In today's episode, our host Jaime Slutzky shares with us the top layers of online strategies, breaking down the core components of marketing, nurturing, and servicing helping you to create a clear action plan to propel your music studio forward.Three Elements of Online:1) MarketingTwo sides: posting and engagingProgression from organic marketing to content marketing to paid marketing.Building a sense of community through engagement on social media.2) Nurturing and Sales:email marketing.Using DMs as a first step in conversations.Empowering students with information to build trust and interest.3) Servicing Your Students:Streamlining business operations with online tools.Expanding online opportunities through private lessons, group programs, digital products, workshops, and courses.Focusing on easy access and support for online students.Action:Evaluate what you're curring tly doing online and how it falls into the buckets listed above. Linked MentionedConvertKitJaimeSlutzky on InstagramWanna chat? Go to https://callwithjaime.com

In today's episode, our host Jaime Slutzky shares with us the top layers of online strategies, breaking down the core components of marketing, nurturing, and servicing helping you to create a clear action plan to propel your music studio forward.Three Elements of Online:<h3>1) Marketing</h3><ul><li>Two sides: posting and engaging</li><li>Progression from organic marketing to content marketing to paid marketing.</li><li>Building a sense of community through engagement on social media.</li></ul><h3>2) Nurturing and Sales:</h3><ul><li>email marketing.</li><li>Using DMs as a first step in conversations.</li><li>Empowering students with information to build trust and interest.</li></ul> <h3>3) Servicing Your Students:</h3><ul><li>Streamlining business operations with online tools.</li><li>Expanding online opportunities through private lessons, group programs, digital products, workshops, and courses.</li><li>Focusing on easy access and support for online students.</li></ul> <h3>Action:</h3>Evaluate what you're curring tly doing online and how it falls into the buckets listed above. <h2>Linked Mentioned</h2><ul><li><a href="https://techofbusiness.com/convertkit/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">ConvertKit</a></li><li><a href="https://www.instagram.com/jaimeslutzky/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">JaimeSlutzky on Instagram</a></li></ul> Wanna chat? Go to <a href="https://callwithjaime.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://callwithjaime.com</a>

288: How to Make Sense of Online for your Music Studio

In this episode of the Music Teachers: Expand Online podcast, Jaime Slutzky is joined by Ashlee Young from the Prosperous Piano Teacher podcast for the first of a engaging two-part conversation. Part 2 will appear on the Prosperous Piano Teacher Podcast in just a few days -- be sure to subscribe now!The focus of this discussion is centered around "Owning Your Unique Brilliance" in the online music teaching space. They share insights, strategies, and personal experiences to help music teachers gain the confidence and skills needed to expand their businesses online successfully.Highlights include:The importance of bringing your unique brilliance as a teacher in order to stand out in the online space.Setting realistic goals, being consistent in taking action, and celebrating small wins are essential for continuous growth and success.Putting your own spin on morning routines. A morning routine is simply a habit that sets you up for owning it!Trusting yourself to do the actions even if you don't know everything you feel you need to in order to get to your goal.It's all about the journey ~ embracing creativity and success online. As music teachers, it is vital to recognize and harness your unique brilliance which will help you to stand out and be noticed online. Your actionable task:Schedule out 10 minutes of uninterrupted time and think about what your bigger goal is. Think about where you want to be in five years, and what you want to be doing, what is one goal that feels easy, that will get you in that direction?Again, be sure to subscribe or follow to Ashlee's Prosperous Piano Teacher podcast to get part 2 of this conversation.Connect with Jaime:InstagramFacebookCallWithJaime.com – Book a call with me to discuss your path forward!

In this episode of the Music Teachers: Expand Online podcast, Jaime Slutzky is joined by <a href="https://www.ashleejyoung.com/podcast" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ashlee Young from the Prosperous Piano Teacher podcast</a> for the first of a engaging two-part conversation. Part 2 will appear on the Prosperous Piano Teacher Podcast in just a few days -- <a href="https://www.ashleejyoung.com/podcast" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">be sure to subscribe now</a>!The focus of this discussion is centered around "Owning Your Unique Brilliance" in the online music teaching space. They share insights, strategies, and personal experiences to help music teachers gain the confidence and skills needed to expand their businesses online successfully.<h2>Highlights include:</h2><ul><li>The importance of bringing your unique brilliance as a teacher in order to stand out in the online space.</li><li>Setting realistic goals, being consistent in taking action, and celebrating small wins are essential for continuous growth and success.</li><li>Putting your own spin on morning routines. A morning routine is simply a habit that sets you up for owning it!</li><li>Trusting yourself to do the actions even if you don't know everything you feel you need to in order to get to your goal.</li></ul> It's all about the journey ~ embracing creativity and success online. As music teachers, it is vital to recognize and harness your unique brilliance which will help you to stand out and be noticed online. <h3>Your actionable task:</h3>Schedule out 10 minutes of uninterrupted time and think about what your bigger goal is. Think about where you want to be in five years, and what you want to be doing, what is one goal that feels easy, that will get you in that direction?Again, be sure to subscribe or follow to Ashlee's <a href="https://www.ashleejyoung.com/podcast" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Prosperous Piano Teacher podcast</a> to get part 2 of this conversation.<h3>Connect with Jaime:</h3><ul><li><a href="https://www.instagram.com/jaimeslutzky/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Instagram</a></li><li><a href="https://www.facebook.com/expandonlinenow/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Facebook</a></li><li><a href="https://callwithjaime.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">CallWithJaime.com</a> – Book a call with me to discuss your path forward!</li></ul>

287: Owning It Online with Ashlee Young

In this episode of the Music Teachers: Expand Online Podcast, host Jaime Slutzky delves into the importance of staying fresh and creative in the ever-expanding online music education space. She shares her recent birthday promotion and how it inspired her to help you shake things up and invite your audience to actively participate in shaping the additional elements of your studio.Discover how you, too, can tap into the power of market research to offer innovative concepts and different modalities.Highlights:The importance of getting inspiration from your audience and allowing them to guide the direction of some of your studio's offerings.Understanding the benefits of external motivation and the freedom to explore creative teaching approaches beyond your niche.Using market research to discover new workshop ideas and engaging lessons based on your audience's preferences and interests.The value of time-bound promotions, setting urgency, and being flexible in pricing to encourage participation and gather valuable insights.Summer presents a perfect opportunity for exploration and creativity. Engage with your audience:Ask them what they'd love to learn, experience, or see more of in your studio.Embrace the power of listening through market research to discover new and exciting ways to expand your teaching methods and offerings.Let your students and followers help shape your studio's future and embark on a journey of continuous growth and impact.Connect with Jaime:InstagramFacebookCallWithJaime.com - Book a call with me to discuss your path forward!

In this episode of the Music Teachers: Expand Online Podcast, host Jaime Slutzky delves into the importance of staying fresh and creative in the ever-expanding online music education space. She shares her recent birthday promotion and how it inspired her to help you shake things up and invite your audience to actively participate in shaping the additional elements of your studio.Discover how you, too, can tap into the power of market research to offer innovative concepts and different modalities.<h2>Highlights:</h2><ol><li>The importance of getting inspiration from your audience and allowing them to guide the direction of some of your studio's offerings.</li><li>Understanding the benefits of external motivation and the freedom to explore creative teaching approaches beyond your niche.</li><li>Using market research to discover new workshop ideas and engaging lessons based on your audience's preferences and interests.</li><li>The value of time-bound promotions, setting urgency, and being flexible in pricing to encourage participation and gather valuable insights.</li></ol> Summer presents a perfect opportunity for exploration and creativity. Engage with your audience:<ul><li>Ask them what they'd love to learn, experience, or see more of in your studio.</li><li>Embrace the power of listening through market research to discover new and exciting ways to expand your teaching methods and offerings.</li><li>Let your students and followers help shape your studio's future and embark on a journey of continuous growth and impact.</li></ul> <h3>Connect with Jaime:</h3><ul><li><a href="https://www.instagram.com/jaimeslutzky/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Instagram</a></li><li><a href="https://www.facebook.com/expandonlinenow/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Facebook</a></li><li><a href="https://callwithjaime.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">CallWithJaime.com</a> - Book a call with me to discuss your path forward!</li></ul>

286: Innovative Teaching through Market Research for Music Teachers

In this episode of the Music Teachers: Expand Online podcast, our host, Jaime Slutzky dives into the power of a clutter-free space for creativity, both in your physical environment and your digital footprint. Discover how a clean workspace can enhance your creative process, leading to increased productivity and better content creation. Whether you're crafting social media assets, recording podcasts, or developing digital products, a clean and organized space can significantly improve your ability to express yourself. And the same goes for our digital space. A clean, streamlined and modern tech stack is going to create space, ease and grace for doing the mundane business admin tasks for your music studio. Reducing redundant tools and the sheer number of tools we use to complete tasks is a surefire way to make huge strides! Recommended Action Steps:  Clear up and organize your physical workspace. Experiment with different creative and creation spaces. Audit your digital tools and toss the ones you don't need. Don't fix what isn't broken. Use modernization to streamline repetitive tasks.  Connect with Jaime:  Instagram Facebook CallWithJaime.com - Book a call with me to discuss your path forward! 

In this episode of the Music Teachers: Expand Online podcast, our host, Jaime Slutzky dives into the power of a clutter-free space for creativity, both in your physical environment and your digital footprint. Discover how a clean workspace can enhance your creative process, leading to increased productivity and better content creation. Whether you're crafting social media assets, recording podcasts, or developing digital products, a clean and organized space can significantly improve your ability to express yourself. And the same goes for our digital space. A clean, streamlined and modern tech stack is going to create space, ease and grace for doing the mundane business admin tasks for your music studio. Reducing redundant tools and the sheer number of tools we use to complete tasks is a surefire way to make huge strides! Recommended Action Steps: <ol> <li>Clear up and organize your physical workspace.</li> <li>Experiment with different creative and creation spaces.</li> <li>Audit your digital tools and toss the ones you don't need.</li> <li>Don't fix what isn't broken.</li> <li>Use modernization to streamline repetitive tasks.</li> </ol> <h4>Connect with Jaime:</h4> <ul> <li><a href="https://www.instagram.com/jaimeslutzky/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Instagram</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.facebook.com/expandonlinenow/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Facebook</a></li> <li><a href="https://callwithjaime.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">CallWithJaime.com</a> - Book a call with me to discuss your path forward!</li> </ul>

285: Creating a Clean and Abundant Space for Creativity in your Music Studio

In this episode of the Music Teachers: Expand Online podcast, host Jaime Slutzky takes a high-level view of online music teaching. She emphasizes the importance of zooming out and understanding what we are trying to achieve online as music teachers. It's easy to get stuck in the details or play small, so finding the right balance between impact and income that fulfills you is crucial to long-term success as an online music teacher. The elements of your landscape include:  your offers student acquisition student goals student-teacher relationship duration internal pulse  By balancing time, money, and energy investments, teachers can optimize their teaching practices. This understanding enables you to identify trends and make informed decisions about your teaching approach. Once the landscape is clear, it is then easier to bring in the right tools and create new offers, such as workshops, courses, or digital products. Taking an outside and analytical perspective will help you to make the decisions and thrive online! Connect with Jaime:  Instagram Facebook CallWithJaime.com - Book a call with me to discuss your path forward! 

In this episode of the Music Teachers: Expand Online podcast, host Jaime Slutzky takes a high-level view of online music teaching. She emphasizes the importance of zooming out and understanding what we are trying to achieve online as music teachers. It's easy to get stuck in the details or play small, so finding the right balance between impact and income that fulfills you is crucial to long-term success as an online music teacher. The elements of your landscape include: <ul> <li>your offers</li> <li>student acquisition</li> <li>student goals</li> <li>student-teacher relationship duration</li> <li>internal pulse</li> </ul> By balancing time, money, and energy investments, teachers can optimize their teaching practices. This understanding enables you to identify trends and make informed decisions about your teaching approach. Once the landscape is clear, it is then easier to bring in the right tools and create new offers, such as workshops, courses, or digital products. Taking an outside and analytical perspective will help you to make the decisions and thrive online! <h4>Connect with Jaime:</h4> <ul> <li><a href="https://www.instagram.com/jaimeslutzky/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Instagram</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.facebook.com/expandonlinenow/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Facebook</a></li> <li><a href="https://callwithjaime.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">CallWithJaime.com</a> - Book a call with me to discuss your path forward!</li> </ul>

284: Taking a High-Level View of your Music Studio

In this episode of the Music Teachers: Expand Online podcast, host Jaime Slutzky revisits the topic of online self-promotion. Jaime shares strategies to authentically showcase oneself and business ventures in the best possible light. She emphasizes the importance of storytelling, giving value to the audience, and being one's own advocate online. Highlights:  Self-promotion can be perceived negatively, but it's essential for online success. Authentic self-promotion involves sharing one's mission, programs, and offers effectively. Examples of ick and yay methods of self-promotion are explored through three scenarios. The importance of storytelling, providing value, and tastefully sharing credentials is emphasized. Strategies for effective online promotion are outlined, encouraging listeners to invite future clients into the conversation.  Jaime underscores the importance of storytelling, value-driven promotion, and self-advocacy online. Embrace these strategies and confidently share your offers and opportunities in a way that aligns with your values and connects with your potential students! Craft engaging stories! Provide value to your audience. Tastefully share your credentials.  Let's make your teaching journey even more awesome --&gt; Join Tune into Success today! Connect with Jaime:  Instagram Facebook CallWithJaime.com - Book a call with me to discuss your path forward! 

In this episode of the Music Teachers: Expand Online podcast, host Jaime Slutzky revisits the topic of online self-promotion. Jaime shares strategies to authentically showcase oneself and business ventures in the best possible light. She emphasizes the importance of storytelling, giving value to the audience, and being one's own advocate online. Highlights: <ul> <li>Self-promotion can be perceived negatively, but it's essential for online success.</li> <li>Authentic self-promotion involves sharing one's mission, programs, and offers effectively.</li> <li>Examples of ick and yay methods of self-promotion are explored through three scenarios.</li> <li>The importance of storytelling, providing value, and tastefully sharing credentials is emphasized.</li> <li>Strategies for effective online promotion are outlined, encouraging listeners to invite future clients into the conversation.</li> </ul> Jaime underscores the importance of storytelling, value-driven promotion, and self-advocacy online. Embrace these strategies and confidently share your offers and opportunities in a way that aligns with your values and connects with your potential students! Craft engaging stories! Provide value to your audience. Tastefully share your credentials.  Let's make your teaching journey even more awesome --&gt; Join <a href="https://expandonlinenow.com/tune-into-success/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Tune into Success</a> today! <h4>Connect with Jaime:</h4> <ul> <li><a href="https://www.instagram.com/jaimeslutzky/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Instagram</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.facebook.com/expandonlinenow/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Facebook</a></li> <li><a href="https://callwithjaime.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">CallWithJaime.com</a> - Book a call with me to discuss your path forward!</li> </ul>

283: Crafting Authentic Music Education Promotion

In this episode of the Music Teachers: Expand Online podcast, host Jaime Slutzky emphasizes the importance of refreshing and revisiting your mindset when expanding your music teaching business online. She takes listeners back to episode 100, originally released on January 1st, 2020, and shares valuable mindset advice that is still relevant today.  When doubt and uncertainty creep in, it's hard to turn off our monkey brain. Jaime shares her strategy:  affirmations and positive self-talk reflections and tracking  You have something valuable to offer and that expanding your business online is the logical next step. Consider this podcast episode an opportunity to expand your support system. Let's break down the barriers that are in your way and take the first or next step towards online expansion. Don't let mindset work you up - embrace the power of positive affirmations, reflect on your progress, and embark on the journey of expanding your music teaching business online.  Let's make your teaching journey even more awesome --&gt; Join Tune into Success today! Connect with Jaime:  Instagram Facebook CallWithJaime.com - Book a call with me to discuss your path forward! 

In this episode of the Music Teachers: Expand Online podcast, host Jaime Slutzky emphasizes the importance of refreshing and revisiting your mindset when expanding your music teaching business online. She takes listeners back to episode 100, originally released on January 1st, 2020, and shares valuable mindset advice that is still relevant today.  When doubt and uncertainty creep in, it's hard to turn off our monkey brain. Jaime shares her strategy: <ul> <li>affirmations and positive self-talk</li> <li>reflections and tracking</li> </ul> You have something valuable to offer and that expanding your business online is the logical next step. Consider this podcast episode an opportunity to expand your support system. Let's break down the barriers that are in your way and take the first or next step towards online expansion. Don't let mindset work you up - embrace the power of positive affirmations, reflect on your progress, and embark on the journey of expanding your music teaching business online.  Let's make your teaching journey even more awesome --&gt; Join <a href="https://expandonlinenow.com/tune-into-success/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Tune into Success</a> today! <h4>Connect with Jaime:</h4> <ul> <li><a href="https://www.instagram.com/jaimeslutzky/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Instagram</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.facebook.com/expandonlinenow/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Facebook</a></li> <li><a href="https://callwithjaime.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">CallWithJaime.com</a> - Book a call with me to discuss your path forward!</li> </ul>

282: Refresh your mindset and expand with confidence

In this episode of the Music Teachers: Expand Online podcast, Jaime Slutzky discusses the importance of positioning your online program for effective marketing. She emphasizes that it's not just about the program's content but about conveying the results and transformation your ideal student will experience. Episode highlights:  The importance of the transformation that your music student experiences through your online product Program terminology; what's a course versus a workshop versus a group program etc. Building Trust and Giving Value: Trust plays a significant role in online marketing.   If you have a current online product, look at your sales page and selling resources and make sure you tap into emotions and evoke a feeling. If you're sitting on ideas, then click on a link below to connect with Jaime and bring those ideas to life! Let's make your teaching journey even more awesome --&gt; Join Tune into Success today! Connect with Jaime:  Instagram Facebook CallWithJaime.com - Book a call with me to discuss your path forward! 

In this episode of the Music Teachers: Expand Online podcast, Jaime Slutzky discusses the importance of positioning your online program for effective marketing. She emphasizes that it's not just about the program's content but about conveying the results and transformation your ideal student will experience. Episode highlights: <ul> <li>The importance of the transformation that your music student experiences through your online product</li> <li>Program terminology; what's a course versus a workshop versus a group program etc.</li> <li>Building Trust and Giving Value: Trust plays a significant role in online marketing. </li> </ul> If you have a current online product, look at your sales page and selling resources and make sure you tap into emotions and evoke a feeling. If you're sitting on ideas, then click on a link below to connect with Jaime and bring those ideas to life! Let's make your teaching journey even more awesome --&gt; Join <a href="https://expandonlinenow.com/tune-into-success/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Tune into Success</a> today! <h4>Connect with Jaime:</h4> <ul> <li><a href="https://www.instagram.com/jaimeslutzky/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Instagram</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.facebook.com/expandonlinenow/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Facebook</a></li> <li><a href="https://callwithjaime.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">CallWithJaime.com</a> - Book a call with me to discuss your path forward!</li> </ul>

281: Sell the experience to unlock the potential of your online music program

In this (rebroadcast) episode of the Music Teachers Expand Online podcast, host Jaime Slutzky shares insights on how to create a thriving online music course. These same actions can be taken for any online teaching opportunity you're interested in exploring such as Online Music Workshops and digital products. There is no one right way to create a successful online music course. There are, however, steps you can take now if you want to have an audience ready to buy your online products, even if it’s still just an idea rattling around in your mind. Jaime has worked with dozens of music teachers and course creators over the past decade and has seen first hand what separates the profitable and successful creators from the creators who flounder. The five things you can do right now are:  Niche your messaging List building Talk with prospective students Design your funnel / student journey Focus on what only you can do and outsource and systematize the rest  Commit to taking action on one of these five things today! Set specific goals and create a plan to implement it. Remember, consistent and focused effort will propel you towards success in the online music education space. Let's make your teaching journey even more awesome --&gt; Join Tune into Success today! Connect with Jaime:  Instagram Facebook CallWithJaime.com - Book a call with me to discuss your path forward! 

In this (rebroadcast) episode of the Music Teachers Expand Online podcast, host Jaime Slutzky shares insights on how to create a thriving online music course. These same actions can be taken for any online teaching opportunity you're interested in exploring such as Online Music Workshops and digital products. There is no one right way to create a successful online music course. There are, however, steps you can take now if you want to have an audience ready to buy your online products, even if it’s still just an idea rattling around in your mind. Jaime has worked with dozens of music teachers and course creators over the past decade and has seen first hand what separates the profitable and successful creators from the creators who flounder. <h3>The five things you can do right now are:</h3> <ul> <li>Niche your messaging</li> <li>List building</li> <li>Talk with prospective students</li> <li>Design your funnel / student journey</li> <li>Focus on what only you can do and outsource and systematize the rest</li> </ul> Commit to taking action on one of these five things today! Set specific goals and create a plan to implement it. Remember, consistent and focused effort will propel you towards success in the online music education space. Let's make your teaching journey even more awesome --&gt; Join <a href="https://expandonlinenow.com/tune-into-success/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Tune into Success</a> today! <h4>Connect with Jaime:</h4> <ul> <li><a href="https://www.instagram.com/jaimeslutzky/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Instagram</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.facebook.com/expandonlinenow/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Facebook</a></li> <li><a href="https://callwithjaime.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">CallWithJaime.com</a> - Book a call with me to discuss your path forward!</li> </ul>

280: Take action now for future online music education success!

In this episode of the Music Teachers Expand Online podcast, host Jaime Slutzky discusses how you and your studio can benefit from online music workshops. Online workshops offer unique advantages for both teachers and students. Online workshops provide interactive environments, foster community and networking, and offer opportunities for growth and income by branching out traditional teaching methods and aligning your teaching with your true passions! Highlights Include:  How online music workshops are advantageous for teachers A ChatGPT generated list of workshop topics for different instruments Student benefits from online music workshops Pricing and duration  With the potential for impact on individuals, increased income, and a sense of community, online workshops provide a unique learning experience for both teachers and students. Online music workshops are a total game-changer for music teachers! They're the secret ingredient to re-envigorate your teaching and connect with your students on a whole new level. Your online workshops have the power to make a real impact on individuals, boost your income, and create a tight-knit community of musicians. So, why not dive into different topics and formats, and give your students an awesome learning experience? Let's make your teaching journey even more awesome --&gt; Join Tune into Success today! Connect with Jaime:  Instagram Facebook CallWithJaime.com - Book a call with me to discuss your path forward! 

In this episode of the Music Teachers Expand Online podcast, host Jaime Slutzky discusses how you and your studio can benefit from online music workshops. Online workshops offer unique advantages for both teachers and students. Online workshops provide interactive environments, foster community and networking, and offer opportunities for growth and income by branching out traditional teaching methods and aligning your teaching with your true passions! <h3>Highlights Include:</h3> <ul> <li>How online music workshops are advantageous for teachers</li> <li>A ChatGPT generated list of workshop topics for different instruments</li> <li>Student benefits from online music workshops</li> <li>Pricing and duration</li> </ul> With the potential for impact on individuals, increased income, and a sense of community, online workshops provide a unique learning experience for both teachers and students. Online music workshops are a total game-changer for music teachers! They're the secret ingredient to re-envigorate your teaching and connect with your students on a whole new level. Your online workshops have the power to make a real impact on individuals, boost your income, and create a tight-knit community of musicians. So, why not dive into different topics and formats, and give your students an awesome learning experience? Let's make your teaching journey even more awesome --&gt; Join <a href="https://expandonlinenow.com/tune-into-success/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Tune into Success</a> today! <h4>Connect with Jaime:</h4> <ul> <li><a href="https://www.instagram.com/jaimeslutzky/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Instagram</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.facebook.com/expandonlinenow/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Facebook</a></li> <li><a href="https://callwithjaime.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">CallWithJaime.com</a> - Book a call with me to discuss your path forward!</li> </ul>

279: Online Music Workshops - Expand with Confidence

Tangible, actionable and relevant information for music teachers who are expanding online with courses, membership sites, workshops and interactive group programs. Tune in for musings, conversations, tech tips and motivation that is all designed to help your music studio have greater impact and income online!

Great information! I learn something new each episode. 
Pam Andrews

Pam Andrews

Great content and amazing to listen to! Can&#39;t wait for more podcast episodes to air!!!

