AP 1181: How Can I Make Launching an Online Course Easier?

AP 1181: How Can I Make Launching an Online Course Easier?

Pat Flynn:
What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to episode 1,181 of Ask Pat 2.0. You're about to listen to a coaching call between myself and an entrepreneur just like you. And today we're talking with Wendy Lewis, who was once working at a marketing and ad agency. She's a writer. She still writes; however, she started something with relation to a new passion with reflexology, helping a lot of people through the body. And what's really interesting is that in this conversation today, you're going to hear something that's very common amongst several entrepreneurs who are trying to create something new. That this thing is a very large, very tough project. And in Wendy's case, she wants to create an online course.

And you'll hear her describe, I want you to pay attention to how she describes an online course before we start talking about the solutions to making this online course easier. Because as you'll find out, as I talk about here in this conversation, things are often a lot easier than we think they should be. And there's a lot of things that I've learned over the years that I pass on to Wendy, that I would love to pass on to you here as you're listening to this conversation as well. So whether it is an online course or something else that you want to create, let's get through it, and let's get through it together.

Here is Wendy Lewis. You can find her writing at WendyZLewis.com or her reflexology website at PranaReflexology.com. Here we go.

Wendy, welcome to AskPat. Thank you so much for joining us today. How are you?

Wendy Lewis:
I'm wonderful. How are you?

Pat:
I'm doing excellent. And I'm really excited to help out, and I'm sure everybody else is excited to listen in and hear what's going on. So why don't you tell us what's going on and who you are and what you do?

Wendy:
Sure. Okay. So who I am and what I do kind of will take a while, but, so, strap your seatbelt. I've worked in marketing and advertising for like 25-plus years. And I started out in ad agencies in New York City. And also, I tend to be what a lot of people call a scanner or a Renaissance soul in that, I'm multi-passionate; I have many passions, many, many things that motivate me and that I'm good at. A lot of people think that, well, there's that saying, Jack of all trades, master of none. I'm one of those people who like, I'm actually pretty good at a lot of things.

Pat:
And that's a blessing and a curse.

Wendy:
Oh my God, it is, it is. Because the curse is that I have such a hard time focusing sometimes, which I want to talk to you about. So I've worked in marketing and advertising, mostly as a copywriter, for 25-plus years. And at the same time that I was developing this advertising career, I also had this huge, deep passion for health and wellness, fitness, inspiring people to be the best they can be, live their best lives. And the way that I did that a lot was through freelance writing when I could, but also teaching. I taught fitness for a while. And 20 years ago, I got certified in reflexology. At the same time that I was working in advertising, I had this reflexology business that has been going concurrently at the same time, all through the years.

Somewhere along the way, I realized that there weren't these two very different disciplines that I was doing, it was rather the common thread through all that I was doing was that I really wanted to help people and motivate people, and I had this passion for health and wellness.

So I kind of shifted and pivoted my writing career a bit. And I started doing health and wellness writing. And actually, toward the end of my career, I did marketing writing for a hospital system. I did marketing writing at the corporate headquarters of a very well-known retail pharmacy chain, whose name I will not mention. Yeah, I don't know if I can or not, so I won't, but if you shop in one of these stores, there's a good chance you saw one of my things. And I'm sorry, I kind of apologize being funny, but it's like, I'm probably one of those people that wrote one of those, “Shop! Sale now!” emails that flooded your inbox. So, but anyway.

Pat:
So, writing, copywriting in the medical field, and then kind of moving on to what then after that?

Wendy:
Yeah. Reflexology. So for those people who don't know, reflexology is very simply put, it's kind of like massage therapy for feet. I love working with athletes and helping people regain function. And what happened was, a few years ago, at the point where I was kind of really getting up to here with the corporate world, I'd always really, really wanted to be more of an entrepreneur. And I just hadn't really reached that level of success with it. So I was hanging onto the job, the golden handcuffs. And so as fate would have it, at the point where I really said, “I cannot stand this anymore,” my soul was dying, I have to quit, wouldn't you know it, they had corporate layoffs, and I was one of several hundred people who was laid off.

It was kind of like, okay, the universe is speaking to me, saying, “Here's this wonderful severance package. Go focus on reflexology.” And so I have. I'm still doing some freelance writing. Actually, for a year, I tasked myself with a really fun project. I wrote a blog post every week that's like inspirational, but with a modern-day twist. I kind of call it the fusion of “All I need to know I learned in kindergarten” combined with the subtle art of not giving up.

Pat:
Where's your blog? Where can we read this and follow your journey?

