10 Steps to Launching an Online

Course
I just launched Learn Lettering 2.0 which generated six figures in revenue by the
second day and the launch is far from over.
In this episode, I share insider tips that will make you thousands more on your next
course launch. I talk about how to validate your course idea, how to get people to
care about it, how to maximize your initial launch period, how to create urgency
without discounting, how to close strong, how to promote on-going sales after the
launch, and so much more.
The Community members who listened live were saying it was like I just gave them
$2,000 of value. If youre not listening to this show, youre saying you dont care
about $2,000.
Whether youre thinking about doing a course, planning a course, about to launch a
course, or already have one that youre wanting to supercharge and breathe new
life into, youre going to get ideas from this episode.
Highlights, Takeaways, Quick Wins

Give the audience what they need, but deliver it in a package of what they
want.

Keep showing up and stay in the forefront of peoples minds.

You have to get people to care about the course way before you release it.

Good products sell themselves, but only when people know about them. The
hard part is getting people to know about them.

Get people to care about you first so they will care about your product.

If you want to make an epic course, learn to write 1,000 words a day.

Publishing weekly is good, but if you can produce high quality content daily,
thats when you win.

Know your target audience and be confident about your price.

Create urgency through bonuses and limited time availability.

Sending a Last Chance email will add 40% more revenue to your bottom
line.

Always reward your loyal customers and early buyers.

If you use someone elses platform to sell your course, realize that youre
giving up control and they have the power over how your brand is perceived.

Show Notes

09:24 Sean: Todays topic is pretty timely for me, because a couple days ago
I launched Learn Lettering 2.0. Im not going to be sharing real numbers yet.
This is a show where we share real numbers, but not today. Theres work time
and theres talking about work time, and were still working. Matt is doing a
course. Matt, when are you going to start working on that?

10:06 Matt: November. September or October well start talking. I have a

few ideas of what I want it to be, but I want to structure it to what
theCommunity wants and what feedback we get. As time goes on, well
refine the idea I have in my mind.

1. Validate Your Course Idea

11:58 Sean: Step number one in launching an online course is validation. You
need to validate. A lot of people start out with, I have this idea for a course
that I want to make, and they make what they want and nobody buys it. The
problem here is you werent looking for what people were asking for. You
dont know what they wanted from you, so you have to find that out. The way
you find that out is by creating content around your area of expertise, this
thing that you want to teach. Create content so people come to
associate you with this subject.

12:39 Then you solicit their questions. You can do this a number of ways, but
one of my favorite ways of doing it is by setting up an email newsletter and
an autoresponder, where the first email asks them what theyre struggling
with. That way, you have an excellent survey with hundreds of messages
from people so you can see what the most popular topics are. You could go
straight to making a course from there, but I would recommend creating
content around those questions. Put that content out and see. If youre
attuned to what people want to learn from you, then those posts, videos, or
podcasts youre making are going to do really well. Youre going to get
disproportionally more downloads or views on those things than your other
content.

Give the audience what they need, but deliver it in a package of what
they want.

13:37 Matt: Get those questions together, get content together, and put it
out all for free.

14:00 Sean: Cory, what are your thoughts here? Are you thinking about
doing a video course?

14:07 Cory: I am thinking about doing a video course. The industry doesnt
really matter. Asking questions about what people are struggling with is the
biggest thing, because then youre going to get people who are already sold
on it. Once you produce some content in an email or blogpost that fixes a
problem that person told you they were struggling with, theyre going to be
on board and are going to be more likely to buy from you when you launch a
course.

14:53 Matt: Shera and I were talking about this a couple of days ago. I was
telling her about the course, and she was saying, How are you going to
know what people want? How are you going to know what their needs are?
It made me think that a lot of the stuff that I think is easy really isnt,
especially if youre new in business. There are some things we all have to do.
Im going to have to go back to seeing all the basic things I need to do to get
a business going. Lets say Im a 16 year old, and Ive been following
seanwes and doing lettering for four years now.

15:42 Sean: We have a 16 year old following this show, listening to Lambo
Goal. Its awesome, but I want to hear Matts answer to this. He wrote us and
asked for money for his business. Matt, what do you think he should be
doing?

16:02 Matt: He should be practicing as much as possible, becoming an

expert at whatever hes working on. If hes good at whatever hes doing and
he has a decent business plan for how hes going to market and get clients, I
have no doubt that someone will invest with him.

16:48 Sean: Hes asking for hundreds of dollars or a couple thousand dollars;
its not like this would revolutionize his vision, its just a little bit of money.