Amazing Podcast

Music Teachers: Expand Online

Nikki Rausch

Are you ready to take control over your sales process? Yes -- then today’s episode is going to give you a boost in that direction! Meet Nikki Rausch! And she is Your Sales Maven. She is a sales coach, an author, and a speaker. Entrepreneurs hire her to teach them how to sell their product in an authentic way so that they are able to build rapport and relationships with their leads and build their client roster. The sales process is a critical component of being an entrepreneur. Having an online presence is only good if you can get people to sign up and take action!. If customers only get to the point of being interested and never sign up and invest their time and money in your product then you aren’t doing everything you can to grow your business. Nikki believes, by having a sales coach and learning how to have sales conversations, it equips you to convert your prospects to customers. As a Sales Coach, Nikki has plenty of tools at her disposal to begin sales conversations. The one that I’m most interested in this episode is the one she used for The Selling Staircase book launch. This strategy allows people to:  Start learning from Nikki at a low price point Get inspired by learning from Nikki And then go up and up and up in her offers  The sales strategy for The Selling Staircase was to create ambassadors in the marketplace for the book, a launch team of supporters, who are willing to step up and promote the book into the marketplace. Nikki and her launch team are using social media, swipe files, podcasts, email marketing and Amazon Reviews as the principal tools to create immediate buzz around the book. She didn’t use this method for either of her first two books, but her community and brand awareness afforded her this new method of book launch! It’s been important to Nikki for her launch team to know she is with them every step of the way. The beauty of a launch team makes Nikki’s book more visible and easier to find in the marketplace. This makes it possible to find her book faster. People can see it’s also more than just Nikki sharing about her book. When you are writing a book, it's so important to visualize the outcome... What do you want to happen as a result of putting your book out into the world? If you are writing a book, you are creating a way for people to have a low price entry point so that they can be exposed to your work and learn from you. It allows someone who isn’t ready to or not able to step into a one on one coaching situation to still learn and be engaged in content. “This idea of people being engaged in the content is social proof. That’s why I’m building this launch team.”- Nikki Rausch With this “social proof”...the goal was to have 50 or more people who have already written a review on Amazon on launch! Every member of the launch team gained early (discounted) access to The Selling Staircase.. They will have read the book. Also, they will be engaged in the content. AND they will be able to talk intelligently about:  What is in the book. How others can use it. Why they would promote it to other people.  A book launch team is like running a beta group for your course or group program… If you already have a large community of followers then you could be ready for this strategy yourself! Think about it this way. When you are doing a beta launch of your group, the people who join are most likely the most loyal people in your community. They are the best right people to be inside your beta -- they are willing to give of themselves to see your success and they are more likely to make it all the way through your content (because they already know-like-and-trust you and your process!) Therefore, they can be a true ambassador. Beta launching is something that Nikki absolutely loves. She beta launched a membership platform and courses. And, even before wrote this book, she was teaching about the content. She then did a webinar and 6 part video series on YouTube. She did all these things to beta her content before she put it into a book form. Nikki wanted to make sure that it was going to resonate with her audience and it allowed for adjustments before she wrote the book. She used online tech tools as stepping stones inside this process of writing her book! So, let’s talk about the book… The full name of the book is The Selling Staircase: Mastering the Art of Relationship Selling. According to Nikki, oftentimes, we learn about filling a sales funnel. People don’t know how to get people from the funnel to the point where they exchange dollars. The idea of the selling staircase is about how to get people from the sales funnel and move them step by step to the end goal. It’s 5 easy steps that help entrepreneurs identify if the person is not an ideal client or ideal client who you then need to move through the process. It teaches them what to say and do to move a client to the next step. Ideally it’s for someone that struggle with the idea of sales. Think about it this way...You have a lead magnet...Then someone downloads the lead magnet and gets on your list and starts going through your email sequence. There are times you may want to pick someone out of that process based on the activity they are doing. You want to be able to take someone out of a possibly elongated process if they are doing the work because you want to be able to reach out to them and help them step by step through the process. Always be looking for and picking clients who are ready. There are lots of ways for people to stay engaged with your work like listening to your podcast or reading your newsletter. Look for people who are ready to take the next step because they won’t just pop out to you. You are going to have to identify them and then engage them in some way to make it easy for them to have more engagement with you. This strategy works for more than just one on one services. It works for selling higher priced services/products as well. When you are selling a product or service you have to:  Meet the customer wherever they are at Extend a hand AND HELP THEM  But how do you get someone to pop out…. Simple: Issue Invitations! People like to be invited -- even if we aren’t actually ready to pop out and take that next step, it feels great to be invited. Make it SUPER clear and easy to work with you. The easiest way to do this is to actually issue an invitation. “If you make it hard for the client to understand that you are PERSONALLY inviting them to something, they often won’t take the next step.”- Nikki Rausch Think about it this way. When we are writing something and sending it out to our community we write it as if they are going to be reading it as a big, collective community...but they aren’t. They are reading it as each individual person. When you are issuing an invitation, it needs to be written to them as if it was JUST written to just one person. A really simple tip to stop writing like you are writing to your community as a whole is to stop using “Hey Guys” or “Hi Everyone”. Your audience members are not reading it as everyone reading together… they are reading it individually so make it feel personal. I was practically jumping up and down when Nikki was talking about this -- I see it all the time!. I also see people who use a personalization function at the start of an email to their community and it seems much more personal, but then everything else in the message is written very generally. On the podcast, we have talked at length about learning who your audience is... when someone takes an action in an email by clicking a link to answer a question, it allows you to segment your list down so you can send multiple versions of an email to best suit the different segments. Segmenting helps make your emails more relevant and personal… here’s an example. Most of the time when I’m reading newsletters that I’ve signed up for … I read them on my phone while I’m at gymnastics. So if Nikki sent me an email and asked me to click here if i’m reading on my mobile phone and I click that button the next time she sends me an email she can say “Hey! I know you are on the go so I’m going to keep this short and sweet…”. How relevant is that kind of information to have? As a recipient of that, it tells me that Nikki really gets me! She wants something more for me and ultimately I’ll be more likely to open more of her emails and take more action! “Anytime you can personalize and make the message feel really relevant to THAT reader, you are speaking right to the heart of somebody.”- Nikki Rausch When you write and email and you make the recipient feel like they are just one of many it’s not enticing. It makes your audience feel like you really don’t care about them as one person. This goes back to a principle in Nikki’s book... “The relationship always comes before the sale.”-Nikki Rausch You have to put the relationship first and start talking to people like you are having real conversations. This is how you master the art of relationship selling. Stop talking AT people and start talking WITH people. Another great topic that Nikki covers is reducing the number of “I” statements. When you are writing something and putting it out into social media, think about it being read by another person. Stop using a bunch of “I” statements except for when you are talking about something you personally did. Things like “I think you might like” or “I created this downloadable” or even “I want you to listen to this” When you really want to engage someone in a conversation, it needs to be “you” statements because they are reading it from their perspective. Use things like “You’re invited” or “You are somebody I would love to connect with”. This has a different message to the reader than saying “I want this for you!” People don’t care what you want, they care about what they want! Effective messaging often includes asking questions and helping someone see the other side. Then there are breadcrumbs to lead them back to you as the service provider. “When you ask people questions, their brains give them an answer. Now whether take action and respond to you is something else.” -Nikki Rausch Nikki recently sent out an email to her list that asked a question. She was amazed at how many people responded to this question. So then she took it a step further and sent them all an individual video that offered them some training. Not everybody watched the videos and responded. But those that did, responded and said they couldn’t believe she did that for them! Because they took the time to engage with her, she took the time to personalize and engage back. This is how you start conversations and move people off of social media and your list! WOW! This is such a testament to the process, but also understanding the mindset and buying signals! Back to Nikki’s Launch team for The Selling Staircase: you don’t have to promise them something big for people to want to be involved. When Nikki was forming her launch team she used a Google Doc and asked people to fill out an application. The application was really focused around them and made sure that it was something that made sense for them and that they would have time for it. The advantage to them of being on the launch team is they:  Get early access to the book. Exclusive community. Get access to Nikki for the 6-week book launch promotion  Nikki planned some fun stuff for the launch team. There were both big and little prizes. Most of the people on the launch team just wanted the access to the content in the book. They purchased the book for $0.99 whereas everyone else will pay a higher price for it. They only reason she is charging them $0.99 is so that the reviews on Amazon show as verified buyers -- gives a whole lot more validity to the reviews! Go check them out now → https://tinyurl.com/SellingStaircaseBook . Members of the launch team were told that they can engage and participate as little or as much as they want. They can purchase the book and leave a review and that’s it. Or have Nikki on their podcast and promote it on your social media and all kinds of other things. Nikki and her team have done everything they could do to make it super easy for the launch team to promote this book. If you want to launch something and you have the community to support you, think about creating ambassadors or a launch team of your own!! Connect with Jaime: Instagram: @techofbusiness  Twitter: @techofbusiness Facebook: @yourbiztech LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaimeslutzky/  Email: jaime@techofbusiness.com Connect with Nikki: Website: https://www.yoursalesmaven.com  Free Ebook: https://www.yoursalesmaven.com/ebook  Email: nikki@yoursalesmaven.com  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yoursalesmaven  Facebook: @NikkiRausch

<h3>Are you ready to take control over your sales process? Yes -- then today’s episode is going to give you a boost in that direction!</h3> Meet Nikki Rausch! And she is <a href="https://yoursalesmaven.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Your Sales Maven</a>. She is a sales coach, an author, and a speaker. Entrepreneurs hire her to teach them how to sell their product in an authentic way so that they are able to build rapport and relationships with their leads and build their client roster. The sales process is a critical component of being an entrepreneur. Having an online presence is only good if you can get people to sign up and take action!. If customers only get to the point of being interested and never sign up and invest their time and money in your product then you aren’t doing everything you can to grow your business. Nikki believes, by having a sales coach and learning how to have sales conversations, it equips you to convert your prospects to customers. As a Sales Coach, Nikki has plenty of tools at her disposal to begin sales conversations. The one that I’m most interested in this episode is the one she used for <a href="https://tinyurl.com/SellingStaircaseBook" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Selling Staircase</a> book launch. This strategy allows people to: <ul> <li>Start learning from Nikki at a low price point</li> <li>Get inspired by learning from Nikki</li> <li>And then go up and up and up in her offers</li> </ul> <h3>The sales strategy for The Selling Staircase was to create ambassadors in the marketplace for the book, a launch team of supporters, who are willing to step up and promote the book into the marketplace.</h3> Nikki and her launch team are using social media, swipe files, podcasts, email marketing and Amazon Reviews as the principal tools to create immediate buzz around the book. She didn’t use this method for either of her first two books, but her community and brand awareness afforded her this new method of book launch! It’s been important to Nikki for her launch team to know she is with them every step of the way. The beauty of a launch team makes Nikki’s book more visible and easier to find in the marketplace. This makes it possible to find her book faster. People can see it’s also more than just Nikki sharing about her book. <h3>When you are writing a book, it's so important to visualize the outcome... What do you want to happen as a result of putting your book out into the world?</h3> If you are writing a book, you are creating a way for people to have a low price entry point so that they can be exposed to your work and learn from you. It allows someone who isn’t ready to or not able to step into a one on one coaching situation to still learn and be engaged in content. “This idea of people being engaged in the content is social proof. That’s why I’m building this launch team.”- Nikki Rausch With this “social proof”...the goal was to have 50 or more people who have already written a review on Amazon on launch! Every member of the launch team gained early (discounted) access to The Selling Staircase.. They will have read the book. Also, they will be engaged in the content. AND they will be able to talk intelligently about: <ul> <li>What is in the book.</li> <li>How others can use it.</li> <li>Why they would promote it to other people.</li> </ul> <h3>A book launch team is like running a beta group for your course or group program… If you already have a large community of followers then you could be ready for this strategy yourself!</h3> Think about it this way. When you are doing a beta launch of your group, the people who join are most likely the most loyal people in your community. They are the best right people to be inside your beta -- they are willing to give of themselves to see your success and they are more likely to make it all the way through your content (because they already know-like-and-trust you and your process!) Therefore, they can be a true ambassador. Beta launching is something that Nikki absolutely loves. She beta launched a membership platform and courses. And, even before wrote this book, she was teaching about the content. She then did a webinar and 6 part video series on YouTube. She did all these things to beta her content before she put it into a book form. Nikki wanted to make sure that it was going to resonate with her audience and it allowed for adjustments before she wrote the book. She used online tech tools as stepping stones inside this process of writing her book! <h3>So, let’s talk about the book…</h3> The full name of the book is The Selling Staircase: Mastering the Art of Relationship Selling. According to Nikki, oftentimes, we learn about filling a sales funnel. People don’t know how to get people from the funnel to the point where they exchange dollars. The idea of the selling staircase is about how to get people from the sales funnel and move them step by step to the end goal. It’s 5 easy steps that help entrepreneurs identify if the person is not an ideal client or ideal client who you then need to move through the process. It teaches them what to say and do to move a client to the next step. Ideally it’s for someone that struggle with the idea of sales. Think about it this way...You have a lead magnet...Then someone downloads the lead magnet and gets on your list and starts going through your email sequence. There are times you may want to pick someone out of that process based on the activity they are doing. You want to be able to take someone out of a possibly elongated process if they are doing the work because you want to be able to reach out to them and help them step by step through the process. <h3>Always be looking for and picking clients who are ready.</h3> There are lots of ways for people to stay engaged with your work like listening to your podcast or reading your newsletter. Look for people who are ready to take the next step because they won’t just pop out to you. You are going to have to identify them and then engage them in some way to make it easy for them to have more engagement with you. This strategy works for more than just one on one services. It works for selling higher priced services/products as well. When you are selling a product or service you have to: <ul> <li>Meet the customer wherever they are at</li> <li>Extend a hand</li> <li>AND HELP THEM</li> </ul> <h3>But how do you get someone to pop out….</h3> Simple: Issue Invitations! People like to be invited -- even if we aren’t actually ready to pop out and take that next step, it feels great to be invited. Make it SUPER clear and easy to work with you. The easiest way to do this is to actually issue an invitation. “If you make it hard for the client to understand that you are PERSONALLY inviting them to something, they often won’t take the next step.”- Nikki Rausch Think about it this way. When we are writing something and sending it out to our community we write it as if they are going to be reading it as a big, collective community...but they aren’t. They are reading it as each individual person. When you are issuing an invitation, it needs to be written to them as if it was JUST written to just one person. A really simple tip to stop writing like you are writing to your community as a whole is to stop using “Hey Guys” or “Hi Everyone”. Your audience members are not reading it as everyone reading together… they are reading it individually so make it feel personal. I was practically jumping up and down when Nikki was talking about this -- I see it all the time!. I also see people who use a personalization function at the start of an email to their community and it seems much more personal, but then everything else in the message is written very generally. On the podcast, we have talked at length about learning who your audience is... when someone takes an action in an email by clicking a link to answer a question, it allows you to segment your list down so you can send multiple versions of an email to best suit the different segments. <h3>Segmenting helps make your emails more relevant and personal… here’s an example.</h3> Most of the time when I’m reading newsletters that I’ve signed up for … I read them on my phone while I’m at gymnastics. So if Nikki sent me an email and asked me to click here if i’m reading on my mobile phone and I click that button the next time she sends me an email she can say “Hey! I know you are on the go so I’m going to keep this short and sweet…”. How relevant is that kind of information to have? As a recipient of that, it tells me that Nikki really gets me! She wants something more for me and ultimately I’ll be more likely to open more of her emails and take more action! “Anytime you can personalize and make the message feel really relevant to THAT reader, you are speaking right to the heart of somebody.”- Nikki Rausch When you write and email and you make the recipient feel like they are just one of many it’s not enticing. It makes your audience feel like you really don’t care about them as one person. This goes back to a principle in Nikki’s book... “The relationship always comes before the sale.”-Nikki Rausch You have to put the relationship first and start talking to people like you are having real conversations. This is how you master the art of relationship selling. Stop talking AT people and start talking WITH people. <h3>Another great topic that Nikki covers is reducing the number of “I” statements.</h3> When you are writing something and putting it out into social media, think about it being read by another person. Stop using a bunch of “I” statements except for when you are talking about something you personally did. Things like “I think you might like” or “I created this downloadable” or even “I want you to listen to this” When you really want to engage someone in a conversation, it needs to be “you” statements because they are reading it from their perspective. Use things like “You’re invited” or “You are somebody I would love to connect with”. This has a different message to the reader than saying “I want this for you!” People don’t care what you want, they care about what they want! <h3>Effective messaging often includes asking questions and helping someone see the other side. Then there are breadcrumbs to lead them back to you as the service provider.</h3> “When you ask people questions, their brains give them an answer. Now whether take action and respond to you is something else.” -Nikki Rausch Nikki recently sent out an email to her list that asked a question. She was amazed at how many people responded to this question. So then she took it a step further and sent them all an individual video that offered them some training. Not everybody watched the videos and responded. But those that did, responded and said they couldn’t believe she did that for them! Because they took the time to engage with her, she took the time to personalize and engage back. This is how you start conversations and move people off of social media and your list! WOW! This is such a testament to the process, but also understanding the mindset and buying signals! Back to Nikki’s Launch team for The Selling Staircase: you don’t have to promise them something big for people to want to be involved. When Nikki was forming her launch team she used a Google Doc and asked people to fill out an application. The application was really focused around them and made sure that it was something that made sense for them and that they would have time for it. The advantage to them of being on the launch team is they: <ul> <li>Get early access to the book.</li> <li>Exclusive community.</li> <li>Get access to Nikki for the 6-week book launch promotion</li> </ul> Nikki planned some fun stuff for the launch team. There were both big and little prizes. Most of the people on the launch team just wanted the access to the content in the book. They purchased the book for $0.99 whereas everyone else will pay a higher price for it. They only reason she is charging them $0.99 is so that the reviews on Amazon show as verified buyers -- gives a whole lot more validity to the reviews! Go check them out now → <a href="https://tinyurl.com/SellingStaircaseBook" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://tinyurl.com/SellingStaircaseBook</a> . Members of the launch team were told that they can engage and participate as little or as much as they want. They can purchase the book and leave a review and that’s it. Or have Nikki on their podcast and promote it on your social media and all kinds of other things. Nikki and her team have done everything they could do to make it super easy for the launch team to promote this book. If you want to launch something and you have the community to support you, think about creating ambassadors or a launch team of your own!! <h3>Connect with Jaime:</h3> Instagram: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/techofbusiness" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@techofbusiness</a> Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/techofbusiness" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@techofbusiness</a> Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/yourbiztech/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@yourbiztech</a> LinkedIn: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaimeslutzky/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaimeslutzky/</a> Email: <a href="mailto:jaime@techofbusiness.com" rel="nofollow">jaime@techofbusiness.com</a> <h3>Connect with Nikki:</h3> Website: <a href="https://www.yoursalesmaven.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.yoursalesmaven.com</a> Free Ebook: <a href="https://www.yoursalesmaven.com/ebook" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.yoursalesmaven.com/ebook</a> Email: <a href="mailto:nikki@yoursalesmaven.com" rel="nofollow">nikki@yoursalesmaven.com</a> Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/yoursalesmaven" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/yoursalesmaven</a> Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/nikki.rausch.9" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@NikkiRausch</a>

073: The Selling Staircase Launch Strategy with Nikki Rausch

Amber De La Garza

095: Outsourcing to TECH for a Boost in Productivity with Amber De La Garza

I'm excited to get into this episode because it hits me so close to home... I have been working with entrepreneurs and business owners since 2010 to create the exact right tech stack to support their online business goals. My heart swells with pride when my clients hit the “go live” button on whatever project we are working on. It’s not just about go live, it’s really about creating the right online product for both my clients and their audience. Not every business owner who wants to have an online revenue source is going to go about it the same way and there is no one right way. Today, we’re going to determine if an online course is right for you!! There are a lot of offline instructors and coaches who could create and sell online courses. But just because you could, should you? I have seen that the success of online course launches has less to do with what you teach and more to do with who you are as a person and how you present yourself to the world. And what’s more, launching an online course can be done in a number of different ways and again this comes down to they type of person you are. Super quick, you could launch your online course with a webinar or a virtual summit or a challenge or a mini-course or through a podcast or through ads or with a launch team (those are the most common ones) so while you’re thinking about online courses, I recommend you also think about what launch method you resonate the most with as well. You’re just going to gravitate towards one more than others. So, now, one more preface – I’m not a therapist or an intuitive or anything else that makes me an expert in identifying traits in people… this is all anecdotal from working with clients for nearly a decade. Migrating existing one-on-one or in-person teaching into an online format doesn’t have a uniform and single method of translation. What I mean is that it’s not just a matter of taking your lesson plan or outline, creating a few videos to teach the lessons and poof, putting them online for someone else to purchase and learn from. It’s more of an art than a science… what works for one type of course creator has no chance of working for another course creator. And the courses that teach you how to create courses do not have a 100% success rate because nobody can say for sure what your unique audience is going to want from you and how they are going to do their best work from your teachings. One of my favorite ways to explain the difference between online and offline instruction is that you simply cannot walk around the classroom or studio and watch over our students as they work through the material and translate that into practice. And that’s really the crux of the matter – how do we translate the human connection into a virtual space? Let’s take a closer look at this… If your primary teaching style is intuitive with a loose outline or lesson plan then it’s super helpful realize this about yourself and to figure out how to be intuitive while being at a distance from your students. And it might make sense to teach your online courses live rather than pre-recorded. This then goes into the launch method and whether your course is going to be open cart/close cart or evergreen enrollment. If instead your primary teaching style is to follow a lesson plan, give your students time to implement and then review their work and provide feedback, the more traditional online course delivery model can work well for you. This would also lend itself to an evergreen promotion and enrollment. Now, if you’re all about progress over perfection, then one aspect of an online course that you’ll want to take into consideration is how to help your students carve the time out on a daily or weekly basis to keep moving forward. The fact that your students show up and put in the effort is going to help them find success more than being tested or quizzed or required to submit their assignments. And with this model, there is a lot that you’ll want to consider outside of the course content so that you keep your students’ attention. We talked about this a bunch with Acuity Scheduling last week. If you haven’t listened to that episode yet, when you’re finished with this one, just scroll one back to episode 104 and have a listen! Here’s the truth about today’s episode – I think that everyone has it in them to create and deliver an online course. For your course to be successful in your eyes, it needs to feel good to you. Your students will only be responsive to the course if you show up as yourself. Be authentic and don’t feel the need to copy anyone else! Let’s go into other ways to know that you’re ready to put together your first (or next) online course!  You’re the perfect person to develop an online course if you’ve taught the methods you’d teach in your online course at least twice in the past and want to teach them again. You’re the perfect person to develop an online course if you have people asking you for an online course! You’re the perfect person to develop an online course if you have proven teaching methods and a desire to reach outside your geographic region. You’re the perfect person to develop an online course if you’ve been wanting to diversify your income. You’re the perfect person to develop an online course if you’re listening to this podcast right now – no, seriously I bet in a short conversation we can come up with a really great outline for what you could teach with excellence and confidence in an online manner.  Assuming that you’re going to create an online course, let’s talk about how to make sure creating that course falls in line with the rest of your business and your life. Because the last thing we want is for you to put all your energy into creating it and have used none of your energy for any of the other facets of an online course being successful. Online courses differ from offline courses in three specific ways that we’ll want to address and for the purpose of this part of the episode, we’re talking specifically about arts instruction – visual arts, photography, performance and music. In the offline space, you can teach in your own studio or through a studio or community center or organization whereas online you’re going to be doing it completely on your own without location boundaries. This means that your students can be all ages, all abilities and just about anywhere in the world. And this matters because your messaging and delivery need to match their needs and goals. In an offline environment, you can easily speak to your student after class to help them get the most out of the class they are taking or you can move them to a different class during the session. This aspect of learning and observing our students looks vastly different online but is as important here as anywhere. And in an online environment we can actually measure a whole lot more than we can offline. I mean, we can see how much of a video a student watches, we can see what lessons they open, we can see what emails they open, we can see them showing up to office hours and a whole bunch of other bits of information – that information is not measurable in the same way offline… so it really makes sense to setup systems and processes to track everything so that next time you launch this course or offer something new, you’ll be able to use that tangible data in meaningful ways. So, getting back to the initial question of the episode – is an online course right for me? Yes. Yes. Yes.  Take a methodical approach. Surround yourself with others who are on the same path. Seek outside support from me or another coach or strategist. Create something that feels good in your soul, flows with your style and methods and that you feel confident you can continue to love and nurture in its own right.  An online course is not something I recommend for businesses just starting out. You need to already have expertise and a track record and an audience. If you don’t have those yet, then sure, put the online course in the side burner for 4 – 6 months as you build these other facets. Your online course can do amazing things for you personally and professionally. I seriously love seeing my clients take their offline tactics and build something new online. So, there you have it – it’s time to stop thinking your online course is coming someday and start looking inward and put the date on the calendar. This episode was designed to get your wheels spinning and to help you see that your dream is possible. If you would like support, strategy or guidance from me, send me a quick DM on Instagram (I’m @techofbusiness) and we can figure out our best next steps. I look forward to hearing about all your online successes. Thanks for listening and reading these notes! And I love getting to know podcast listeners, so connect with me on any of the platforms listed here:  Download the Online Product Phases Instagram: @techofbusiness Facebook: @yourbiztech The Expand Online Community on Facebook Email: jaime@techofbusiness.com Contact Page: https://techofbusiness.com/contact/ 

I'm excited to get into this episode because it hits me so close to home... I have been working with entrepreneurs and business owners since 2010 to create the exact right tech stack to support their online business goals. <h3>My heart swells with pride when my clients hit the “go live” button on whatever project we are working on. It’s not just about go live, it’s really about creating the right online product for both my clients and their audience.</h3> Not every business owner who wants to have an online revenue source is going to go about it the same way and there is no one right way. Today, we’re going to determine if an online course is right for you!! There are a lot of offline instructors and coaches who could create and sell online courses. But just because you could, should you? I have seen that the success of online course launches has less to do with what you teach and more to do with who you are as a person and how you present yourself to the world. And what’s more, launching an online course can be done in a number of different ways and again this comes down to they type of person you are. Super quick, you could launch your online course with a webinar or a virtual summit or a challenge or a mini-course or through a podcast or through ads or with a launch team (those are the most common ones) so while you’re thinking about online courses, I recommend you also think about what launch method you resonate the most with as well. You’re just going to gravitate towards one more than others. So, now, one more preface – I’m not a therapist or an intuitive or anything else that makes me an expert in identifying traits in people… this is all anecdotal from working with clients for nearly a decade. Migrating existing one-on-one or in-person teaching into an online format doesn’t have a uniform and single method of translation. What I mean is that it’s not just a matter of taking your lesson plan or outline, creating a few videos to teach the lessons and poof, putting them online for someone else to purchase and learn from. It’s more of an art than a science… what works for one type of course creator has no chance of working for another course creator. And the courses that teach you how to create courses do not have a 100% success rate because nobody can say for sure what your unique audience is going to want from you and how they are going to do their best work from your teachings. One of my favorite ways to explain the difference between online and offline instruction is that you simply cannot walk around the classroom or studio and watch over our students as they work through the material and translate that into practice. And that’s really the crux of the matter – how do we translate the human connection into a virtual space? <h2>Let’s take a closer look at this…</h2> If your primary teaching style is intuitive with a loose outline or lesson plan then it’s super helpful realize this about yourself and to figure out how to be intuitive while being at a distance from your students. And it might make sense to teach your online courses live rather than pre-recorded. This then goes into the launch method and whether your course is going to be open cart/close cart or evergreen enrollment. If instead your primary teaching style is to follow a lesson plan, give your students time to implement and then review their work and provide feedback, the more traditional online course delivery model can work well for you. This would also lend itself to an evergreen promotion and enrollment. Now, if you’re all about progress over perfection, then one aspect of an online course that you’ll want to take into consideration is how to help your students carve the time out on a daily or weekly basis to keep moving forward. The fact that your students show up and put in the effort is going to help them find success more than being tested or quizzed or required to submit their assignments. And with this model, there is a lot that you’ll want to consider outside of the course content so that you keep your students’ attention. We talked about this a bunch with Acuity Scheduling last week. If you haven’t listened to that episode yet, when you’re finished with this one, just scroll one back to episode 104 and have a listen! Here’s the truth about today’s episode – I think that everyone has it in them to create and deliver an online course. For your course to be successful in your eyes, it needs to feel good to you. Your students will only be responsive to the course if you show up as yourself. Be authentic and don’t feel the need to copy anyone else! Let’s go into other ways to know that you’re ready to put together your first (or next) online course! <ul> <li>You’re the perfect person to develop an online course if you’ve taught the methods you’d teach in your online course at least twice in the past and want to teach them again.</li> <li>You’re the perfect person to develop an online course if you have people asking you for an online course!</li> <li>You’re the perfect person to develop an online course if you have proven teaching methods and a desire to reach outside your geographic region.</li> <li>You’re the perfect person to develop an online course if you’ve been wanting to diversify your income.</li> <li>You’re the perfect person to develop an online course if you’re listening to this podcast right now – no, seriously I bet in a short conversation we can come up with a really great outline for what you could teach with excellence and confidence in an online manner.</li> </ul> Assuming that you’re going to create an online course, let’s talk about how to make sure creating that course falls in line with the rest of your business and your life. Because the last thing we want is for you to put all your energy into creating it and have used none of your energy for any of the other facets of an online course being successful. <h2>Online courses differ from offline courses in three specific ways that we’ll want to address and for the purpose of this part of the episode, we’re talking specifically about arts instruction – visual arts, photography, performance and music.</h2> In the offline space, you can teach in your own studio or through a studio or community center or organization whereas online you’re going to be doing it completely on your own without location boundaries. This means that your students can be all ages, all abilities and just about anywhere in the world. And this matters because your messaging and delivery need to match their needs and goals. In an offline environment, you can easily speak to your student after class to help them get the most out of the class they are taking or you can move them to a different class during the session. This aspect of learning and observing our students looks vastly different online but is as important here as anywhere. And in an online environment we can actually measure a whole lot more than we can offline. I mean, we can see how much of a video a student watches, we can see what lessons they open, we can see what emails they open, we can see them showing up to office hours and a whole bunch of other bits of information – that information is not measurable in the same way offline… so it really makes sense to setup systems and processes to track everything so that next time you launch this course or offer something new, you’ll be able to use that tangible data in meaningful ways. <h3>So, getting back to the initial question of the episode – is an online course right for me?</h3> <h4>Yes. Yes. Yes.</h4> <ul> <li>Take a methodical approach.</li> <li>Surround yourself with others who are on the same path.</li> <li>Seek outside support from me or another coach or strategist.</li> <li>Create something that feels good in your soul, flows with your style and methods and that you feel confident you can continue to love and nurture in its own right.</li> </ul> An online course is not something I recommend for businesses just starting out. You need to already have expertise and a track record and an audience. If you don’t have those yet, then sure, put the online course in the side burner for 4 – 6 months as you build these other facets. Your online course can do amazing things for you personally and professionally. I seriously love seeing my clients take their offline tactics and build something new online. So, there you have it – it’s time to stop thinking your online course is coming someday and start looking inward and put the date on the calendar. This episode was designed to get your wheels spinning and to help you see that your dream is possible. If you would like support, strategy or guidance from me, send me a quick DM on Instagram (I’m @<a href="https://www.instagram.com/techofbusiness/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">techofbusiness</a>) and we can figure out our best next steps. I look forward to hearing about all your online successes. Thanks for listening and reading these notes! And I love getting to know podcast listeners, so connect with me on any of the platforms listed here: <ul> <li>Download the <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/onlineproduct/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Online Product Phases</a></li> <li>Instagram: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/techofbusiness" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@techofbusiness</a></li> <li>Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/yourbiztech" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@yourbiztech</a></li> <li>The <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/community/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Expand Online Community</a> on Facebook</li> <li>Email: <a href="mailto:jaime@techofbusiness.com" rel="nofollow">jaime@techofbusiness.com</a></li> <li><a href="https://techofbusiness.com/contact/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Contact Page: https://techofbusiness.com/contact/</a></li> </ul>

105: Is an online course right for me?

