#055: If you want to create and launch an online course so you can have more freedom in your business and life, it's important to get started on the process.
We all know this, so why do we often hesitate because we're worried that no one will buy? Or think that next year will be a better time, because we'll have things sorted by then.
In this episode, I'm sharing my insight from inside the launch trenches with my clients.
You will learn:
What's really behind thinking that you don't have time right now or "I'll do it next year".
A huge mindset shift that will get you excited about your first launch (instead of fearing it).
How to create a launch funnel that suits you (and it doesn't HAVE to include social media.
If you're interested in learning more about Launch and Thrive, you can find out all the details here: https://www.loublakely.co/launch
#055: If you want to create and launch an online course so you can have more freedom in your business and life, it's important to get started on the process.
We all know this, so why do we often hesitate because we're worried that no one will buy? Or think that next year will be a better time, because we'll have things sorted by then.
In this episode, I'm sharing my insight from inside the launch trenches with my clients.
You will learn:
What's really behind thinking that you don't have time right now or "I'll do it next year".
A huge mindset shift that will get you excited about your first launch (instead of fearing it).
How to create a launch funnel that suits you (and it doesn't HAVE to include social media.
If you're interested in learning more about Launch and Thrive, you can find out all the details here: https://www.loublakely.co/launch
Enjoy the episode, Lou xx
Speaker 1:
Hello and welcome to episode 55 of the online course creator show. I'm Lou Blakely, I am your host, and this podcast is all about helping and wishes go, getting women create and sell online courses. Now I wanted to jump in and record this episode today because I think that this is a big problem when it comes to launching and actually causes delays of sometimes years, right, and that is that there's a hesitation to launch because you ask you that no one will buy. That thought is at the back of your mind. What if no one buys it? What if I do all of this work and do the launch and all of that kind of stuff and then nobody buys it? And I think this is actually also really common. I think that everyone has this thought go through their mind, but it's just about whether you act on it or not. So that's why I want to talk about it today, because it's something that we need to talk about, right, and I think the hesitation is also sometimes more of a thing for those who have a small audience or who haven't done much marketing in the past and don't have an email list or big social media following and all of that kind of stuff. The other thing that I think happens is we've just finished the five day boot camp that I ran all around creating an offer. So the people that have gone through that now have an offer. So there should be, logically, absolutely no hesitation now to moving into that launch phase, because they've nailed the offer, they've created an offer that's in alignment for them, that they know that their audience is going to benefit from. That is the right kind of format that is set up in a way that it's really going to help their businesses grow. So at this point, from a logical point of view, there is no reason not to go into the launch.
Speaker 1:
But yet there is that hesitation and this is where mindset really comes into launching as well. Like this fear is really a mindset issue, right, and there's no shame in having a mindset issue, like everyone has them, ok. So we need to stop thinking that a mindset issue is a weakness. It is not. It is simply something that we need to move through. And the first step to that is actually becoming aware of how this fear may be showing up.
Speaker 1:
And I actually think that when this is actually the fear or the mindset issue behind, I'll do this next year. I'll do a launch when I've got this ready, or I'll do a launch when I make enough money from my one-on-one services or something like that, like we're looking for an out or making it conditional on something else happening, even though it's what we really want to do. We're giving ourselves an out because we don't want to potentially put ourselves into a situation where we're going to be disappointed. So I am a firm believer that if you are saying to yourself, I'm going to launch next year or I'm not going to launch right now, I'll do it later, when I feel more ready, I firmly believe that A this is a mindset issue and quite often the root of this is going to be a fear that no one is going to buy. And how do I know this is because I've experienced it myself and I've also worked one on one with many clients where it's just me and them on Zoom, and they've actually told me this stuff. We've gotten to the bottom of that. So this is what my experience tells me that this is the actual fear behind putting it off to a later date and I'm not put talking about putting it off for like one or two weeks. I think that's fairly normal when we're trying to schedule the perfect date for a launch, but I'm talking about when you think I'd love, when you know you'd love to have an online course, but you think it's going to be a project for next year, and then next year comes and you still don't do it because it's not actually next year that's going to be perfect. It's that you still have the fear. So getting over the fear is absolutely vital in order for you to step in and create that business that you want, where you want to get your time back, where you want to have more freedom in your business, where you're not going to have booked out meetings like a booked out calendar, meetings back to back all day, where you actually have that freedom.
