AP 0203: Should I Wait Until I’m Finished Before Launching My Course?

AskPat 203 Episode Transcript

Pat: Hey, hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 203 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions, five days a week.

Before we get to today's question from Stan, I do want to thank today's sponsor, because they are the company who created the intro to AskPat, and I actually have them working on another intro for another podcast coming out soon. They are amazing. This is Music Radio Creative, and Isabella and Mike over there are some of the most professional and also nicest people I've ever worked with for anything. They produce high-quality podcast intros, outros, and jingles. They work with a ton of experts to bring you the best, and all the music and sound effects are fully licensed so you can focus on creating great content without having to worry about copyright claims. You may have heard their jingles on Michael Hyatt's show, Podcast Answer Man, Entrepreneur on Fire, and of course, AskPat. You got to check them out. So if you go to MusicRadioCreative.com/askpat, you can go ahead and check them out. Again, MusicRadioCreative.com/askpat. Now, let's get to today's question from Stan.

Stan: Hi Pat. My name is Stan from Canada, and I teach Biblical Greek at GreekForAll.com. First of all, I want to thank you for everything you do. I have learned so much, and I'm looking forward to learn even more.

And here is my question. I've been working on my project for about seven months. I have written two books, and I've developed a website, which at the moment of this recording has a very cool coming soon page. And now I came to the final stage of my project: filming a video course, video lessons, for my program. And it takes a lot of time. I estimate it might take up to six months to finish. So here's the question: Should I wait util I finish my video lessons and then open the website for public, or should I launch it now and share the video lessons with my subscribers as I make them along the way? The entire course will be for sale when it's done, and if the audience watched the lessons already, would they want to purchase the entire course later? I have some thoughts on the solution, and of course, your opinion, your insights, are greatly appreciated. Thanks again for your hard work. I appreciate you. All the best.

Pat: Stan, thank you so much for the question. I truly appreciate the kind words you said at the beginning of your question there. It just always is motivating to hear that, so thank you. Now to answer your question in a very quick way, yes. You should absolutely launch your website before you finish your video course, and I think a lot of people would agree with me on this.

Now I know, and I completely understand where you're coming from. You want it all to be completed, because you want something to offer your audience as soon as they get on your brand. You don't want those wasted opportunities. But I feel like if you do that, you'd be wasting opportunities now, between now and when you finally finish, to build that audience, to build trust, to get people used to your style so that, when you do come out with your video lesson course, it's going to be a home run. So spending that time now to build that audience by putting your website up there, providing content, maybe sharing some of these videos along the way, perhaps even just building an email list. You should absolutely be doing that, and I hope you're doing that right now even at your first phase here in the coming soon page. Which I think is a great idea, and we'll get into more detail about the phases along the way.

But like I said, you got to come out with the website sooner than later. And again, I understand you want to have people go through the whole sales funnel right through the beginning. But you want to think of this as a . . . especially if you're going to be charging a lot. Whether you charge a lot or a little, you want to spend time to build that audience first. It's so much easier to sell to people who trust you and who you've already helped. And you could do that with the content that you have. You also have books too. I mean, that could be a part of the process leading up to your online video course as well. So let's sort of rewind here and get to where you're at now. And I want you to think about, between now and when you begin selling your video course, I want you to think of this as phases. But more than just phases, because we've all heard that before. I want you to shift your mindset a little bit and think of them as events.

So you've had your first event here. And the reason I say event is because that's something that people make a big deal of, right? And you obviously want to make a big deal out of it, but you want other people to also make a big deal out of it as well.

Now if you were to wait six months to finish your video lessons, that would be one event. One excuse to share everything and obviously launch with a bang, but then after that, then what? Now if you go through these phases like what you've started already, you have your coming soon page. That's one event. That's something people can start to share, and you start to build buzz for what's to come. Maybe you share a teaser thing here and there every once in a while to start to build people into this email list. That way, when you launch your website, that's phase two. This is another event that you can create a big deal out of. And on day one, you'd already have people on your email list excited. Those are sort of the low hanging fruit that have just been waiting for the type of content that you have to give to them. And it's at that point you can start to build a real trust with them. But not only that, to have them help you build trust with others through the power of sharing, through the power of building a community together. That's your time to build.

So you need that website up there to do that. That's your home base. That's where you're going to start to share a little bit of your personality, a lot of your content and what you have to offer, and why people should stick around and wait. And actually pay attention to you. And when you do that, eventually you get more events down the road. For example, each of these books, there can be an event surrounded around that.

Even if you've launched these books already, you could do events to relaunch them. Maybe have sales and talk about them. Maybe you give away pieces of these books for free, and I think you should absolutely do that right now. I mean, you already have books to sell, it seems like. So take one or two chapters out, the first chapter out of each of these books, and give them away to your email subscribers, for example. Or make that the incentive to subscribe to your email list. Or just give them away for free anyway.