Today we are breaking down what it means to pre-launch or pre-sell your online program. We’re going to break down what needs to be in place for the pre-launch to be successful and the factors to consider when using this launch method. Pre-launching or pre-selling an online program essentially means that you create your sales page and start receiving payments before the program content is complete. There are two primary reasons why businesses choose the pre-sell method which are:  To validate the idea To raise funds to produce the product  And because there is an investment on the customer side of things, more often than not, pre-selling an online product requires one or more of these customer sets:  An established customer base asking for the product Loyal followers on social media Direct outreach to potential customers  And there are other customer bases too -- but for now, these are the most likely who will be up for buying your online product before it’s complete. For the rest of this episode, I assume that you know where your initial customers are going to come from and the work required to get them to the sales page… let’s get to what needs to be setup and what can wait. The final action our customers are going to take is to go through the checkout process. Therefore, this is the most important element to have setup properly when you’re pre-selling. The checkout cart that I most highly recommend is ThriveCart…  Episode 82 of the podcast was a deep dive into this robust platform. For our purposes today, ThriveCart is where our customers are going to pay for this new online product. They are going to be presented with the checkout page which you’ll want to fully build out. This includes:  A well defined product name Price and payment options A list of “what’s included” An image or graphic representing the product Your terms of service and refund policy  It doesn’t have to be complicated, it just has to be complete. And if you don’t know the full extent of what will be included in your product yet, ...and more! always works well. After your customers pay for this pre-launch product, they will be directed to the thank you for purchasing page or another page of your choice. This page is likely the second most important pre-launch asset you can have. This is where we set expectations, double down on our commitment to product creation and let them know how much we value them. This page is where you reassure your new customer that their success with this program is your utmost priority. I like to throw a video on this page because it adds a personal touch. Right on the heels of the thank you page, there needs to also be a thank you email in addition to the payment receipt. They could be done as one single email customizing the ThriveCart receipt email or as two separate ones with the latter coming from your email marketing system. I like to do two emails -- ever so slightly customizing the ThriveCart one and then sending a more complete one from ActiveCampaign. So, yes, you will need to make sure that your cart is properly connected with your email marketing platform. And this is because we’ll be using that as the mechanism for keeping our pre-sell customers in the know as far as the progress of the program they have purchased. So far: we have a place for our customers to purchase the product, a thank you page, a thank you email and hooked the purchase into our email marketing system. But for most of us, that’s not enough -- we need a sales page to help our customers see that this product is truly right for them at this stage in their life or business. The sales page is kinda like a cover letter on a resume. The resume can stand for itself but the cover letter gives the resume context and warmth. It’s the same thing with the sales page. Your sales page can be more simplified at the pre-launch stage than it will be during your public launch. The key elements of the sales page are the same as the checkout page, but usually it’s going to be more aesthetically pleasing. I have three questions for you to ask yourself that can help you figure out if you need a sales page or just a checkout page:  Is my customer interacting with me during the sales process? If so, then you might not need one. If they are not, then you probably want one. Is my audience already used to buying things online? If so, then your checkout page might be enough because they understand the process. If they are not, then the more we can warm them up to the idea of an online product, the more likely they will be to follow through and make the purchase. Is this product more than $100? If so, then a sales page is highly recommended. If it’s more than $500 then a sales page is absolutely necessary.  So, do we need anything else? Well… not to make the sale but to efficiently create the product that we are preselling, then yes, we’ll want to have a few other tactical pieces in order. The first is how we are going to ultimately deliver the online program.   If it’s a live video session based program, then we’ll be using Zoom to deliver it. And it’s time to get your Zoom Pro account squared away.  If it’s an online membership program or an online course, know what platform you’ll be using. I recommend either Thinkific or MemberVault… and if you want to know more about those platforms, I did mini-series on each of them earlier this year on the podcast. If it’s a done with you or done for you type product, again, you’ll want to make sure you know how this program will be delivered. If it’s being delivered via email, then your email marketing system is soon going to be your best friend!  The bottom line on this is that it’s super important that you’re clear how the product is being delivered so that you can refer to that in your language on the sales page, checkout page, thank you page and emails. Next, what type of content are you going to be including in this program? Is it going to be video content? Is it going to be printable PDFs? Is it going to be fill-in-able PDFs? Is it going to be audio files? What tools are you going to use to create the content? Does your chosen delivery platform include a mechanism for storing that content or do you need to source out Vimeo PRO or a cloud storage location? One other thing that I would highly recommend getting in place is your pixels -- this is going to vastly help your public marketing phase so the sooner you have your Facebook pixel installed in all the right places the happier your marketing team will be. This is most critical if you have an in person or offline established customer base that you want to start doing online business with. And then we get into the bells and whistles side of things. What else can you throw into your online product to wow your customers, help them progress through the program and win? While it’s not necessary to have all this stuff figured out at the presale stage, it’s super helpful and can streamline the decisions that are coming next. Are you wondering what doesn’t need to be in place since I’ve talked so much about what does need to be there…  You don’t need to have all your content created.  And you don’t need to have all your emails written.  And you don’t need to have your public launch marketing plan in place.  And you don’t need to have your customer service automated or a chat bot. And you don’t need to even create your entire online product before letting your pre-launch or pre-sell customers gain access to the product.  What I mean by the last bullet point is that if you’re doing an online course or online membership, you can be two or three weeks ahead of your audience so that they get access to Week 1 content while you’re working on Week 4 content. At this stage, your customers are going to people that already know you, already trust you and truly believe that you’re going to serve them right. Making the purchase experience smooth should be the primary focus. I would love to support you during your pre-launch. Join us in the Expand Online Facebook group which you can access by going to techofbusiness.com/community/ And if you want any assistance with ThriveCart or any of the other tools we mentioned here, use any of the links below to get in touch! Connect with Jaime:  Learn about the Five Phases of an Online Product Instagram: @techofbusiness Facebook: @yourbiztech Email: jaime@techofbusiness.com 

Today we are breaking down what it means to pre-launch or pre-sell your online program. We’re going to break down what needs to be in place for the pre-launch to be successful and the factors to consider when using this launch method. <h2>Pre-launching or pre-selling an online program essentially means that you create your sales page and start receiving payments before the program content is complete. There are two primary reasons why businesses choose the pre-sell method which are:</h2> <ol> <li>To validate the idea</li> <li>To raise funds to produce the product</li> </ol> And because there is an investment on the customer side of things, more often than not, pre-selling an online product requires one or more of these customer sets: <ul> <li>An established customer base asking for the product</li> <li>Loyal followers on social media</li> <li>Direct outreach to potential customers</li> </ul> And there are other customer bases too -- but for now, these are the most likely who will be up for buying your online product before it’s complete. For the rest of this episode, I assume that you know where your initial customers are going to come from and the work required to get them to the sales page… let’s get to what needs to be setup and what can wait. The final action our customers are going to take is to go through the checkout process. Therefore, this is the most important element to have setup properly when you’re pre-selling. The checkout cart that I most highly recommend is ThriveCart… <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/082-thrivecart-and-online-revenue-deep-dive/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Episode 82 of the podcast</a> was a deep dive into this robust platform. For our purposes today, ThriveCart is where our customers are going to pay for this new online product. <h3>They are going to be presented with the checkout page which you’ll want to fully build out. This includes:</h3> <ul> <li>A well defined product name</li> <li>Price and payment options</li> <li>A list of “what’s included”</li> <li>An image or graphic representing the product</li> <li>Your terms of service and refund policy</li> </ul> It doesn’t have to be complicated, it just has to be complete. And if you don’t know the full extent of what will be included in your product yet, ...and more! always works well. After your customers pay for this pre-launch product, they will be directed to the thank you for purchasing page or another page of your choice. This page is likely the second most important pre-launch asset you can have. This is where we set expectations, double down on our commitment to product creation and let them know how much we value them. This page is where you reassure your new customer that their success with this program is your utmost priority. I like to throw a video on this page because it adds a personal touch. Right on the heels of the thank you page, there needs to also be a thank you email in addition to the payment receipt. They could be done as one single email customizing the ThriveCart receipt email or as two separate ones with the latter coming from your email marketing system. I like to do two emails -- ever so slightly customizing the ThriveCart one and then sending a more complete one from ActiveCampaign. So, yes, you will need to make sure that your cart is properly connected with your email marketing platform. And this is because we’ll be using that as the mechanism for keeping our pre-sell customers in the know as far as the progress of the program they have purchased. So far: we have a place for our customers to purchase the product, a thank you page, a thank you email and hooked the purchase into our email marketing system. But for most of us, that’s not enough -- we need a sales page to help our customers see that this product is truly right for them at this stage in their life or business. The sales page is kinda like a cover letter on a resume. The resume can stand for itself but the cover letter gives the resume context and warmth. It’s the same thing with the sales page. Your sales page can be more simplified at the pre-launch stage than it will be during your public launch. The key elements of the sales page are the same as the checkout page, but usually it’s going to be more aesthetically pleasing. I have three questions for you to ask yourself that can help you figure out if you need a sales page or just a checkout page: <ol> <li>Is my customer interacting with me during the sales process? If so, then you might not need one. If they are not, then you probably want one.</li> <li>Is my audience already used to buying things online? If so, then your checkout page might be enough because they understand the process. If they are not, then the more we can warm them up to the idea of an online product, the more likely they will be to follow through and make the purchase.</li> <li>Is this product more than $100? If so, then a sales page is highly recommended. If it’s more than $500 then a sales page is absolutely necessary.</li> </ol> <h3>So, do we need anything else?</h3> Well… not to make the sale but to efficiently create the product that we are preselling, then yes, we’ll want to have a few other tactical pieces in order. The first is how we are going to ultimately deliver the online program.  <ul> <li>If it’s a live video session based program, then we’ll be using Zoom to deliver it. And it’s time to get your Zoom Pro account squared away. </li> <li>If it’s an online membership program or an online course, know what platform you’ll be using. I recommend either <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/thinkific/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Thinkific</a> or <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/mv/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">MemberVault</a>… and if you want to know more about those platforms, I did mini-series on each of them earlier this year on the podcast.</li> <li>If it’s a done with you or done for you type product, again, you’ll want to make sure you know how this program will be delivered.</li> <li>If it’s being delivered via email, then your email marketing system is soon going to be your best friend!</li> </ul> The bottom line on this is that it’s super important that you’re clear how the product is being delivered so that you can refer to that in your language on the sales page, checkout page, thank you page and emails. Next, what type of content are you going to be including in this program? Is it going to be video content? Is it going to be printable PDFs? Is it going to be fill-in-able PDFs? Is it going to be audio files? What tools are you going to use to create the content? Does your chosen delivery platform include a mechanism for storing that content or do you need to source out Vimeo PRO or a cloud storage location? One other thing that I would highly recommend getting in place is your pixels -- this is going to vastly help your public marketing phase so the sooner you have your Facebook pixel installed in all the right places the happier your marketing team will be. This is most critical if you have an in person or offline established customer base that you want to start doing online business with. And then we get into the bells and whistles side of things. What else can you throw into your online product to wow your customers, help them progress through the program and win? While it’s not necessary to have all this stuff figured out at the presale stage, it’s super helpful and can streamline the decisions that are coming next. Are you wondering what doesn’t need to be in place since I’ve talked so much about what does need to be there… <ul> <li>You don’t need to have all your content created. </li> <li>And you don’t need to have all your emails written. </li> <li>And you don’t need to have your public launch marketing plan in place. </li> <li>And you don’t need to have your customer service automated or a chat bot.</li> <li>And you don’t need to even create your entire online product before letting your pre-launch or pre-sell customers gain access to the product.</li> </ul> What I mean by the last bullet point is that if you’re doing an online course or online membership, you can be two or three weeks ahead of your audience so that they get access to Week 1 content while you’re working on Week 4 content. At this stage, your customers are going to people that already know you, already trust you and truly believe that you’re going to serve them right. Making the purchase experience smooth should be the primary focus. I would love to support you during your pre-launch. Join us in the Expand Online Facebook group which you can access by going to <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/community/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">techofbusiness.com/community/</a> And if you want any assistance with ThriveCart or any of the other tools we mentioned here, use any of the links below to get in touch! <h3>Connect with Jaime:</h3> <ul> <li>Learn about the <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/freebie/multiply/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Five Phases of an Online Product</a></li> <li>Instagram: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/techofbusiness" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@techofbusiness</a></li> <li>Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/yourbiztech" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@yourbiztech</a></li> <li>Email: <a href="mailto:jaime@techofbusiness.com" rel="nofollow">jaime@techofbusiness.com</a></li> </ul>

098: TECH for Online Program Pre-Launch

Over the past few episodes, we’ve been getting into the nitty gritty of online courses - from if this is the right online product for you, to administration and supporting your students… but what we haven’t talked about yet and what I’ve been saving up for in this episode is pricing and value. These are two separate topics for sure, the price of your online course and the value one receives from the course can be completely disconnected (like you could give away a course for free and it be life changing or you could charge a fortune for your course and it not help your student at all) -- but what we really want is for the price to reflect the value and the value to be seen within the price. Pricing structures There are multiple ways to price a course, I’m going to go through the most common ways here.  Flat rate. Your students pay 100% of the course price up front before gaining access. Installments. Your students pay a percentage of the course price each month for a certain number of months. Free trial + flat rate or installment. Just as it sounds, you give free access to the course for a certain number of days and then roll the student into either a pay in full or installment plan. Paid trial + flat rate or installment. Instead of a free trial, you charge a nominal amount, like $1, $5 or $10 for access to the trial and then after the trial period ends, the student rolls into an installment plan or pays the balance in full. Pay what you want. This is where you let your students decide how much the program is worth to them and they pay that amount to gain access to the course.  Essentially, your prospective students are going to subconsciously tie their expected results to the price tag. So it’s our job as we determine our prices and create our offer pages to help those prospects come to the “yes I need this” decision! The value of your course is in the transformation that you’re set to create for your student should they follow your course material and take action every step of the way. In addition to the transformation, the perceived value will be developed by the student and likely include:  Course structure Course content format Community Interaction with you as the instructor Schedule requirements Intermediate milestones Practical Application Cost Discounts Testimonials and Reviews Additional expenses to incur (such as purchasing supplies)  A course can be priced at $49 and check all the boxes for a student. Or a course can be priced at $997 and check all the boxes for the same student. But the $49 course and the $997 course are not going to have the same value proposition. Your student would expect to get quick wins on a smaller scale with a $49 course than they would with a $997 course. If your course helps a student get from knowing nothing about playing the piano to being able to play a Mozart Sonata then the value is super high. It’s a huge feat to learn the piano and tackle a classic piece of work. Figuring out how to price this course is essential to having students come on board. If you price this course too low then your prospective student isn’t going to take you seriously -- because the stated transformation has a far greater value than price tag indicates to the student. If you price this course too high, then you’re going to hit an investment threshold by your students… not everyone has the ability to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a course. This is also where payment plans come into effect. Most payment plans cost slightly more over the pay in full option. Usually somewhere between 5 - 15% higher. This is an easily justifiable surcharge because it’s of benefit to your student, has higher costs and higher risk on your side. The costs are the cost of doing business but the higher risk comes from students receiving training or material before they have fully paid for them. Which now creates a wrinkle in the administration side of things… what happens when a credit card payment fails or your student cancels their payment plan. We’ll talk about the options a bit later but for right now, the entire purpose of a payment plan is to help your student balance the cost of your course with the reality of their own life. My 13 year old daughter dances. She takes 3 classes - ballet, jazz and contemporary. The studio offered us three different payment options, pay in full, pay quarterly or pay monthly. We chose monthly payments not because they were the cheapest option, but because they were the best fit for our family. Paying for the year in full was too much of a financial burden and the quarterly payments weren’t enough of a savings so it made sense to do monthly. But that’s a full year commitment with a huge reward in the form of the recital at the end of the commitment. And should I fail to make my payments, the studio can simply take my daughter out of the recital. Most of our online courses have a shorter run time; 6 - 12 weeks is standard. And many courses are completely self-paced and can be completed in as little as a weekend. So while payment plans are nice, they aren’t always necessary. I like my clients to price their courses between $147 and $997. I feel like these are good price points for courses to be profitable, students to see the value and enough of an investment for students to follow through. We’ve already talked a lot about student follow through so we’re not going to dwell on that here -- just go back in the podcast to last week’s episode 107 where we discussed multiple avenues to support your students for ideas on supporting your students and for them to realize the value they place on the course. The value that the students place on your course will determine if they purchase it and how far they get through it. As the instructor, it’s not you who gets to dictate the value of your course… but that’s not to say that we can’t influence the value assessment. And it starts with course structure ~ or the way that content and experience is delivered. Things like… Is it all available at once or is it dripped over time or is it progressive where each module is available immediately after the preceding module has been completed. Are there quizzes and assignments and work to be done or is it education only without a practical component. Each of these decisions has to be made for a logical reason and then communicated to help prospective students build the course value for themselves. A course that consists of videos and worksheets and assignments is going to have a different perceived value than a course that consists of text-based lessons and different than one that has downloadable audio lessons to learn on the go. There’s nothing to say that a text-based only lesson is going to have a lower value than one that has all the bells and whistles, but I can assure you that your students are going to feel more connection with you and the course material if they hear your voice and see your face. And speaking of that -- real time interaction with you can make or break the value proposition. If your students have access to you even if they aren’t in the same part of the world that can be huge! This access can be in the form of your Facebook community, live Q&amp;A sessions on Zoom, personalized messages or critiques created with Loom videos or just from your phone. Knowing that you have access to a judgement free and warm environment increases the value ~ and here we are again supporting our students. The greater the opportunity for support the greater the perceived value. You have to provide the clues so that your prospective student can come to their own value determination. And this is one of the reasons why there are copywriters who specialize in course sales pages -- they understand how to take what you’re promising in your course and translate it into the words that can help your prospective students become your active students. And people like me to help you create a succinct digital strategy to make sure that you don’t go down a rabbit hole that you don’t need to go down. I said it before, I like courses priced between $147 and $997 but that’s still a huge range. And your course isn’t the only expense that your student is going to incur as they embark on your course. What supplies or equipment are they going to have to purchase or rent to complete your course? The cost of the supplies or equipment has to be in alignment with the price of the course. If your course is $147 and the supplies and equipment is also $147 then the value of the course needs to be at least double the price tag! If you’re teaching something that can help your student in their business, then generally speaking your course price can be higher than something that provides only personal value. But this isn’t a steadfast rule. It really comes back to the value proposition. So let’s talk a bit more about pricing psychology… and I mean coupons, discounts and slashed prices. The online space is overrun by discounts and coupons and price slashes… for both products and services, so should you issue coupons, provide discounts and slash your prices? Well… would you do that in your offline business?  Do you offer your students a discount if they enroll in more than one of your classes? Do you have coupons available for the general public? Do you have an advertised price that is higher or different than the actual price you charge?  You’re at a distinct advantage over course creators who do not currently have an offline model to leverage. You can follow your already established guidelines and translate them online. The one big difference that you’ll want to consider is that online courses might not take up as much of your time as offline courses do, once they are in motion. Which might help you justify a lower price than your offline course might command. And let’s talk about slashing prices -- because I threw that term out without much context. What I mean here is that you list the “retail price” of your course at $997 and then put a slash through that and say for a limited time the course is $200 off and only $797. This is a gimmick but it works because it is an anchor to the value. Go back to episode 77 with Melina Palmer to learn more about behavioral patterns of our students. The price of your course is one data point on the perceived value matrix that our students construct. It’s not the only piece nor do I believe it’s the most important. And you know what? The nice thing about online courses is that there is no requirement to keep things static. You can close the doors on your course and revamp it so that it’s got more perceived value and then increase the price, or close the doors and break it into several smaller courses and charge less. I promised earlier on that I would talk a couple of minutes about what to do if a student stops paying their payment plan. There are two sides: what to do about the money you’re owed and what to do about the student’s access to the course content. On the money side… Start by reaching out to the student, let them know their most recent payment failed and ask them to update their credit card. Sometimes people forget to update their credit cards when the expiration date passes or the cards get reissued. Sometimes I suggest providing an alternate method for paying the balance in full instead of trying to get the existing subscription back online. Most of the time these cases need to be handled on a case by case basis. On the content access side… non-payment means that access to the course content, community, email communication, live interactions should all cease. It’s imperative to include this information in your course terms of service so that you avoid objections from delinquent students. One of the reasons why some people don’t do payment plans is because they don’t want to deal with the non-payment issues. And that’s up to you. Finally, before we wrap up, let’s talk a couple of moments about the other couple of payment methods I mentioned at the outset -- that is free or paid trials and pay what you want. Trial periods are really good if you can provide a ton of value at the start of the course because that content can act as mechanism in your sales flow. Trial users can be soft-sold while increasing the know-like-trust factor for them to fully invest in the course. With a trial period, we don’t want to give away the entire course and then for the prospective student to decide not to purchase. So a limited trial should include enough to showcase your expertise and how you work and how you transform your students! A trial is just that, something to whet their appetite for more. Now the pay what you want option was popular a couple of years ago, but is less so right now (but that could change again.) The idea here is that you know your value and your worth, and you want your course to be accessible to as many people as possible. You’re willing to use this course as a lead gen tool and are less concerned about a personal financial upside. I don’t really like this model because almost every student will give the course a lower perceived value and will get less out of the course than if the published price was exactly what they paid. Or put another way -- in general your pay what you want students will pay less than ½ the perceived value. A course with a perceived value of $200 would garner less than $100 on a pay what you want model whereas a $200 perceived value could have a published price of $125 or $147 and get an equal number of sales. Whoa… I think I might have thrown a lot more into this conversation than I initially thought I would! I knew I was passionate about perceived value and pricing but had no idea this much would pour out of me! Take a few nuggets from this episode and continue the conversation with me over on Instagram or in the Expand Online community which you can access by going to https://techofbusiness.com/community. Next week, we’re going to continue the conversation about courses with a specific lens on running your course with cohorts (because we both know that students have a better chance of showing up and succeeding when they are surrounded by their peers!)  Download the Online Product Phases Book a Strategy Session Instagram: @jaimeslutzky Facebook: @yourbiztech The Expand Online Community on Facebook Email: jaime@techofbusiness.com Contact Page: https://techofbusiness.com/contact/ 

Over the past few episodes, we’ve been getting into the nitty gritty of online courses - from if this is the right online product for you, to administration and supporting your students… but what we haven’t talked about yet and what I’ve been saving up for in this episode is pricing and value. These are two separate topics for sure, the price of your online course and the value one receives from the course can be completely disconnected (like you could give away a course for free and it be life changing or you could charge a fortune for your course and it not help your student at all) -- but what we really want is for the price to reflect the value and the value to be seen within the price. Pricing structures <h3>There are multiple ways to price a course, I’m going to go through the most common ways here.</h3> <ul> <li>Flat rate. Your students pay 100% of the course price up front before gaining access.</li> <li>Installments. Your students pay a percentage of the course price each month for a certain number of months.</li> <li>Free trial + flat rate or installment. Just as it sounds, you give free access to the course for a certain number of days and then roll the student into either a pay in full or installment plan.</li> <li>Paid trial + flat rate or installment. Instead of a free trial, you charge a nominal amount, like $1, $5 or $10 for access to the trial and then after the trial period ends, the student rolls into an installment plan or pays the balance in full.</li> <li>Pay what you want. This is where you let your students decide how much the program is worth to them and they pay that amount to gain access to the course.</li> </ul> Essentially, your prospective students are going to subconsciously tie their expected results to the price tag. So it’s our job as we determine our prices and create our offer pages to help those prospects come to the “yes I need this” decision! The value of your course is in the transformation that you’re set to create for your student should they follow your course material and take action every step of the way. In addition to the transformation, the perceived value will be developed by the student and likely include: <ul> <li>Course structure</li> <li>Course content format</li> <li>Community</li> <li>Interaction with you as the instructor</li> <li>Schedule requirements</li> <li>Intermediate milestones</li> <li>Practical Application</li> <li>Cost</li> <li>Discounts</li> <li>Testimonials and Reviews</li> <li>Additional expenses to incur (such as purchasing supplies)</li> </ul> A course can be priced at $49 and check all the boxes for a student. Or a course can be priced at $997 and check all the boxes for the same student. But the $49 course and the $997 course are not going to have the same value proposition. Your student would expect to get quick wins on a smaller scale with a $49 course than they would with a $997 course. If your course helps a student get from knowing nothing about playing the piano to being able to play a Mozart Sonata then the value is super high. It’s a huge feat to learn the piano and tackle a classic piece of work. Figuring out how to price this course is essential to having students come on board. If you price this course too low then your prospective student isn’t going to take you seriously -- because the stated transformation has a far greater value than price tag indicates to the student. If you price this course too high, then you’re going to hit an investment threshold by your students… not everyone has the ability to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a course. <h4>This is also where payment plans come into effect.</h4> Most payment plans cost slightly more over the pay in full option. Usually somewhere between 5 - 15% higher. This is an easily justifiable surcharge because it’s of benefit to your student, has higher costs and higher risk on your side. The costs are the cost of doing business but the higher risk comes from students receiving training or material before they have fully paid for them. Which now creates a wrinkle in the administration side of things… what happens when a credit card payment fails or your student cancels their payment plan. We’ll talk about the options a bit later but for right now, the entire purpose of a payment plan is to help your student balance the cost of your course with the reality of their own life. My 13 year old daughter dances. She takes 3 classes - ballet, jazz and contemporary. The studio offered us three different payment options, pay in full, pay quarterly or pay monthly. We chose monthly payments not because they were the cheapest option, but because they were the best fit for our family. Paying for the year in full was too much of a financial burden and the quarterly payments weren’t enough of a savings so it made sense to do monthly. But that’s a full year commitment with a huge reward in the form of the recital at the end of the commitment. And should I fail to make my payments, the studio can simply take my daughter out of the recital. Most of our online courses have a shorter run time; 6 - 12 weeks is standard. And many courses are completely self-paced and can be completed in as little as a weekend. So while payment plans are nice, they aren’t always necessary. I like my clients to price their courses between $147 and $997. I feel like these are good price points for courses to be profitable, students to see the value and enough of an investment for students to follow through. We’ve already talked a lot about student follow through so we’re not going to dwell on that here -- just go back in the podcast to last week’s episode 107 where we discussed multiple avenues to support your students for ideas on supporting your students and for them to realize the value they place on the course. The value that the students place on your course will determine if they purchase it and how far they get through it. As the instructor, it’s not you who gets to dictate the value of your course… but that’s not to say that we can’t influence the value assessment. And it starts with course structure ~ or the way that content and experience is delivered. Things like… Is it all available at once or is it dripped over time or is it progressive where each module is available immediately after the preceding module has been completed. Are there quizzes and assignments and work to be done or is it education only without a practical component. Each of these decisions has to be made for a logical reason and then communicated to help prospective students build the course value for themselves. A course that consists of videos and worksheets and assignments is going to have a different perceived value than a course that consists of text-based lessons and different than one that has downloadable audio lessons to learn on the go. There’s nothing to say that a text-based only lesson is going to have a lower value than one that has all the bells and whistles, but I can assure you that your students are going to feel more connection with you and the course material if they hear your voice and see your face. And speaking of that -- real time interaction with you can make or break the value proposition. If your students have access to you even if they aren’t in the same part of the world that can be huge! This access can be in the form of your Facebook community, live Q&amp;A sessions on Zoom, personalized messages or critiques created with Loom videos or just from your phone. Knowing that you have access to a judgement free and warm environment increases the value ~ and here we are again supporting our students. The greater the opportunity for support the greater the perceived value. You have to provide the clues so that your prospective student can come to their own value determination. And this is one of the reasons why there are copywriters who specialize in course sales pages -- they understand how to take what you’re promising in your course and translate it into the words that can help your prospective students become your active students. And people like me to help you create a succinct digital strategy to make sure that you don’t go down a rabbit hole that you don’t need to go down. I said it before, I like courses priced between $147 and $997 but that’s still a huge range. And your course isn’t the only expense that your student is going to incur as they embark on your course. What supplies or equipment are they going to have to purchase or rent to complete your course? The cost of the supplies or equipment has to be in alignment with the price of the course. If your course is $147 and the supplies and equipment is also $147 then the value of the course needs to be at least double the price tag! If you’re teaching something that can help your student in their business, then generally speaking your course price can be higher than something that provides only personal value. But this isn’t a steadfast rule. It really comes back to the value proposition. So let’s talk a bit more about pricing psychology… and I mean coupons, discounts and slashed prices. The online space is overrun by discounts and coupons and price slashes… for both products and services, so should you issue coupons, provide discounts and slash your prices? <h3>Well… would you do that in your offline business?</h3> <ul> <li>Do you offer your students a discount if they enroll in more than one of your classes?</li> <li>Do you have coupons available for the general public?</li> <li>Do you have an advertised price that is higher or different than the actual price you charge?</li> </ul> You’re at a distinct advantage over course creators who do not currently have an offline model to leverage. You can follow your already established guidelines and translate them online. The one big difference that you’ll want to consider is that online courses might not take up as much of your time as offline courses do, once they are in motion. Which might help you justify a lower price than your offline course might command. And let’s talk about slashing prices -- because I threw that term out without much context. What I mean here is that you list the “retail price” of your course at $997 and then put a slash through that and say for a limited time the course is $200 off and only $797. This is a gimmick but it works because it is an anchor to the value. <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/077/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Go back to episode 77 with Melina Palmer to learn more about behavioral patterns of our students.</a> The price of your course is one data point on the perceived value matrix that our students construct. It’s not the only piece nor do I believe it’s the most important. And you know what? The nice thing about online courses is that there is no requirement to keep things static. You can close the doors on your course and revamp it so that it’s got more perceived value and then increase the price, or close the doors and break it into several smaller courses and charge less. I promised earlier on that I would talk a couple of minutes about what to do if a student stops paying their payment plan. There are two sides: what to do about the money you’re owed and what to do about the student’s access to the course content. On the money side… Start by reaching out to the student, let them know their most recent payment failed and ask them to update their credit card. Sometimes people forget to update their credit cards when the expiration date passes or the cards get reissued. Sometimes I suggest providing an alternate method for paying the balance in full instead of trying to get the existing subscription back online. Most of the time these cases need to be handled on a case by case basis. On the content access side… non-payment means that access to the course content, community, email communication, live interactions should all cease. It’s imperative to include this information in your course terms of service so that you avoid objections from delinquent students. One of the reasons why some people don’t do payment plans is because they don’t want to deal with the non-payment issues. And that’s up to you. Finally, before we wrap up, let’s talk a couple of moments about the other couple of payment methods I mentioned at the outset -- that is free or paid trials and pay what you want. Trial periods are really good if you can provide a ton of value at the start of the course because that content can act as mechanism in your sales flow. Trial users can be soft-sold while increasing the know-like-trust factor for them to fully invest in the course. With a trial period, we don’t want to give away the entire course and then for the prospective student to decide not to purchase. So a limited trial should include enough to showcase your expertise and how you work and how you transform your students! A trial is just that, something to whet their appetite for more. Now the pay what you want option was popular a couple of years ago, but is less so right now (but that could change again.) The idea here is that you know your value and your worth, and you want your course to be accessible to as many people as possible. You’re willing to use this course as a lead gen tool and are less concerned about a personal financial upside. I don’t really like this model because almost every student will give the course a lower perceived value and will get less out of the course than if the published price was exactly what they paid. Or put another way -- in general your pay what you want students will pay less than ½ the perceived value. A course with a perceived value of $200 would garner less than $100 on a pay what you want model whereas a $200 perceived value could have a published price of $125 or $147 and get an equal number of sales. Whoa… I think I might have thrown a lot more into this conversation than I initially thought I would! I knew I was passionate about perceived value and pricing but had no idea this much would pour out of me! Take a few nuggets from this episode and continue the conversation with me over on <a href="https://www.instagram.com/jaimeslutzky/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Instagram</a> or in the Expand Online community which you can access by going to <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/community" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://techofbusiness.com/community</a>. Next week, we’re going to continue the conversation about courses with a specific lens on running your course with cohorts (because we both know that students have a better chance of showing up and succeeding when they are surrounded by their peers!) <ul> <li>Download the <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/onlineproduct/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Online Product Phases</a></li> <li><a href="https://techofbusiness.com/strategy/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Book a Strategy Session</a></li> <li>Instagram: @<a href="https://instagram.com/jaimeslutzky/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">jaimeslutzky</a></li> <li>Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/yourbiztech" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@yourbiztech</a></li> <li>The <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/community/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Expand Online Community</a> on Facebook</li> <li>Email: <a href="mailto:jaime@techofbusiness.com" rel="nofollow">jaime@techofbusiness.com</a></li> <li><a href="https://techofbusiness.com/contact/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Contact Page: https://techofbusiness.com/contact/</a></li> </ul>