Wendy:
My writing name is WendyZLewis.com. Lewis is L E W I S, yeah. And so I'm working on compiling all those blog posts into a book. And I'm really excited to get that out, and so I can reach people with that. But as far as paying the day-to-day bills, I have this wonderful private reflexology practice now. And although I love working with people and working with clients, I find that I'm kind of back to that trading hours for dollars thing. And I'm sure that's something you've probably heard a few times.

So along the way, I think I got the idea from one of your broadcasts. You had a guest on, and he had this innovative way of teaching people to play piano. And he created an online course. And I think that last we checked in, he had earned about a million dollars from this course, which is amazing. It's wonderful. So I was thinking, “Okay, reflexology course.” And also in the last year with COVID, we've all been spending a lot more time at home. People are working at home, they're with their families. So I thought, my thought process was going more toward, not so much teaching people to be professional reflexologists, but rather using reflexology as a healing tool to bond with spouses, partners, children, help create deeper bonds with people they love and care about.

I've kind of tested out the ideas with a few people. And so far reception has been very good, but—but the problem, and what I wanted to discuss with you is, first of all, there seems to be this huge learning curve as far as creating an online course. And from my background in marketing and doing some video production, it's not exactly foreign to me. My reflexology website is good. I've got videos up on there, but creating an online course just seems to have this gigantic learning curve. And it's almost overwhelming. And also, I feel like there's probably going to be at least a year before I can really launch this thing.

Pat:
Why do you say that?

Wendy:
Well, from my learning so far, I'm taking an online course actually about how to create online courses. It just seems to be this huge thing, and so many things I have to learn and get into place first. However, I'm thinking, too, I'm wondering if there are any suggestions you might have, if there are any ways to get some smaller income streams started to kind of push me forward with some momentum. You got any thoughts thus far?

Pat:
Definitely, Wendy. I have some ideas for you. As you know, I'm very proficient with online courses and have gotten a system down for creating them. And we have now 10 online courses, both paid and free, in the SPI world. And so this is a great conversation that we're going to have because I am so in love with courses and what they can do. They allow you to share information, to take that information once, package it, and then continually help people over time and get results. And that's really fascinating. And the reason why I ask that question, “Well, why do you think it's going to take a year?” is because, very common, we often think these things, like writing a book, which feels so heavy or creating an online course, which feels so heavy and different from writing blog posts, we put them on this pedestal. We treat them as this giant thing, where the real strategy is, how do we make this as simple as possible for us?

If this were easy, what would it look like? That's a question that Tim Ferriss asked me once. And oftentimes we, especially people like you and I who are so into everything, we try to put everything into it, and then it takes a lot of time. So let me give you a strategy that may work, and we can kind of talk about it and maybe massage it if you will, to turn it into something, pun intended there, so that we can actually maybe get a plan for you coming out of this conversation. Does that sound okay?

Wendy:
Yeah. Thank you.

Pat:
Okay, cool. So the very first thing is to understand what is this course transformation going to be? Right. Before we lay down the bricks on what this course is going to actually include, what is the ultimate outcome? This influences what the sales and marketing is going to be about, which luckily you are proficient in from your previous career. And secondly, it helps a person understand whether or not this is for them or not for them. If it's a little confusing as to whether or not this is the transformation they want, then there's analysis paralysis. People aren't going to be sure, and they're not going to make a decision, right? So we have to be so clear with what the transformation, what's the promise of this course, what's life like on the other end of this. The more clear you can get with that, the more clear a decision, yes or no, is going to be for a person up front. And that's going to make everything moving forward so much easier for you. So that's kind of like step number one.

Step number two will then be like reverse-engineering that result into a course format. Meaning, okay, what are the steps required to go from where they're at now and the problems and the pains that they have to that goal that we have? I know a classic way to do this is, for example, you take a Post-it Note and you write down that transformation and boom, you just smack it on the right side on the wall. And then you take another Post-it Note and you have, okay, here's where they're at now. Here's the pains that they have. Boom, you smack that on the left-hand side. And now your job is to fill in the gaps in the middle. How do we go from left side to right side? And my favorite way to do this is to not think linearly to start, because our brains do a great job of coming up with ideas, but not a great job of coming up with them in the order that they should be coming out in.

And so we can actually take advantage of this by going, okay, let's just like throw up other Post-it Notes, almost kind of spewing them out of you, whatever you think may be included to go from A to Z, right? Anything and everything, even if it's bad, we can remove and edit later, but we need to turn off the editing part of our brain and turn on that creative, okay, just “Here's everything I know. here's everything that I've learned. That just goes in here.” And something magical happens because at this point you start to see clusters of things. Oh, these four Post-it notes seem to kind of relate to each other. Okay, let's take the Post-it notes out and move them around and create a little cluster there. Here's another cluster, another grouping. And these groups start to form, and you start to maybe go, “Okay, well there's two of these. Let me remove one of them. Oh, this seems to be missing here. Let me add another one.”

