Launch Before You Build Debrief

Lyric Kinard (00:17.742) Hello my fellow artists, crafter, creator. Too many of us delay getting our workshop out there because the course isn't ready yet. The problem is you spend hours building something and that's risky, not knowing ahead of time if anybody is going to sign up for it or not. Today I'm going to introduce you to a different idea. building an audience, building your messaging, and signing up students before you build a single lesson so that you know what you build is what your students need and what you want because you already have paying students in there. Curious? I'm Lerick Montgomery-Kinard coming to you from the Academy for Virtual Teaching with this podcast, Creatives on Camera, where we work with you, artists, creators, crafters, who want to build or are working in online teaching businesses. So a little while ago, I thought it would be fun to share a challenge with our people at the Academy for Virtual Teaching to create a 30-day pre-sell-it challenge and we ran it. It was amazing and I'm coming to you with a debrief with letting you know how that actually worked out. Now this is something that I've done for a long time and I thought it was crazy a little bit because of you know my weird brain that comes up with ideas and ideas and thinks about them. Lyric Kinard (02:13.046) And then maybe two years later, it's like, all of a sudden, now it's time. This workshop has to get put out and I will build the landing page. will open it for registration and invite students in and then build the course just in time. Every week we'll open up a new lesson. And that deadline motivates me to actually get all of the filming done. But there's another really interesting thing. that this does for you. It's not just a weird ADD you are insane to open a class before it's even built. There is a real advantage to this. If you were creating a product and wanted to bring it into the market, would you put it on store shelves without ever having somebody test it out, without ever getting feedback from the customers you think need this? called market testing. When you go through the process that we just did in our, we called it the 30-day workshop launch challenge, it's going to be renamed, and it was a beta test. That whole course was a kind of test of that course, testing this hypothesis of if you build all of this stuff before you even build the course. Can you get students in there who will market test it for you? And guess what? It worked. And I know it sounds terrifying. So many of us want to have the thing absolutely perfect before we offer it to our people. It sounds like, my gosh, what if I'm not able to deliver what I promise? Well, I know you will. Your students know you will. When you have people helping you, counting on you, you live up to expectations. And that's fantastic. The thing is with this process that the expectations are that it's a beta. It isn't going to be perfect. You are inviting your market testers, your students to come along with you and see how this sausage is made to go through the process for you. So let's go through a few reasons why Lyric Kinard (04:42.018) this really is a good idea. Number one, if you invite students to come with you on this journey, tell them what it is you plan to provide and get feedback from them first, it validates the idea for the workshop you have before you invest all of the effort just to open the class for registration and crickets, nothing happens. It reduces your risk. It reduces the time you might waste. And here's the thing, it provides early revenue to fuel your content creation. It helps you shape the content based on real student feedback. So, and I've done it the other way before too. Build a whole course and then I have to work really hard to market it to get people in. And sometimes the course sits unfinished because nobody's waiting. Sometimes I lose momentum or confidence. And another thing is that the idea of launching something doesn't mean after everything's already done, right? There's work involved before you get it done. And when you have a pre-sell process. It's a simple plan that opens registration before creating the whole course. All right. So what we did in the 30 day challenge was we set specific easy ideas, easy tasks for each day, 30 days. We're going to change it up a little bit next time because I've been getting feedback and we want things like weekends off and The tasks were super easy, so maybe we can combine them. Next time I open this, we're going to do it in 15 tasks over three weeks. So you can have weekends off and you can come in every day or you can do everything on the weekend. The tasks are small enough that you can do this. And specifically, you plan the general outline of your workshop. So you kind of have a curriculum. Lyric Kinard (07:08.472) but especially you have a plan for how it will be delivered, whether it's going to be live or prerecorded workshops, but we make it an experience for our beta testers. Even if it is eventually going to just live on its own as an evergreen course where people can buy and get all of the content all at once, this first run of it is an experience. The people are going to sign up and give you feedback and wait for each video to be posted on whatever schedule you decide together. It's going to be interactive either way. You are going to come up with a clear course description with messaging that speaks to your people because you ask them, because you talked to them first. Even if you don't have a giant audience, Even if you only have a few friends and family, you call them up and you say, if you were going to learn this thing, what questions would you have? And if they're students and you know they already want to learn the thing, because people ask you to teach something all the time, right? So you can ask them things like, why haven't you already learned this? What is your block? What is your biggest problem? What questions do you have? You ask those things. at the very beginning of the process and you listen to their words, you get their feedback. It's mostly listening so that you understand what problems they have that you can then solve with the workshop you build. And you use those words in your marketing messaging. Marketing is not sales, it is just here's the gift I have to offer you that will help you be more creative, that will help you have the peace and joy that you are looking for because you want to learn this thing, right? Lyric Kinard (09:17.46) We also build emails, the welcome sequence. So when somebody signs up, they get an automated sequence that says, hey, I'm so glad you're here and here's instructions for what we're going to do and here let's set up expectations. And here is where you can give me more feedback. We also write invitation emails. So the emails you send to your friends and family or your warm list saying, hey, This thing is in the works. And hey, do you want to learn this thing with me? And I'm