108: The truth about online course  pricing and perceived value.

So, you’re ready to expand online? Awesome!!! And I’m sure you have thousands of thoughts running through your head as to how to make that a reality. This is an exciting time and I’m so glad you’re here. The Expand Online podcast is hosted by Jaime Slutzky and its mission is to help you see what’s possible for your business in the online space and to help you take the steps needed to make those possibilities a reality! Your business is already successful in your community and it’s time to remove location barriers and provide your brilliance and unique approach to a corner of the massive online audience. This episode goes into starting in the right place in order to quickly and smoothly expand online. The right place is visioning and idea generation… That is figuring out what you want to actually create and who you are creating this online product for.  Are you wanting to create an extension of your offline/in-studio business or are you wanting to create an entry level or advanced level opportunity that leads in or out of your studio offerings? Are you wanting to work with your current student base in a new online way or are you wanting to branch out beyond your current market? Are you wanting to have direct and regular contact with the individuals who purchase your online product or are you more interested in as-is product delivery or is your vision to have students at multiple levels of engagement?  In a nutshell, the first phase should consist of three prongs:  what you’re creating who you’re creating it for how your purchasers are supported and engaged with once  Once you have vision clarity then it’s time to get your idea outlined to see the bits and pieces that will need to come together in the creation process. When in the visioning phase, we truly have a blank canvas for idea generation. As we start to develop our online product, knowing the what and the who are critical. The how that I just mentioned is a tangent of the who, because the level of contact between you and your purchasers is intrinsically tied to who they are and what they need to feel supported and accomplish their goal. That’s really the big thing here -- we want to create an online product that helps our purchaser accomplish something. And frankly, one of the reasons why I recently pivoted the audience of this podcast to focus more tightly on serving the needs of arts instructors is because I love supporting others who in turn bring more joy and fun to their students, clients and customers. If you start with anything other than this, the online product creation journey is going to be far more difficult. I have a downloadable for you that goes through the phases as I see them with online products. You can grab that at https://techofbusiness.com/onlineproduct/ I thought about making this a super short episode, but then the episode wouldn't provide the value that I strive to provide… So, let’s look at why starting with the vision and idea is so much better than starting elsewhere! Once we dip our toes into each of the other phases of online product development we will come back to why I believe the idea and vision is paramount to the initial successes of your online product. First up, type of product. If, instead of the vision, you start with the type of product you’re going to create, then you’ll find that your idea and vision will be boxed into the group program or online course or membership site or downloadable workbook or other container that you want to create. What if after deciding on a product type you can’t come up with a product idea that fits into that container? But you’ve already decided on the container, you’ll face internal resistance, self doubt and other kinds of nasties battling for which is better…  Is your idea so good that you should give up on the type of product you want to create? Is your product type stitched to your heart and you throw away good product ideas because they don’t work with the type of product you envision creating?  This is why we want a blank canvas when in the idea and visioning phase! Next, the tech. Now, often successful artists who are leaning into having online products do so under the guidance of a coach or mentor. And all of us who provide guidance and support and strategy have our favorites when it comes to the technology needs for online products. Your coach or mentor might have their “blueprint” which outlines the entire tech stack before you even start exploring ideas! I certainly have my favorite tech tools but I don’t have one singular tech stack that I recommend to everyone. Your product idea should dictate the tech used not the other way around.  There are a ton of fabulous tools and many of them will work equally well to bring your online product to the point of sale. Just as the type of product shouldn’t dictate the idea, the tech should also not dictate the flow of ideas. Our third non-starter is the creation process Ok, this one should be fairly obvious -- developing an online product should not start with creating the actual product! If we start here without a clear vision and idea and before we know the online product container then how on earth is this product going to see the light of day? Two quick examples -- Let’s say you’re a photographer and you want to create an online product. So you start flushing out your lightroom presets so that you can sell them. Who are you selling them to - parents? Amateur photogs? Professional photogs? And what is the end user’s proficiency level with Adobe Lightroom? And where are you going to house the presets? And What is the purpose of selling and buying these - in your business and for your purchasers? Instead of starting to flush out the lightroom presets, the starting point should be to flush out why and to whom you’re selling the presets. And then figure out what support the purchasers are going to need… once those things are accomplished, you can dabble in the creation process while flushing out the delivery container and the tech. The idea and vision is truly the cornerstone to the product. Have you heard the saying “sell them what they want, give them what they need?” -- that’s really what we’re talking about here. Our second example is a musician who teaches one on one piano lessons on the side. The one on one lessons have blown up and in order to double down on your own growth as a musician, you’re looking to create an online product to serve your students in a one to many capacity. So, you create lesson plans and instructional videos that your students could choose to purchase instead of working one on one with you. This product has a lot of online potential, but without identifying the vision and flushing out the idea, the lesson plans might collect digital dust instead of helping your students improve their piano playing. Just like the prior example, it’s vital to identify who the product is for, what support they are going to need to find success with your product and how they are most likely to best use the product. Sure, those lesson plans and lightroom presets will have a place in a final online product, so if you’ve started on your product creation with the creation itself, don’t throw it away! Instead, take a step back and do the visioning and idea work ahead of moving forward with more creation! And, if you need help with any of this, please send me a quick message on Instagram, I’m @techofbusiness or send me an email at jaime@techofbusiness.com. The final non-starting point is the marketing and promotion. Often you’ll hear people talking about pre-selling an online product (I mean episode 98 was all about pre-selling.) This is a great method for seeing if your product has an audience and people who are willing to buy… but how can we start with marketing and promotion before we even have a vision and idea? We can’t. So, I’m going to leave this phase of the online product development process here. Marketing and promotion must come after the idea is fleshed out enough that you can speak clearly about it. Nobody wants to read a sales page that says “I’m building something really cool, send me $100 and I’ll give it to you when it’s done” right? Enough about the phases that we don’t want to start with, let’s get back to the vision and idea to wrap things up. My strong recommendation is to start with a simple product that helps the purchaser create a victory in their life. Using that as the framework for a brainstorming session does not mean that your signature online program doesn’t make it onto the blank canvas just that it might not make it to the first product creation. I also recommend not mapping out your first 10 products before you sell your first product and get feedback… in fact, our next episode is going to be all about getting feedback and buy in for your online product idea. Again, the download that goes through all the phases we discussed is available at https://techofbusiness.com/onlineproduct/ Do you know another artist who is thinking about expanding online this year? Share this episode with them directly inside your podcast app. In general, you’ll be able to do this from the show summary screen. Often you’ll click on the ellipses (three little dots) to open a tray with the share option. Thank you for sharing. My mission, as I mentioned at the top of the episode, is to help artists see what’s possible in the online space and to help make those possibilities a reality! Thanks for listening and reading these notes! And I love getting to know podcast listeners, so connect with me on any of the platforms listed here:  Download the Online Product Phases Instagram: @techofbusiness Facebook: @yourbiztech The Expand Online Community on Facebook Email: jaime@techofbusiness.com 

<h2>So, you’re ready to expand online? Awesome!!!</h2> And I’m sure you have thousands of thoughts running through your head as to how to make that a reality. This is an exciting time and I’m so glad you’re here. The Expand Online podcast is hosted by Jaime Slutzky and its mission is to help you see what’s possible for your business in the online space and to help you take the steps needed to make those possibilities a reality! Your business is already successful in your community and it’s time to remove location barriers and provide your brilliance and unique approach to a corner of the massive online audience. This episode goes into starting in the right place in order to quickly and smoothly expand online. <h3>The right place is visioning and idea generation…</h3> That is figuring out what you want to actually create and who you are creating this online product for. <ul> <li>Are you wanting to create an extension of your offline/in-studio business or are you wanting to create an entry level or advanced level opportunity that leads in or out of your studio offerings?</li> <li>Are you wanting to work with your current student base in a new online way or are you wanting to branch out beyond your current market?</li> <li>Are you wanting to have direct and regular contact with the individuals who purchase your online product or are you more interested in as-is product delivery or is your vision to have students at multiple levels of engagement?</li> </ul> In a nutshell, the first phase should consist of three prongs: <ul> <li>what you’re creating</li> <li>who you’re creating it for</li> <li>how your purchasers are supported and engaged with once</li> </ul> Once you have vision clarity then it’s time to get your idea outlined to see the bits and pieces that will need to come together in the creation process. When in the visioning phase, we truly have a blank canvas for idea generation. As we start to develop our online product, knowing the what and the who are critical. The how that I just mentioned is a tangent of the who, because the level of contact between you and your purchasers is intrinsically tied to who they are and what they need to feel supported and accomplish their goal. <h4>That’s really the big thing here -- we want to create an online product that helps our purchaser accomplish something.</h4> And frankly, one of the reasons why I recently pivoted the audience of this podcast to focus more tightly on serving the needs of arts instructors is because I love supporting others who in turn bring more joy and fun to their students, clients and customers. If you start with anything other than this, the online product creation journey is going to be far more difficult. I have a downloadable for you that goes through the phases as I see them with online products. You can grab that at <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/onlineproduct/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://techofbusiness.com/onlineproduct/</a> I thought about making this a super short episode, but then the episode wouldn't provide the value that I strive to provide… So, let’s look at why starting with the vision and idea is so much better than starting elsewhere! Once we dip our toes into each of the other phases of online product development we will come back to why I believe the idea and vision is paramount to the initial successes of your online product. <h3>First up, type of product.</h3> If, instead of the vision, you start with the type of product you’re going to create, then you’ll find that your idea and vision will be boxed into the group program or online course or membership site or downloadable workbook or other container that you want to create. What if after deciding on a product type you can’t come up with a product idea that fits into that container? But you’ve already decided on the container, you’ll face internal resistance, self doubt and other kinds of nasties battling for which is better… <ul> <li>Is your idea so good that you should give up on the type of product you want to create?</li> <li>Is your product type stitched to your heart and you throw away good product ideas because they don’t work with the type of product you envision creating?</li> </ul> This is why we want a blank canvas when in the idea and visioning phase! <h3>Next, the tech.</h3> Now, often successful artists who are leaning into having online products do so under the guidance of a coach or mentor. And all of us who provide guidance and support and strategy have our favorites when it comes to the technology needs for online products. Your coach or mentor might have their “blueprint” which outlines the entire tech stack before you even start exploring ideas! I certainly have my favorite tech tools but I don’t have one singular tech stack that I recommend to everyone. Your product idea should dictate the tech used not the other way around.  There are a ton of fabulous tools and many of them will work equally well to bring your online product to the point of sale. Just as the type of product shouldn’t dictate the idea, the tech should also not dictate the flow of ideas. <h3>Our third non-starter is the creation process</h3> Ok, this one should be fairly obvious -- developing an online product should not start with creating the actual product! If we start here without a clear vision and idea and before we know the online product container then how on earth is this product going to see the light of day? <h4>Two quick examples --</h4> Let’s say you’re a photographer and you want to create an online product. So you start flushing out your lightroom presets so that you can sell them. Who are you selling them to - parents? Amateur photogs? Professional photogs? And what is the end user’s proficiency level with Adobe Lightroom? And where are you going to house the presets? And What is the purpose of selling and buying these - in your business and for your purchasers? Instead of starting to flush out the lightroom presets, the starting point should be to flush out why and to whom you’re selling the presets. And then figure out what support the purchasers are going to need… once those things are accomplished, you can dabble in the creation process while flushing out the delivery container and the tech. The idea and vision is truly the cornerstone to the product. Have you heard the saying “sell them what they want, give them what they need?” -- that’s really what we’re talking about here. Our second example is a musician who teaches one on one piano lessons on the side. The one on one lessons have blown up and in order to double down on your own growth as a musician, you’re looking to create an online product to serve your students in a one to many capacity. So, you create lesson plans and instructional videos that your students could choose to purchase instead of working one on one with you. This product has a lot of online potential, but without identifying the vision and flushing out the idea, the lesson plans might collect digital dust instead of helping your students improve their piano playing. Just like the prior example, it’s vital to identify who the product is for, what support they are going to need to find success with your product and how they are most likely to best use the product. Sure, those lesson plans and lightroom presets will have a place in a final online product, so if you’ve started on your product creation with the creation itself, don’t throw it away! Instead, take a step back and do the visioning and idea work ahead of moving forward with more creation! And, if you need help with any of this, please send me a quick message on Instagram, I’m @<a href="https://www.instagram.com/techofbusiness/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">techofbusiness</a> or send me an email at <a href="mailto:jaime@techofbusiness.com" rel="nofollow">jaime@techofbusiness.com</a>. <h3>The final non-starting point is the marketing and promotion.</h3> Often you’ll hear people talking about pre-selling an online product (I mean episode 98 was all about pre-selling.) This is a great method for seeing if your product has an audience and people who are willing to buy… but how can we start with marketing and promotion before we even have a vision and idea? We can’t. So, I’m going to leave this phase of the online product development process here. Marketing and promotion must come after the idea is fleshed out enough that you can speak clearly about it. Nobody wants to read a sales page that says “I’m building something really cool, send me $100 and I’ll give it to you when it’s done” right? Enough about the phases that we don’t want to start with, let’s get back to the vision and idea to wrap things up. My strong recommendation is to start with a simple product that helps the purchaser create a victory in their life. Using that as the framework for a brainstorming session does not mean that your signature online program doesn’t make it onto the blank canvas just that it might not make it to the first product creation. I also recommend not mapping out your first 10 products before you sell your first product and get feedback… in fact, our next episode is going to be all about getting feedback and buy in for your online product idea. Again, the download that goes through all the phases we discussed is available at <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/onlineproduct/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://techofbusiness.com/onlineproduct/</a> Do you know another artist who is thinking about expanding online this year? Share this episode with them directly inside your podcast app. In general, you’ll be able to do this from the show summary screen. Often you’ll click on the ellipses (three little dots) to open a tray with the share option. Thank you for sharing. My mission, as I mentioned at the top of the episode, is to help artists see what’s possible in the online space and to help make those possibilities a reality! Thanks for listening and reading these notes! And I love getting to know podcast listeners, so connect with me on any of the platforms listed here: <ul> <li>Download the <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/onlineproduct/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Online Product Phases</a></li> <li>Instagram: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/techofbusiness" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@techofbusiness</a></li> <li>Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/yourbiztech" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@yourbiztech</a></li> <li>The <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/community/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Expand Online Community</a> on Facebook</li> <li>Email: <a href="mailto:jaime@techofbusiness.com" rel="nofollow">jaime@techofbusiness.com</a></li> </ul>

101: A  blank canvas for creating  your online product.

First off… a quick definition for you… a cohort is simply a group or company of people. In terms of online courses, a cohort is a group of course participants who start the course at the same time and are guided through the content. A cohort helps participants actually accomplish what they buy the course to help them with. Because, as we’ve been discussing lately, it’s not enough for us to put out really good content, we need to help our students move through the content. And a cohort is a great way to really create the impact you seek. As you know, the two most popular methods of having online courses are evergreen and open cart/close cart. The evergreen course is always being marketed whereas the open cart/close cart has launch cycles. Running a cohort works with both methods but there are obvious differences in the way a cohort needs to be presented. A cohort is super easy to implement with an open cart/close cart launch method. Because in this method, we only have the doors open for a short amount of time and the students are all going to be starting right after the window closes or right after they sign up. And your cohort students will easily be at the same point within the course by default, whether they choose to purchase on day 1 or day 10 of your open cart. For courses with an open cart/close cart launch, most of the time introductory information or lessons are provided immediately and the course officially starts after the cart is closed. So the content release schedule is consistent across students. And our cohort students are on the exact same release schedule as the other students… Not only does this make things easier for you and your cohort students but it makes it possible to sell the cohort as an add-on once the course is already up and running. Remember, your cohort is designed to help the students get through the material. So, our cohorts need to have contact points -- like a community forum or private Facebook group, zoom calls, additional opportunities for feedback. I think that the cohort should sell itself! Now, with an evergreen course, your students have the ability to start at any time. And you want them to get started as soon as they purchase without sitting around waiting for their cohort to start… So how exactly do we make a cohort work with an evergreen course? Some of this will depend on the number of students you have signup on a weekly and monthly basis. If you have 5 new students a week and you want to have 10 students in every cohort, then you might form your cohort every 6 - 8 weeks. This does mean that your cohort students may be at different spots within the course, but you can normalize this within the cohort progression and accountability plan. When my clients and I determine that a cohort makes sense for their evergreen course, we list that information on the sales page, but don’t sell it directly, except in the 10 days before the cohort starts. For students that purchase during non-cohort sales periods, we sell the cohort after the fact, via personal outreach, internal announcements and other touchpoints. The advantages of the cohort community often outweigh the DIY approach and I find that when positioned correctly, you can have 25% or more existing students sign up for the cohort program. So, we’ve covered inviting students into cohorts for both evergreen and open cart/close cart courses. But what does it mean to run a cohort… let’s really think about that right now. Running a cohort means that you need to get inside the head of your student to understand how they need to be supported.  Do they need touchpoints on multiple channels? Do they need checklists? Do they need accountability and check ins? Do they get busy and take time away from their learning for other life tasks? o they want positive reinforcement from you? How much community and social interaction is the right amount for them to stay on track without being another distraction? What is the delta between where they start and where your course takes them?  We want to support and guide and inspire our cohort students. We don’t want our engagement to take them sideways or away from the course material. Let’s assume you have an 8-week, 6-chapter course.  The course material is released on day 1 of week 1, week 2, week 3, week 5, week 6 and week 7. Weeks 4 and 8 are integration or implementation weeks. There is a forum or private Facebook group for cohort members to connect. Each week has a recommended exercise that is submitted to you for feedback and a suggested exercise that is shared in the community. Monthly cohort zoom calls are scheduled in week 1 and week 5. Peer feedback and critique is encouraged in the forum or private Facebook group.  This is the bare minimum of a successful cohort. Accountability and support are what separate cohorts from DIY courses. I like to encourage my clients to go above the bare minimum with surprise and delights. This could be by  Sending a kudos email. Shout-out in your private Facebook group. Shout-out on your public social media. Create accountability partnerships through observation. Bonus calls or going live in your Facebook group to address specific questions that are coming in. Bringing guest experts into the Facebook group or to give masterclasses that are tangentially connected to the goal of your course. Introducing your students to peers or mentors that you are acquainted with.  The idea is that you treat your cohort students with grace and joy, so that they get as much out of the experience as possible. It’s inevitable, even within a cohort, for students to fall behind and because of the atmosphere we create with our cohort, it’s so much easier to bring that student back into the fold. It might mean outreach in less conventional formats -- like a Facebook or Instagram DM or even a text message or phone call. I love being able to give that personal and individualized attention to cohort students because they have provided me with a mechanism to do so. A question that comes up a lot with respect to cohorts is pricing the cohort against the standard version of the course. I believe that your course needs to cost at least $297 to even consider a cohort. If a course costs less than $297, there is not enough room to move within the proper order of magnitude to get to a cohort price that reflects the additional work. Let’s say our 8-week, 6-chapter course has a price tag of $297… actually let’s do $300 for easier math. Our bare minimum cohort requirements mean working an extra 3 hours per week for those 8 weeks. So 24 extra hours. If your cohort has 10 students in it, that’s an extra 2.4 hours per student. Let’s round that up to 3 hours per student for all the bonuses that we include. If your hourly rate is $150/hour, then you’re giving each student an additional $450 of value for being in the cohort. And since we don’t charge our hourly rates for packages, let’s drop that price down to $100/hour so an additional $300. Can you charge $600 for the cohort version of the course… of course you can, but it’s a much bigger hurdle because you’re now asking the student to invest twice as much in the course than the material costs. So, if instead, the course was $497, then we’re offering $497 or $797 which has a smaller order of magnitude. I like to price cohorts between $250 and $400 more than the stand-alone version of the course and make sure that it is in alignment with the stand-alone version. Oh, and for evergreen courses, I recommend that the cohort be a flat fee and no different if it’s bundled into the course (during the 10 days leading up to the start) or sold after the fact to enrolled students. Let’s wrap this episode up with a few more things to consider when you’re weighing the opportunity of adding a cohort to your course or changing things up so that a cohort is a viable option for your students. Don’t introduce a cohort if you haven’t validated your course. You’ll want to make sure that you’ve had at least 50 people purchase your course and completion surveys submitted by at least 8 students. When you notice that students stop making progress on a specific section, consider modifications to that section before saying that a cohort is going to fix it. Because the material needs to be strong enough for a DIYer to be successful. You may run multiple different courses and your students might elect to purchase more than one at a time. Limit cohort enrollment to a single course. So if you have more than one course with a cohort option, make sure that students understand that they can only be in a single cohort at any one time. Make decisions as to how to wrap up your cohort. We’re going to be talking about this one a lot more in a couple of weeks. And finally, it’s okay to ask for help. Invite past students to become cohort or community moderators. Understand what is manageable for you and get support to make sure that you deliver a consistent and wonderful experience for your students. Thank you so much for hanging out with me for the Expand Online podcast today -- would you leave a rating and review in  Apple Podcasts so that other artistic professionals know that this podcast is designed to help them create a sustainable and enjoyable online revenue stream.  Download the Online Product Phases Book a Strategy Session Instagram: @jaimeslutzky Facebook: @yourbiztech The Expand Online Community on Facebook Email: jaime@techofbusiness.com Contact Page: https://techofbusiness.com/contact/ 