And it's a very sort of organic sort of brainstorming session, mind mapping, if you will, that then results in, “Wow. Here is cluster number one. That seems to be step two in this process. Here's another cluster, which is the first part, which is like mindset. Here's the fifth part, which is like the final step.” And you can start to move things around. And all of a sudden, you have your outline in front of you just kind of magically.

I've done this process with writing books. I've done this with smaller pieces of content, with every single course was built in this way, because then the outline becomes your production plan. The outline becomes your production plan. When you nail the outline, you don't have to nail exactly what the title of each lesson is or the modules, but at least it gives you an understanding, almost like a prototype. This is actually a form of what this will become, and you can even share it with people at that point. The people you've already connected with, you can be like, “Hey, this is what I'm thinking of creating. How does this feel to you?” And you can get them to start poking holes for you. You can get them to start resonating with it and validating what you're doing, which is really interesting.

And then at this point, after maybe another round of changes based on that feedback, you have a really interesting decision to make. You could do what a lot of people do, which is, you film the whole thing. You just kind of go, “Okay, module one I'm going to get done this week. Module two I'm going to get done this week.” You have the whole thing done. And then you sell it all at the end. That's sort of option A. Option B is to fill module one and then you pre-sell it. And then you can build the next modules sort of with those students in there.

Option C, which is becoming more and more popular now, this is what you might call a cohort-based course to start out with. You take a group of people who said they're interested, and really, you don't need very many to do the job because the purpose is on that first launch to not make a huge amount of money. It is to walk people through this process, to help them get results, to fine-tune the course. You've already gotten a little bit of payment upfront from those beta testers. They're almost forcing you to create it as you go, right? So, hey, week one starts on this date, and then you prepare the workshop or the lesson for that week. And then they do homework and they come back with you the next week, and that's becoming module two. And then eventually at the end, you'll have everything filmed, which could then lead to your digital course that could come out later more publicly.

And the beauty of this is now you have real results from real people who've gone through it with you before, which does two things for you. Number one, obviously testimonials are great for sales, but number two, you now have the confidence that this thing actually works. And so now you're going to be more confident in your messaging moving forward. And the cool thing about that is you're building it as you go. You don't need to produce the whole thing upfront. You could kind of go along with your students.

That's kind of a quick rundown of different ways that you could approach this, and it wouldn't take you a year to do, unless you purposely don't carve out the time to do it, obviously. How are you feeling with these options or what we've discussed so far?

Wendy:
No, that's very interesting. I'm curious, how many people would you feel is like a good number if I were to do like the beta testing group?

Pat:
I would say 10.

Wendy:
Okay. So that's pretty small.

Pat:
Yeah. Pretty small because the purpose is, again, that's your first launch and it's just to kind of get the bugs out, if you will, and just get it out there; it forces you to get it out there. And then come the second time with these testimonials and your confidence, maybe now you can start maybe putting some marketing dollars behind it. Maybe you can start utilizing the email list that you have a little bit more and going much bigger, much wider, more aggressive, maybe a campaign behind it, where for two weeks you write blog posts that sort of open people up to this idea that dispel all the myths and then kind of you have this special launch with a special discount. Your beta students likely are going to get a little bit of a discount on eventually what this will become as far as price, but they also get more access to you than anybody ever will in the course launches in the future.

That's the benefit of doing this live with you in a way, is they get to ask questions almost in real time with you at certain moments. The way to do that would be even just as simple as a Zoom call. Say for two hours every Monday, we're going to get on a Zoom call. There's a one hour every Friday to just ask questions, if you want to pop in; you don't have to. And then by the end of four weeks, boom, you have all this stuff so that [insert transformation here]. So it doesn't have to take a year.

Wendy:
That sounds great. Do you have any suggestions on how I might be able to find some people? Now, one of the great things about doing a course that draws me to it is the fact that I can reach people outside of my geographical region. But the downside is I don't know how to reach those people yet.

Pat:
Well, I mean, whether it's a digital course, I mean, the cool thing is—yeah, you're right. It doesn't have to be and it shouldn't be in person, this is anywhere in the world people can come in. So there's a number of different ways you can do this. You can utilize your network and ask people that you already have contact with to see if there's anybody that they might know that'd want to participate in this. And you could offer those people who send you people, maybe, “Hey, I'll give you $50 if you send anybody over to take this beta course with me.” You can offer them that, and you don't pay them unless they bring people over. So there's really no loss.

Another way to do it would be to, for example, promote a free training. Maybe it's a 30-minute or one hour, everything you need to know about reflexology, in and out. Maybe it's not everything. Maybe it's just a small little thing, right? Or how to cure your headaches with reflexology, or whatever the one solution is. Right? And then you promote this webinar. It's the one thing people know that they're just going to be with you for a short period of time. Or maybe even if it's a live stream on Facebook or Instagram, or what have you, where you're just kind of talking about and providing value. And at the tail end of this thing, the tail end of this webinar, if you will—I prefer the webinar approach because you get to collect email addresses up front and it's more of like an event versus just, oh, kind of a casual live—but it's a training that you get access to. You sit down with the chat room, and you're kind of watching Wendy get in there and talk and teach and provide value.

And then at the end you go, “Hey, by the way, I'm also launching a program. It's in its beta phase right now. We're only going to take a few amount of people, but if you're interested in this, you're going to get a discount. Here's what it entails. Here's what you're going to get. You're going to work with me for four weeks. If you're interested, here's the sales page.” And now of course, because you have those emails from that webinar, you can follow up with them. You can give them more information. “Hey, if you want to chat about this, give me a call. Would love to get on a phone call with you to just talk you through what this is going to entail.” It's going to take a little bit of work. It's not a just throw up the webpage and it's not a, if you build it they will come sort of situation. But if you don't build it, nothing's going to happen.

Wendy:
That's for sure. No, this is really interesting. Just the idea of thinking much smaller and breaking things down into very small chunks. I mean, I've been kind of—what I've been getting into on my reflexology website lately is just, a lot of my clients are asking the same questions. For example, like, “Oh, I feel so embarrassed I fell asleep.” You know? So I made this video, “Is it okay to fall asleep during a session?” And you know, new clients who haven't been to see me yet, they see my video, they get little acquainted with me. They get their questions answered. I'm having a really, a lot of fun doing the videos. Yeah. So it's like, what you're saying really makes a lot of sense in the way that, for example, I could just say, “Hey, tune in. I'm going to have this thing about how to reduce stress with this one simple reflexology technique, blah, blah, blah.”

Pat:
Great headline. Love it.

Wendy:
Yeah. Okay. So yeah, these are great ideas.

Pat:
I love this because then what this does is it allows you to fail small so you can win big. It's an iterative approach. This is what I talk about in my book, Will it Fly?. Let's take like a baby step, number one. We get a green light? Cool. Let's move on to next step. Green light? Cool. Next step. Green light? Cool. Let's keep going. Versus what most people do is they kind of like keep it all inside. And then when it's ready finally, in who knows how long, you let the world know, and then nobody says anything, and you're shouting from the rooftops. And you have no connections, no previous green lights where you've made contact with people to validate anything that you could go back to.

The nice thing about this strategy is anybody who comes to the webinar or the training, you know they're interested in this, and now you're already building a relationship and providing value, which then allows for a conversation to happen. And the natural conclusion to the end of the conversation is the start of this program, versus just you entering the party and going like, “Dr. Wendy here. Buy my thing! I know we don't know each other yet, but I promise this is great.”

So that's kind of the approach. It's a little bit longer, but it's a little bit more organic. This is where sales is headed in the future is the relationship approach, the providing-value-first approach, and having the solution just be like a no-brainer. You want people to go, “Wendy, this is so great. How can I pay you for more of this information?” “Oh, by the way, I have this thing here that could…” You know?

Wendy:
Sounds good. Quick question. Would you have any suggestions for how I might know what I do, like if I were to teach reflexology, obviously if I'm face-to-face in-person with somebody it's very easy. They can see what I'm doing. But what I am teaching, I think this has been one of my fears, is that I can't just use a slide, and I can't exactly have somebody with their feet right here and demonstrate something. So do you have any suggestions on how I might be able to bridge that gap?

Pat:
Yeah. Let me ask you a question. If I told you I was really stressed and you wanted to help me out today and use reflexology to do that, but I wouldn't have internet access for the next two days and I have to come back and watch something that you provided me, what would you do to help me? How would you help me personally in that way, where you couldn't touch my feet right now, but you show me how to do something?

Wendy:
Probably the easiest way would be to just shoot a really quick, quick video and send it to the person.

Pat:
And what would be in that video?

Wendy:
Well, I have some fake feet. I mean, if I could get like a real foot to show them, or if it's, I could use my own or I have these teaching—it's kind of funny, but I have like these plastic teaching feet, I could probably use one of those.

Pat:
There you go.

Wendy:
Or a PDF or something. Yeah.

Pat:
There it is, you just told me the answer. And actually, I was going to ask you if there was such a thing as fake feet you could use. You've already said that there are. If you were going to show somebody how to do CPR, you have like that dummy that you kind of do the thing with, and then you're good to go. It sounds kind of weird right on the outside, but if you're like, hey... I would just kind of play it up. I'd be like, “Hey guys, I want to introduce you to my foot. It's actually not my foot. This is a dummy foot. I know it's weird, but this is what I can do to best teach you right now.” And then it's like, it's passed. If you give it a name, like here, this is Freddie the Foot or something, I don't know.

Wendy:
It's so funny you say that, because I do have a Freddie the foot.

Pat:
Are you serious?

Wendy:
I'm totally serious. It's one of those, you know those gag feet that people put in their trunk to make it look like they have a person in the trunk. That has been one of my best teaching tools, Freddy the Foot.

Pat:
Oh, that's good. It's not like bloody or anything, is it?

Wendy:
No, no.

Pat:
Okay. Because I know that I've seen some of those on the street where it's like, you know, there's like...

Wendy:
No, no. Very friendly.

Pat:
That's really funny, Freddy the foot. I guess that's just a common name for a foot, I guess.

Wendy:
I know. Who knew that all feet were named Freddy?

Pat:
Cool, Wendy. So how are you feeling after this? Do you have sort of next steps in mind?

Wendy:
Yeah, I feel really inspired. Actually, I'm going to just kind of sit down and brainstorm. What is the smallest thing I can do right now? I have not an extensive email list, but I do have an email list of about 150 people. I mean, I could definitely reach out to them. I know a few people in a coaching group who are in other parts of the world and say, “Hey, I'm going to do this thing.” Maybe I'll have this little webinar or something and, hey, try to get people interested. Pick a date and go for it.

Pat:
I love that. Yeah. I mean, it could be a webinar, or it could even be even easier, a one-page PDF that solves all these problems that you know if people download, they're interested in it. If you put it up there and it doesn't move at all, it's like, “Okay, well what does that mean? Good thing I didn't create the whole course first.” Like, let's figure out this problem. How do we position this message? How do we get them interested? What's the gateway or what's the door to come in? Then we can move on to the next steps, bring them in the door and then you serve them the hors d'oeuvres, welcome them in and then...

Wendy:
That's true, Pat. And one thing that I like about this is what I just mentioned is like, well, how do I show them something visually? I'm realizing that that might actually be a positive to this potential negative is that, well, we can talk about it face to face, but then there has to be a follow-up. “Oh, I'll send you this video. Oh, I'll send you this whatever that shows exactly what I'm talking about.” So yeah.

Pat:
That's great. Good job. That's fantastic. I like it, Wendy.

Wendy:
I'm so motivated now. Thank you! Thank you, Pat.

Pat:
Good. That was my job. You're welcome. One more time, where can people find your work?

Wendy:
Yes, my writing, if you want to go to my writing site, it's WendyZLewis.com, and reflexology, everything you want to know about reflexology, is Prana—that's “P” like Peter, R-A-N-A-Reflexology.com.

Pat:
Pranareflexology.com. Awesome. Thank you, Wendy. This has been great. Appreciate you.

Wendy:
Thank you, Pat. You take care.

Pat:
All right. I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Wendy. And again, just to point out, a lot of these things that are often seen as much bigger than they actually are—this is a very common problem with us entrepreneurs. And as Tim Ferriss always says, and this is something that he's taught me, “If this were easy, what would it look like?” And let's start there before we overcomplicate things.

So Wendy, I want to wish you all the best of luck. Again, you can check out Wendy's writing at WendyZLewis.com or her reflexology website at prana, that's P-R-A-N-A, not fish piranha, but prana, P-R-A-N-AReflexology.com. Wendy, thank you so much.

And thank you for listening all the way through. I appreciate you, appreciate all the reviews that have been coming in. This is just incredible as we're getting into the 1,200th episode of AskPat. Just want to say thank you again so much. And I look forward to serving you in the next episode. Hit that subscribe button if you haven't already. And as always, peace out, and Team Flynn for the win. Cheers.

Thanks for listening to AskPat at AskPat.com. I'm your host, Pat Flynn. Our senior producer is Sara Jane Hess. Our series producer is David Grabowski, and our executive producer is Matt Gartland. Sound editing by Duncan Brown. AskPat is a production of SPI Media. We'll catch you in the next session.