17:01 Matt: If it could give him focus for a couple months to pay his bills and
focus on whatever he does, I can see how that would be beneficial to him
even if it isnt hundreds of thousands of dollars. Thats what I believe.

17:39 Sean: I believe this 16 year old kid needs to start spending his time
hustling and stop spending his time asking for money from a bunch of
podcasters. If youre 16 and youre starting your first business, do
some work first. If all youre hearing is the startup terminology of getting
funding and thats how you start businesses, thats how you start a VC
funded business, but thats not how you have to start a business. A lot of
businesses are bootstrap. If youre 16 years old and its your first business,
try and give it a go first. If you have a little bit of a track record and you can
say, I hustled, I built this agency, these are the results, and now Im looking

to scale it and Im looking for some investments, I think hes going to get
more traction that way.

18:48 Matt: He needs to have a portfolio, past clients hes worked with, and
some feedback from the clients before he starts asking for money.

18:56 Sean: Maybe Im making a wrong assumption that at 16 he doesnt

have a portfolio. Maybe he does.

19:03 Matt: I think when I was 16, I had a portfolio and I had clients. If I had
$2,000, I would have used that money to pay for my bills and get more
clients, and I would have paid back that $2,000 in a month and probably had
$10,000 in the bank. Thats the way I do business and the way I think.

19:24 Sean: Number one, I think youre an anomaly. Number two, I think a
lot of your current expertise is coloring your nostalgic view of yourself as a 16
year old. The chat room is saying that 16 year olds need to struggle when
they get things rolling, not have cash handed to them. Alex says, Im 17,
and I totally agree. Theres no bills at my age and nothing but time. You can
do so much at my age, theres really nothing to hold us back. Hes 17 and
he gets it.

20:04 Matt: When I was 16, I was already investing in the stock market. I
was given a few thousand dollars and I turned it into $100,000. A little bit of
help goes a long ways with the right mindset. Im not saying to hand every
16 year old $2,000. I had a successful snow cone business. I was making
almost $80,000 from that business, and then I had my lawn business that
was making me about $50,000. You want the kid to have a portfolio and
clients. You need to see if he has credit card transactions or proof of
statement, just like any other business.

When it comes to investing, dont focus on age.

20:49 A 16 year old wont be as mature as a 30 year old because of

experience, but I can tell you that if the kid is in the right mindset, hes
listening to Lambo Goal and changing his mindset, this could happen. This is
why I just turned $50,000 down to be on this show, not because I enjoy
talking in a microphone. My time is valuable. If people can change their
mindset, work hard, bust their chops, any 16 year old worth his salt can get a
portfolio together, get some clients, and get it done. Like everyone in the
chat is saying, you have no bills, so you can focus on your specialty. Then,
when you get your clients and you have your business plan, youre ready to
start asking podcasters for money, and you will get that money and grow it
100%.

21:50 Never stop asking. I cant remember how many people I asked for
money just to get my lawn business going. The dude that did still thanks me
to this day. At 16, youve got nothing but time. Work, work, work, and say no
to fun. Youll have fun when you get older. I get fiery about this because Im
25. If you were to see my life, you would say, This is unreal. It is unreal,
because we do unreal work here. We do unreal hustle. It can be done, but I
have no fun. I barely have friends, but I cant hang out with them, because I
made a choice when I was 12 that I was going to be a successful business
man and I was going to pay hard work when I was young so when I was older
I could enjoy my life.

22:56 If you decide to make that same choice, Im not saying be a

workaholic, but get your priorities straight. Build the foundation for your
business, get it rolling, and youll see that your business will take care of you.
You will slowly be able to step away, and youll be set. You wont need to ask
for $2,000 because youll be making that an hour. Knowing that 16 year olds
are listening to this makes me believe that were going to actually live in a
decent society.

2. Build Buzz

23:49 Sean: You need to build buzz. Lets say you have your validated idea
at this point. You know what people want, youve put out content, and that
content has done tremendously well. Now, you need to decide that youre
going to do a course. Thats probably what youve decided already, but I
wanted to take a step back and make sure that youre doing the right course
that people are actually going to buy. Now that you know that, you need to
build buzz. You need a minimum of six months that you announce a
course and work up to it. Thats what I would do. That sounds like a long
time.

24:26 Matt: During this time, as your building the buzz, are you taking the
feedback and building quality stuff around it and then sending it out on top of
building the buzz?

24:36 Sean: Youre announcing it before it exists, and youre getting people
hyped. Building buzz comes from Backwards Building.

You have to get people to care about the course way before you release it.