First off… a quick definition for you… a cohort is simply a group or company of people. In terms of online courses, a cohort is a group of course participants who start the course at the same time and are guided through the content. A cohort helps participants actually accomplish what they buy the course to help them with. Because, as we’ve been discussing lately, it’s not enough for us to put out really good content, we need to help our students move through the content. <h3>And a cohort is a great way to really create the impact you seek.</h3> As you know, the two most popular methods of having online courses are evergreen and open cart/close cart. The evergreen course is always being marketed whereas the open cart/close cart has launch cycles. Running a cohort works with both methods but there are obvious differences in the way a cohort needs to be presented. A cohort is super easy to implement with an open cart/close cart launch method. Because in this method, we only have the doors open for a short amount of time and the students are all going to be starting right after the window closes or right after they sign up. And your cohort students will easily be at the same point within the course by default, whether they choose to purchase on day 1 or day 10 of your open cart. For courses with an open cart/close cart launch, most of the time introductory information or lessons are provided immediately and the course officially starts after the cart is closed. So the content release schedule is consistent across students. And our cohort students are on the exact same release schedule as the other students… Not only does this make things easier for you and your cohort students but it makes it possible to sell the cohort as an add-on once the course is already up and running. <h4>Remember, your cohort is designed to help the students get through the material. So, our cohorts need to have contact points -- like a community forum or private Facebook group, zoom calls, additional opportunities for feedback. I think that the cohort should sell itself!</h4> Now, with an evergreen course, your students have the ability to start at any time. And you want them to get started as soon as they purchase without sitting around waiting for their cohort to start… So how exactly do we make a cohort work with an evergreen course? Some of this will depend on the number of students you have signup on a weekly and monthly basis. If you have 5 new students a week and you want to have 10 students in every cohort, then you might form your cohort every 6 - 8 weeks. This does mean that your cohort students may be at different spots within the course, but you can normalize this within the cohort progression and accountability plan. When my clients and I determine that a cohort makes sense for their evergreen course, we list that information on the sales page, but don’t sell it directly, except in the 10 days before the cohort starts. For students that purchase during non-cohort sales periods, we sell the cohort after the fact, via personal outreach, internal announcements and other touchpoints. The advantages of the cohort community often outweigh the DIY approach and I find that when positioned correctly, you can have 25% or more existing students sign up for the cohort program. So, we’ve covered inviting students into cohorts for both evergreen and open cart/close cart courses. But what does it mean to run a cohort… let’s really think about that right now. <h2>Running a cohort means that you need to get inside the head of your student to understand how they need to be supported.</h2> <ul> <li>Do they need touchpoints on multiple channels?</li> <li>Do they need checklists?</li> <li>Do they need accountability and check ins?</li> <li>Do they get busy and take time away from their learning for other life tasks?</li> <li>o they want positive reinforcement from you?</li> <li>How much community and social interaction is the right amount for them to stay on track without being another distraction?</li> <li>What is the delta between where they start and where your course takes them?</li> </ul> We want to support and guide and inspire our cohort students. We don’t want our engagement to take them sideways or away from the course material. Let’s assume you have an 8-week, 6-chapter course. <ul> <li>The course material is released on day 1 of week 1, week 2, week 3, week 5, week 6 and week 7.</li> <li>Weeks 4 and 8 are integration or implementation weeks.</li> <li>There is a forum or private Facebook group for cohort members to connect.</li> <li>Each week has a recommended exercise that is submitted to you for feedback and a suggested exercise that is shared in the community.</li> <li>Monthly cohort zoom calls are scheduled in week 1 and week 5.</li> <li>Peer feedback and critique is encouraged in the forum or private Facebook group.</li> </ul> <h3>This is the bare minimum of a successful cohort. Accountability and support are what separate cohorts from DIY courses.</h3> <h4>I like to encourage my clients to go above the bare minimum with surprise and delights. This could be by</h4> <ul> <li>Sending a kudos email.</li> <li>Shout-out in your private Facebook group.</li> <li>Shout-out on your public social media.</li> <li>Create accountability partnerships through observation.</li> <li>Bonus calls or going live in your Facebook group to address specific questions that are coming in.</li> <li>Bringing guest experts into the Facebook group or to give masterclasses that are tangentially connected to the goal of your course.</li> <li>Introducing your students to peers or mentors that you are acquainted with.</li> </ul> <h3>The idea is that you treat your cohort students with grace and joy, so that they get as much out of the experience as possible.</h3> It’s inevitable, even within a cohort, for students to fall behind and because of the atmosphere we create with our cohort, it’s so much easier to bring that student back into the fold. It might mean outreach in less conventional formats -- like a Facebook or Instagram DM or even a text message or phone call. <h2>I love being able to give that personal and individualized attention to cohort students because they have provided me with a mechanism to do so.</h2> A question that comes up a lot with respect to cohorts is pricing the cohort against the standard version of the course. I believe that your course needs to cost at least $297 to even consider a cohort. If a course costs less than $297, there is not enough room to move within the proper order of magnitude to get to a cohort price that reflects the additional work. Let’s say our 8-week, 6-chapter course has a price tag of $297… actually let’s do $300 for easier math. Our bare minimum cohort requirements mean working an extra 3 hours per week for those 8 weeks. So 24 extra hours. If your cohort has 10 students in it, that’s an extra 2.4 hours per student. Let’s round that up to 3 hours per student for all the bonuses that we include. If your hourly rate is $150/hour, then you’re giving each student an additional $450 of value for being in the cohort. And since we don’t charge our hourly rates for packages, let’s drop that price down to $100/hour so an additional $300. Can you charge $600 for the cohort version of the course… of course you can, but it’s a much bigger hurdle because you’re now asking the student to invest twice as much in the course than the material costs. So, if instead, the course was $497, then we’re offering $497 or $797 which has a smaller order of magnitude. I like to price cohorts between $250 and $400 more than the stand-alone version of the course and make sure that it is in alignment with the stand-alone version. Oh, and for evergreen courses, I recommend that the cohort be a flat fee and no different if it’s bundled into the course (during the 10 days leading up to the start) or sold after the fact to enrolled students. Let’s wrap this episode up with a few more things to consider when you’re weighing the opportunity of adding a cohort to your course or changing things up so that a cohort is a viable option for your students. Don’t introduce a cohort if you haven’t validated your course. You’ll want to make sure that you’ve had at least 50 people purchase your course and completion surveys submitted by at least 8 students. When you notice that students stop making progress on a specific section, consider modifications to that section before saying that a cohort is going to fix it. Because the material needs to be strong enough for a DIYer to be successful. You may run multiple different courses and your students might elect to purchase more than one at a time. Limit cohort enrollment to a single course. So if you have more than one course with a cohort option, make sure that students understand that they can only be in a single cohort at any one time. Make decisions as to how to wrap up your cohort. We’re going to be talking about this one a lot more in a couple of weeks. And finally, it’s okay to ask for help. Invite past students to become cohort or community moderators. Understand what is manageable for you and get support to make sure that you deliver a consistent and wonderful experience for your students. Thank you so much for hanging out with me for the Expand Online podcast today -- would you leave a rating and review in <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tech-of-business-podcast/id1368927036?mt=2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Apple Podcasts</a> so that other artistic professionals know that this podcast is designed to help them create a sustainable and enjoyable online revenue stream. <ul> <li>Download the <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/onlineproduct/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Online Product Phases</a></li> <li><a href="https://techofbusiness.com/strategy/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Book a Strategy Session</a></li> <li>Instagram: @<a href="https://instagram.com/jaimeslutzky/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">jaimeslutzky</a></li> <li>Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/yourbiztech" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@yourbiztech</a></li> <li>The <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/community/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Expand Online Community</a> on Facebook</li> <li>Email: <a href="mailto:jaime@techofbusiness.com" rel="nofollow">jaime@techofbusiness.com</a></li> <li><a href="https://techofbusiness.com/contact/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Contact Page: https://techofbusiness.com/contact/</a></li> </ul>

109: Augment your student  success rate with  cohorts!

Without a double, at some point in time your program is going to conclude and we want to celebrate the progress that our members have made during the time we’ve been working with them! I am so passionate about the full experience for our online program participants that I want to take our time today to discuss some of my favorite ways to wrap up group programs and when students complete their courses. Before we get there, I want to assure you that the online ship hasn’t sailed and left you behind -- Nope! you can do this and your exact right set of students or members or participants or whatever you want to call them are going to be there when you’re able to serve them online. Many of your existing or past clients are probably waiting for you to create what they need; they really aren’t looking for other instructors. So, rest assured, what you’re inspired to create by working on expanding online is the right thing for you to be doing now. There… that’s out of the way. Remember the best resource to get started online is the Expand Online Getting Started Guide available at https://techofbusiness.com/onlineproduct/ So, today, we’re talking about getting to the end of your program and how to make sure that you properly graduate and celebrate the participation of your members. You know those last ten minutes of the final class in a series -- where we’re all saying “OK, nice work, good luck!” and then everyone packs up and leaves. Well, that’s pretty much what we want to avoid in the online space -- mostly. Sure, we want to give our students permission to pack up their things and go on to the next adventure or experience, but we also want to let them know we are proud of their accomplishments and that we would love to continue to support them on their journey. In the online space it’s so easy for people to get distracted by the next product or program that catches their eye, hello shiny object syndrome, so creating a graduation and clear end of program carries so much value. We can do this in such a beautiful and impactful way. So, first, let’s talk about online group programs where you meet weekly with your participants on Zoom and there is material for them to work on each week. The graduation date is clear -- it’s either your last zoom session or within a week of that call. I love having the last call or a bonus call for graduation helping my members on the path that is best for them! This call is a celebration of the progress that everyone has made throughout the program as well as introducing members to next steps and how they can keep making progress either alone or with you. When groups are 20 or fewer participants, I like to spend a bit of time talking about each participant, what their goals were when they joined the program and what their greatest accomplishment during the time together. Make it fun and joyous -- maybe even bring in conversation so that it’s not all “Jane wanted to do this and she did” and “Joe wanted to do that and he did too.” It helps to continue to show that you are invested in their progress, their successes and their futures. It’s such an honor to be trusted with helping someone advance their passion, so of course we want to highlight how honored we are to have been able to work with them these past 6 or 8 or 12 weeks. We do not want the graduation call to feel like a big huge pitch or promotion of our services. Our participants need to know what’s next but this is about celebrating them and creating a clear end to the program. On this call, we’re going to cover logistics like when the Facebook group is going to close, how access to the program material may shift and when final feedback on assignments will be provided. This is also the time to ask your participants to complete your online program feedback form. Getting real time feedback, especially when you’re going to relaunch your program again, is absolutely invaluable. You might even want to take a few minutes during your graduation celebration for people to go fill it out while still on the call. And testimonials -- we want testimonials from our students -- you can record them right there on the call. If you want video testimonials, you can just change your settings so that you see “speaker view” instead of “gallery view” and click the zoom record button. I’m happy to jump on your zoom call and help you figure this out the first time if you want me to -- that’s something I do for all my clients, I will do anything to help you make the tech work as easy as possible for you! OK, so like I’ve said, our group graduation is really a celebration. It’s about reaffirming their decision from weeks or months ago to spend the time and show up each week and work with you. Most likely, you’re going to have people who failed to show up consistently or make the progress they wanted to make. Go back to episode 107 to refresh yourself on how to reach out and help these people come back into the fold. You’ll want to do your best effort to re-engage them long before the graduation call. And regardless of their success, if they do show up on the final call, make sure that they are also appreciated and acknowledged. Let’s always try to put a light and relaxed spin on it -- no need to call out that they didn’t hit their goals. There is a reason they showed up for this call and that’s important. Now if you have an open/close course or a cohort going through the course together, you can do similar things with respect to a graduation ceremony. It takes a lot for people to make their way all the way through a course, especially if it’s one that is dripped (or paced out) over several months. So consider adding a few other special details for graduation like:  Issue certificates Send a personal message or email to the student when you receive notification that they have finished Acknowledge their official completion inside your Facebook group or forum  With self-paced, independent study courses we often have fewer touch points with our students, so it’s potentially even more valuable to do this additional connection at the conclusion. It helps your students know that you care about them and have been monitoring their progress along the way. Here are a few ideas on opportunities for people to continue to learn and grow from you…  If the program came with limited access to the material, then we can offer extended access for  nominal fee We can invite them to the next level program We can offer a one time or on-going one-on-one experience We can invite graduates to a higher level mastermind We can allow graduates to participate in the next round of the program at a reduced fee We can offer group moderation or mentorship opportunities to them so that they rise up as leaders within your community  In some cases, it might make sense to send a personalized or recommended road map to your participants. This way you can tailor the exact recommendation to them. There are people we would love to bring into a mastermind and others that we would rather see join the next level group program instead. It depends largely on what you’re offering, what you’re willing to offer and staying in tune with each individual person’s goals. Celebrating completion and successes always feels good. It’s part of human nature to want the kudos and accolades! I hope this episode has inspired you to map out the end of your program with as much heart and thought as you do with the content and the delivery. I wish you nothing but success with all your online products and courses and programs. I’m here to help you make this dream a reality. If you haven’t already, be sure to go to the shownotes and download the Expand Online Getting Started Guide and reach out on Instagram any time!  Download the  Expand Online Getting Started Guide Book a Strategy Session Instagram: @jaimeslutzky Facebook: @yourbiztech The Expand Online Community on Facebook Email: jaime@techofbusiness.com Contact Page: https://techofbusiness.com/contact/ 

Without a double, at some point in time your program is going to conclude and we want to celebrate the progress that our members have made during the time we’ve been working with them! I am so passionate about the full experience for our online program participants that I want to take our time today to discuss some of my favorite ways to wrap up group programs and when students complete their courses. Before we get there, I want to assure you that the online ship hasn’t sailed and left you behind -- Nope! you can do this and your exact right set of students or members or participants or whatever you want to call them are going to be there when you’re able to serve them online. Many of your existing or past clients are probably waiting for you to create what they need; they really aren’t looking for other instructors. <h2>So, rest assured, what you’re inspired to create by working on expanding online is the right thing for you to be doing now.</h2> There… that’s out of the way. <h4>Remember the best resource to get started online is the Expand Online Getting Started Guide available at <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/onlineproduct/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://techofbusiness.com/onlineproduct/</a></h4> So, today, we’re talking about getting to the end of your program and how to make sure that you properly graduate and celebrate the participation of your members. You know those last ten minutes of the final class in a series -- where we’re all saying “OK, nice work, good luck!” and then everyone packs up and leaves. Well, that’s pretty much what we want to avoid in the online space -- mostly. Sure, we want to give our students permission to pack up their things and go on to the next adventure or experience, but we also want to let them know we are proud of their accomplishments and that we would love to continue to support them on their journey. In the online space it’s so easy for people to get distracted by the next product or program that catches their eye, hello shiny object syndrome, so creating a graduation and clear end of program carries so much value. <h3>We can do this in such a beautiful and impactful way.</h3> So, first, let’s talk about online group programs where you meet weekly with your participants on Zoom and there is material for them to work on each week. The graduation date is clear -- it’s either your last zoom session or within a week of that call. I love having the last call or a bonus call for graduation helping my members on the path that is best for them! This call is a celebration of the progress that everyone has made throughout the program as well as introducing members to next steps and how they can keep making progress either alone or with you. When groups are 20 or fewer participants, I like to spend a bit of time talking about each participant, what their goals were when they joined the program and what their greatest accomplishment during the time together. Make it fun and joyous -- maybe even bring in conversation so that it’s not all “Jane wanted to do this and she did” and “Joe wanted to do that and he did too.” It helps to continue to show that you are invested in their progress, their successes and their futures. It’s such an honor to be trusted with helping someone advance their passion, so of course we want to highlight how honored we are to have been able to work with them these past 6 or 8 or 12 weeks. We do not want the graduation call to feel like a big huge pitch or promotion of our services. Our participants need to know what’s next but this is about celebrating them and creating a clear end to the program. On this call, we’re going to cover logistics like when the Facebook group is going to close, how access to the program material may shift and when final feedback on assignments will be provided. This is also the time to ask your participants to complete your online program feedback form. Getting real time feedback, especially when you’re going to relaunch your program again, is absolutely invaluable. You might even want to take a few minutes during your graduation celebration for people to go fill it out while still on the call. And testimonials -- we want testimonials from our students -- you can record them right there on the call. If you want video testimonials, you can just change your settings so that you see “speaker view” instead of “gallery view” and click the zoom record button. I’m happy to jump on your zoom call and help you figure this out the first time if you want me to -- that’s something I do for all my clients, I will do anything to help you make the tech work as easy as possible for you! OK, so like I’ve said, our group graduation is really a celebration. <h3>It’s about reaffirming their decision from weeks or months ago to spend the time and show up each week and work with you.</h3> Most likely, you’re going to have people who failed to show up consistently or make the progress they wanted to make. Go back to episode 107 to refresh yourself on how to reach out and help these people come back into the fold. You’ll want to do your best effort to re-engage them long before the graduation call. And regardless of their success, if they do show up on the final call, make sure that they are also appreciated and acknowledged. Let’s always try to put a light and relaxed spin on it -- no need to call out that they didn’t hit their goals. There is a reason they showed up for this call and that’s important. Now if you have an open/close course or a cohort going through the course together, you can do similar things with respect to a graduation ceremony. It takes a lot for people to make their way all the way through a course, especially if it’s one that is dripped (or paced out) over several months. So consider adding a few other special details for graduation like: <ol> <li>Issue certificates</li> <li>Send a personal message or email to the student when you receive notification that they have finished</li> <li>Acknowledge their official completion inside your Facebook group or forum</li> </ol> With self-paced, independent study courses we often have fewer touch points with our students, so it’s potentially even more valuable to do this additional connection at the conclusion. It helps your students know that you care about them and have been monitoring their progress along the way. <h4>Here are a few ideas on opportunities for people to continue to learn and grow from you…</h4> <ul> <li>If the program came with limited access to the material, then we can offer extended access for  nominal fee</li> <li>We can invite them to the next level program</li> <li>We can offer a one time or on-going one-on-one experience</li> <li>We can invite graduates to a higher level mastermind</li> <li>We can allow graduates to participate in the next round of the program at a reduced fee</li> <li>We can offer group moderation or mentorship opportunities to them so that they rise up as leaders within your community</li> </ul> In some cases, it might make sense to send a personalized or recommended road map to your participants. This way you can tailor the exact recommendation to them. There are people we would love to bring into a mastermind and others that we would rather see join the next level group program instead. It depends largely on what you’re offering, what you’re willing to offer and staying in tune with each individual person’s goals. Celebrating completion and successes always feels good. It’s part of human nature to want the kudos and accolades! I hope this episode has inspired you to map out the end of your program with as much heart and thought as you do with the content and the delivery. I wish you nothing but success with all your online products and courses and programs. I’m here to help you make this dream a reality. If you haven’t already, be sure to go to the shownotes and download the <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/onlineproduct/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Expand Online Getting Started Guide</a> and reach out on Instagram any time! <ul> <li>Download the  <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/onlineproduct/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Expand Online Getting Started Guide</a></li> <li><a href="https://techofbusiness.com/strategy/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Book a Strategy Session</a></li> <li>Instagram: @<a href="https://instagram.com/jaimeslutzky/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">jaimeslutzky</a></li> <li>Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/yourbiztech" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@yourbiztech</a></li> <li>The <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/community/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Expand Online Community</a> on Facebook</li> <li>Email: jaime@techofbusiness.com</li> <li><a href="https://techofbusiness.com/contact/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Contact Page: https://techofbusiness.com/contact/</a></li> </ul>

112: Celebrate your  students when  they  complete online programs

In this episode we’re going through the pre-work steps how to get your online product to the point of creation. That is -- everything that I think needs to be figured out before writing a single video script or writing a single line of sales copy or creating a single graphic. In short, this is developing the promise. Your online product is going to deliver on a promise. And every aspect of the product, whether it’s a course, membership site, group program, distance learning or other type of online product, needs to work towards delivering on that promise. Let's use an example to illustrate how to develop the promise. Let’s say your online program is going to help someone keep their paint brushes in good working shape for twice as long as the average lifespan of a paint brush in under 15 minutes. There is value to this program -- your students are going to save money by not having to purchase new brushes as often and being able to sit down and paint whenever they feel compelled (because their equipment is ready to use.) This is the promise. The promise is the BECAUSE not the HOW. Or put another way -- nobody really wants to wrap up every painting session with a cleaning session. That’s not a strong selling proposition. They want to be able to start every painting session with clean brushes that are ready to use. So we need to use the angle of what they want instead of what they don’t as the premise of the promise we are delivering. Now, let me jump in here and say I know next to nothing about painting but I’m inspired by artists and this felt like a good example to use right now… Our promise needs to encompass the benefit of being able to sit right down and get to the joy of the craft. Our promise is that “When you finish this program you’ll be proficient at keeping your paint brushes in tip top shape so that they are ready every time you sit down at the easel.” That’s compelling! Here’s another take, factoring in the time element. We said it earlier that we’re going to make the brushes last twice as long as average. And that it’s going to take less than 15 minutes. Our promise might include the aspect of saving time and money on supplies. “When you finish this program your art supply runs will be less frequent, saving you time which can immediately be used to create more art.” Or “when you finish this program your art cleanup will fast, efficient and a joy instead of a burden.” Get the idea? And once we get the promise down, it’s so much easier to pull everything together from the content and messaging to the tech and marketing. Here at Tech of Business, we love helping our clients deliver their promises... actually, we are on a mission to help our clients over-deliver their promises… When your students take your course and feel that you’ve lived up to the promise, they’ll be happy. When you over-deliver and wow them, then they will spread the word about your online products and shout your name from the rooftops. That’s the power of delivering… but I digress. This post is about understanding what needs to be in place outside of the tech and the content. First up: time allocation. Once you have customers who purchase your online product, you need to have time to service them. And this means that there are going to need to be adjustments to your weekly schedule. Are you going to commit to a forum or a Facebook group, weekly office hours or guaranteed email responses. All those options will compound the benefits of the product but they take time out of your day. You can choose to reduce your in studio time to block that out for online students. Or you can carve it outside of free time. But it needs to be figured out before getting to the creation. Next: team. Who is going to work with you and support this project. Are you doing it solo from conceptualization all the way down or are you hiring a videographer or a copywriter or a tech company (ahem, you know this is what we do here at the Tech of Business, right?) or are you going to have a long-term contractor, assistant or team member working on it with you. Finally: education. And, if this is your first online product what do you need to learn before you can launch this product? Do you want to hire a strategist or mentor or a coach or a consultant? Do you want to take a course or attend a workshop? And the ugly truth -- do you have the money and time for the pre-work, creation and marketing to make it a success? Jumping to creating the online product is my favorite place to go -- but there is so much that goes into having a successful online product, and I'll bet since you've read this far, you know that the pre-work and understanding what you’re promising is going to have compound benefits. We’re right on the cusp of a new year, as of the time of the release of this episode, and I know you’ll be itching to create and spread your wings. I’m right there with you -- let’s just make sure we’re doing it right from the get go. BTW, I recently talked on the podcast about launching messy -- and I am good with that but launching messy doesn’t mean launching unprepared. And the same goes with creating -- pre-work and a constant reminder of the promise you want to make to your customers is task #1.

In this episode we’re going through the pre-work steps how to get your online product to the point of creation. That is -- everything that I think needs to be figured out before writing a single video script or writing a single line of sales copy or creating a single graphic. <h4>In short, this is developing the promise.</h4> Your online product is going to deliver on a promise. And every aspect of the product, whether it’s a course, membership site, group program, distance learning or other type of online product, needs to work towards delivering on that promise. Let's use an example to illustrate how to develop the promise. Let’s say your online program is going to help someone keep their paint brushes in good working shape for twice as long as the average lifespan of a paint brush in under 15 minutes. There is value to this program -- your students are going to save money by not having to purchase new brushes as often and being able to sit down and paint whenever they feel compelled (because their equipment is ready to use.) This is the promise. The promise is the BECAUSE not the HOW. Or put another way -- nobody really wants to wrap up every painting session with a cleaning session. That’s not a strong selling proposition. They want to be able to start every painting session with clean brushes that are ready to use. So we need to use the angle of what they want instead of what they don’t as the premise of the promise we are delivering. Now, let me jump in here and say I know next to nothing about painting but I’m inspired by artists and this felt like a good example to use right now… Our promise needs to encompass the benefit of being able to sit right down and get to the joy of the craft. Our promise is that “When you finish this program you’ll be proficient at keeping your paint brushes in tip top shape so that they are ready every time you sit down at the easel.” <h3>That’s compelling!</h3> Here’s another take, factoring in the time element. We said it earlier that we’re going to make the brushes last twice as long as average. And that it’s going to take less than 15 minutes. Our promise might include the aspect of saving time and money on supplies. “When you finish this program your art supply runs will be less frequent, saving you time which can immediately be used to create more art.” Or “when you finish this program your art cleanup will fast, efficient and a joy instead of a burden.” Get the idea? And once we get the promise down, it’s so much easier to pull everything together from the content and messaging to the tech and marketing. Here at Tech of Business, we love helping our clients deliver their promises... actually, we are on a mission to help our clients over-deliver their promises… When your students take your course and feel that you’ve lived up to the promise, they’ll be happy. When you over-deliver and wow them, then they will spread the word about your online products and shout your name from the rooftops. That’s the power of delivering… but I digress. This post is about understanding what needs to be in place outside of the tech and the content. <h3>First up: time allocation.</h3> Once you have customers who purchase your online product, you need to have time to service them. And this means that there are going to need to be adjustments to your weekly schedule. Are you going to commit to a forum or a Facebook group, weekly office hours or guaranteed email responses. All those options will compound the benefits of the product but they take time out of your day. You can choose to reduce your in studio time to block that out for online students. Or you can carve it outside of free time. But it needs to be figured out before getting to the creation. <h3>Next: team.</h3> Who is going to work with you and support this project. Are you doing it solo from conceptualization all the way down or are you hiring a videographer or a copywriter or a tech company (ahem, you know this is what we do here at the Tech of Business, right?) or are you going to have a long-term contractor, assistant or team member working on it with you. Finally: education. And, if this is your first online product what do you need to learn before you can launch this product? Do you want to hire a strategist or mentor or a coach or a consultant? Do you want to take a course or attend a workshop? <h2>And the ugly truth -- do you have the money and time for the pre-work, creation and marketing to make it a success?</h2> Jumping to creating the online product is my favorite place to go -- but there is so much that goes into having a successful online product, and I'll bet since you've read this far, you know that the pre-work and understanding what you’re promising is going to have compound benefits. We’re right on the cusp of a new year, as of the time of the release of this episode, and I know you’ll be itching to create and spread your wings. I’m right there with you -- let’s just make sure we’re doing it right from the get go. BTW, I recently talked on the podcast about <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/093-its-okay-to-launch-messy/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">launching messy</a> -- and I am good with that but launching messy doesn’t mean launching unprepared. And the same goes with creating -- pre-work and a constant reminder of the promise you want to make to your customers is task #1.