Speaker 1:
It's only going to come when you decide to take the step and actually do the thing, instead of saying next year, now, the fear of no one buying when we go into creating an offer or potentially moving through a launch, but having that fear of no one buying what it actually results in is wanting to have a course but never quite even putting it out there properly. Maybe you decide that you're not going to do a big launch because you feel like you're going to have to put yourself out there too much. So instead you launch quietly, which then just perpetuates the fear even more because you're becoming you're like kind of feeding into that feeling of being scared of being seen and all that kind of stuff, or worse, it actually results in not launching at all and just putting it on your website, like when you have that offer, when you have that course. Putting it on your website is also going to result in low numbers, right For your launch. So because people don't see it.
Speaker 1:
And the thing is that you with launching or an online course, is that you cannot sell a secret. It does not matter how good that secret is, how amazing your offer is, how amazing your online course is, if nobody knows about it, then nobody's going to buy it, nobody's going to get the benefit of it, nobody's going to get the results, and then it kind of becomes a self fulfilling prophecy, right Like where you're not getting the feedback and the testimonials and that kind of thing, which means that you can't keep increasing your launches and actually becoming really successful with this business model. So let's shift the thinking around, moving from having an offer idea or maybe it's fully mapped out, maybe you've done the bootcamp and it's fully mapped out and ready to go, but you're still having that fear of actually pushing forward with it, or the idea of launching is something that you'd wish didn't exist, right, and that you could just put on your website. Let's shift the thinking around this. So what I'm going to share with you next is probably something that you have never thought of before, because I feel like in the online marketing space, we are just fed constant monetary results, right, and that can affect our ego, and then we don't want our ego to be hurt. So we want to go into that launch and get the massive result, be able to tell other people about it, like, of course, that's normal, but it's also our ego. Now, what I want you to know about that first launch is that the purpose of it is actually not to have the biggest monetary result, like, sure, that is a great side effect, but the purpose of your first launch is simply to validate your offer idea. So you've put together your offer Obviously, you have to have in order to be able to launch it, because there's got to be a thing that you're launching, but the purpose of that first launch is to actually get that feedback that there are people willing to pay money for what you're offering and when it comes to validating that, you just need to hit like a 1 to 3% conversion rate off the people who actually signed up for your free event.
Speaker 1:
So that's your masterclass or your bootcamp or your challenge. So say you ran an event and you got 100 people to attend that event. From a typical online course conversion framework, you can expect to get 1 to 3 sales from 100 people, because that's 1 to 3%, right, that may be a lot lower than what you think, but that is actually a validated course idea and that gives you the permission to then go forward and spend time creating it because you know that it's validated right. And that's why I encourage you to never create any modules or any lessons before you actually do your launch and see if people will pay for it. Because if you've spent months building a course and then no one buys it, then you have literally just spent that time on something that you can't sell. So you need to validate it first, pre-sell it and then create the actual course. Once you have got the validation that people are going to buy it.
Speaker 1:
So I think this takes the pressure off right, like if all you are doing in that first launch is getting the feedback that there are people that's willing to buy this course, and that conversion rate is between 1 to 3% and you know what? It can be a lot higher, like. I've seen it up to like 10, 12%, right, but it all comes down to how warm your audience is as well, how big your audience is. Have you been doing marketing or are you just completely new to this? It is very simple actually to be able to get that 1 to 3% conversion rate with, even if you haven't been active online with your online marketing, that kind of thing. Okay, so does that take the pressure off? Because I want you to know that one launch isn't going to change your business. The first launch is actually just the beginning. You just need to do that first launch to validate your offer idea. From there, you go and create the course and then you launch again. It's not one launch. It's actually a series of launches over time that are going to have a massive impact on your business, but you really just have to get started with that first one.
Speaker 1:
Now, another fear that I think comes up for people is and this is based in ego again like, let's be real about this is the fear of putting yourself out there in a big way, doing a big launch, making a big like who are about it? And then for it to flop or for no one to buy. Well, as I just said, as I just shared with you, a conversion rate of 1 to 3% is actually industry standard, right, and you probably don't need to shout and scream. The beauty of the way that I teach launching is that you actually just need to find the kind of sales funnel that suits you and that may not even really include too much social media, but you do need some form of funnel in order to be able to attract people into your world and then invite them to your free event and then, from there, you introduce them to your office, so that it is a sales funnel, also called a customer journey. So you just need some kind of funnel, and that's what launching is at the end of the day, except it's in a live environment, right. So there's a open doors moment and then there's the time when you close the doors.
Speaker 1:
So right now, for me, as an example, I have barely shared on social media about my course, because my funnel right now is actually this podcast, my email list and my Facebook group, so I haven't gone big on Instagram or anything like that. I haven't been doing TikTok videos, nothing like that at this point, like I think, yes, in the future I will do that, but right now I have wanted to do this launch that I'm in right now to validate the offer, and I have already done that, which is amazing. The doors haven't closed yet. So I just wanted to share that so that you know that you don't have to go out and do the biggest launch of your life for the first launch. The purpose of the first launch is to make sure that people buy and yes, of course we want to make money from that. That's only natural. But it is more about validating the offer.
Speaker 1:
Now let's talk about the possibility of no one buying your course. Like, let's go there. The good thing, if you follow my method, which is creating the offer, outline and mapping out your offer and all that kind of stuff, but not actually creating any of the modules or lessons, and then no one buys it because in that validation process you actually realize that there is no demand for it the good thing here is that you haven't spent months creating it so you actually can pivot. You can then go through a process of finding out from the people who came into your world during that launch what they actually do want and where your offer didn't hit the mark. You can actually start speaking to these people. But if you've spent months and months creating a course and then this happens, of course it's going to be disappointing.
Speaker 1:
I think just this mentality around launching, that you should give up if it fails, is absolutely flawed. It's like we don't think like that in relation to anything else. We don't sign up to a gym program and we skip a few days and then just never go back. Like maybe we skip a few days and then it becomes a week and then we kind of kick ourselves back into gear, maybe the following week or the next month or something. We don't leave it our whole lives With launching. I feel like this is this mentality that if it doesn't go crazy the first time, then we've failed. You absolutely haven't. It is really about having that resilience to see it for what it is, which is just a product. It's like a packet of biscuits in the shop, like if no one wants it, then the company that makes those biscuits is just going to do a bit more market research and find out what people actually do want, right? So we need to detach like this is not about us, it means nothing about us as human beings is actually your product and if your audience wants it, and it's as simple as that. So I really don't want you to delay launching because of the sphere and I don't want you to also try and avoid launching, which is where you maybe create the whole thing and then put it on your website, because I know firsthand that that doesn't work and will end in disappointment. Live launching is the way to get your online course out there and get your first customers. So let's not delay because of this fear of no one buying.
Speaker 1:
Instead, think long term. How will you look back on this time in two years? Is it the time that everything changed or the time when nothing did and you kind of kick yourself in hindsight that you didn't move sooner? The reality is that nothing is going to change if you aren't willing to start. If you really want to change your business model and get away from working on other people's dreams and move into a life and business with time and financial freedom, you're going to have to start. Thinking about starting isn't going to cut it. You've got to physically start moving in the right direction. That starts with the first steps and that is your first launch. Then that first launch becomes the foundation to build from. We don't need to fear people not signing up, and the way I will teach you launching inside of Launch and Thrive actually makes that virtually impossible. The doors to Launch and Thrive are now open. You can take a look at everything that's inside at lewblaclighco. You will see everything that's in this program.
Speaker 1:
This is the first round of Launch and Thrive 2.0. So I have run this before as a group coaching program back in 2021. That was the 1.0 version. This 2.0 is hugely improved on that, because I got amazing feedback from the people that went through it at that time. So this is an online course, but for this round, you're going to get more support from me, so this is really the time to join.
Speaker 1:
For the next 13 weeks, I'm going to be by your side as you go through the process of going from never having done a launch before to having completed your first launch. Now, this is created for busy service providers and freelancers, because I know exactly what it's like to walk in your shoes right, so it is very systematically set up so that you can do it alongside what you're already doing. I also have resources that I can help you with to actually find more time to be able to do this, because I know when you're moving from one business model to the other, you still want to be making money right. I definitely understand that, and that is why I have also built in three action only weeks to this process, so it's not all about like a fire hose of information and more content all of the time. I'm giving you time to actually be able to go away and do the work and get it done without putting too much pressure on the rest of your life.
Speaker 1:
So I would love to see you inside Launch and Thrive. I will teach you, step by step, how to create a sustainable selling system for your online course that you can then use to scale up. There's lots of amazing bonuses as well. There are six bonuses for this round, so I definitely recommend you head over to LouBlakleyco forward slash, launch and check out all of the details. The doors close very soon, so do not wait, and I hope to see you in there.
Speaker 1:
Thanks so much for listening today. I cannot emphasize enough that you should not wait. Getting started now and taking the first steps towards your first launch is going to be something you look back on with pride. So thanks so much for listening today. I will be back next week with a guest interview, which I'm really looking forward to. In the meantime, have a great week ahead and thanks for listening. Thanks, course, creators and go getters. You're incredible and I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you haven't done so already, make sure you hit subscribe in your podcast app so you don't miss an episode. If you'd like to find out more about what I offer, head across to LouBlakleycom. See you next time.