit to work with me. I'll ask them what they're working on, I'll ask them what their struggles are, and if I sincerely believe it's something I can help them with, then I'll make an offer. If I'm like, I don't have a service, I'm not doing coaching right now, I just want to sell courses, I still do these phone calls and I research, I ask them questions. What are you stuck on? What are you struggling with? What could I create for you that would make everything a lot easier for you? What could I put together that would make your business, your health, your wealth, your relationship better?
The point of these calls is whether it turns into a sales call or it's purely a research call, it's one-on-one FaceTime with my ideal customers because they booked a call, they signed up for my freebie, they clearly want this outcome I'm offering. I have the ability to follow up with them and ask them, what do you want from me? And based on what they want from me, I can actually create an offer. So instead of creating an offer from a place of, here's what I'm good at, here's what I know, here's what I can teach. I'm creating an offer from a place of, let me show you what I'm actually able to do for you based on what you want. Okay?
So now that my email list is around 500 people, I would create what I call a beta or a founding member launch for my first digital course offer, but I would teach it as a bootcamp or a live experience. Now, this is the big thing where people go, what should I charge? What should I charge? What should I charge? I like to, for my first one, if you're like... Here's the thing, pricing is an art. There is so much that goes into it. We could do a whole episode on pricing, but if you're going to twist my arm and force me to give you an answer, I'd say price your first offer between 2 and 300 bucks. Okay? It's a good price in terms of the revenue it can generate, but it's still highly convertible to new subscribers. And what I mean by that is you don't have to be like, oh, reach into your wallet and give me $10,000 to work with me. You don't need to be a great phone closer, you don't need to be a high ticket salesperson. All you have to do is make a great offer, the price is strong, and it's still kind of around that impulsive level of like, yeah, I can spend a couple hundred bucks to get that result that I'm looking for.
And then my goal is to get 8 to 10 people, which is about 2% of the entire list. My goal is to get 2% of people who gave me their name and email to now invest 2 to $300 with me. Now, for those of you who are doing the math on this, you're saying, Okay, that's two to $3,000. But how much did it cost to get the 500 people on your list? Realistically, in a business to consumer space, you can spend 500 to 1,000 getting people on your list, about 1 to $2 per lead. In a B2B space, a business to business space, for a free pdf you could spend between 1,000 and 2,000 to get people on your list. So price accordingly. If you're B2B, you probably want to be closer to 300. If you're B2C, you probably want to be closer to 200 in terms of the price of your offer. But if you do that, and you can be around those numbers, you're going to profit on this first launch.
So to launch the offer, I'd keep it really simple. I would start with the date I'm running it, a deadline to enroll, and then I would just email my list 5 or 10 times about the offer. If you're listening to this, you're probably like 5 or 10 times, that's so broad. 5 to 10 times I would really set a deadline and I would just keep emailing, and I'd keep it really simple. I'd write a nice sales page for it, maybe in ThriveCart or even in SamCart. You could do it in Leadpages. It doesn't really matter. You could do it on your website, but I'd keep it simple. I wouldn't do a webinar, I wouldn't do a challenge. I wouldn't do a video series. Just a good promotional email sequence and a strong offer. And if you're listening to this going, Zach, how do I make sure that it's a strong offer? Well, that's the importance of those research calls, because you're literally going to write down on those calls what people are saying they want, what people are saying they're struggling with, what people are saying, I would pay a thousand dollars to solve this problem. What specifically do they want, weave that into your offer, both your emails and your sales page.
So, now the next most important thing is to show up. Show up. Run that live boot camp experience so you can pay attention. How do people engage? What do they want more support with? What might be missing based on the feedback they give me? And I would collect testimonials throughout and at the end so I have them for when I do another launch. So, one thing that I also like to note is that don't take all of that money that you profited on that first launch, like that 2 to 3K that you have in your pocket from that promotion, don't just put it in your pocket. I'd spend 3 to 500 on making the course, hosting services, video services, design services, recording software, and I would save 1,500 to 2,000 for my next promotion.
Now, if you're doing the math on that, you might go, Zach, that means I've put all this money into ads and I've made no money yet. 100%. When you're starting your business, I recommend you put a lot that comes out back in. And that's what I did early on, and that's what I would still do now. And believe it or not, some business models, not the online course model, but some business models aren't even profitable for the first one to three years. I don't say that to scare you or tell you, you can't be profitable in your first one to three years, I tell you that because I want you to understand what a gift we have in this space to be able to create something out of nothing at a low barrier of entry and start generating revenue. So don't get caught up in, I've got to make money quick and fast. We're still in the first 30 to 60 days, keep the money that's coming in and keep putting it back into the business.