099: Doing the Pre-Work for Online Product Success

Supporting your students as their online course instructor is part of why you’re creating your online course, right? So in today’s episode we’re getting into how that support manifests itself and how you can create the best experience for your students. In my opinion, it’s not enough to provide content access, we must provide other classroom experiences even for virtual classrooms. A formal classroom comes with expectations; students know what is expected of them when they arrive, how they should act and processes for when they leave. We need to create that same level of expectation online. It’s something that separates your course from lesser courses online. We accomplish this with a multi-pronged approach. The first approach I’m going to discuss is your Facebook group ~ I bet you thought I was going to jump into email or the intro unit inside your course material, didn’t you? But the warmth and clear guidelines of your Facebook group (or other online discussion forum) is both easier to understand and relate back to the physical classroom or studio and easier to implement. When someone signs up for your classes, be it online or offline, holding the door open for them and welcoming them inside is an important gesture. In the online space this means that it needs to be super easy for them to access and interact in your Facebook group. The privacy settings of a Facebook group is really what I’m talking about here.  Your group Privacy should be set to Private, which means that the posts are only visible to members of the group. The Hide Group setting should be set to Visible so that your students can request access to the group. If this setting is set to Hidden, then it’s not going to be easy for people to be granted access to the group. To keep member approval issues to a minimum, Facebook gives you the ability to upload a file of users to automatically approve via email address and ask membership questions. I love the file upload but it doesn’t work 100% because it’s a manual process and sometimes people use different email addresses for courses than they do for their Facebook profile. And I also love membership questions because they are a super easy way to quickly validate purchase. The questions can be checkboxes, radio buttons or written answers. So I usually just give a keyword in the welcome email that they select from a set of options via the radio buttons. And I set expectations. I let my students know that Facebook Group membership approval is performed periodically throughout the day and guaranteed to be done at 8pm Pacific each evening (or whatever cadence feels right to you.) This has worked out the best all around for my clients and also what I personally do. So at 8pm, I upload the csv of everyone who has purchased and then go through the pending requests to validate the rest of the people who are requesting access. For another time, I can go into addressing requests from non-purchasers. But I think we should leave this side of things here. If you would like support for this part of your course, book a strategy session with me at https://techofbusiness.com/strategy/ and we can get everything setup including the process for creating that csv for automatic approvals. Next up… let’s chat about the rules of your Facebook group. This includes posting rules, group expectations and repercussions for violations. It sucks to have to include repercussions since we’re all adults, but it needs to be said. Nobody wants to continuously police or monitor students’ activities and we definitely do not want to see students being disrespected or made to feel uncomfortable by other students in our community. So, that’s what rules are for… We’re going to want to include things like:  How the group posts are structured What types of posts are allowed  Text only Images Videos   Can a student go live in the group Is self-promotion allowed Are there daily or weekly group comment threads Whether or not vulgar language is allowed Off-topic threads How to ask for feedback from instructor, moderator and/or peers Private messaging rules How to report abuse or violations  Rules aren’t designed to be don’t don’t don’t and I think the best method for creating group rules is to have 2 or 3 do’s or positive rules for every don’t or negative one. Another thing to always include is the support contact form link. I prefer this over an email address (which you can use if you really want) because you can provide structure to the support message. And, if you have multiple people who take care of support, it’s super helpful to either have a group inbox for these messages or use system routing to send messages to the appropriate person based on the nature of the message. What’s more, this is the perfect way to help yourself not get inundated with Facebook messages for course support. We want our Facebook group to be active and vibrant ~ if you see a question get asked multiple times, throw it into an FAQ that is accessible both in the group and in the course content platform. Your FAQ is going to be a living document. And while we’re at it, I know that it’s much easier to create the active and vibrant atmosphere in a course focused Facebook group when everyone starts at the same time. Your group might sustain that vibrancy on its own, or more likely, the activity level will start to dwindle as the course progresses because of student distraction or priority shifts. So, as the course creator and group facilitator it’s crucial that we remain seen and visible inside the group. I recommend:  Going live on a schedule Going live spontaneously Post Ask Me Anything threads Post Kudos threads Post Feedback threads Like and comment on every post from your students Invite your students to be accountable to one another through accountability partner matching or accountability threads  And with that, you’re going to be well on your way to helping your students feel personally and collectively supported. Let’s move onto, dum, dum, dum… emails! There is actually only one email that needs to be sent to our students, but I recommend, depending on the exact style and structure of your course, 2 - 4 emails per module or chapter or week or other logical breakpoint. The one required email includes content access - so Thinkific of MemberVault for most of my clients, expectations and best practices, Facebook group information and how to get more support. Yes, we are using our welcome email as an upsell into a mentorship, cohort, one-on-one or other method of helping our students succeed. I’m going to talk more about pricing and course value next week, so just like before, this is mostly a high level conversation here on the podcast, but for your unique situation, I would love to help craft a unique strategy that makes sense for you, your business, your lifestyle and that of your students. A strategy call is the best way to do that: https://techofbusiness.com/strategy/ So, other than using the welcome email for selling, we really want to help our new student start the program that they have just paid for. And to do this, our welcome email needs to come out right after the payment is received… and this is where we’re going to make sure that we have ActiveCampaign or ConvertKit integrated with our payment system. That way, the payment system can trigger the welcome to the course sequence of emails… and don’t worry, I set this up for clients all the time!  Seriously, I love being the techie behind your online product successes -- which is one of the main reasons I started this podcast nearly two years ago -- so that I could showcase all the ways that you can and others have had success online and then help you get there.  Now, the 2-4 emails per week or chapter or module, what do I want you to include in those? The more that we can create the feeling of one-to-one conversation with our students, the more they will feel connected to us which in turn helps them make progress on the course material and reach out when they need help. When there is a strong connection between the course delivery platform and the email marketing platform, we can have automated emails go out to our students.  Automated emails can be triggered when modules and chapters and units are completed. Automated emails can also be setup to go out if a student hasn’t made progress in a certain amount of time. Automated emails can go out every Sunday or Thursday or whatever day you want. Automated emails can go out a certain number of hours or days after a unit is completed.  The reason why tying emails to course progress is so important is because we are reaching our students in a second location on their computers. They are not going to always be on our course website, but they are going to regularly check their emails. When you’re just getting started on tying your course with email, I would recommend just setting up two email automations -- the first for when someone has completed a chapter or module to introduce them to the next one and the second for when someone hasn’t made progress on the course in 4 - 7 days. In these emails we’re inviting conversation. We want them to reply back to the email or to post in the Facebook group or to complete the contact form that we talked about earlier. We want our students to know that we’re wanting them to find success through our course. There are 3 more ways that we can support our students:  Inside our course Virtual online office hours Public praise through social media, your weekly newsletter, posters in your studio or otherwise  Inside our course, this will be done with quizzes, surveys and assignments. When a student participates in these, they are essentially opening the door for a deeper conversation. When it comes to assignments, we should always provide feedback, not just a pass/fail. And the same for quizzes, we can address their incorrect responses with positive feedback and invite conversation. The responses to survey questions are invaluable. We gain insight into how students perceive and use the information we present in the lessons and can adapt and respond as necessary. Survey responses also help us iterate our courses so that the next cohort or set of students has an even better experience. Virtual office hours will take place in a zoom meeting room. You’ll setup the date and time and communicate the link to your students. They can submit their questions in advance or hop on and ask them live. The recording from office hours can then be uploaded into your course platform and into your Facebook group. This is another opportunity to email your students. Once an office hours session is complete, I also go the extra step of pulling out each question and answer into written and succinct form so that you can build a catalog of Q&amp;A and also see what additional training or bonuses you can deliver. Oh my, we didn’t even talk about bonuses as a way to support our students… but that can be huge too. Surprising them with a personal note, personal outreach, alternative methods and other tangential or complimentary content will help them find success! And the last one ~ everyone likes to be acknowledged for their hard work. It’s easy for an elementary school art teacher to hang their students’ creations on the wall but we can’t do that with your students who are all over the country or around the world. Instead, we use the virtual walls of Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Our Blogs, Our Newsletters, Pinterest and whatever other fancy tools we have at our disposal. I recommend getting students’ permission before sharing their name and work or tagging them. I generally do this at the outset of the course so that they can truly be surprised and delighted when it happens. Usually asking for this permission is in the second or third email that I send them after they purchase, not the welcome email because it’s a nice to have, not a must have! The success of your course lies in the success of your students. Supporting them, encouraging them and rewarding them are going to have ongoing benefits for you, your business, your students and their newfound skill. I would love to know your biggest takeaway and what you’re going to do next for your online course. Send me a DM on Instagram, I’m @jaimeslutzky, and let me know or tag me in you Instagram Stories!  Download the Online Product Phases Book a Strategy Session Instagram: @jaimeslutzky Facebook: @yourbiztech The Expand Online Community on Facebook Email: jaime@techofbusiness.com Contact Page: https://techofbusiness.com/contact/ 

Supporting your students as their online course instructor is part of why you’re creating your online course, right? So in today’s episode we’re getting into how that support manifests itself and how you can create the best experience for your students. <h4>In my opinion, it’s not enough to provide content access, we must provide other classroom experiences even for virtual classrooms.</h4> <h3>A formal classroom comes with expectations; students know what is expected of them when they arrive, how they should act and processes for when they leave. We need to create that same level of expectation online. It’s something that separates your course from lesser courses online.</h3> <h2>We accomplish this with a multi-pronged approach.</h2> The first approach I’m going to discuss is your Facebook group ~ I bet you thought I was going to jump into email or the intro unit inside your course material, didn’t you? But the warmth and clear guidelines of your Facebook group (or other online discussion forum) is both easier to understand and relate back to the physical classroom or studio and easier to implement. When someone signs up for your classes, be it online or offline, holding the door open for them and welcoming them inside is an important gesture. In the online space this means that it needs to be super easy for them to access and interact in your Facebook group. The privacy settings of a Facebook group is really what I’m talking about here. Your group Privacy should be set to Private, which means that the posts are only visible to members of the group. The Hide Group setting should be set to Visible so that your students can request access to the group. If this setting is set to Hidden, then it’s not going to be easy for people to be granted access to the group. To keep member approval issues to a minimum, Facebook gives you the ability to upload a file of users to automatically approve via email address and ask membership questions. I love the file upload but it doesn’t work 100% because it’s a manual process and sometimes people use different email addresses for courses than they do for their Facebook profile. And I also love membership questions because they are a super easy way to quickly validate purchase. The questions can be checkboxes, radio buttons or written answers. So I usually just give a keyword in the welcome email that they select from a set of options via the radio buttons. And I set expectations. I let my students know that Facebook Group membership approval is performed periodically throughout the day and guaranteed to be done at 8pm Pacific each evening (or whatever cadence feels right to you.) This has worked out the best all around for my clients and also what I personally do. So at 8pm, I upload the csv of everyone who has purchased and then go through the pending requests to validate the rest of the people who are requesting access. For another time, I can go into addressing requests from non-purchasers. But I think we should leave this side of things here. If you would like support for this part of your course, book a strategy session with me at <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/strategy/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://techofbusiness.com/strategy/</a> and we can get everything setup including the process for creating that csv for automatic approvals. Next up… let’s chat about the rules of your Facebook group. This includes posting rules, group expectations and repercussions for violations. It sucks to have to include repercussions since we’re all adults, but it needs to be said. Nobody wants to continuously police or monitor students’ activities and we definitely do not want to see students being disrespected or made to feel uncomfortable by other students in our community. <h3>So, that’s what rules are for… We’re going to want to include things like:</h3> <ul> <li>How the group posts are structured</li> <li>What types of posts are allowed <ul> <li>Text only</li> <li>Images</li> <li>Videos</li> </ul> </li> <li>Can a student go live in the group</li> <li>Is self-promotion allowed</li> <li>Are there daily or weekly group comment threads</li> <li>Whether or not vulgar language is allowed</li> <li>Off-topic threads</li> <li>How to ask for feedback from instructor, moderator and/or peers</li> <li>Private messaging rules</li> <li>How to report abuse or violations</li> </ul> Rules aren’t designed to be don’t don’t don’t and I think the best method for creating group rules is to have 2 or 3 do’s or positive rules for every don’t or negative one. Another thing to always include is the support contact form link. I prefer this over an email address (which you can use if you really want) because you can provide structure to the support message. And, if you have multiple people who take care of support, it’s super helpful to either have a group inbox for these messages or use system routing to send messages to the appropriate person based on the nature of the message. What’s more, this is the perfect way to help yourself not get inundated with Facebook messages for course support. We want our Facebook group to be active and vibrant ~ if you see a question get asked multiple times, throw it into an FAQ that is accessible both in the group and in the course content platform. Your FAQ is going to be a living document. And while we’re at it, I know that it’s much easier to create the active and vibrant atmosphere in a course focused Facebook group when everyone starts at the same time. Your group might sustain that vibrancy on its own, or more likely, the activity level will start to dwindle as the course progresses because of student distraction or priority shifts. So, as the course creator and group facilitator it’s crucial that we remain seen and visible inside the group. <h3>I recommend:</h3> <ul> <li>Going live on a schedule</li> <li>Going live spontaneously</li> <li>Post Ask Me Anything threads</li> <li>Post Kudos threads</li> <li>Post Feedback threads</li> <li>Like and comment on every post from your students</li> <li>Invite your students to be accountable to one another through accountability partner matching or accountability threads</li> </ul> And with that, you’re going to be well on your way to helping your students feel personally and collectively supported. Let’s move onto, dum, dum, dum… emails! There is actually only one email that needs to be sent to our students, but I recommend, depending on the exact style and structure of your course, 2 - 4 emails per module or chapter or week or other logical breakpoint. The one required email includes content access - so <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/thinkific/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Thinkific</a> of <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/mv/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">MemberVault</a> for most of my clients, expectations and best practices, Facebook group information and how to get more support. Yes, we are using our welcome email as an upsell into a mentorship, cohort, one-on-one or other method of helping our students succeed. I’m going to talk more about pricing and course value next week, so just like before, this is mostly a high level conversation here on the podcast, but for your unique situation, I would love to help craft a unique strategy that makes sense for you, your business, your lifestyle and that of your students. A strategy call is the best way to do that: <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/strategy/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://techofbusiness.com/strategy/</a> So, other than using the welcome email for selling, we really want to help our new student start the program that they have just paid for. And to do this, our welcome email needs to come out right after the payment is received… and this is where we’re going to make sure that we have <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/activecampaign/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">ActiveCampaign</a> or <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/convertkit/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">ConvertKit</a> integrated with our payment system. That way, the payment system can trigger the welcome to the course sequence of emails… and don’t worry, I set this up for clients all the time! <blockquote> Seriously, I love being the techie behind your online product successes -- which is one of the main reasons I started this podcast nearly two years ago -- so that I could showcase all the ways that you can and others have had success online and then help you get there. </blockquote> <h2>Now, the 2-4 emails per week or chapter or module, what do I want you to include in those?</h2> The more that we can create the feeling of one-to-one conversation with our students, the more they will feel connected to us which in turn helps them make progress on the course material and reach out when they need help. When there is a strong connection between the course delivery platform and the email marketing platform, we can have automated emails go out to our students. <ul> <li>Automated emails can be triggered when modules and chapters and units are completed.</li> <li>Automated emails can also be setup to go out if a student hasn’t made progress in a certain amount of time.</li> <li>Automated emails can go out every Sunday or Thursday or whatever day you want.</li> <li>Automated emails can go out a certain number of hours or days after a unit is completed.</li> </ul> The reason why tying emails to course progress is so important is because we are reaching our students in a second location on their computers. They are not going to always be on our course website, but they are going to regularly check their emails. When you’re just getting started on tying your course with email, I would recommend just setting up two email automations -- the first for when someone has completed a chapter or module to introduce them to the next one and the second for when someone hasn’t made progress on the course in 4 - 7 days. In these emails we’re inviting conversation. We want them to reply back to the email or to post in the Facebook group or to complete the contact form that we talked about earlier. We want our students to know that we’re wanting them to find success through our course. There are 3 more ways that we can support our students: <ul> <li>Inside our course</li> <li>Virtual online office hours</li> <li>Public praise through social media, your weekly newsletter, posters in your studio or otherwise</li> </ul> Inside our course, this will be done with quizzes, surveys and assignments. When a student participates in these, they are essentially opening the door for a deeper conversation. When it comes to assignments, we should always provide feedback, not just a pass/fail. And the same for quizzes, we can address their incorrect responses with positive feedback and invite conversation. The responses to survey questions are invaluable. We gain insight into how students perceive and use the information we present in the lessons and can adapt and respond as necessary. Survey responses also help us iterate our courses so that the next cohort or set of students has an even better experience. Virtual office hours will take place in a zoom meeting room. You’ll setup the date and time and communicate the link to your students. They can submit their questions in advance or hop on and ask them live. The recording from office hours can then be uploaded into your course platform and into your Facebook group. This is another opportunity to email your students. Once an office hours session is complete, I also go the extra step of pulling out each question and answer into written and succinct form so that you can build a catalog of Q&amp;A and also see what additional training or bonuses you can deliver. Oh my, we didn’t even talk about bonuses as a way to support our students… but that can be huge too. Surprising them with a personal note, personal outreach, alternative methods and other tangential or complimentary content will help them find success! And the last one ~ everyone likes to be acknowledged for their hard work. It’s easy for an elementary school art teacher to hang their students’ creations on the wall but we can’t do that with your students who are all over the country or around the world. Instead, we use the virtual walls of Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Our Blogs, Our Newsletters, Pinterest and whatever other fancy tools we have at our disposal. I recommend getting students’ permission before sharing their name and work or tagging them. I generally do this at the outset of the course so that they can truly be surprised and delighted when it happens. Usually asking for this permission is in the second or third email that I send them after they purchase, not the welcome email because it’s a nice to have, not a must have! The success of your course lies in the success of your students. Supporting them, encouraging them and rewarding them are going to have ongoing benefits for you, your business, your students and their newfound skill. I would love to know your biggest takeaway and what you’re going to do next for your online course. Send me a DM on Instagram, I’m @<a href="https://www.instagram.com/jaimeslutzky/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">jaimeslutzky</a>, and let me know or tag me in you Instagram Stories! <ul> <li>Download the <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/onlineproduct/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Online Product Phases</a></li> <li><a href="https://techofbusiness.com/strategy/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Book a Strategy Session</a></li> <li>Instagram: @<a href="https://instagram.com/jaimeslutzky/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">jaimeslutzky</a></li> <li>Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/yourbiztech" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@yourbiztech</a></li> <li>The <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/community/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Expand Online Community</a> on Facebook</li> <li>Email: <a href="mailto:jaime@techofbusiness.com" rel="nofollow">jaime@techofbusiness.com</a></li> <li><a href="https://techofbusiness.com/contact/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Contact Page: https://techofbusiness.com/contact/</a></li> </ul>

107- Multiple avenues to support your  students throughout your course

Melina Palmer

Have you ever launched a product and said to yourself, “I really hope someone buys this.”?  I think we all have at some point in time. Wouldn’t it be great if you could understand the thought processes your customers have when they are deciding whether or not to buy your product or service?  I think we could all benefit from learning a little bit about mindset, your brain, and online sales tactics. I was so excited to have a conversation with Melina Palmer about these exact things!    Melina Palmer has a background in branding and marketing.  She worked in this for a decade. She decided to go back to school to get her Master’s Degree in Behavioral Economics.  You may be saying, “What is that?” Melina explains that behavior economics is the psychology of how people make buying decisions.  Melina specializes in how the brain works when making choices.     She then works with businesses to help them understand the way the brain actually works.  And the way it works typically isn’t the way YOU THINK it would or should be. This helps business owners create better messaging to communicate with potential buyers to produce more leads that then turn into conversions.  Talk about an amazing piece of information to know as an entrepreneur.   We spend so much time on the Tech of Business podcast talking about different ways you can engage with your customers.  We talk about different ways to use technology to do more with your customers and for them to entice them. But I really feel like we need to understand the way the brain works on a deeper level when they are receiving this messaging.   So...what should we be thinking about when we are putting together our lead magnets, sales pages, etc?   “It’s really easy to come up with the right answer to the wrong question.  But if you want to be effective, hitting the right people, and making a difference, changing the world with your business, it’s important to make sure you’re answering the right questions and solving the right problem.”- Melina Palmer   There is alot more work that needs to be done on the front end to achieve this.  In order to do this, you need to know a few important things like:  Know who you are talking to. What you are trying to say. Communicate what you want people to do.    This is kind of an “everything matters” approach to things.  I mentioned this in a podcast a while back about when someone is scrolling on their phone and clicking the button on their phone, how nice is it to the customer that you can send them an email letting them know that YOU KNOW they are on their phone so you are limiting the amount of copy there is to read???    It’s important to understand the intention of the platform you’re using.   This means you need to understand not only what it was designed to do, but also what mind frame your potential customer might be in when they are using it.  You also need to understand the goals are actually reasonable.     Let’s take Instagram for example.  It’s very image and video driven. Melina has a few people she likes to watch on Instagram.  But although she likes to watch them, she would never visit their website. So when you are deciding on the platform you are going to use you need to get in the mindset of your potential customer is doing on the platform then you can say “OK what do I WANT them to do when they look at my post on instagram?”     You have to understand their mindset!  It’s important to know what you want them to do to take and the next most logical step on their customer journey.  Think about it in terms of an actual trip in a car. You don’t have to say you are driving from Seattle to Miami, but rather Seattle to Olympia.  You know you are just going South FIRST, then you continue to add the next piece and the next piece. It’s the same thing with the online trajectory.   But...why would someone want to do a challenge vs. a download?   A benefit in doing a challenge like a 5 day challenge is setting up the consistency that creates a habit in the mindset of your potential customers.  Being there on a regular basis creates a mindset piece that becomes a habit. This is impactful assuming that the thing you are trying to sell them after the fact is also in some sort of engagement with you on a regular basis.  If you are selling them something after the challenge that is the complete opposite, it may be harder to make the sell. So you can see where in some cases a challenge would be WONDERFUL and in others not so much.     You have to understand the brain makes associations that are incredibly literal in a lot of ways.  Example would be font sizes on price tags. So when something is on sale the original price is marked out and the new price is in bigger font.  A test was done where that was reversed and the new price was put in the smaller font and a lot more people bought in this circumstance because our brains make the association of small font, small price.  Isn’t this incredible???     When you think about when you hear the word Apple, your brain thinks about everything is knows associated with apples.  Everything from computers and phones to the color red to oranges. That’s all happening in your brain at once. Understanding what associations may come up in someone’s brain and how you want to lead them down the path is important when you are trying to promote your business or product. Okay my brain is literally going boom boom boom right now.  Talk about mind blown!     Dialing into fonts When we get to the end of a challenge or email sequence, and it’s time to make the sale of the product you will convert more by putting the “discount price” in the smaller font than the original price.  Melina says not to put the new price in red because our brains are conditioned that red means stop.  Whereas, the color green is much more friendly of wanting to buy.  The font size can make a difference and you definitely want to LEAD with the bigger price first.  The brain will latch onto that bigger price first and then move up or down from there. This is called anchoring and adjustment.     “What you lead with absolutely shapes the perception that somebody has in their experience with you.”- Melina Palmer   There are so many studies out there about anchoring and adjustment.  Melina was once speaking to a group of female coaches. She was wearing a blingy necklace at this event.  She asked the women to think about the last two digits of their social security number. She then asked them to estimate how much her necklace costs.  It was then she told them that someone with a higher two digits like 8-9 would value the necklace higher than someone who had 1-2 at the end. Then a lady raises her hand and said that her last two digits were 8-9 and she immediately thought the necklace was worth $89 then she realized what that amount was and adjusted her estimate to $65.  It’s just another example of how our brains make associations without us even realizing it.  Where is your buyer before they see your sales page? What are they doing? Are they going through your material and you are able to guide them through things? Or are they cluttered on Facebook or Instagram and your sales page is an aside they happen to click?   This is something that is going to make a big difference in their mental state and what their brain is going to let them do.  It’s really important to pick who you are targeting too when you are setting up your advertisements. This could be limited on some mediums like YouTube.   Why would someone want to leverage social vs avoid social? The human brain is mostly run by our subconscious. Our subconscious brain has actually been shown to make about 99% of our decisions.  So it’s really running the show. Your subconscious is filtering through about 11 million bits per second. Whereas, your conscious can only filter about 40 bits per second.  How’s that science for you? This means that things “you think” you’ll remember you actually probably won’t.   The benefit of being part of a social channel is that Facebook will REMIND you that people are posting in a group that you are in.   It will send notifications that remind you when things are going on in the group and it reminds you that you are a part of that group.     Sometimes when we actually want to “learn” something you need more focus.  This means you may want to be off the social forum and into a private forum.  Sometimes it’s really hard to convince our audience to come along on that journey with us.  But if you keep the mindset that you know people are busy and they just forget because it’s human nature, then you know you need to remind them.  We have to get out of our own mindset of being a bother or a nag. You need to be putting out something that is thoughtful and helpful to create direct contact with people who wanted to engage with you.  Basically you need to remind them of it much like the social channels do. This could be done via email.     This is why email marketing is such a valuable tool.  You can send out emails once a day, once a week, emails based on activity… it really depends on what your goals are with that content.  You have to keep yourself and your content top of mind without being an irritant. You need to set the expectation with your audience of what you might be sending them especially if you are expecting to make a shift in how often you are going to communicate with them.  Prepping people for communication is important.   If you are thinking that you want to make a shift in my business and I want to do it in a way that is going to be beneficial in my audience, if you want to have a conversation with me then have a conversation with me.  If there is something that is triggering your thinking that you could do better with something then let’s put it on the roadmap and have a conversation about it.   Must have Tips It’s really important when you are using technology and automated systems to not think about what’s best for you, but rather what’s best for the person receiving it. What’s the value to them?  You need to be framing your messaging to convey that you have thought about what’s best for THEM not YOU!     There are so many pieces of technology that we are trying to be a part of these days and so many people have fallen into the trap of having their tech set up in a way that is ME, ME, ME. A great example of this is when you follow someone on twitter and you get an automated direct message to follow that person on all the other channels.  That automated message doesn’t make anyone feel special. This makes most people want to unfollow immediately!  Thinking about THEM (the people receiving your message) matters the most.   The online space is a very noisy space.  We are all unique with our own unique gifts.  And we are going to attract the best, right people for us.  So we want to give those people the ability to actually find us and connect with us.  If we are just part of the noise it’s never going to happen. It’s so beneficial to take a step back when you are creating something and ask some advisors to look at things from their perspective.  You have to realize that what you THINK might be best...may not actually be best. The good thing about that is you can tweak things until you do get the winning combination.     Automations can be very helpful. Automations that ask open ended questions can inspire people to reply back and engage with you.  You can ask questions like “What coffee shop do you like to co work at?”. What would you say to someone when you are actually talking to them face to face?  Think about this when you are setting up an automation.   Connect with Jaime:  Instagram: @techofbusiness Twitter: @techofbusiness Facebook: @yourbiztech LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaimeslutzky/ Email: jaime@techofbusiness.com  Connect with Melina:    Podcast: The Brainy Business Website: https://www.thebrainybusiness.com Instagram: @thebrainybiz Facebook: The Brainy Biz 

Have you ever launched a product and said to yourself, “I really hope someone buys this.”?  I think we all have at some point in time. Wouldn’t it be great if you could understand the thought processes your customers have when they are deciding whether or not to buy your product or service?  I think we could all benefit from learning a little bit about mindset, your brain, and online sales tactics. I was so excited to have a conversation with Melina Palmer about these exact things!  Melina Palmer has a background in branding and marketing.  She worked in this for a decade. She decided to go back to school to get her Master’s Degree in Behavioral Economics.  You may be saying, “What is that?” Melina explains that behavior economics is the psychology of how people make buying decisions.  Melina specializes in how the brain works when making choices.   She then works with businesses to help them understand the way the brain actually works.  And the way it works typically isn’t the way YOU THINK it would or should be. This helps business owners create better messaging to communicate with potential buyers to produce more leads that then turn into conversions.  Talk about an amazing piece of information to know as an entrepreneur. We spend so much time on the Tech of Business podcast talking about different ways you can engage with your customers.  We talk about different ways to use technology to do more with your customers and for them to entice them. But I really feel like we need to understand the way the brain works on a deeper level when they are receiving this messaging. <h3>So...what should we be thinking about when we are putting together our lead magnets, sales pages, etc?</h3> “It’s really easy to come up with the right answer to the wrong question.  But if you want to be effective, hitting the right people, and making a difference, changing the world with your business, it’s important to make sure you’re answering the right questions and solving the right problem.”- Melina Palmer There is alot more work that needs to be done on the front end to achieve this.  In order to do this, you need to know a few important things like: <ul> <li>Know who you are talking to.</li> <li>What you are trying to say.</li> <li>Communicate what you want people to do.</li> </ul> This is kind of an “everything matters” approach to things.  I mentioned this in a podcast a while back about when someone is scrolling on their phone and clicking the button on their phone, how nice is it to the customer that you can send them an email letting them know that YOU KNOW they are on their phone so you are limiting the amount of copy there is to read???  <h3>It’s important to understand the intention of the platform you’re using.</h3> This means you need to understand not only what it was designed to do, but also what mind frame your potential customer might be in when they are using it.  You also need to understand the goals are actually reasonable.   Let’s take Instagram for example.  It’s very image and video driven. Melina has a few people she likes to watch on Instagram.  But although she likes to watch them, she would never visit their website. So when you are deciding on the platform you are going to use you need to get in the mindset of your potential customer is doing on the platform then you can say “OK what do I WANT them to do when they look at my post on instagram?”   You have to understand their mindset!  It’s important to know what you want them to do to take and the next most logical step on their customer journey.  Think about it in terms of an actual trip in a car. You don’t have to say you are driving from Seattle to Miami, but rather Seattle to Olympia.  You know you are just going South FIRST, then you continue to add the next piece and the next piece. It’s the same thing with the online trajectory. <h3>But...why would someone want to do a challenge vs. a download?</h3> A benefit in doing a challenge like a 5 day challenge is setting up the consistency that creates a habit in the mindset of your potential customers.  Being there on a regular basis creates a mindset piece that becomes a habit. This is impactful assuming that the thing you are trying to sell them after the fact is also in some sort of engagement with you on a regular basis.  If you are selling them something after the challenge that is the complete opposite, it may be harder to make the sell. So you can see where in some cases a challenge would be WONDERFUL and in others not so much.   You have to understand the brain makes associations that are incredibly literal in a lot of ways.  Example would be font sizes on price tags. So when something is on sale the original price is marked out and the new price is in bigger font.  A test was done where that was reversed and the new price was put in the smaller font and a lot more people bought in this circumstance because our brains make the association of small font, small price.  Isn’t this incredible???   When you think about when you hear the word Apple, your brain thinks about everything is knows associated with apples.  Everything from computers and phones to the color red to oranges. That’s all happening in your brain at once. Understanding what associations may come up in someone’s brain and how you want to lead them down the path is important when you are trying to promote your business or product. Okay my brain is literally going boom boom boom right now.  Talk about mind blown!   <h3>Dialing into fonts</h3> When we get to the end of a challenge or email sequence, and it’s time to make the sale of the product you will convert more by putting the “discount price” in the smaller font than the original price.  Melina says not to put the new price in red because our brains are conditioned that red means stop.  Whereas, the color green is much more friendly of wanting to buy.  The font size can make a difference and you definitely want to LEAD with the bigger price first.  The brain will latch onto that bigger price first and then move up or down from there. This is called anchoring and adjustment.   “What you lead with absolutely shapes the perception that somebody has in their experience with you.”- Melina Palmer There are so many studies out there about anchoring and adjustment.  Melina was once speaking to a group of female coaches. She was wearing a blingy necklace at this event.  She asked the women to think about the last two digits of their social security number. She then asked them to estimate how much her necklace costs.  It was then she told them that someone with a higher two digits like 8-9 would value the necklace higher than someone who had 1-2 at the end. Then a lady raises her hand and said that her last two digits were 8-9 and she immediately thought the necklace was worth $89 then she realized what that amount was and adjusted her estimate to $65.  It’s just another example of how our brains make associations without us even realizing it.  <h4>Where is your buyer before they see your sales page? What are they doing? Are they going through your material and you are able to guide them through things? Or are they cluttered on Facebook or Instagram and your sales page is an aside they happen to click?</h4> This is something that is going to make a big difference in their mental state and what their brain is going to let them do.  It’s really important to pick who you are targeting too when you are setting up your advertisements. This could be limited on some mediums like YouTube. <h3>Why would someone want to leverage social vs avoid social?</h3> The human brain is mostly run by our subconscious. Our subconscious brain has actually been shown to make about 99% of our decisions.  So it’s really running the show. Your subconscious is filtering through about 11 million bits per second. Whereas, your conscious can only filter about 40 bits per second.  How’s that science for you? This means that things “you think” you’ll remember you actually probably won’t. The benefit of being part of a social channel is that Facebook will REMIND you that people are posting in a group that you are in.   It will send notifications that remind you when things are going on in the group and it reminds you that you are a part of that group.   Sometimes when we actually want to “learn” something you need more focus.  This means you may want to be off the social forum and into a private forum.  Sometimes it’s really hard to convince our audience to come along on that journey with us.  But if you keep the mindset that you know people are busy and they just forget because it’s human nature, then you know you need to remind them.  We have to get out of our own mindset of being a bother or a nag. You need to be putting out something that is thoughtful and helpful to create direct contact with people who wanted to engage with you.  Basically you need to remind them of it much like the social channels do. This could be done via email.   This is why email marketing is such a valuable tool.  You can send out emails once a day, once a week, emails based on activity… it really depends on what your goals are with that content.  You have to keep yourself and your content top of mind without being an irritant. You need to set the expectation with your audience of what you might be sending them especially if you are expecting to make a shift in how often you are going to communicate with them.  Prepping people for communication is important. If you are thinking that you want to make a shift in my business and I want to do it in a way that is going to be beneficial in my audience, if you want to have a conversation with me then have a conversation with me.  If there is something that is triggering your thinking that you could do better with something then let’s put it on the roadmap and have a conversation about it. <h3>Must have Tips</h3> It’s really important when you are using technology and automated systems to not think about what’s best for you, but rather what’s best for the person receiving it. What’s the value to them?  You need to be framing your messaging to convey that you have thought about what’s best for THEM not YOU!   There are so many pieces of technology that we are trying to be a part of these days and so many people have fallen into the trap of having their tech set up in a way that is ME, ME, ME. A great example of this is when you follow someone on twitter and you get an automated direct message to follow that person on all the other channels.  That automated message doesn’t make anyone feel special. This makes most people want to unfollow immediately!  <h5>Thinking about THEM (the people receiving your message) matters the most.</h5> The online space is a very noisy space.  We are all unique with our own unique gifts.  And we are going to attract the best, right people for us.  So we want to give those people the ability to actually find us and connect with us.  If we are just part of the noise it’s never going to happen. It’s so beneficial to take a step back when you are creating something and ask some advisors to look at things from their perspective.  You have to realize that what you THINK might be best...may not actually be best. The good thing about that is you can tweak things until you do get the winning combination.   Automations can be very helpful. Automations that ask open ended questions can inspire people to reply back and engage with you.  You can ask questions like “What coffee shop do you like to co work at?”. What would you say to someone when you are actually talking to them face to face?  Think about this when you are setting up an automation. <h3>Connect with Jaime:</h3> <ul> <li>Instagram: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/techofbusiness" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@techofbusiness</a></li> <li>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/techofbusiness" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@techofbusiness</a></li> <li>Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/yourbiztech/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@yourbiztech</a></li> <li>LinkedIn: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaimeslutzky/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaimeslutzky/</a></li> <li>Email: <a href="mailto:jaime@techofbusiness.com" rel="nofollow">jaime@techofbusiness.com</a></li> </ul> <h3>Connect with Melina:</h3> <ul> <li>Podcast: The Brainy Business</li> <li>Website: <a href="https://www.thebrainybusiness.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.thebrainybusiness.com</a></li> <li>Instagram: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/thebrainybiz/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@thebrainybiz</a></li> <li>Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/thebrainybiz/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Brainy Biz</a></li> </ul>