And that's how, again, you build trust. You get people used to your style, again, leading up into the online video course. At which point, six months down the road, you would then have a much bigger email list. You would have much better relationship with people who are on your brand. You'd have a much more engaged email list, and a much bigger email list. Perhaps you'd even have power users, and then you can then build that ambassador list. And that's where a lot of the power comes in with building this audience is, you build this audience, but within that audience, you find that there's going to be raving fans. People who will just begin to purchase anything that you come out with, and who will share anything that you come out with. So you should absolutely build that ambassador list and start to determine, who are the real strong community members that you have who can be there to evangelize what you've done and be a spokesperson for what you've done as well and share with more people. Be there as testimonials, for example, for how you've been able to help them, even before the online video course happens.

And then when the online video course happens, you might want to consider doing what a lot of people are doing. And I'm actually coming out with an episode of the Smart Passive Income podcast. I interviewed Amy Porterfield about her three-video series launch plan. You may have seen this if you've been online for a while. You've seen these people or companies launch something new, or a product that they have, or a course, or a membership site, and they do a three-video process, a three-video series process. And so that's right up your alley, since you're doing videos already. And so that will lead into your launch, and you'll be able to even use that as an email list builder while also being able to promote your product. And you'll be able to make much more money down the road as well. So I would absolutely, absolutely, absolutely—I’m going to say that three times—come out with your website sooner. Start to build that audience. Build your email list. Create more mini events. All leading up, it’s almost like your launch plan, with the coming soon and launching a website, well that's just a smaller part of this bigger whole leading up to the online video course.

Now, Stan, you mentioned giving away the videos to your email subscribers. Now I think you're on the right track there. I don't think you should give away all the videos. And again, that's probably going to be a lot of content to consume. You want to save some of those, of course. But you also want to give away some of your best ones as well. And I think over time, this is really cool.

You launch your website, and then over time, as you begin to create these videos, share one every month, for example. And I would mention that you have this course coming out, and that you're working on it. And I think that would help people understand that you are an authority in this space. You're not just some blogger or some person with a website and a couple books, but you're actually somebody who's working really hard to create the best course on whatever it is that you have to share. And people are going to be there and following you along the way. And that's really cool.

When you can get your audience seeing behind the scenes of what's going into a product that you have coming out, and also involved. Perhaps you can have people start to comment on these videos that you have. So I wouldn't actually, in that video, I'm sort of speaking technically now. Of course those emails that you send out to your email subscribers, perhaps once a month, with a new video, one segment or one part of your course, one lesson in your overall course, it wouldn't just be a video that they could watch on YouTube. No. You'd want it to be super professional. You'd want it to be on a specific landing page that would then get people more excited, but also leaving comments with each other as well.

Maybe at the end of those videos you have a certain call to action, which is to leave a comment. And that way you can get people engaged and even more excited and seeing other people who are sharing those same issues and problems. So that you can all together, your audience can all together get excited, and feed off of each others' energy leading up to your launch. And I think when people get involved, and perhaps, even if you get them to share some things that then influence what you put in the course later. Again, you'd be missing out on that opportunity too if you wait six months down the road. You'd be missing out on the opportunity to have your direct target audience tell you what should be in the course, or how it should be. You'd be missing out on that.

But when you do that, and then you actually implement some of those things, or even if you don't, just the fact that you're asking and getting your audience to participate. It helps them get more excited about your launch as well. So Stan, I hope that answers your question, and sorry to be blunt there, but, yeah. You've got to do it. I wouldn't wait six months. Every day that you don't have content online is a day you are losing an opportunity to help a person, to collect an email subscriber, to have a fan, to potentially have a customer down the road. So you got to have it out now. Stan, thanks so much for the question. An AskPat t shirt will be headed your way. One of my assistants will be getting to you very shortly to collect that information, your shipping information from you.

For those of you listening, if you have a question you'd like potentially featured here on the show, it's really easy. All you have to do is go to AskPat.com and ask right there on that page. Just use any mic that you have handy, even if it's an internal speaker, or excuse me, microphone that you have on your computer or laptop. It doesn't matter. I just want to hear it from you.

And as always, I want to thank today's sponsor, which is MusicRadioCreative.com. They are awesome. They work with some of the best people in the industry—audio producers, voiceovers, musicians, jingle singers—to help you create your high-quality podcast intro, outro, and jingle. And it's truly a worldwide experience, actually. Over the past year alone, they've worked with clients from over 107 different countries.

So if, like Stan, you're from out of the US—Stan's in Canada, which is actually, fun fact, one of my favorite national anthems. I just love it. I was at a hockey game recently, and we were playing Calgary. I say we, but I was actually in Columbus, Ohio. It was the Blue Jackets versus Calgary, national anthem came on for the US, of course for Calgary as well, the “Oh Canada.” I just love that song. Anyway, that was a random fact for you all. But if you want to try something, and you're really niche and you're in another country and you need some podcast intros or outros done, you've got to go through Music Radio Creative. So all you have to do is go to MusicRadioCreative.com/askpat. Again that's MusicRadioCreative.com/askpat And as always, I'm going to end with a quote. And today's quote is from Margarita Gakis. And she says, “Finished crap can be edited. Unfinished greatness languishes forever. The only bad writing is the thing you didn't write.” Cheers, take care, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat.