AP 1182: How Do I Test and Launch My Course When I Have Zero Reach?

AP 1182: How Do I Test and Launch My Course When I Have Zero Reach?

Pat Flynn:
What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to episode 1,182 of AskPat 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 William Barton from BootSpy.com, as in a spy, S-P-Y. BootSpy.com. He's got a really interesting question today, one that maybe you are familiar with in your own head, and that is how do I launch the thing that I have when I don't have a list or I don't have anybody out there who knows that I exist yet? How do I validate this thing? How do I make sure and ensure that it's something that's going to work before I put all this time and effort into it?

And if you know me, you know I've written a book called Will It Fly?. We're going to talk a lot of the principles and the strategies and techniques that I talk about in that book with William today.

Whether you’re launching something new or even something old, you want to build that audience, you want to test it first, so let's talk about it. Here he is, William Barton from BootSpy.com.

William, welcome to AskPat. Thanks for joining us today.

William Barton:
Thank you for having me, Pat. I just want to say first off, I started listening to you about three years ago, and you were one of the first podcasts I started listening to in the entrepreneurial space. And now I've been doing it full time for a year and a half. So I just want to say thank you publicly. I owe you so much. I'm so thankful. And I know so many people listening, they're going through the same thing I did.

Pat:
That's awesome. Well, thank you for sharing that. I appreciate that. Tell us what you're doing now. What does business look like? And have you introduce yourself.

William:
My name is William Barton. I started off as a freelance writer. That's kind of how I got started. I started working with a men's fashion online blog niche authority site. I started working with them, and I've been doing that... I still am doing that now for about a year and a half. And the owner of that site, he and I partnered up on something called Peacoat Media, and we run a series of niche blogs. One of them's called BootSpy where we just cover men's boots specifically. So we're basically doing that authority site niche model kind of building affiliate sites, advertising revenue, that kind of thing. So yeah, we're getting a start in that. Been really exciting.

So yeah, that's my story so far.

Pat:
That's really cool. Where can I help you? Sounds like things are moving along pretty well.

William:
Yeah, absolutely. As I said, I've been working in this men's fashion space, and through that site, that site has about 500,000 visitors per month. And through that site, my main job has been to really focus on sponsored posts and bringing in new brands and that whole process and what that's like. And over the year and a half, I've developed this process that I think is really, really unique. So my business partner and I, we want to take that and share that with other authority site owners, people with blogs between 25,000 and 750,000 visitors a month. And we want to create a course around the whole idea of how to reach out to brands for sponsored posts, how to express your value, the whole thing from start to finish.

So we have this idea for a course. I have all the modules written out, pretty much ready to go, but the problem is I have no audience, no list, and currently no brand around the subject. So I don't have any blogging tips, brand or anything like that. And I was wondering, how do I pre-sell my course to ensure that there's a market fit before I spend the 50 to 200 hours creating this course. I don't have a list of people who would be interested in this subject. Is there any way to pre-sell the course to ensure that at least there's a fit that, this is something people want?

Pat:
I mean, this is a great question, and a very important one because what may entrepreneurs do is they create the thing, then they just throw a whole bunch of ads at it, ad money, and then it's like crickets. It's like, I don't even know how to figure out what's wrong. So the idea validation up front is really, really key. The beauty of what it is that you're teaching is that there is inherent ROI built in. It's a lot more difficult to do this if you are teaching a person how to play piano. You'd have to build an audience and prove yourself and show that expertise because there really isn't money on the other end unless you're teaching how to make money from your piano in some way.

So the cool thing is it's going to be fairly easy to attract people with that idea that they might just need one sponsored post to make up for the cost of this thing. That's really, really cool. So there's a couple things you can do. Number one, you could potentially be a guest on another person's podcast to describe this potential—you know, the process and to then get people interested in, for example, a webinar. Let's say you have a webinar planned for two months from now and you're just like, "Okay. My job between now and then is just to get as many creators who have between 25,000 and 750,000 traffic a month, to just get to know as many people, to feed them all into this one webinar where I'm going to teach this. And I'm going to do that by being a guest on other people's podcasts, showing up on other people's blogs, maybe being a guest on other people's YouTube channel. So it's going to take a little bit of work, but what I love about this is there's a relationship component to it and a way for you to almost prove that this is something that works.