25:19 The first way to do this is to announce it well in advance. Dont try to
launch a course in three months and try to turn it around. I wont even notice.
People are busy; they dont notice announcements, they notice consistency.
Youve got to keep showing up and stay in the forefront of peoples
minds. For Learn Lettering, I posted a blog post every day for 30 days in a
row. It was a lot of work. There were still some people who hadnt heard

about it. Its insane. Youve got to stretch out that time and invest. Invest six
months minimum. Announce the course and dont expect anyone to care, but
keep driving traffic to that landing page.

26:18 Create a landing page to build buzz. Write the landing page as if the
course already existswhat it is, who its for, and what its going to do for
you. Youre doing this based on the target audience you want to reach, the
feedback youve gotten that validated this idea after you put out content, so
you say on your landing page, This is going to help you with this. You know
how youre having trouble with this thing, this is going to tell you the solution
in a way thats going to save you time.Thats how youre writing this, and
you havent even made it yet.

27:06 Capture interest. People are only going to come to this once. You have
one shot with a lot of people, and you need to capture that. If they just go
to your landing page and nothings there yet, theyre going to go away and
never come back. Capture them with a sign up form.

3. Backwards Building

27:26 You put this promise out here. You say, This is what this course is
going to be and what its going to do for you, and you essentially put the
press release as if its done. Thats your landing page. Now you have to
actually make that. You havent made it yet, but by Backwards Building,
youve put a stake in the ground and told people what the course is going to
be so people have time to get excited about it. It makes sure you know
exactly what you have to make, because you cant get distracted now. You
cant say, Maybe Ill add this or change this. You promised what it was
going to be, so it gives you clarity so you can work toward building this
course.

28:19 What percentage of the work should be on marketing versus actually

creating the product? This might sound crazy, but I would say absolutely no
less than 50/50, but I might even say as high as 80% marketing. The single
most important thing is getting people to care.It doesnt matter if you
have the best product in the world if people dont know about it. Its
not going to sell itself unless you have some kind of track record or existing
brand recognition. When we say, Good products sell themselves, thats
when people hear about them.

When people know about good products, they continue to sell themselves.

29:12 When you know about the iPhone, it continues to sell itself. You talk
about it with your friend, everyone hears about it. Thats why I err on the side
of marketing 80%. Your problem is that people dont know, so people dont
care. People need to care about you as a person. Thats how youre going to

get people interested in the beginning. You could focus on the product, you
could just say that the product is so great that they should care, but thats
going to be harder unless you have a really big marketing budget. Otherwise,
if youre bootstrapping this, starting with your own money and doing this
from scratch, you need to get people to care about you.
Get people to care about you first so they will care about your product.

30:29 Cory wanted to make this film. Hes wanted to make a short film, and
he was thinking that he would spend a bunch of time making it and put it out,
and its going to be so awesome that people will love it. The problem is that
people dont care. He also wanted to sell this. He worked really hard; hes
paying actors and showing up, and its a lot of work. He wanted to sell his
short film, even if its for $6 to $12.

31:11 Its not going to work, and the way I would recommend going about it
is this: provide a bunch of value about video itself. Now, Cory said, I dont
want to teach video, I want to make short films. I told him to get people to
care about him. Niche down, curate, and give people value. Teach what you
know, and get people to care. Do a weekly video show, because then
everyone will be excitedAwesome, Corys episode is out! Suddenly, Cory
makes this short film and he starts mixing in his behind-the-scenes in his
teaching videos. Hes bringing all of this in, and eventually it will go live and
people will buy it because they care about him. They care that Cory made it,
not because theres a short film they would spend $6 on. They care about
you because youve given them value.

4. Video & the Value Perception

33:02 Kieran asks, Audio courses, good idea or notif its suitable for the
material of course? Video is the most difficult of all the mediums to produce
because it takes the most amount of work. If you have podcasting, its just
audio. If you have writing, its just words. You can take as long as you want to
write, edit, and rearrange it before you post it. Audio is live, so you can chop
it up a little bit, but theres less freedom and flexibility because its recording.
With video, you have everything you have with audiowhich still needs to be
top-notchbut you also have the visual: lighting, color correction, delivery,
different cameras, and its just a huge production.

34:01 Its a lot of work, but in exchange for that, you have a really high value
perception. If I put out the 100,000 words I wrote for Learn Lettering 2.0,
which is still in its introductory rate, people would not have paid the price it
is because of the value perception. All of those words, however many, are in
the course. Its like a book, but theres also video, so the value perception is
higher. If you want to do a course, you should do video, unless you

dont care about money. If youre going to do video, you need to do a good
job.

34:57 Matt: I cant just use my webcam or GoPro?