077: Mindset, Your Brain, and Online Sales Tactics with Melina Palmer

 This episode is completely actionable and these actions should take you less than 30 minutes to complete. There are a few things that you can do in your business to make things SO. MUCH. EASIER. And that’s what we’re tackling today. I have worked with businesses anywhere from “I’m going to start a business” to having a sizeable online following and revenue in the 6 figures. And regardless of where my client is at when we start working together, my first step is to make sure the foundations are present and working. The foundations are 5 areas that need to be dialed in. We went in depth on these in episode 71 and to remind you they are:  Your online home Email marketing and/or customer relationship management A mechanism for delivering free and paid content A checkout or payment system Scheduling software  I’d love for you to go back to  episode 71 to hear a bit more about why I think these are the foundation pieces of every online business. Today all you’re going to do is categorize the tools that you’ve thought about using, have signed up for and are actively paying for. Grab a sheet of paper and make four columns. Label them: Tool Name / Foundation Area / Status / Investment Now, go through all the tools you have in your toolbox and write them down in the first column. Once you’ve finished that, go back to the top and assign each tool to the foundation area to which it belongs. If you’re unsure, think about what it does for your business and either write second tier or extends functionality – maybe it’s a tool like ConvertBox which is a more complex tool and doesn’t fall into the foundation areas I mentioned. This tool is extremely powerful and integrates with several other tools. I would just write “second tier” and move on down my list. If a tool crosses more than one foundation area, like Acuity which can do scheduling and take payments, write both. In the third column we’re going to list the status of that product in our businesses. You can either rate on a scale from 0 – 10 where 0 is not using the tool and 10 is using the tool regularly in the business or you can do this column with words such as “interested” “partially implemented” “fully functional” “need to replace” “need to improve” and so on. Either way, the goal of this column is to show how much you rely on the tool right now Another thing that you can do with this column is to give it two scores, the first is present and the second is where you want this tool to be in 3 months. In the priority column, we’re going to list the investment in terms of time and money. Just as with the last column, we will want to track a couple of things here… How much time have you invested and how much money have you invested. And then once you’ve listed those, you’ll also estimate how much more time and money you’ll be investing into this tool in the next 3 months. Once this sheet of paper is complete, you’ll have a really good idea as to how ready you are to expand online. Let’s take a look at what that really means with a couple of real examples. First example is a ceramics studio. The studio just upgraded to using Square for their payment processing and product sales. They have a website that lists the address, hours and classes. People call the studio to sign up for classes and workshops. Inside the studio student registration is done with pen and paper and includes the option to sign up for promotional and informational emails. All this information is then entered manually into an excel spreadsheet. When the studio sends promotional emails, they use webmail provided by their website host. I would say that this studio is very much the most basic formula. Of the five foundational elements for an online business, they have a mechanism for online payments (Square) and a website as their online home. Therefore, we know that at a minimum they’ll need an email marketing or customer relationship management system, a content delivery system and a scheduling tool. If the owner has thought about any of those pieces, those would be on their quick listing, otherwise that’s the next thing that will need to be tackled. Since this business has a lean online footprint, the owner was able to complete all columns of the sheet right away. It was easy to list the foundational area, status and investment for the tools that are already in place. This list will change over time and I recommend that it’s revised a minimum of every 3 months – especially because we have investment and status metrics projected out 3 months. Now, let’s flip over to another example. This one is an artist who sells their work at shows and online through a virtual storefront. She rents space at an art studio on a monthly basis for her own creation and teaches several courses and workshops there. She takes payment for these courses and workshops through the virtual storefront that she initially setup for selling her creations. Now that she’s ready to offer her courses and workshops online, we’re going to run through the tools and create her quick hit list. For the foundational areas, we’re good regarding an online home, a payment processor, and email marketing. And she’s given those all a confident status. So, the two pieces she still needs are the content delivery and scheduling. Next week we’re going to be discussing why I believe scheduling software is a requirement for online courses and workshops and why I strongly recommend using Acuity Scheduling. But for now, please trust me in saying that it’s a requirement. This artist spends a lot of time interacting with other course creators and has a few content delivery platforms and systems listed on her quick hit list as potential tools to use. She hasn’t invested any money in them and only taken a cursory look at each of them. So they are all on equal footing which is a perfect place to be when thinking about expanding online. I would guess that our ceramics studio owner is at least 3 months away from opening the doors to the online course and workshop space whereas our artist could likely get this new revenue stream up in as few as 3 weeks, just based on where they each are with regards to their tech quick hits sheet. I encourage you to start tracking tools in your business. Even if your online products aren’t coming in the next 6 months, the sooner you create your tech quick hits list, the easier it’s going to be to take the plunge. And it’s so much fun to take the plunge. So, do yourself a favor and sit down with a piece of paper, split it into the four columns Tool Name / Foundation Area / Status / Investment and write down tools you’re actively using, tools you’ve signed up for and tools you’re interested in exploring. I also love seeing a list of tools that you’ve considered but rejected or stopped using to make sure to not waste time in the tech stack development. Let me leave you with this – expanding your business online is a fun and rewarding experience. It’s amazing how much impact you can make outside of your geographical area and there is no one right way to do the online product thing. Give yourself grace and space and time. It’s a lot like starting a new business, but you’ve already got experiences to learn and grow from. So, whether you want to figure it all out on your own and lean on this podcast and other online resources or you want to work in a collaborative and supportive manner with a strategist (like me) or a coach, you can take what you do offline and create an online version that matches your vision! Thanks for listening and reading these notes! And I love getting to know podcast listeners, so connect with me on any of the platforms listed here:  Download the Online Product Phases Instagram: @techofbusiness Facebook: @yourbiztech The Expand Online Community on Facebook Email: jaime@techofbusiness.com 

<h2> This episode is completely actionable and these actions should take you less than 30 minutes to complete.</h2> There are a few things that you can do in your business to make things SO. MUCH. EASIER. And that’s what we’re tackling today. I have worked with businesses anywhere from “I’m going to start a business” to having a sizeable online following and revenue in the 6 figures. And regardless of where my client is at when we start working together, my first step is to make sure the foundations are present and working. <h3>The foundations are 5 areas that need to be dialed in. We went in depth on these in episode 71 and to remind you they are:</h3> <ul> <li>Your online home</li> <li>Email marketing and/or customer relationship management</li> <li>A mechanism for delivering free and paid content</li> <li>A checkout or payment system</li> <li>Scheduling software</li> </ul> I’d love for you to go back to <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/071-the-top-5-tech-tools-online-service-providers-need-in-their-business/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> episode 71</a> to hear a bit more about why I think these are the foundation pieces of every online business. Today all you’re going to do is categorize the tools that you’ve thought about using, have signed up for and are actively paying for. Grab a sheet of paper and make four columns. Label them: <h3>Tool Name / Foundation Area / Status / Investment</h3> Now, go through all the tools you have in your toolbox and write them down in the first column. Once you’ve finished that, go back to the top and assign each tool to the foundation area to which it belongs. If you’re unsure, think about what it does for your business and either write second tier or extends functionality – maybe it’s a tool like ConvertBox which is a more complex tool and doesn’t fall into the foundation areas I mentioned. This tool is extremely powerful and integrates with several other tools. I would just write “second tier” and move on down my list. If a tool crosses more than one foundation area, like <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/acuity/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Acuity</a> which can do scheduling and take payments, write both. In the third column we’re going to list the status of that product in our businesses. You can either rate on a scale from 0 – 10 where 0 is not using the tool and 10 is using the tool regularly in the business or you can do this column with words such as “interested” “partially implemented” “fully functional” “need to replace” “need to improve” and so on. Either way, the goal of this column is to show how much you rely on the tool right now Another thing that you can do with this column is to give it two scores, the first is present and the second is where you want this tool to be in 3 months. In the priority column, we’re going to list the investment in terms of time and money. Just as with the last column, we will want to track a couple of things here… How much time have you invested and how much money have you invested. And then once you’ve listed those, you’ll also estimate how much more time and money you’ll be investing into this tool in the next 3 months. Once this sheet of paper is complete, you’ll have a really good idea as to how ready you are to expand online. <h3>Let’s take a look at what that really means with a couple of real examples.</h3> First example is a ceramics studio. The studio just upgraded to using Square for their payment processing and product sales. They have a website that lists the address, hours and classes. People call the studio to sign up for classes and workshops. Inside the studio student registration is done with pen and paper and includes the option to sign up for promotional and informational emails. All this information is then entered manually into an excel spreadsheet. When the studio sends promotional emails, they use webmail provided by their website host. I would say that this studio is very much the most basic formula. Of the five foundational elements for an online business, they have a mechanism for online payments (Square) and a website as their online home. Therefore, we know that at a minimum they’ll need an email marketing or customer relationship management system, a content delivery system and a scheduling tool. If the owner has thought about any of those pieces, those would be on their quick listing, otherwise that’s the next thing that will need to be tackled. Since this business has a lean online footprint, the owner was able to complete all columns of the sheet right away. It was easy to list the foundational area, status and investment for the tools that are already in place. This list will change over time and I recommend that it’s revised a minimum of every 3 months – especially because we have investment and status metrics projected out 3 months. Now, let’s flip over to another example. This one is an artist who sells their work at shows and online through a virtual storefront. She rents space at an art studio on a monthly basis for her own creation and teaches several courses and workshops there. She takes payment for these courses and workshops through the virtual storefront that she initially setup for selling her creations. Now that she’s ready to offer her courses and workshops online, we’re going to run through the tools and create her quick hit list. For the foundational areas, we’re good regarding an online home, a payment processor, and email marketing. And she’s given those all a confident status. So, the two pieces she still needs are the content delivery and scheduling. Next week we’re going to be discussing why I believe scheduling software is a requirement for online courses and workshops and why I strongly recommend using Acuity Scheduling. But for now, please trust me in saying that it’s a requirement. This artist spends a lot of time interacting with other course creators and has a few content delivery platforms and systems listed on her quick hit list as potential tools to use. She hasn’t invested any money in them and only taken a cursory look at each of them. So they are all on equal footing which is a perfect place to be when thinking about expanding online. I would guess that our ceramics studio owner is at least 3 months away from opening the doors to the online course and workshop space whereas our artist could likely get this new revenue stream up in as few as 3 weeks, just based on where they each are with regards to their tech quick hits sheet. I encourage you to start tracking tools in your business. Even if your online products aren’t coming in the next 6 months, the sooner you create your tech quick hits list, the easier it’s going to be to take the plunge. <h2>And it’s so much fun to take the plunge.</h2> So, do yourself a favor and sit down with a piece of paper, split it into the four columns Tool Name / Foundation Area / Status / Investment and write down tools you’re actively using, tools you’ve signed up for and tools you’re interested in exploring. I also love seeing a list of tools that you’ve considered but rejected or stopped using to make sure to not waste time in the tech stack development. Let me leave you with this – expanding your business online is a fun and rewarding experience. It’s amazing how much impact you can make outside of your geographical area and there is no one right way to do the online product thing. Give yourself grace and space and time. It’s a lot like starting a new business, but you’ve already got experiences to learn and grow from. So, whether you want to figure it all out on your own and lean on this podcast and other online resources or you want to work in a collaborative and supportive manner with a strategist (like me) or a coach, you can take what you do offline and create an online version that matches your vision! Thanks for listening and reading these notes! And I love getting to know podcast listeners, so connect with me on any of the platforms listed here: <ul> <li>Download the <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/onlineproduct/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Online Product Phases</a></li> <li>Instagram: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/techofbusiness" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@techofbusiness</a></li> <li>Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/yourbiztech" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@yourbiztech</a></li> <li>The <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/community/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Expand Online Community</a> on Facebook</li> <li>Email: <a href="mailto:jaime@techofbusiness.com" rel="nofollow">jaime@techofbusiness.com</a></li> </ul>

103: Take Action ~ your quick tech review in under  30 minutes!

It is my pleasure and honor to be here helping you find the right way for your business to expand online and to support you through the implementation and launch! This episode is about group programs. Some people call these incubators, accelerators and masterminds but I prefer to use the more general term. Essentially what we are talking about is a program with a weekly online live session along with complimentary worksheets and exercises and possibly additional touch points. Most group programs also have a private Facebook group or online forum component. Group programs can be run for anything and like last week’s episode one of the compelling features is accountability and establishing relationships between participants and with you as the leader, mentor, guide or facilitator -- whichever word you prefer to use. The prep work for a group program is different than a course because so much of the work and teaching is done live. But that’s not to say that we don’t need to prep at all -- in fact, most group programs have at least as much prep as online courses do! The format of your group program can be anything from straight lectures to mastermind sessions and from coworking sessions to critique or feedback or presentations. So let’s go into each of the formats I just listed. Lectures This is where you have a lesson planned out and you give it direct to camera and your members watch, learn and take notes if they want (or if you don’t provide summary documentation.) This may include live demonstrations or a slide deck and can also include playing of external videos or citing books and other sources or websites. Lectures are a foundational element of most group programs because our members are looking to learn from us. But lectures sound so boring which is why I love tangible lectures which include plenty of showing and demonstration not just theory. Mastermind sessions A mastermind session involves members coming together with you as the leader to help breakthrough challenges. There are several formats to mastermind sessions and they revolve around soliciting and providing feedback, recommendations and support from other members of the program and the leader. Q&amp;A Sessions Ask me anything or Q&amp;A sessions are an open forum for group participants to get clarification, advice and feedback from the group leader or moderators. These sessions are different than mastermind sessions because they are usually more surface level and the responses are provided predominantly from you, as the group program creator and leader. Coworking sessions Coworking sessions are just what they sound like. These are sessions where group members all come with work in hand and spend the time together moving forward on the project or assignment at hand. In these sessions most participants work through the theory that was presented in an earlier lecture session. Presentations Presentations are usually provided by guest experts and follow a format of lecture plus Q&amp;A. The idea of presentations is to add complementary information to the program that the leader knows will be of value to the participants but that the leader herself is not equipped to present. Critique or Feedback Sessions These sessions are insanely valuable around the middle of a group program and towards the end. These sessions involve taking in samples of the members’ work in progress and sharing feedback in a group format. I’ll give an example of this format in a little bit so that you can get a better understanding of using this type of session within your program! Just like with an online course, group programs are far more engaging when there is a nice mix of formats and styles. Let’s build a group program together right now on the podcast. We're going to build this online group program for a drawing teacher. She teaches a 4-week fruit bowl drawing class through her local community Parks &amp; Recreation programs. She wants to take this class and turn it into an online group drawing program. For ease of conversation, let's call this drawing teacher Jo. So, Jo wants to create this online program... instead of it being a 4-week program, let's make it an 8-week program and setup the weeks like this:  Week 1: lecture Week 2: coworking session Week 3: lecture Week 4: mastermind Week 5: lecture Week 6: critique Week 7: lecture Week 8: Q&amp;A  I probably wouldn’t bring in a presentation type session because 8-weeks is not long enough. But if the program were longer, we could bring that in as early as week 7. There would be four lectures which correspond to the content Jo presents in her current class, a coworking session to facilitate, and both a critique and Q&amp;A session to create structure for. We're gently skipping around the normal online product development framework and focusing specifically on the creation phase. Jo will generate a list of resources the members will want to have at their disposal for each session. This will include pens, pencils and markers, blank or colored paper, possibly the recommended amount of work space and lighting considerations. I would probably also include instructions to download zoom onto whatever device you’re going to use and to use earbuds or headphones. At this time the structure of the program will also be presented to the group members and the Facebook group will be created so participants can get to know each other. For the lecture sessions, we're taking a lot of what Jo's already created for her Parks &amp; Recreation class and whittling it down to the most important elements. Because there is no hands on application where Jo can walk the room, the style of the lecture will be different. Jo will still have her members do some drawing during the lectures and assign them specific tasks to do between lectures. We also have an alternate style class between lectures so that the material from each lecture can be used by the group members and they can continue to come together to make progress and connect. The purpose of the coworking session being in week 2 is to allow members to get adequate time drawing at the early stage of the program which will help them to keep showing up and making progress on their drawing. On the heels of this session, Jo will probably encourage her participants to jump into the Facebook group and post their progress. (In the creation phase, it's really helpful to create a post and prompt calendar for that group.) I’m going to throw myself into the student shoes for a moment here, while discussing the mastermind portion. Let’s say that I have attended all three sessions so far, shared my work from the coworking session in the Facebook group but cannot figure out how to work through one of the parts of the lesson that took place in week 3. I have stopped in my tracks a bit because I don’t feel like I can get the right flow of my hand holding my flare pen and that I am starting to tell myself that I’ll never be able to draw anything good. I come to the mastermind session feeling defeated but when it's my turn to be in the hot seat, Jo encourages me to share what's holding me back. She asks where my successes have been and what I'm struggling with. I modestly show her what I’ve drawn so far and my page of scratched out versions of the assignment from last week. She asks the group members if they have any thoughts or observations for me. And once my peers start sharing with me that they found this trick or that strategy to hold the pen in a different way, or that they come to group lectures in their kitchen but sit in their sunroom to apply the work, it relaxes me and I am then able to come up with a plan to complete the current assignment and promise to post it in the group by the end of the week. Masterminds are all about helping one another move forward. During the creation phase, Jo will look back on the encouragement and advice she gives to students in her offline class, and have those ready to boost up her online students. It’s quite likely that more than one participant will be having similar struggles and the collective advice is invaluable. OK… so let’s structure Jo's critique session that’ll be taking place in week 6. This is a much more formal session than the mastermind session. Critique work is required to be submitted at least 72 hours before the session. And the critique work consists of three works from the program:  A sample of work completed specifically from the first lecture A sample of work completed specifically from the second lecture A sample of work in progress from the third lecture  Jo will then go through and create a slidedeck with all the presented work and make notes as to what to highlight and feedback to provide to each member. She will provide suggestions for making your drawings more uniquely yours and help with more ease and flow. This is created on the fly during the program and knowing the structure is going to make it an easy task for Jo to tackle along the way. We want our members to feel accomplished and excited to keep drawing. The feedback needs to be authentic and presented in a positive light. We are here to inspire and motivate, this is not the time or place to tear down a member or tell them that they haven’t improved at all. Be kind and be helpful. And for the final session, my best advice to Jo would be to be prepared to respond on the fly! Questions can be submitted in advance or asked live on the call. This session is designed to give members additional tools and suggestions to keep drawing and keep creating. Questions that come up during the Q&amp;A session might be everything from reviewing some basics to additional resource recommendations. The Facebook group will be a place for ongoing feedback and encouragement. Jo should set expectations at the outset of the program and plan on being in there on a daily basis, prompt members regularly with new ways to connect, engage and share their drawing. If she doesn’t want to use a tool like MemberVault to house lectures, samples or instructions, the Facebook group Learning Units will be where content will be housed. While this is not my preference, because it makes it super difficult to run the same group program over and over again, it’s an option and worth mentioning here. We ran pretty deep through that group program for Jo and I hope you understand how an offline class can be converted into a group program! It's true...  Anything that you teach in workshop format offline can be converted into a group program. Anything that you teach online as a course can be converted into a group program. Online group programs can be converted into online courses.  The key with anything we create is that we get better and better at creating the content, presenting the content and always tying the content to the goal. You can do this and I would be honored to help you through the process. Go to https://techofbusiness.com/online-product/ to get started. And with that… wishing you a massively successful week and I’ll be back next week with another episode where we get into the tech needed to run group programs and course cohorts. I alluded to a couple of the tools here -- Zoom, Facebook and MemberVault and we’ll get into how to make sure you make the best tech choices for your students and their successes next week!  Get started with your own Online Product Book a Strategy Session Instagram: @jaimeslutzky Facebook: @yourbiztech The Expand Online Community on Facebook Email: jaime@techofbusiness.com Contact Page: https://techofbusiness.com/contact/ 

It is my pleasure and honor to be here helping you find the right way for your business to expand online and to support you through the implementation and launch! This episode is about group programs. Some people call these incubators, accelerators and masterminds but I prefer to use the more general term. Essentially what we are talking about is a program with a weekly online live session along with complimentary worksheets and exercises and possibly additional touch points. Most group programs also have a private Facebook group or online forum component. Group programs can be run for anything and like last week’s episode one of the compelling features is accountability and establishing relationships between participants and with you as the leader, mentor, guide or facilitator -- whichever word you prefer to use. The prep work for a group program is different than a course because so much of the work and teaching is done live. But that’s not to say that we don’t need to prep at all -- in fact, most group programs have at least as much prep as online courses do! The format of your group program can be anything from straight lectures to mastermind sessions and from coworking sessions to critique or feedback or presentations. So let’s go into each of the formats I just listed. <h2>Lectures</h2> This is where you have a lesson planned out and you give it direct to camera and your members watch, learn and take notes if they want (or if you don’t provide summary documentation.) This may include live demonstrations or a slide deck and can also include playing of external videos or citing books and other sources or websites. Lectures are a foundational element of most group programs because our members are looking to learn from us. But lectures sound so boring which is why I love tangible lectures which include plenty of showing and demonstration not just theory. <h2>Mastermind sessions</h2> A mastermind session involves members coming together with you as the leader to help breakthrough challenges. There are several formats to mastermind sessions and they revolve around soliciting and providing feedback, recommendations and support from other members of the program and the leader. <h2>Q&amp;A Sessions</h2> Ask me anything or Q&amp;A sessions are an open forum for group participants to get clarification, advice and feedback from the group leader or moderators. These sessions are different than mastermind sessions because they are usually more surface level and the responses are provided predominantly from you, as the group program creator and leader. <h2>Coworking sessions</h2> Coworking sessions are just what they sound like. These are sessions where group members all come with work in hand and spend the time together moving forward on the project or assignment at hand. In these sessions most participants work through the theory that was presented in an earlier lecture session. <h2>Presentations</h2> Presentations are usually provided by guest experts and follow a format of lecture plus Q&amp;A. The idea of presentations is to add complementary information to the program that the leader knows will be of value to the participants but that the leader herself is not equipped to present. <h2>Critique or Feedback Sessions</h2> These sessions are insanely valuable around the middle of a group program and towards the end. These sessions involve taking in samples of the members’ work in progress and sharing feedback in a group format. I’ll give an example of this format in a little bit so that you can get a better understanding of using this type of session within your program! Just like with an online course, group programs are far more engaging when there is a nice mix of formats and styles. <h3>Let’s build a group program together right now on the podcast. We're going to build this online group program for a drawing teacher. She teaches a 4-week fruit bowl drawing class through her local community Parks &amp; Recreation programs. She wants to take this class and turn it into an online group drawing program. For ease of conversation, let's call this drawing teacher Jo.</h3> So, Jo wants to create this online program... instead of it being a 4-week program, let's make it an 8-week program and setup the weeks like this: <ul> <li>Week 1: lecture</li> <li>Week 2: coworking session</li> <li>Week 3: lecture</li> <li>Week 4: mastermind</li> <li>Week 5: lecture</li> <li>Week 6: critique</li> <li>Week 7: lecture</li> <li>Week 8: Q&amp;A</li> </ul> I probably wouldn’t bring in a presentation type session because 8-weeks is not long enough. But if the program were longer, we could bring that in as early as week 7. There would be four lectures which correspond to the content Jo presents in her current class, a coworking session to facilitate, and both a critique and Q&amp;A session to create structure for. We're gently skipping around the normal online product development framework and focusing specifically on the creation phase. Jo will generate a list of resources the members will want to have at their disposal for each session. This will include pens, pencils and markers, blank or colored paper, possibly the recommended amount of work space and lighting considerations. I would probably also include instructions to download zoom onto whatever device you’re going to use and to use earbuds or headphones. At this time the structure of the program will also be presented to the group members and the Facebook group will be created so participants can get to know each other. For the lecture sessions, we're taking a lot of what Jo's already created for her Parks &amp; Recreation class and whittling it down to the most important elements. Because there is no hands on application where Jo can walk the room, the style of the lecture will be different. Jo will still have her members do some drawing during the lectures and assign them specific tasks to do between lectures. We also have an alternate style class between lectures so that the material from each lecture can be used by the group members and they can continue to come together to make progress and connect. The purpose of the coworking session being in week 2 is to allow members to get adequate time drawing at the early stage of the program which will help them to keep showing up and making progress on their drawing. On the heels of this session, Jo will probably encourage her participants to jump into the Facebook group and post their progress. (In the creation phase, it's really helpful to create a post and prompt calendar for that group.) I’m going to throw myself into the student shoes for a moment here, while discussing the mastermind portion. Let’s say that I have attended all three sessions so far, shared my work from the coworking session in the Facebook group but cannot figure out how to work through one of the parts of the lesson that took place in week 3. I have stopped in my tracks a bit because I don’t feel like I can get the right flow of my hand holding my flare pen and that I am starting to tell myself that I’ll never be able to draw anything good. I come to the mastermind session feeling defeated but when it's my turn to be in the hot seat, Jo encourages me to share what's holding me back. She asks where my successes have been and what I'm struggling with. I modestly show her what I’ve drawn so far and my page of scratched out versions of the assignment from last week. She asks the group members if they have any thoughts or observations for me. And once my peers start sharing with me that they found this trick or that strategy to hold the pen in a different way, or that they come to group lectures in their kitchen but sit in their sunroom to apply the work, it relaxes me and I am then able to come up with a plan to complete the current assignment and promise to post it in the group by the end of the week. Masterminds are all about helping one another move forward. During the creation phase, Jo will look back on the encouragement and advice she gives to students in her offline class, and have those ready to boost up her online students. It’s quite likely that more than one participant will be having similar struggles and the collective advice is invaluable. OK… so let’s structure Jo's critique session that’ll be taking place in week 6. This is a much more formal session than the mastermind session. Critique work is required to be submitted at least 72 hours before the session. And the critique work consists of three works from the program: <ul> <li>A sample of work completed specifically from the first lecture</li> <li>A sample of work completed specifically from the second lecture</li> <li>A sample of work in progress from the third lecture</li> </ul> Jo will then go through and create a slidedeck with all the presented work and make notes as to what to highlight and feedback to provide to each member. She will provide suggestions for making your drawings more uniquely yours and help with more ease and flow. This is created on the fly during the program and knowing the structure is going to make it an easy task for Jo to tackle along the way. We want our members to feel accomplished and excited to keep drawing. The feedback needs to be authentic and presented in a positive light. We are here to inspire and motivate, this is not the time or place to tear down a member or tell them that they haven’t improved at all. Be kind and be helpful. And for the final session, my best advice to Jo would be to be prepared to respond on the fly! Questions can be submitted in advance or asked live on the call. This session is designed to give members additional tools and suggestions to keep drawing and keep creating. Questions that come up during the Q&amp;A session might be everything from reviewing some basics to additional resource recommendations. The Facebook group will be a place for ongoing feedback and encouragement. Jo should set expectations at the outset of the program and plan on being in there on a daily basis, prompt members regularly with new ways to connect, engage and share their drawing. If she doesn’t want to use a tool like <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/mv/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">MemberVault</a> to house lectures, samples or instructions, the Facebook group Learning Units will be where content will be housed. While this is not my preference, because it makes it super difficult to run the same group program over and over again, it’s an option and worth mentioning here. We ran pretty deep through that group program for Jo and I hope you understand how an offline class can be converted into a group program! It's true... <ul> <li>Anything that you teach in workshop format offline can be converted into a group program.</li> <li>Anything that you teach online as a course can be converted into a group program.</li> <li>Online group programs can be converted into online courses.</li> </ul> The key with anything we create is that we get better and better at creating the content, presenting the content and always tying the content to the goal. You can do this and I would be honored to help you through the process. Go to <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/online-product/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://techofbusiness.com/online-product/</a> to get started. And with that… wishing you a massively successful week and I’ll be back next week with another episode where we get into the tech needed to run group programs and course cohorts. I alluded to a couple of the tools here -- Zoom, Facebook and MemberVault and we’ll get into how to make sure you make the best tech choices for your students and their successes next week! <ul> <li>Get started with your own <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/onlineproduct/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Online Product</a></li> <li><a href="https://techofbusiness.com/strategy/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Book a Strategy Session</a></li> <li>Instagram: @<a href="https://instagram.com/jaimeslutzky/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">jaimeslutzky</a></li> <li>Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/yourbiztech" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@yourbiztech</a></li> <li>The <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/community/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Expand Online Community</a> on Facebook</li> <li>Email: <a href="mailto:jaime@techofbusiness.com" rel="nofollow">jaime@techofbusiness.com</a></li> <li><a href="https://techofbusiness.com/contact/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Contact Page: https://techofbusiness.com/contact/</a></li> </ul>