And then what I would do is just use your own website or you and your partner's website as the case study. “Hey, I'll show you how we made...” If you want to disclose money, you don't have to. It could be, “We'll show you how we booked our last 10 sponsored posts.” I'm just going to walk you through that process. Obviously when you teach this for free on a podcast or even on this webinar, high-value training, you're not going to teach everything. It's probably impossible to teach in just that short period of time because there's a lot of details. There's contracts. There's other things that are involved. But you're going to go through the process of perhaps finding a sponsor and actually booking it.

And then wow, now that I know how to do this, William, teach me where I can get more. What contracts? How do I do this? How do I keep this process running? “Oh, by the way, we're going to be opening up a beta program for our course, which starts on this date, or, “We're taking pre-sales right now for a course that's coming out next month.” However you want to do it, that's a way that you'd be able to potentially do it. On top of that... Sorry, I'm just spitting so much at you right now. I hope this is okay. Luckily it's recorded, so you can slow it down if I'm talking too fast.

But the other thing that you could do is even before going that far, you could personally reach out to some people that you might already know. Maybe some people that you don't know but maybe they know somebody who is a creator that fits within your target market to just be one of your guinea pigs, where literally you help that person. Maybe it is for a dollar amount. Maybe it's not for a dollar amount. But you walk them through the process to... First of all, if you can't get anybody interested in that way, well then there's probably going to be an issue. It's going to be hard to get people on an online course. So first of all, this is going to force you to go, "Okay. How do I position this? How do I message it? How do I talk about it in a way that's going to get people interested?"

William:
Even sending that first email. Being like, "Hey, can we do this?" That's going to clarify things. Yeah.

Pat:
Exactly, exactly. It forces you to do that, and it's not going to feel sleazy or aggressive because you literally are trying to help this person in whichever way. Then when you get them to say yes, you can start analyzing, "Okay. Well, what's your ultimate goal? How come you said yes?" Again, start pulling out this information. They work with you for a week or two or what have you, maybe it's just a couple people that you work with. That forces you to understand, how do I teach this in a way? What are the things that I thought they would get but they're not getting? How do I structure this in a way? I have a structure, but it's obviously maybe a little bit too confusing, too overwhelming, or maybe it's not enough. You'll discover those things right up front.

And then, this is the best part, you help them get a result. Now you have a real hero's journey case study, a person booking their first sponsorship for a certain dollar amount, and maybe that's the fee. The fee is, “Hey, you don't have to pay. I'll get you your first sponsor, and all I ask is in exchange you give us a really good testimonial when we do this and you let us share your story.” If I'm a creator and I'm like, "Hey, I've been struggling to make money. And this angel named William comes and says you're going to make me more money? Of course I would do that for you." And that story of Jimmy the blogger who's struggling to make any sort of money through ads and Google AdSense gets this one sponsor who now pays $3,000 a month. Everybody else watching on the sidelines is going to go, "William, can you show me how to do that? How can you show me, William? Can you show me?"

I'm going to stop talking. I want to hear your response to all this, but what are your thoughts?

William:
So what I'm hearing you say is the first step would be a good place to find someone who I know that could benefit from this and kind of just go through the process with them for one or two weeks. Help them get their first sponsor. That'll teach me a lot of people’s struggles. That'll teach me a lot of how to teach it, and I'll get a better idea of what I'm actually doing on my end. And then the next step after I get that and get that testimonial as well, is maybe start going to... I can use that testimonial, essentially, that story, to go to podcasts, reach out to people, and set a date for a webinar. And be like, "Hey, this is what's going on. Do you want to sign up?" Maybe I just create a little landing page or something like that where I collect people's emails. Like here’s, "Go to this site." It's just a box but you just put a enter your email here for the webinar.