So now that I have done the live round and collected testimonials, what I would do is I would record it as a completed course. I would take feedback from my customers and update the content that needs to be updated. I would build out the sales page even better with the testimonials, the features and benefits, any bonuses. Really, what I'm doing is I'm taking something that worked well or not well live, and I'm now packaging it up into prerecorded course. Because I don't want to do this live every single time. Now, you may, when you launch it, have live elements like live coaching calls or support calls or a Facebook group, and that's great, but you don't want to have to recreate it every time you do it.
And if you are doing it live every time, you can use the same slide decks. But I just find that eventually it becomes exhausting. Just to be blunt. Between you and me it's a lot of work to do a live class over and over and over again. So what I would do is I would take the content from that live boot camp that I did and I'd pre-record it for the next round, package it up, build out my sales page, put everything together, get my testimonials, and make it look really like this nice fleshed out offer.
Then what I would do is I would plan to host a five day challenge or a webinar. Now, I lean towards five day challenges for beginners because they're really easy to set up. And as a side note, if you want to learn how to run a five day challenge, I have a complete toolkit called the Challenge Launch Toolkit. You can head over to toolkit.heartsoulhustle.com. Again, that's toolkit.heartsoulhustle.com, and you can check out our toolkit that teaches you how to launch with a five day challenge. It's got everything you need from email swipe files, basic Facebook ads, you know how to create a sales page, how to create content. Everything is inside of that, and you can check it out over at toolkit.heartsoulhustle.com. So if you want to check that out, you absolutely can. And I just want to say that whether you do a challenge or a webinar, you may want to invest some time and resources into figuring out the way to do that best because there really is a challenge and webinar process that people follow to get results. It's not just, well, I'm going to go live for five days, or I'm going to go live for a one hour webinar, teach people and then sell something. There is a little more to it than that. So just be aware that whether you do a challenger webinar, you want to also study how those work.
So now I host my webinar or challenge, and I use that money that I brought in from that first live launch that I kind of set aside to generate leads for the webinar. So I'm going to spend 1,500 to $2,000 on my first launch. But again, this is not necessarily money from my pocket. This is money from my last launch. So I'm reinvesting the launch asset growth back into the business. The other thing to keep in mind is that you still have this list of 500 people. You still have a way to contact them, and the people who didn't want to pay for the live bootcamp the first time around might be more interested in a free challenge or webinar. So, my goal would be to get 400 to 500 people on the webinar with a three to 4% conversion rate. I would also increase the price of the program to 4 to $500, add on live support which is the Facebook group, the group coaching, and that would bring me another 7 to $8,000. So at this point, I've now made nine to $10,000 on this launch.
Then I do the same thing. I repeat that process. I do the class live in terms of the Facebook group or the coaching calls. I get testimonials and I just continue to enhance. So when I make that 7 to $8,000, I mentioned this earlier, but I think it's worth mentioning again, I'm not just going to take it and spend it, right? I'm going to pull a little bit out for taxes. I'm going to pull a little bit out for myself, and I'm going to put a lot of it back into the business for future growth.
So, that's my plan to go from 0 to 10K with only a small investment in a Facebook ads. Really, a 500 to $2,000 investment in your business up front can bring you to that $10,000 mark. And I just want to say, I know that it can be stressful. And just between you and me, this is not a guarantee. This is not a promise. This is not this will 100% work. This is just what I would do if I had to start over to make momentum fast in the first 60 to 90 days. There are other ways. You can use Instagram, you can use Facebook, you can use TikTok, you can do something else, right? I'm just sharing with you what I think would work for me based on my expertise. And we have a ton of podcasts on the Not Your Average Online Marketing Podcast roster around how to run Facebook ads, how to run challenges, how to do all these things that I've talked about today. So if you're listening to this and you're like, I want to go deeper on any of these topics, check out our past episodes because we do go deep on a lot of these topics and we really want to support you and help you get incredible results.
So with all that being said, we will wrap up here. If you enjoy this episode, do me a favor, be sure to drop a review. It really helps us reach new people with the show and tell us that we're doing a good job. And number two, don't be afraid to tag me on Instagram at HeartSoulHustle with your takeaways from the show. A screenshot in your story of you listening to the episode is always super appreciated. And if you want a recap of the show or the full transcript, you can head over to HeartSoulHustle.com/NYAP044. That's HeartSoulHustle.com/NYAP044 for Not Your Average Podcast episode number 44, where we broke down how to go from 0 to 10K. If you're just getting started, I hope you got mad value from this episode. I cannot wait to see you back next week on the Not Your Average Online Marketing Podcast. And until next week, stay not so average.
