Introduction
Welcome back to the Entrepreneur Mindset Podcast!
Over the last few episodes, we have been talking about course creation. We have talked about messaging for your course, the importance of taking breaks to actually be more creative. We’ve talked about creating a successful course idea. We’ve talked about course objectives. We have talked about vision and values, the key components of a profitable course.
We have talked about engagement with guest, Shannon. We talked about accessibility for your course. We’ve talked about audience building with guest, Tracy. We have talked about mindset. We have talked about ideas to get you started. We have talked about all of this information to help you go from course idea to implementation and launch. But what happens once you’ve launched your course?
Does it all stop? And the answer is no. Today we’re going to talk about what happens after you launch your course.
Next Steps
It’s a really exciting moment. When you launch your course, you have your first set of students go through the course, and it feels like this big exhale because A: it’s working and B: people bought it. Your Stripe account is lighting up, and you are starting to see the transformations that are happening as a result of the hard work, the effort, and your course idea. But the story doesn’t end here. This is where you have an opportunity to be one of my favorite things, and that’s a scientist. So when I think about business as a whole, and especially when I think about course launching, I think about the importance of the scientific method.
Now, most of you know that my PhD is in industrial organizational psychology. So I have been cutting my teeth for years upon years on the experimental process. And so the way I think about a course after it’s been launched is the fact that, great, we had this hypothesis.
Here’s the course. This idea is needed. We launch it, we wait to see if it works. We gather our data and then we make adjustments, right? That’s what happens after a launch. You are refining and making adjustments, and this is probably one of the most important things in your business, aside from actually creating the course and getting it out.
There is this refinement process. When you have launched, here are some things that you need to still be aware of and be doing in a very active way to keep moving forward. And the first thing is to keep building your list. When you first launched your course, you had this list of people that were potential students.
You launched your course, some of those people bought, and now we need to refill that list with potential students. We need to consistently be creating opportunities to get our name out there, to get our ideas out there, to build relationships with human beings. A lot of times it feels like, okay, so if I launch once, now I can just glide along.
And the truth is that this is kind of when some of the harder work begins. Because we had that initial set of people purchase our course, these were really interested people. Now we have to find more really interested people. I want you to make sure that as you launch your course and start to move into that delivery phase, and even that refinement phase, that you are not forgetting about the importance of building your list so that it continues to grow over time.
First up is list building. Second, launching your course gives you this opportunity to now gather information. You get to use your client’s words, you get to listen to how they’re describing the challenges that they’re experiencing as they implement your ideas. You get to hear the words that they’re saying when they experience success. You get to listen in in a very intimate way to what’s going on with your students. You can use this to not only refine your messaging. So what are you putting out in social media, in emails, on your sales page, you can also use it to refine your course. If you find that many students are struggling with this one particular module or objective, it might be that you need to explain it in a different way, provide an additional resource or maybe even a bonus to pre help them learn before they go to that exact module.
But the key here is that you are gathering data. Now, this is so scary. I will never forget the first time that I got course reviews back. It was over 15 years ago, and I still remember that pit in my stomach because I had put my heart and soul into that course. And here I am, opening myself up to criticism people who are probably going to say, and this was my mindset back then. People are going to say they hate it. But here’s the thing. I want you to manage your mindset here very carefully. When someone offers you feedback, recognize that they are doing so because they want your course to be a success. They want your course to be all that you have imagined it to be, and they have some ideas on how to help you get there.
When you start realizing that these are ideas coming from a place of service, it’s a lot easier to read through where it says, well, that lesson was really kind of fuzzy. I didn’t understand it. It’s not a personal attack. It’s a, oh, this is an opportunity to incorporate some more exercises to incorporate a new example that might be clearer. Now you’re not feeling threatened by this feedback. You are feeling receptive to this feedback. It becomes a good thing. And that leads me into the next thing that you can start doing after you’ve launched your course and have started helping students move through it and experience that transformation you’ve shared with them. And that is to start gathering case studies.
Now, a lot of times people say, I’ve got to get testimonials for my course. And I would say, yes, I agree, but I love a good case study and here’s why. A case study is going to be more in depth. I love getting on Zoom or some other recording platform with my students and talking to them about what their life was like before the course. What was the tipping point that had them realizing they needed to do something different, and what made them choose my course in particular? And then walking them through how have they grown in skill and mindset in resources through going through this course and how has that shifted their life or their business?
When you do a case study like this, what happens is not only do you have one big long video, you have pieces that you can segment out to share at appropriate times in your launch cycle or just in general. You have quotes that you can now pull, and it just becomes a very rich story because it’s not just this one little tiny, I thought so-and-so was great. I really liked their course. It becomes a story that anyone can fit into that they can see themselves in that exact same situation.