35:00 I dont think you should. With that said, if thats all you have, its a
mindset thing. We probably have $30,000 worth of camera gear. Ive been
investing for years, because I care a lot about the quality. I didnt start out
with that; I started with a single camera. Its an investment, but you should
work toward that. Does that mean you have to spend $30,000 before you do
a video course? Noits about your mindset. If all you have is a GoPro, dont
use the built in audio, but get a mic.

35:38 Dont just shoot it wherever and ignore the white balance. Close the
blinds, pick up a $20 light at a hardware store, look up how to diffuse the light
and reflect it. Hustle and make it look good. Spend a ton of time on postproduction and color correction and make it look decent. Cory, youre a video
guy, so you know what goes into this. If youre going to produce a course, do
you feel like everything Ive said is a lot of pressure, or does it make sense?

36:28 Cory: I dont feel pressure, but maybe Im not the best person to ask. I
feel very comfortable with what I would do and how I would do it. My process
always starts with writing, and I still have a lot of that to do. I plan to write
maybe ten lessons, but Im only on four. Once I write it, Ill go back and
perfect it to see if it flows well. Do I really want this as the first lesson? All
that kind of stuff. Then its just a matter of doing it and doing your best work.

5. Start With Writing

37:40 Sean: If you want to make a course, you need to learn to write 1,000
words minimum a day. Do more. I wrote 100,000 words in six or eight weeks.
Thats what it takes. If you want to make an epic course, youve got to
learn to write. If you cant write 1,000 words a day, you need to stop
thinking about doing a course and start thinking about showing up every day
and writing. Everything you do starts with writing, whether its a blog post,
podcast, videos, or a course. No one is going to pay $497 to see you show up
and ramble. We have hours upon hours of lessons for Learn Lettering of
highly scripted, highly edited material. Its pristine quality.

38:37 There are consultants for Infusionsoft that charge $500 an hour
theyre normal people like you, so its not 100% efficiency. Theyre not writing
down and scripting their answers and delivering it in a perfectly edited
format, it has fluff in it because were humans. A course should have none of
that fluff. It should be high quality, just the very best, everything thats
prepared. I get people asking for discounts and payment plans, and I
say, No, go save up your money. Stop asking if you can send me this

amount a month and get access; put that amount in your savings account,
and when youre ready, come back and buy this. I dont want your money.

39:44 I know that I would make more sales if I did payment plans. I know that
if I did discounts for someone because of the conversion rates from their
country, thats the economy. Thats the market. Thats real life. Because I
make my courses to be ten times the value, it holds its value no matter what.
If you just want the business modules, its still ten times as valuable. Buy the
whole thing. Stop asking me for half of the modules. I get people writing in
asking for discounts; its already introductory rate, and they want it even
cheaper. Youre going to get that every time.

Know your target audience and be confident about your price.

40:40 I got an email from someone who said, In my country, this course is a
months wages. I couldnt have spent my money better. I get more opposite
responses, but those people are not my target audience. Know your target
audience and stick to your guns.

41:11 Matt: If they dont want to have the discipline to put that money away,
like Seans saying, the course isnt for them. Theyre not going to be
dedicated and take in that information like someone who is going to put up a
month of their wage. Theyre going to appreciate all the time you put into
that course and soak it up.

41:29 Sean: Theres your litmus test. Are you ready to produce a course? The
answer is, are you ready to write 1,000 a day? Are you doing that? Can you
do that? If not, you have no business doing a course.

6. Craft a Launch Sequence

42:03 People dont notice announcements, they notice consistency. If you

want to do something, do it consistently. If you think you care about
something and you want people to care about it, do it no less than weekly.
People live their lives in weekly cycles, and it resets every week. They do
their routine, watch their shows, and it resents, so if you do it less often,
people dont care at all. Weekly is minimum, daily is the key. Less than
weekly, you dont exist. Weekly, okay, you can play.

Publishing weekly is good, but if you canproduce high quality content

daily, thats when you win.

42:51 Im not talking about some measly 400 to 600 word blog post, lets get
into the thousands here. Lets hustle. Lets put something out there. Ive
preached this stuff, and then I actually did it with my 30 day blogpost series.
It was a total of 45,000 words, and I did it all in a row. For various reasons Ive

talked about on other episodes, I set the deadline that I did, and I did the
amount of work that I did in a certain amount of time, which was a little bit
intense.

43:26 I would recommend that you dont necessarily do a new post every
single day, but you could build a queue in advance. Corys doing that; hes
writing ten in advance, and thats going to help him out a lot. If you wrote
fifteen of your daily blog posts in advance, during the full 30 days, you could
write a blog post every other day and be fine.

