Course Creators Weekly #45 🗓 May 3rd, 2021 - Launching a new course

In this article, Julia Saxena shares everything they did in the run-up to launching Minimum Viable Video (MVV) together with Cam Houser.

There are so many great lessons in there. But, as always, remember that every course and every launch is different. Take inspiration, but don't follow blindly!

On naming:

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  Naming is hard—brainstorm and get through the bad ones until you find good ones
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  Use people's feedback to guide your decisions, but in the end, make your own choices

High-leverage pre-launch activities:

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  Free workshops—validate, experiment, and fine-tune your content through feedback
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  Offer a lead magnet (e.g. short email course) to grow your email list and drive up sales
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  Set up your launch email sequence—prime your audience and address their objections
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  Send personalised emails (e.g. for MVV, they did 50 personalised videos)
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  Find other creators to collaborate with—potential guest speakers and partners
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  Talk to potential students 1:1—invite them to reach out with every one of your emails

Other lessons:

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  There isn't a "right" time to launch—start shipping and iterating as soon as you can
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  Be prepared to price your first launch lower—you need students (don't price too low!)
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  Find a partner with a complementary skillset to split the work and celebrate with
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  Accept and embrace the fact that you'll never get things 100% perfect—just start

I highly recommend checking out the article for more context and better understanding of why all this matters!

Thomas Frank is a YouTuber with over 2M subscribers, making videos to help people become more capable and productive in their lives. He shares his story in a conversation with Andrew Barry, and here I share my biggest takeaways:

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  Find the thing that's interesting to you, that you love, and start experimenting
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  Build relationships with the people you admire—lucky breaks don't happen in silo
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  Be resourceful, willing to experiment and learn things along the way
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  Learn in public—share your journey with the people a few steps behind you
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  Focus on systems and completion, not perfection
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  Repurpose your content for sharing on multiple platforms
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  Make evergreen, timeless content, consistently—build a flywheel
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  Learn to balance short-term desires with your long-term vision of you
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  Your audience is transient—some people lose interest while more people find you
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  Avoid making abrupt pivots—prime your audience for change, and do it gradually
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  Provide insane value upfront, for free, to build trust and grow your audience
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  Price your course based on the value it provides, not its volume of content, and…
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  Remember that shorter, no-fluff courses are even more valuable
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  Start scrappy, and aim to get 1% better with every iteration

The best testimonials are the ones that students give without you asking. But, if you don't have any great ones yet, you can follow Rob Hope's 3-step process to generate the perfect customer testimonial:

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  Request a long, detailed testimonial
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  Edit the testimonial, extracting highlights and key points
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  Share the edited testimonial with your customer—make sure they're happy with it