Pat:
Yeah. I mean, any webinar platform typically is going to give you an opportunity to create a registration page with just some information and a date and whatnot. I mean, you could even manually do this in a way where maybe on your website somewhere it's a landing page, and it's just a subscription to an email list essentially. And then through that email list, you have a Zoom link eventually sent to them. You can do it that way too.

William:
Awesome. Yeah. I mean, it's funny because it's as simple as that.

Pat:
Exactly. Dude, we always try to complicate so much, and we make these things like courses and whatnot... Literally right before this call I had another call with a woman named Wendy who was asking about online courses, completely overcomplicating the process too. She said, "It's probably going to take over a year to create this thing." And I'm like, "What? No, not at all." So hopefully you can see, in fact, how simple this is, and it should be as simple as possible for you to get up there because the quicker you do it, the more likely you are to get answers. Whether you get the result you want or not, you get either the result you want or the lesson you needed to do it better or restructure something for the next time.

But this is going to teach you about positioning. It's going to force you to create the information and help this person out. Getting one person one result unlocks not just the ability for other people to see that you can do this for them, but it unlocks your ability because likely... I know you can do this for yourself, but there may be something... This is very common. I'm not saying it is for you, but it's very common for you to go, "Well, what if this was just for me and I can't do this for other people? Will this even work for others?" This will prove that to you, and that confidence will come out. Again, you're not sharing your story as much anymore, even though you will. You're also sharing Jimmy and his blog’s story, which will resonate way more.

William:
That makes sense. So right now, I’ve scripted out the first two main sections. I could almost do it as informal as this and do it informally. Or do you have a recommendation on... I've taken courses that are very casual where someone's just sharing their knowledge. And I've enjoyed those. And I've also taken courses where people set up the nice camera, and I'm familiar with that. I have the lights, and I do YouTube content. So I'm familiar with higher production value. In your eye, is it important to have that production value, or is it more important to be quick and get the feedback going?

Pat:
It's a nice-to-have, but oftentimes it just is much more than needed, especially at the start. I think if you're going to do the results for one or two people, literally just Zoom and quick little videos on your phone could work just to at least start. And then once you get that process down, as you're pre-selling it, maybe that's the time when production’s going to happen. Then even while production is happening, maybe you pre-sell it and module one is done. But module two you're going to film as people are going through module one. And then you release it even in that way. That way, you don't have to wait for all six modules or however many there are to be done and launch it. You can launch it as it's halfway through. Every single course I've launched, or most of them at least, 90% of them have been launched not fully complete yet because people aren't going to get the end until they get through the beginning part.

And what's really interesting is sometimes people will share how maybe something was missing or maybe they want wait for the part where in the course I talked about this. I'm like, "Oh, I didn't even think about that. I’d better add it in to the later parts." That's a benefit you can actually utilize those people who are your guinea pigs to help make this thing the best it can be for everybody.

William:
That makes sense. Talking about pricing, is that when you're launching a course... Obviously I think for the first course, and it's kind of untested, I want to keep it at a lower rate than what I think it's ultimately worth. Do you have any sort of method around pricing the first launch of the course when you're not really sure if you're going to be adding more things later down the road because feedback and everything like that? A formula there, or...

Pat:
You just said if you're not sure, but if you get these results from these first few people, you will be sure. That's the other thing. You will know this process works. So just be careful about using that language because after those first few results, you know this thing works. It's actually your responsibility and your obligation to make sure that you can share this because this is life-changing for people.

Pricing is interesting because there's a number of different ways to determine price. It could be based on, “Here are other courses and programs that are priced at this and here's ours. And ours is priced higher because it's answering these questions which those don't.” You can have a little juxtaposition or comparison. But for me, really it's about the value that you can provide on the other end. If you can help a person get a sponsored post and likely at those traffic levels, I mean, I would imagine that's thousands of dollars maybe even for the first contract potentially. It would be silly of you to charge $27. I'm just using that as an extreme. But that almost seems unreal.

It almost is like if you go to a furniture store. It's this antique furniture, all beautiful. They're thousands of dollars, and you see this beautiful chair and it's like $5. You're like, "That's haunted, or it's going to break. Something's wrong with that, or it smells like smoke." You want to play within the value that you're offering. Obviously, you could charge tens of thousands of dollars knowing people could implement this and earn that much. But obviously there's a line there. And then there's also the idea that maybe this is the first thing that people transact with you with, but maybe on top of this later there is a coaching session or a mastermind opportunity or a group coaching session which will cost more. So that could be something that could also juxtaposition what the cost would be.

Let me ask you, William: If I were a blogger and that was my traffic and I was in your target market. If I was like, "William, how much can I pay you for to help me land my first sponsor? How much would it require if I just wanted to hire you one-on-one?"

William:
I would say for the full system, the first thing that came to my head is about $500 essentially just for right under that. But like $500.

Pat:
Okay. Number one, I would double that. Just typically people undervalue them—. I mean, if I land one sponsor at $1,000, I've just got twice my money back from the time with you. Let's just say it's $1,000 for me to do this for you. But my online course is going to be $499 or $299, whatever it might be. Now it's like, "Wow. $1,000 is a lot, but I get that there's value there. But I can just do this on my own for just $300? That's… one contract will pay me three times more than that. I just got to do the work."

William:
So almost like in the conversation, I'm starting off saying here's how much it would cost for me to do this for you to make sure that it happens 100%. Would you offer that, or would you just say like, "Well, I can't do that because I've got limited time. So here's the course that teaches you everything at $500."

Pat:
Bingo. This is called price anchoring, and I know a lot of course creators who shoot up their in-person price because number one, they're confident in that. But also, they know and they don't care if anybody gets one-on-one coaching. What they care about is how the value of their course is perceived relative to that.

William:
So people are looking at their rate and being like, "Oh, this guy's worth $1,000 an hour, but I can get the course for $500. That's a steal."

Pat:
Exactly. Does that make sense?

William:
Yeah. That makes absolute sense.

Pat:
Again, you have the advantage of the fact that you're teaching something that gets people money back almost immediately that works. You can even have a guarantee. "Hey, if you don't land your first sponsor within three months after we start working together, and typically it happens after a month for some of our students or the people that I've worked with. Again, it took Jimmy three weeks. Within a couple months, you don't get your first contract. You know what? We'll give you your money back." Wow, there's no risk at all. It only feels like upside. And if you can land the story with the pricing and that messaging, dude, it's going to be a hit.

William:
That's awesome. No, I love to hear that. That's super inspiring. And yeah, so simple. Email some people and get on some podcasts and set it up.

Pat:
Just go into the different entrepreneurial podcasts. A lot of them don't cover this kind of stuff, and honestly one additional strategy is you can find an influencer who has an entrepreneurial audience who doesn't do this. You give them the white glove service. "Hey, name. I see you have this stuff. You have a large audience, and you're not making any money from sponsored ads. Why not? Let me help you do this. I'll be your chauffeur and do this for you for free. But if it works for you, would you mind sharing it with your audience because I think they would benefit from it too." Now they're telling their own story to their people that they've earned trust with, and they're mentioning you. You get that validation up front there. That could work as well.

So whether that happens up front or maybe down the road after a launch, that could be another strategy.

William:
I have one other series of questions that, a little bit different topic, but I just had to ask you. I'm at a point in my entrepreneurial journey where I could use a little bit more guidance. It was funny, I was thinking just three days ago, I was like, "It's time. I need to find a mentor. I need to find a mastermind." And that's when I actually got the email from your assistant saying to come on. It blew my mind. I was like, "A mentor? I get 30 minutes with Pat Flynn. That's nuts."

But anyway, I need some more guidance to kind of take it to the next level. So I'm looking for a mentor, and I'm also looking to join a mastermind. Do you have any tips or ideas on where to search out a mentor that could be a fit for me, or do you know anyone or anything like that?