43:53 The key here is to get on peoples radar. You need to provide content
daily if you can. I messed this up with the first launch in 2014. I announced it
six months in advance, so I got that part right, but then I sent five emails five
days before it. That was it. They werent even valuable emails. The emails
you should be sending in the launch sequence arent, Buy My Course!
Reasons to Buy My Course! Youll be Awesome if You Buy My Course! Its
giving people value around the content of the course. Give away some of
the coursetake 10% of it and give it away.

44:43 I did even more than that. I gave away four modules out of 15 or 16, as
well as several lessons from the master class. Theyre free on YouTube for
anyone. I wrote a ton of stuff thats in the Master Class and baked it into that
sequence. Give it away. Youre staying in the forefront of peoples minds, and
theyre realizing that youre the person to go to for value on this subject.

7. Create Urgency

46:28 There are several ways to create urgency. The worst way is to discount
everything and devalue all of your products, but this is what a lot of people
do. They discount, run a promotion, and later on theyll do some more
coupons. Its terrible; dont do that.

Create urgency through bonuses and limited time availability.

47:08 You can also create urgency through scarcity. If something is scarce
and theres only a certain amount, that creates urgency. You cant create
false urgency. If you have a digital product like a course, you cant
say, Theres only six courses left! False scarcity doesnt work. If you have a
physical item, you can mix these together: bonuses and scarcity. Maybe you
say, The first 20 people to buy this course get this t-shirt or will be mailed a
physical guide, or something like that. Thats a physical item, and you can
totally say that there are only 20 available. That makes sense to people,
because thats true scarcity.

47:59 You want to create some sort of urgency. If youre just launching and
saying, Hey, its available, youll make some sales from the people who are

really excited, but most people need an incentive to buy. People

think, Ill get around to it. Ill do it later. If they think that, itll never happen.
They will never come back. You need to give a reason for them to
buy now. Ive mixed these together. I release my courses at an introductory
ratethis is the early rate for the launch, for the people who are signed up
and are excited to buy. I regularly increase the price of my products. I will
increase the price and never bring it back down.

49:08 I will actually release it at a certain price, increase the price, and it
never comes back down. Thats not discounting. The fact that you know that
Im going to increase the price isnt a sort of flash-sale, but Im launching at
an introductory rate that you can take advantage of, because then Im going
to increase it permanently. Look at my track record. When I launched the first
Learn Lettering, I raised the price $50, and people still bought. I said, Im
raising the price in 48 hours and its never coming back down, and the first
time people didnt care, but the next time they realized that I was being
serious. I sold $50,000 worth of courses in a weekend.

50:04 Now, the problem is, you need the margin. You need the head room
to raise your price. If I cant confidently say that this is worth ten times
what Im asking, I need to add more value or the price is wrong. If I have that
head room, I can keep going up. I found that sweet spot, and I stopped
increasing the price. This is where people start freaking out, thinking, I need
money, so Ive got to squeeze some revenue out of this. Ill run a discount, do
a bundle, or put it on a deal site. Youre devaluing your products and youre
devaluing your brand. I now think of your name, you as a person, and your
products as discounted, devalued, and cheapened.

51:05 Ill tell you what I did for Learn Lettering. In the future, Ill tell you real
numbers on a seanwes podcast. I launched the course at $447its 15
modules and 75 lessons. You cant really wrap your mind around that figure
until you see it. If you go to LearnLettering.com and see the immensity of the
course material, you can scroll and scrollthere are modules with tons of
lessons, and each lesson is 10 or 20 minutes long. Its insane; its so much
value. People saw this and said that this is worth thousands, but there are
also people asking for discounts. I had the head room to go up.

52:12 Its a steal. I launched at $447, and Im going to increase it to

$699 permanently, where Im certain it will continue to sell. I launched it in
three tiers,
1. Starter Class
2. Intermediate Class
3. Master Class

52:34 You should use tiers when youre selling products (Related: e160
Nailing Your Product Launch the First Time). The Master Class is $699, the
Intermediate Class is $299, and the Starter Class is supposed to be $99. It
has mainly three modules, and last time, my old Intermediate Class had three
modules and I sold hundreds of them at $99. This time, I had a crazy idea,
and I decided to give away the Starter Class. Its $99 value and hundreds of
people would have bought it, but dont worry, I gave them a special upgrade
option for the new version. In the two days since its launched, my video
hosting bill is 600% over capacity. Four figure bill on the bandwidth, and Im
giving this away to thousands of people.