So list building, refine your messaging in your course. Start gathering case studies, and then I want you to start refining your launch. Decide what you liked from this launch that worked that you’d like to do 18 more times. Decide what you think, “Wow, this was awful. I did not enjoy doing that. Let me see if I can replace it with something that’s better”.
I want you to start really analyzing your data. How did your launch go? How did it feel? What was it like energy wise? How was it in terms of conversions from clicks to the sales page to actually buying your course? What does all of this look like? I want you to be a data scientist. I want you to explore the data that you have as well as remembering your vision and your values to decide where you’d like to take your launch that currently exists into the future.
And for some of you, this might mean moving to a more evergreen style of course. And so when we talk about an evergreen course, I know this might be new for some of you. An evergreen course is the concept of being available for purchase all of the time, just like an evergreen is green all of the time. A, an evergreen course is available for purchase all the time.
Now, there are some courses that open up and close. Think about people like Amy Porterfield’s Digital Course Academy, Stu McLaren, the membership experience, Jeff Walker with Product Launch Formula. These are open-closed courses. They’re not available for purchase throughout the year M most of the time they’re only launching once a year.
But if you want that consistent income, you want to be able to share your course throughout the year, you are going to go with an evergreen style. This would be the equivalent of Amy Porterfield’s, List Builders Society. That is an evergreen course that you might be familiar with. I want you to decide as you’re thinking about your launch style and what you want to incorporate into your launches, do you really want an evergreen course? And how are you going to launch that regularly so that it is constantly in people’s inbox, it’s in their social media so that they have a way to get to that course? Or do you want to have kind of a bigger open closed launch or some combination? This is truly a cycle of refinement. Once you have launched your course for the first time, it’s a cycle of refinement, and that’s a really exciting place to be.
Action Item
If you are ready to take some action, and I know you are because you’re listening to this podcast, then if you have a course that’s already launched, here’s your action item. I want you to take a look at your launch and write out the pieces that you really liked, the pieces that you did not like, and start to brainstorm how you can adjust your launch so that we have more of the pieces that you like and less of the pieces that you don’t like.
And if you have not yet launched a course, your action item is going to be focused on list building and creating more connections. One of the things that I’ve seen throughout launches in 2023 and even in 2022 to some extent, is that people need a lot more reassurance to feel comfortable to purchase a course. And that means having more conversations. So do that now.
Do it like it is your job because it is network, create conversations, create relationships, build trust. And this takes time. And if you are sitting here thinking, I don’t really like networking, or It’s tiring, or I’m not sure how to be effective as a networker, I have a resource for you. I’ll put that in the show notes.
You can grab a copy of it. And this resource is especially good if you’re introverted, so don’t feel like it won’t work for you if you are introverted. As a fellow introvert, I can assure you these are the, these are the processes I use when I network so that I don’t need to spend the next 24 hours on the couch recovering. So be sure to grab that resource.
It is a free resource for you on networking, and I’ll put that link in the show notes.
Conclusions
Let’s wrap up. I’m trying to keep this episode a little bit on the shorter side so that you can either list, build or analyze your data. We have talked in this series about course creation. We’ve talked about messaging, taking breaks, how to have a successful course idea, creating course objectives, leaning into your vision and value with your course, the key components of a profitable course. We’ve talked about student engagement with guest, Shannon. We’ve talked about audience building with guest, Tracy. We have talked about accessibility for your course. We’ve talked about mindset. We have talked about ways to get started on your course right now.
In other words, we have talked about a lot of things involving your course creation process. And today, we wrap up this series by talking about what happens after the course launch. It becomes a cycle of refinement where we continue to list build, we continue to refine our messaging, our course content. We start to gather case studies and evaluate how we want to launch in the future.
Whether it’s a small low-key launch with a few emails or a big fancy launch with a multi-part webinar, it does not matter. The key is that it is aligned with your vision and your values, and that it is something you can do over and over. You also now have an opportunity to think about whether you’d like your course to be evergreen or to be an open closed style course with launches periodically throughout the year.
I don’t know about you, but I’m really excited about the idea of creating and building courses. I’ve been doing this for 15 plus years and am always happy to answer questions. Feel free to pick my brain, send me a DM on Facebook or Instagram at Entrepreneurs in Flow, and I will be happy to provide you with feedback. I’ll cheer you on or just be there to walk alongside you on your journey.
And if at any point you decide that you’d like a little bit of one-on-one help, I am here for that as well. Again, just send me a DM at Entrepreneurs in Flow on Facebook or Instagram. Let me know you heard this podcast and that you are interested in one-on-one support. Just reach out, just take meaningful action each and every day.
I’ll see you back here next week for another episode of the Entrepreneur Mindset Podcast, where we focus on mentoring, community and implementation. It’s all about taking action so that we can remove the overwhelm of building a successful and profitable business and add in a little dose of momentum.
Until next time, have a healthy, safe, and happy week.
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