Pat:
Literally doing what you're doing right now is the way to find them. You just ask around. The hard thing is a lot of these mastermind groups are formed in person when people meet up at conferences. They feel the vibe with the other people. We haven't had an opportunity to get around other people. So it's a little bit more difficult. Typically getting involved in Facebook groups or any communities where people are already talking amongst each other. If you can get into those places and just kind of listen or ask around there, that's typically where people are often looking for these kinds of connections.

Quick little video messages to people who may be a good mentor or a person who might have a mastermind and you just want to see what's involved. It can be great; a video often cuts through the weeds. It'll take some time. But I think it's a really, really important thing. I wouldn't be where I'm at today without the mentors that I've had. I've had several, and I've sort of like, not upgraded from each one but every time I have a new goal or new outlook or thing that I need or want help with, I then find a mentor that I know has been there, who has done that thing, then it keeps progressing and progressing.

But yeah, that's a very smart question. I don't know anybody off the top of my head right now, but they exist. They're out there. And if you can't find your own mastermind group, actually one of my mastermind groups that I'm in, I started. I connected with one other person, then we just, "Hey, let's get on a weekly call together and just hold each other accountable." And after a month, it was like, "We should start adding more people in." We just started to invite more people in. And this group has been around for nine years now every Wednesday talking. Every Wednesday. It's awesome. And at this point now, we know each other. It's not just businesses but personalities and families and that kind of stuff. We started it, so if you can't find one, you can start one with somebody who may be at the same or near the same level as you that is out there.

William:
For the mentorship, it's basically like when you're looking for a new mentor or whatever it is, you have a specific goal in mind, whether that's get into course creation or other goals, bigger.

Pat:
That's a good question. There are goal-specific things like that. I, for a while, wanted to create a community, and we did, SPI Pro. I've had certain people in my mind and people who I’ve reached out to and connected with, and some of them I even paid for access to learn all about community. They've done it. They've made the mistakes. Why would I try to figure it out all on my own when I can save time and money by getting them?

Then there is like one or two life mentors, if you will, people who are more bigger, who are more understanding of not just the things I'm trying to do but the legacy I want to live and the family, and all that kind of stuff too. So it's okay to have more than one. It's not like dating where you shouldn't be dating more than one person at a time. But it's kind of based on where you want to go, who you want to be, or who you want to be like, or who you want to learn from. Then just following in their footsteps or trying to get access.

William:
That's amazing. I know where to start.

Pat:
Nice, William. We talked about a lot today. Hopefully this was helpful. Where can people go to find more of your stuff?

William:
Yeah. So if people want to head to BootSpy.com, they can see what I'm up to on the niche side and what we're up to. And if you own a small blog, you can head over there. Send me an email, [email protected]. And if you're interested in this course and want to let me know, just email me at [email protected]. Maybe you could be my Jimmy that we talked about with Pat and help you out and do some sponsored posts.

Pat:
I love it. How do you spell BootSpy?

William:
So it is B-O-O-T-S-P-Y dot com. Like a spy of boots, a spier of boots.

Pat:
Got it. Dude, this was awesome. Thank you so much for opening up for us and helping us out.

William:
Thank you so much, Pat. I really appreciate the time. This was amazing.

Pat:
Take care, bye.

All right. I hope you enjoyed that conversation with William from BootSpy.com. Again, William, thank you so much, and I'm glad that we talked about this because I think it's going to be helpful for a lot of people too.

For you listening, thank you for listening all the way through. If you'd like to get coached here on the show just like William did, all you have to do is fill out the application on AskPat.com. And I may or may not reach back out to you. It might not be right away. We’ve got a lot of people calling in and asking for help. That's why I'm here. The show wouldn't exist without these questions. So I do appreciate you asking. So again, AskPat.com. Hit that application, leave me a quick voicemail of what's going on. We might reach out to you in the near future.

So thank you so much for listening. Please subscribe if you haven't already, and I look forward to serving you in next week's AskPat episode. Until then, keep rocking it. Take care. 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.