53:43 As of this recording, close to 4,000 people have signed up for the
starter class in less than two days. Theyre watching this high quality
material on premium video hosting that Im paying for. Im being a little bit
crazy, and Im not saying that this is necessarily what you need to do, but its
what I did. The first time, I sold the Starter Class for $29, and as soon as you
put a price tag on anything it cuts out a lot of the free people. I tried to create
a story here, so the story is that I should have sold this for $99 because I sold
the exact same amount last year for $99 and this time I added more, but I
decided to give it away.

54:35 I decided to do that because I think it will cause people to spread the
word, and that turned out to be the case. I posted on Instagram and got 300
comments that day, all with people tagging at least one other person. People
were tweeting itit was spreading like crazy. When they purchase it, even
though its free, they have to go through the checkout process. Thats how
they get an account and all of that. I still get people who say, I dont want to
fill out the information on the check out because its free.

55:28 Get out you freeloader! The reason Im giving you all this insane
amount of free value, and Im paying thousands to do it, is because I believe
that youll find value in this. People are tweeting this saying, I cant believe
how high quality the production of this is in the free stuff, its insane. I cant
thank you enough. Im like, Yes, you can; go buy something. I cant pay
my rent with your thanks. I know not everyone is going to buy, theyre going
to be freeloaders, but some of them will. People will purchase it with a $0
checkout, and on the confirmation page it says, So excited, Im going to be
sending you an email with access, why dont you spread the excitement?
Tweet this: I just signed up for Learn Lettering class by seanwes. Check it out,
Im so excited.

56:22 I get tweets like that every few minutes around the clock. Compare to
what else is on the market, these cheap $19 or $20 classes that are basic,
just a few lessons, not a Master Class with 75 lessons of business stuff.
Theyre trying to hit the low end of the market. You could pay $29 for a

shallow class or you could get $99 worth of a premium class for free. Im
hitting both ends, bringing people in on the low end. Remember that 30 day
sequence I wrote? This now gets repurposed. Someone buys the Starter
Class, and they start getting emails automatically, these 30 day emails I
already wrote, interjected with up-sells. Over time, a percentage of those
people convert, they upgrade.

57:47 It pays off. Thats the reason the launch is different this time. Were still
talking about creating urgency, and this time I didnt do a short launch. Im
giving away a ton and Im paying to do it, and I know thats going to hurt my
initial sales. I wanted it to do better than the last launch, but I know that Im
giving away so much that some people are going to think, I was going to
buy it, but I might as well get the free one and check it out. People have got
all this free material to go through, so if I did a 24 or 48 hour launch, it
wouldnt be enough time. I decided to extend it. Theres that initial bonus
period, but the introductory rate doesnt end until August 9th, 2015. You can
still get the master class at the introductory rate.

58:58 At the end, Im going to push it a lot more, because its going to be the
very last chance. Im increasing the price and its going up permanently. So
this time, I spread it out. I am happy to say that the launch has done better
than the first launch, but its far from over. Theres a lot of people who are
still in the free stuff that will convert at the very end. They always wait till the
last minute. A lot of people set a launch window, push it really hard at the
beginning, and then say, It ended, you missed out. They should have sent a
last-chance email, saying, This is the last day, go take advantage because
its going away.Then, send another last-chance email at two hours left.

Sending a Last Chance email will add 40% more revenue to your bottom line.
8. Keep Sales Going

1:00:38 Matt: Just from learning from Sean, I wouldnt do discounts. I would
probably throw in a bonus of some sort, because if I add something, that
wouldnt take away from the price but would provide more high quality.

01:02 Sean: Its a brilliant way to do it. Add another lesson, add another
module, add another bonus, and say, I just made this new thing and added
it, so its now even more valuable. Give it to all of your previous customers
always reward loyalty. The people who buy from me first always get the
best deal. They get the best price and the most value. The people who
discount are screwing their loyal customers.

1:01:40 Its not the discount bin, its the middle-finger bin. Thats what it is to
the previous customers. I bought a course, and then I saw it for free on a
discount site. Imagine how I feltit wasnt good. I felt like I was cheated. I

never wanted to go back and buy from that person again. Its this short term
thinking, this How can I squeeze all the money out of this first sale? Guess
what? Youre never going to get any more sales; all you did was squeeze
money out of one launch with no long-term sustainable business plan. Whos
going to come back and buy from you?

1:02:32 Not me, and I was going to. I enjoyed this course and got value out of
it, and then it was the strangest thing. It went from feeling like it was a
valuable course, that I actually recommended to many people, to me feeling
cheated. I felt like I should have gotten my money back or something, and
thats a weird feeling because I just went from feeling like I spent my money
well to thinking, Look at all these people getting it for free. I must have been
cheated. Thats terrible. You dont want that for your customers. Add value.

Instead of discounting, create new stories and new content around your
product.

1:03:23 In our case, we could keep making videos, add modules, write new
posts, add some sort of bonusbe creative and add more value. Its the
content thing. A lot of people want to promote their course and keep
saying, Go check out my course. Spam, spam, spam. I say, create new
content that is contextually around the topic of your course as an excuse to
get people there. I just made a new video as a screencast showing you how
to do this. If you liked it, go check out the course.Awesome, thats value and
its an excuse to get in front of people and promote your thing, because
thats what people actually resonate with and how you avoid being seen as a
spammer.

9. Close Strong

1:04:57 You dont want to just let your promotion period endclose strong.
Do a webinar. Do a live event, where you teach some of whats in the
premium version of the course, and treat it like a presentation. What can you
teach people? Its not just, Go buy my thing. I dont like that, and neither
will your audience. You have to give them some value. At the end, do a live
event and teach people something thats in the paid version of your
course. Give it awaystop being stingy. Stop worrying that no one is going
to buy it. Theyre not going to buy it unless they see actual value from you.

1:05:41 You cant make it this big mystery. People cant go as in depth
with a podcast or video as they can with a course. If they go into a
course, theyve got all these modules and lessons, they can mark it as
complete, they can take their time, they can come back day after day.
Theyre not going to do that with a podcast. I can give people Ten Steps to
Launching an Online Course, and do it in a podcast and people can listen to
it for free right now. But, if I made a course on launching courses, I could

really hone down these ten steps, break it down, and do videos, case studies,
and detailed stuff.

1:06:28 The people who really want that will get more value from it. I can
give this away for free and not worry about it. Dont worry about giving
stuff away. Close strong, show up, provide some value, and then say, This
offer is going away, the bonus is no longer available, and the price is
increasing permanently. Close strong and dont forget the end of the
promotion period.

Your product is only valued at whatever youre willing to sell it for.

If you discount the price, thats what itsworth.
10. Think About the Long-Game

1:07:48 This course, the thing youve poured your life and soul into for six
months, is nothing. This is only the beginning. Its a little blip. Right now,
youre looking ahead and you see this big mountain ahead of you. Stop
thinking like that and zoom out. Youre hustling, showing up, and suddenly
youre having the biggest spike everthats what I want you to think about.
This is Lambo Goal here, and we think big. This course youre going to do is
small. Its the beginning.

Dont be afraid to lose money or break even, because its not about this
courseits about the long-game.

1:09:08 Its about your brand perception. Why should people care about you,
come back to you, and continue to buy from you? Your first course is the
first experience people have with you. Set the precedent. Hire a
professional video crew, to the point where youre going to lose money, if you
care about winning. Im dead serious here. If you care about losing and you
want to be a loser, then squeeze all the money you can out of this. Stop
listening to me and go plan your discounts. Get some more money out of the
biggest mountain youll ever have in your life. Meanwhile, to me, thats just a
little blip on the radar.

1:09:53 This is getting people conditioned. Thats why Im giving so much

away, why we have multiple courses that will cost us thousands and all kinds
of expenses to produce that Im going to give away. Pure giveaway, because
Im about the ten-year game, for the future when Im charging thousands for
courses. Its coming. Youre going to buy them because you believe in what
Im doing, youve gotten value from them and it has changed your life. It has
changed your trajectory, your thinking, your mindset, and youre seeing
results for it. Youre making more money, your brand is higher quality, and
youre working with better clients. People actually care about your content;

they open your emails because of the value that Ive given you. Thats why
youre going to buy it, but thats years from now. Im going to have hustle for
years.
Should You Launch Your Course On Your Own Platform?

1:12:19 Sean: Devin asks, Should you spend money on your own platform
to launch your course or go on someone elses for your first course or two? I
learned the hard way; I did start on someone elses platform, and it ended up
not going well. It depends on how you look at it. I rarely see things as failures
because Im always looking for the positive: what have I learned? What can I
take away from this? I dont think it was a failure. I did get thousands of
students on this other platform.

1:13:12 I did make tens of thousands of dollars, so it sounds like a success.

This platform changed the game on me, and they didnt inform me. They
didnt give me control. They locked my price and wouldnt let me change it.
They sent out discounts whenever they felt like it, and I had no control
over the discounts being sent. I could send more if I wanted, but they
were sending out Presidents Day discounts and any excuse they could get.
Discount, discount, discount, and thats how theyre branding themselves and
how I am being branded by association, by being on their platform. I said that
I didnt like it, and they said, Okay, we understand, but you cant change
your price. You cant remove your course.

1:14:11 The best I could do was get them to deactivate it from getting future
students, but I could not remove my content. They wouldnt let me. It was
terrible. Did I learn things from it? Yes, I did. Did I get my feet wet with
teaching? I did. Do I recommend it? I dont. I recommend that you start with a
workshop in person. Get with real people. Stop guessing at what their
struggles are and find out. Say, Hows it going? What can I help you
with? Learn a ton from that. Do more of those, and eventually do a course.

If you use someone elses platform to sell your course, realize that youre giving up
control and they have the power over how your brand is perceived.

1:15:09 They control whether your content is discounted and whether you get
to set a good price for it. Do you want to make 40% of $19? It got even
worse. I could not only no longer set the price of my own course because
they locked it, but eventually they switched to a membership system and
didnt ask or tell me. They changed their whole platform and everyone else
seemed to go along with it. Now, you just get a cut of their membership.
Every time they promote the course or you promote your own course, youre
promoting their membership. Its no longer about you, your material, or your
value. Someones going to pay a few dollars a month to get access to this.

1:16:07 Compare that to me, charging three or four figures for a single
course. Its all about how you want to be positioned. If you want to be in the
discount bin, if you want to be cheap, if you want your brand to be devalued
and someone else have control over it, go join another platform. If you dont,
you need to build your own platform. Its a lot of work. Its worth it if youre
on board with number ten, the long game. It does take a lot of effort. There
are some solutions out there, and some are easier than others, but they have
less control than others.

1:16:49 Ive used WooCommerce and Sensei, which is their teaching

integration. You also have to have groups integration, and if you want to have
subscriptions, youll need subscriptions. Theres a lot of plugins, and it does
take some development, but in my opinion, its been very much worth it.

Use Tiers to Attract High Revenue Clients

1:17:15 Robert asks, When launching your first course, should you create
tiered content, or should you give people a sense of the value of the basic
content before expecting them to want to buy into a higher tier with more
content? You do want to create tiered content. Let me tell you what to do in
most cases. I havent always done this, but for good reason. In most cases,
you want to have your product. Lets say this is a book or something like that.
Three is the sweet spot for tiers, because it lets people feel like they have
choices without it being too much. If you give people three choices, theyll
think, Which one do I want? If you give them one, they think, Do I want it
or not? Youre going to miss out.

1:18:24 Say your product is a book. The three tiers you want to create are
above and beyond the book, not the book, two thirds of the book, and one
page of the book. You dont go down, you dont cripple it, you add value. Start
with the book and then go up and say, Heres a book and a guide, some
videos, recordings, and interviews with experts.Theres tier two. Theres a
sweet spot of 1x where its just your book, 2.2x the price, and then 5x the
price. For the 5x, youve got to be really creative. Maybe that includes a
membership, a community forum, or a one hour consult with you. Be creative
and add some value. Not a lot of people are going to get the highest tier, but
if you just do the book, you miss out on a ton of high end revenue potential.

1:19:28 Theres a ton of people who want to spend money, who will not
even consider something unless its a certain amount. Im guilty of this
because I like premium things. Now, I have to tell the story of my chair
breaking. Im working hard and I lean back in my chair and it snaps. The back
just broke off, and Im lying on the floor with bruises. I set out to buy a chair
and said, Im not paying less than four figures for a chair. Im looking by
price. Im buying a nice chair. I deserve to be comfortable and I dont want

my back to have bruises. I bought an Aeron chair, and I bought the nice
version; it was $1,200.
If you assume that everyone is looking for cheaper prices, youll miss out on a
ton of revenue.

1:21:35 Youre missing people like me, who only want to buy this if its
serious. I could probably buy a $400 or $600 chair and maybe never be on
the floor with bruises. Maybe, who knows? Its worth it to me to have that
piece of mind. Someone out there is looking at your course and
thinking, Only $199? I want to learn character design. I want to be a
legitimate artist here. You must not even know what youre doing. How can I
pay my bills with $200 a month? Youre expecting to teach me to make a
living as a character artist for $200? Obviously, your course is not in depth
enough for me. You dont know what youre talking about. Dont miss out
on a high end revenue potential. I did it wrong. I crippled my product.

1:23:07 For my first Master Class with Learn Lettering, the actual product was
the ten module class. I crippled it by saying, Get part of it and its
cheaper. Later on, I realized that I left some revenue potential on the table. I
could have gone up. Forget all the people who want to spend $29. Heres the
class, its $300. You can buy the class, or you can buy the class and get
access to a community forum. Or, you can buy the class and get access and
receive a one-on-one consultation, portfolio review, or a group coaching calls.
Get creative. Only ten people do it? If you charge $999 for that tier, thats not
bad. Are you arguing with an extra $10,000?