looking for beta testers. And by the way, registration is open. We'll build a sequence of emails that invite people in. And a plan for marketing messaging on social media, YouTube, wherever you get the word out. Little teasers, little hints that something is coming up. And then... an announcement that registration is open. The other practical thing we do is build your sales page on whatever platform you use. We'll have kind of a formula, build a sales page that is effective, that your student can come and see and say, that's me. That's the problem I have. This is what I want to learn. I am going to sign up for this. And you start taking students who have paid before you build a single thing. It sounds crazy, right? But through the first workshop, through the first run of this challenge, it was phenomenal to watch what teachers accomplished. It is a lot of steps over 30 days. They were tiny little steps and... It was amazing to feel the energy. We had a group discussion area and the assignment to report in each day and share what you've done because doing this in a group of other people who are doing it at the same time has so much energy to it. And our teachers who posted every day or as often as they could and got through all the tasks. Lyric Kinard (11:38.796) By the end of 30 days, they had a welcome sequence set up. They had invitations. They had photography taken of the projects. They had a vague course outline and plan, sometimes more than vague. Sometimes, you know, a lot of us are building courses online that we've taught in person for a long time. They had a sales page and a way to take payments. And most importantly, they had paid students ready and waiting for when the workshop actually launches. Now I use the example of myself launching workshops. So I'm building the 30 day challenge thing, right? At the same time that I'm launching a new workshop for my own art teaching. It was a paint your shoes workshop that I've taught on. in person many times and it is so much fun and people have been asking me for a long time. You know, my friends see my fancy boots that I painted and I tell them I painted it and say we need to have a shoe painting party. So guess what? We are. I built everything around it and have a full class of paying students and now, now I'm building the videos. I'm recording the videos. I'm building the supply list. And you know what? They're contacting me through the online course platform community forum area and saying, the supply list, it's all there. But can you make a printed version? Well, duh. Yeah, of course I can. But it hadn't occurred to me. Nobody, I just don't usually do that. And it's easy to do. So of course. I put it up there. It's added value that the students wanted. I'm not having them tell me exactly what to teach. They're just helping me shape it and deliver it in a way that has so much value for the students in it. And I'm telling you, it is really fun. We are having a lot of fun. And the teachers who went through this process also have paying students. Lyric Kinard (14:01.12) A of them aren't even opening their actual workshop for a couple months. While I'm recording this, this is right before the holidays and we've gone through this process. They have paid students signed up who know that the content isn't going to actually happen until the first of the year, a couple months away. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that just kind of mind blowing and incredible? that you can have this validation, that you can test your offer, that you can have income sitting there to fund the creation of the course before you even build it. Now, it doesn't have to be evergreen courses. My course that the shoe course that I'm working on, we've started with a live zoom that is a Q &A. We have pre-recorded content that is going up over the next couple of weeks. We're going to have another live Zoom Q &A at the end where they'll give me feedback and let me know how it went. And I actually have people local to me who are also doing this. We're going to get together and have a little fashion show, you know, which is fantastic and fun, but also that's an opportunity for me to get a lot of imagery that will work fantastically well in my future marketing. So what do you think? Does it sound absolutely insane? It is a little bit, but actually it's so much smarter to build a workshop with validation, with market testing. And you know what, I have to get the videos done on time. That old thing that I used to do, it's the only motivating factor for me to actually get the workshop up. It still actually does that for me really, really well. So I'd love to hear what you think. We're going to open this again several times throughout the year because there is so much energy when we do it as a cohort. Lyric Kinard (16:27.028) So several times, if you're on the email list at academyforvirtualteaching.com, you'll see that we'll open the window for a new cohort to come through this experience together. And it's a party. We make it so much fun together. In the, I think we're going to call it the Workshop Pre-Sell Launch Lab. Because we do, we build everything. around the part before you actually launch the workshop, right? It's all the pre-sell stuff. We'll be opening that several times throughout the year. We invite you to join us. It's a blast. It is so much fun. And my friends, it works. It absolutely works. And if you want to join the Academy's free membership, academyforvirtualteaching.com, you can join our free community. It's a discussion forum on a private platform. Kind of behaves like Facebook, but it's not Facebook. If you want to join us there, we will be having a roundtable where the teachers who've gone through this experience talk about it. And we get to share how it's going, you know, because it is messy all in the middle. But again, that's part of the fun. And your students don't want perfection and Hollywood produced production. They're not there for that. They are there to learn the creative thing, the joy that you have to share with them. So stop waiting. Stop putting it off. Stop thinking it has to be perfect. And come join us. at the Academy. And next time we run the Launch Lab, join on in and get that idea that has been swimming around in your head for way too long. Let's get it made. Because what you have to offer is something that your students out there in the world need. They want that moment of peace and joy. Lyric Kinard (18:52.118) and creativity. There's something so amazing that comes from being able to make something from nothing to being able to bring beauty and creativity into this world. My friend, what you do is so important. It makes the world a better place. So come join us. Keep creating. And hey, if you get the chance. Do the like and subscribe, leave a review, all the things for the Creatives on Camera podcast. It really helps us get the word out. Thank you so much for being with us and for sharing this journey. Take care, friends. Bye.