110 - Building an online group program from your offline courses and workshops

Your online business success is my goal and focus. Tech of Business is what I do, but your desire to Expand Online is what brought you to this podcast, right? You are a professional with an offline hands-on business and are super excited about the idea of adding supplemental or replacement income through an online product. An online product:  online courses membership sites group programs distance teaching that meet via Zoom video conferencing (with or without material provided online) physical or downloadable products with online marketplaces   There are several phases of online product development and my sweet spot is in the tech… but there is so much more than the tech that goes into successful online products. This episode focuses on the mindset that is needed to venture online when you already have offline successes. Regardless of the reason for wanting to create an online product, work in the online space takes a different mindset than in person work. There are probably a stack of questions swirling around in your head:  Do I know enough to create this online product? Do people want to engage with me in this way? How am I going to get this product created? Is my business taking over my life? Can I really do something online? I’m starting from nothing, how do I start to get traction?  And the list goes on -- if you have other mindset questions, post them over in the Expand Online Facebook group which you can access here. The bigger question isn’t what questions are swirling around in your head, but what to do to get through these thoughts so that you can expand online and fulfill this desire. Our brains play tricks on us, big time, to keep us in our safe zone. It’s easy to stay where we are, but our hearts itch for expansion and growth. People, especially entrepreneurs, do not do a good job sitting sit and stagnating. So, we need to equip ourselves with the tools to conquer the naysayer in our minds.  You have enough knowledge to expand online. You are worthy of having people pay to learn and be inspired by you. You can do this. You can expand online and maintain a sense of self. You have insight and knowledge and passion to attract followers, subscribers and customers. You will feel empowered by creating something from nothing.  I’m extremely analytical and it took me a long time to realize that these are affirmations. All an affirmation is, is to state that something is true and real. I can get behind that… just as art is in the eye of the beholder, affirmations are also real and true when you’re willing to let them be real and true. Some of the affirmations that I say on a regular basis are:  My ideas are worth exploring. There are people who need to hear my message. I am creative and can create beautiful things. I will guide, support and assist 100 artists in 2020 bring their online product to market.  That last one is critical -- telling myself on a daily basis that my work and effort has a tangible result this year will make it so. Expanding your business online doesn’t have to be monumental… it can be a slow start and build over time. It’s all about putting one foot in front of the other and taking the journey. And it’s far easier to tackle little mindset road bumps than it is to put all the roadblocks in place before identifying the start line. Our paths always twist and turn and often take unexpected detours. Which is part of the fun -- with an online product we can do more experimentation too! Other than affirmations and mantras, another great way to set your mindset right is to plan in reflection points. Let me explain… If you know that every Friday afternoon you have set aside 20 - 30 minutes to reflect on the progress you’ve made that week, you’ll add tangibility and that in turn helps you stay in the right mindset. Let’s say we’re creating an online course and are growing our Instagram following so that when the course is ready for market (or pre-launch) we have a pathway to go down. Then our weekly reflection point will include taking a look at both the course creation process as well as the Instagram growth and engagement. Tracking makes me feel successful. I used to just fly by the seat of my pants when it came to Instagram but once I setup a plan to truly watch what I’m doing on Instagram, it became so much more apparent that my efforts there are being validated. And the same goes for reflecting on the development of the online course -- there are times when course creation puts us in the weeds, reflecting on how far we’ve come is a great way to pull us out. I have struggled with wanting to put too much into my courses and needing to pull back… in fact, I have a course that is called Guided Tech Setup that is in soft-launch right now and in that course, I considered throwing in the towel several times. I knew what I wanted to create and why and for whom. But getting off the start line and outlining it took me a while. I kept letting my monkey brain tell me that my clients would rather just hire me to do this work and what’s the point. But when I got to my Friday reflection period and saw that I pushed through and created an outline, it became easier to see the course being complete. Then I began writing scripts and lessons and downloadable material. And suddenly, a large part of me just wanted to wing it! It took me a bit to realize that was my brain trying to keep me safe -- it was saying, if you wing it, you will get this done faster. But faster wasn’t my goal, quality was my goal. Giving my customers a quality product that would help them with their online program was my goal. And that couldn’t be rushed. I had to change from “this is hard” to “this is worth the effort.” And the same goes for each new online product that I create. And the same goes for each new online product that you create. It cannot be created in a vacuum. The right mindset and opportunities to correct course helps us to create the best possible product for our customers every step of the way. My mentors and coaches have told me that even if you get through this mindset piece for this project, it’s going to come back in another form for the next project. Pushing through and being objective are my natural defences against mindset woes. I am getting better at repeating affirmations and making them visible. It’s January 1st and if you’re anything like me, you’re getting inundated with noisy messages about starting this year on the right foot and planning and productivity and streamlining and setting goals and a whole lot of messages that can wear down your defences. I want you to know that you can do this. You can expand your business online in 2020. You have something that your future customers are craving. Expanding online is the next logical step for you -- and I am thrilled to be part of your support system to make this a reality. Let’s do this together! Join me in the Expand Online: Strategy, Support and Tech Facebook group today!

Your online business success is my goal and focus. Tech of Business is what I do, but your desire to Expand Online is what brought you to this podcast, right? You are a professional with an offline hands-on business and are super excited about the idea of adding supplemental or replacement income through an online product. An online product: <ul> <li>online courses</li> <li>membership sites</li> <li>group programs</li> <li>distance teaching that meet via Zoom video conferencing (with or without material provided online)</li> <li>physical or downloadable products with online marketplaces</li> </ul> There are several phases of online product development and my sweet spot is in the tech… but there is so much more than the tech that goes into successful online products. <h2>This episode focuses on the mindset that is needed to venture online when you already have offline successes.</h2> Regardless of the reason for wanting to create an online product, work in the online space takes a different mindset than in person work. There are probably a stack of questions swirling around in your head: <ul> <li>Do I know enough to create this online product?</li> <li>Do people want to engage with me in this way?</li> <li>How am I going to get this product created?</li> <li>Is my business taking over my life?</li> <li>Can I really do something online?</li> <li>I’m starting from nothing, how do I start to get traction?</li> </ul> And the list goes on -- if you have other mindset questions, post them over in the <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/community/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Expand Online Facebook group</a> which you can access <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/community/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>. The bigger question isn’t what questions are swirling around in your head, but what to do to get through these thoughts so that you can expand online and fulfill this desire. Our brains play tricks on us, big time, to keep us in our safe zone. It’s easy to stay where we are, but our hearts itch for expansion and growth. People, especially entrepreneurs, do not do a good job sitting sit and stagnating. So, we need to equip ourselves with the tools to conquer the naysayer in our minds. <ul> <li>You have enough knowledge to expand online.</li> <li>You are worthy of having people pay to learn and be inspired by you.</li> <li>You can do this.</li> <li>You can expand online and maintain a sense of self.</li> <li>You have insight and knowledge and passion to attract followers, subscribers and customers.</li> <li>You will feel empowered by creating something from nothing.</li> </ul> I’m extremely analytical and it took me a long time to realize that these are affirmations. All an affirmation is, is to state that something is true and real. I can get behind that… just as art is in the eye of the beholder, affirmations are also real and true when you’re willing to let them be real and true. <h3>Some of the affirmations that I say on a regular basis are:</h3> <ul> <li>My ideas are worth exploring.</li> <li>There are people who need to hear my message.</li> <li>I am creative and can create beautiful things.</li> <li>I will guide, support and assist 100 artists in 2020 bring their online product to market.</li> </ul> That last one is critical -- telling myself on a daily basis that my work and effort has a tangible result this year will make it so. Expanding your business online doesn’t have to be monumental… it can be a slow start and build over time. It’s all about putting one foot in front of the other and taking the journey. And it’s far easier to tackle little mindset road bumps than it is to put all the roadblocks in place before identifying the start line. Our paths always twist and turn and often take unexpected detours. Which is part of the fun -- with an online product we can do more experimentation too! Other than affirmations and mantras, another great way to set your mindset right is to plan in reflection points. Let me explain… If you know that every Friday afternoon you have set aside 20 - 30 minutes to reflect on the progress you’ve made that week, you’ll add tangibility and that in turn helps you stay in the right mindset. Let’s say we’re creating an online course and are growing our Instagram following so that when the course is ready for market (or pre-launch) we have a pathway to go down. Then our weekly reflection point will include taking a look at both the course creation process as well as the Instagram growth and engagement. Tracking makes me feel successful. I used to just fly by the seat of my pants when it came to Instagram but once I setup a plan to truly watch what I’m doing on Instagram, it became so much more apparent that my efforts there are being validated. And the same goes for reflecting on the development of the online course -- there are times when course creation puts us in the weeds, reflecting on how far we’ve come is a great way to pull us out. I have struggled with wanting to put too much into my courses and needing to pull back… in fact, I have a course that is called Guided Tech Setup that is in soft-launch right now and in that course, I considered throwing in the towel several times. I knew what I wanted to create and why and for whom. But getting off the start line and outlining it took me a while. I kept letting my monkey brain tell me that my clients would rather just hire me to do this work and what’s the point. But when I got to my Friday reflection period and saw that I pushed through and created an outline, it became easier to see the course being complete. Then I began writing scripts and lessons and downloadable material. And suddenly, a large part of me just wanted to wing it! It took me a bit to realize that was my brain trying to keep me safe -- it was saying, if you wing it, you will get this done faster. But faster wasn’t my goal, quality was my goal. Giving my customers a quality product that would help them with their online program was my goal. And that couldn’t be rushed. I had to change from “this is hard” to “this is worth the effort.” And the same goes for each new online product that I create. And the same goes for each new online product that you create. It cannot be created in a vacuum. The right mindset and opportunities to correct course helps us to create the best possible product for our customers every step of the way. My mentors and coaches have told me that even if you get through this mindset piece for this project, it’s going to come back in another form for the next project. Pushing through and being objective are my natural defences against mindset woes. I am getting better at repeating affirmations and making them visible. It’s January 1st and if you’re anything like me, you’re getting inundated with noisy messages about starting this year on the right foot and planning and productivity and streamlining and setting goals and a whole lot of messages that can wear down your defences. <h2>I want you to know that you can do this. You can expand your business online in 2020. You have something that your future customers are craving.</h2> Expanding online is the next logical step for you -- and I am thrilled to be part of your support system to make this a reality. Let’s do this together! Join me in the <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/community/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Expand Online: Strategy, Support and Tech Facebook group today</a>!

Episode 100: The mindset taking you from hands-on to online

I believe that scheduling software systems like Acuity Scheduling and Calendly (among others) is an absolute requirement for online course creators. You’re doubting me, I know it – when I proposed this topic to my friends they thought I was nuts to insist so passionately about this! Because, well, you’re setting up your online course so that you can leverage your time and offer your brilliance in a one-to-many capacity. That’s a great mission, it frees you up to work on your own art expression, hone new skills and become an even better ambassador for your craft. But, the reason you’re setting up your online course doesn’t help your students get the success or knowledge they seek. Your objective has many folds and one of them is most certainly helping your students complete the program they purchase, enjoy the process and share your courses with others. And, your online scheduling tool will certainly help with those objectives and has a direct line to increased profits – so that’s good enough right? We can stop the episode right here and you’ll go to https://techofbusiness.com/acuity/ to signup for Acuity Scheduling! Or maybe not – but hopefully by the end of the episode you’ll agree with me that the benefits of online scheduling are in complete alignment with your goals. Let’s break down your course takers into 4 groups:  Interested but not purchased New purchaser Active participant Lagging participant  And for good measure, let’s add a 5th group: graduate! Your scheduling software is going to help you with course takers in each of these segments. First up, our “interested but not purchased group.” This is a really important group of people to nurture – they’ve given you some indication that what you’re offering is something they are seeking. They may have signed up for a free module from your course or attends your Facebook Lives regularly or your webinar or opens your sales emails or whatever other tool you use to help people find out about your courses. When people get so close to signing up but don’t do it, getting them on a call can be really effective. You could offer a strategy call (either full price or discounted) in your nurture sequence and link to a set of open slots on your calendar inside your scheduling app. Or you could host public Q&amp;A sessions and have people register for them through Acuity -- I love this strategy because there can be a limited number of seats and that’s evident when people click over. This provides a sense of scarcity and exclusivity. There are a ton of ways to leverage one-on-one and group calls during your sales process and the last thing that you’ll want to do is to try to figure out how to schedule them manually. Acuity Scheduling takes into account time zones so your prospective student can schedule in their time zone even if it’s different than yours! Having Acuity or another scheduling tool in your tech stack allows you to offer bonus calls and tiers for your courses. It would be far more time consuming and negate some of the benefits of one-to-many courses if all bonuses and scheduling was not automated. Many course creators I work with host office hours or other group calls as part of the base tier. So how can we improve upon that and help our almost-students say yes – well, by going beyond the basic and offer a higher level of access to us! And I like to just provide a private scheduling link to my higher level purchasers – they get 10 sessions or 6 sessions or 3 sessions or whatever and they can schedule time on my calendar. It’s a huge benefit to your business and to their success in the program. A bonus I like to offer is a finite number of reduced price one-on-one sessions and because Acuity can schedule, take payments and have coupons, it’s an ideal platform for this type of bonus. In a nutshell, having some way for potential students to see that they can have a higher level of access to you is a huge incentive for them to say “YES.” Now, for your people who just bought your course, you want to make sure they get started right away and get some quick wins. Offering all students a 10 or 15 minute kick-off call or a new students only group call once a week is a brilliant strategy – it’s all about over delivering at this point. They didn’t sign up for it, it’s just something you throw in as a hidden bonus. This call might be the difference between them asking for a refund and becoming your unicorn student… seriously. It can have that much of an impact! Not convinced that you need scheduling software for this? Well, it’s all about setting things up to make your business as easy as possible and free you up to do what you do best, right? So if you like scheduling and the high touch approach, I’m sure you could make a case for doing scheduling without software but know that it might mean you’ll be having calls outside of your desired time blocks, on days you’d rather be doing non-client focused work and accidentally booking calls with clients on your birthday! (OK, so I didn’t accidentally book a client call on my birthday but I did have someone request to book a podcast interview on my birthday last summer ~ fortunately I had scheduling software in place so it was evident that I wasn’t available that day!) I mentioned for your new purchaser the benefit of quick wins and over delivering. This is the same for your students who are making steady progress. These are generally the people who skate through without much notice… most course creators don’t spend much time on their “good students” because the good students just proceed… but what if you have a scheduling tool that makes it easy to do more for your good students? Something that shows them that you see them and their progress and want to reward the milestones. It could be a free call for them to provide you with a video testimonial or feedback on the course, or it could be an invite-only Q&amp;A session or anything else that gets you onto their calendar and invites them to show up for themselves! It’s imperative to be connected with your students on multiple levels. So, if you’re using a community forum or online group of some kind, that’s a great base level. And providing access to you in a structured way through scheduling software makes the connections that much easier to manage and helps us also look extremely professional! That’s actually one of my favorite reasons for using scheduling software – the perception that you take your business seriously. And, in case you’re wondering, there are several functions within Acuity that make it so that your entire schedule isn’t open for appointments. These include setting default availability for different types of appointments, blocking off time before and after appointments, presenting only a percentage of your available openings to someone booking time and more options that I truly cannot remember off the top of my head. Let’s get back to these good students for a moment – without making an effort to connect with them on a personal level, the relationship might be a one time purchase, but helping them see that you care and notice that they are delving in and learning, that can take things to a whole new level. And there is no ceiling on what we can offer and do for our students. Now, for our course participants who seem to fall behind, stop or don’t even start, we can use high touch to bring them into the fold and help them get an ROI on their investment. If you’ve offered a refund window of say 30 days, you might see an uptick in refund requests at the end of the window from this segment of your purchasers because they truly haven’t taken any action and will place the blame on you. So, helping them through the refund window to get a quick win or two is huge in avoiding refunds or disgruntled purchasers. When courses are sold in an open cart/closed cart method it’s pretty easy to pack a whole lot of value inside the refund window to keep people making traction but when your course registration is evergreen or always available, it’s still important to find a way to make an impact and help your students catch up and feel good about their purchases – enter the scheduling software once again! Here, however, unlike any of the other groups we’ve discussed, it’s super important to make sure that there is no fee associated with any offers we present. My favorite offer to this group, which can be offered to anyone in the course, is to have co-learning sessions. Essentially, that’s a 60- or 90-minute group booking on Acuity that will end up being a zoom call where everyone goes through the course at their own pace. They can ask questions in the chat and you can facilitate conversation at the beginning and take breaks and even break your participants into small group conversations. The idea here is to provide the environment where they can effectively get stuff done. I actually do this with a group of women once a month to work on our businesses… we all do our own thing for 25 minutes then come back together to regroup then have at it again. We do it for 2 hours. Once your refund window has expired, that doesn’t mean we should take the money and not care about our students’ course completion. Limited time bonus calls are a great way to re-incentivize your ghosted students. Think of it as a way to help these students get back on track. I have a client who offers fitness programs online. She always leaves a buffer in the course content so that if people can’t fit in their workout or meditation or whatever, they have time to catch up and there is no shaming them. You don’t need to be in fitness to help people get back on track! Our final bonus group of students is those people who complete the course they purchased. We want to have something to offer them after they complete. It might be a free success session where they share with you the takeaways and what they’ve learned and applied in their life. Or it could be upselling them into a virtual group program or one-on-one coaching/mentorship with you. When we go from in studio to online, there are barriers that fall away like place and time but new barriers arise – those are accountability, focus and follow through. Having Acuity scheduling or another online scheduling tool will help you with these persistent barriers and help you truly connect with your students. So, have I convinced you? Jump into the Expand Online Community which you can get into at https://techofbusiness.com/community/ or by sending me a DM on Instagram, I’m @techofbusiness. I look forward to hearing about all your online successes. Thanks for listening and reading these notes! And I love getting to know podcast listeners, so connect with me on any of the platforms listed here:  Download the Online Product Phases Instagram: @techofbusiness Facebook: @yourbiztech The Expand Online Community on Facebook Email: jaime@techofbusiness.com 

I believe that scheduling software systems like <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/acuity/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Acuity Scheduling</a> and Calendly (among others) is an absolute requirement for online course creators. <h3>You’re doubting me, I know it – when I proposed this topic to my friends they thought I was nuts to insist so passionately about this!</h3> Because, well, you’re setting up your online course so that you can leverage your time and offer your brilliance in a one-to-many capacity. That’s a great mission, it frees you up to work on your own art expression, hone new skills and become an even better ambassador for your craft. But, the reason you’re setting up your online course doesn’t help your students get the success or knowledge they seek. Your objective has many folds and one of them is most certainly helping your students complete the program they purchase, enjoy the process and share your courses with others. And, your online scheduling tool will certainly help with those objectives and has a direct line to increased profits – so that’s good enough right? We can stop the episode right here and you’ll go to <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/acuity/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://techofbusiness.com/acuity/</a> to signup for <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/acuity/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Acuity</a> Scheduling! Or maybe not – but hopefully by the end of the episode you’ll agree with me that the benefits of online scheduling are in complete alignment with your goals. <h2>Let’s break down your course takers into 4 groups:</h2> <ul> <li>Interested but not purchased</li> <li>New purchaser</li> <li>Active participant</li> <li>Lagging participant</li> </ul> And for good measure, let’s add a 5th group: graduate! <h3>Your scheduling software is going to help you with course takers in each of these segments.</h3> First up, our “interested but not purchased group.” This is a really important group of people to nurture – they’ve given you some indication that what you’re offering is something they are seeking. They may have signed up for a free module from your course or attends your Facebook Lives regularly or your webinar or opens your sales emails or whatever other tool you use to help people find out about your courses. When people get so close to signing up but don’t do it, getting them on a call can be really effective. You could offer a strategy call (either full price or discounted) in your nurture sequence and link to a set of open slots on your calendar inside your scheduling app. Or you could host public Q&amp;A sessions and have people register for them through <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/acuity/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Acuity</a> -- I love this strategy because there can be a limited number of seats and that’s evident when people click over. This provides a sense of scarcity and exclusivity. There are a ton of ways to leverage one-on-one and group calls during your sales process and the last thing that you’ll want to do is to try to figure out how to schedule them manually. <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/acuity/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Acuity</a> Scheduling takes into account time zones so your prospective student can schedule in their time zone even if it’s different than yours! Having <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/acuity/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Acuity</a> or another scheduling tool in your tech stack allows you to offer bonus calls and tiers for your courses. It would be far more time consuming and negate some of the benefits of one-to-many courses if all bonuses and scheduling was not automated. Many course creators I work with host office hours or other group calls as part of the base tier. So how can we improve upon that and help our almost-students say yes – well, by going beyond the basic and offer a higher level of access to us! And I like to just provide a private scheduling link to my higher level purchasers – they get 10 sessions or 6 sessions or 3 sessions or whatever and they can schedule time on my calendar. It’s a huge benefit to your business and to their success in the program. <h4>A bonus I like to offer is a finite number of reduced price one-on-one sessions and because <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/acuity/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Acuity</a> can schedule, take payments and have coupons, it’s an ideal platform for this type of bonus.</h4> In a nutshell, having some way for potential students to see that they can have a higher level of access to you is a huge incentive for them to say “YES.” Now, for your people who just bought your course, you want to make sure they get started right away and get some quick wins. Offering all students a 10 or 15 minute kick-off call or a new students only group call once a week is a brilliant strategy – it’s all about over delivering at this point. They didn’t sign up for it, it’s just something you throw in as a hidden bonus. <h3>This call might be the difference between them asking for a refund and becoming your unicorn student… seriously. It can have that much of an impact!</h3> Not convinced that you need scheduling software for this? Well, it’s all about setting things up to make your business as easy as possible and free you up to do what you do best, right? So if you like scheduling and the high touch approach, I’m sure you could make a case for doing scheduling without software but know that it might mean you’ll be having calls outside of your desired time blocks, on days you’d rather be doing non-client focused work and accidentally booking calls with clients on your birthday! (OK, so I didn’t accidentally book a client call on my birthday but I did have someone request to book a podcast interview on my birthday last summer ~ fortunately I had scheduling software in place so it was evident that I wasn’t available that day!) I mentioned for your new purchaser the benefit of quick wins and over delivering. This is the same for your students who are making steady progress. These are generally the people who skate through without much notice… most course creators don’t spend much time on their “good students” because the good students just proceed… but what if you have a scheduling tool that makes it easy to do more for your good students? Something that shows them that you see them and their progress and want to reward the milestones. It could be a free call for them to provide you with a video testimonial or feedback on the course, or it could be an invite-only Q&amp;A session or anything else that gets you onto their calendar and invites them to show up for themselves! It’s imperative to be connected with your students on multiple levels. So, if you’re using a community forum or online group of some kind, that’s a great base level. And providing access to you in a structured way through scheduling software makes the connections that much easier to manage and helps us also look extremely professional! That’s actually one of my favorite reasons for using scheduling software – the perception that you take your business seriously. And, in case you’re wondering, there are several functions within <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/acuity/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Acuity</a> that make it so that your entire schedule isn’t open for appointments. These include setting default availability for different types of appointments, blocking off time before and after appointments, presenting only a percentage of your available openings to someone booking time and more options that I truly cannot remember off the top of my head. Let’s get back to these good students for a moment – without making an effort to connect with them on a personal level, the relationship might be a one time purchase, but helping them see that you care and notice that they are delving in and learning, that can take things to a whole new level. And there is no ceiling on what we can offer and do for our students. Now, for our course participants who seem to fall behind, stop or don’t even start, we can use high touch to bring them into the fold and help them get an ROI on their investment. If you’ve offered a refund window of say 30 days, you might see an uptick in refund requests at the end of the window from this segment of your purchasers because they truly haven’t taken any action and will place the blame on you. So, helping them through the refund window to get a quick win or two is huge in avoiding refunds or disgruntled purchasers. When courses are sold in an open cart/closed cart method it’s pretty easy to pack a whole lot of value inside the refund window to keep people making traction but when your course registration is evergreen or always available, it’s still important to find a way to make an impact and help your students catch up and feel good about their purchases – enter the scheduling software once again! Here, however, unlike any of the other groups we’ve discussed, it’s super important to make sure that there is no fee associated with any offers we present. My favorite offer to this group, which can be offered to anyone in the course, is to have co-learning sessions. Essentially, that’s a 60- or 90-minute group booking on <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/acuity/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Acuity</a> that will end up being a zoom call where everyone goes through the course at their own pace. They can ask questions in the chat and you can facilitate conversation at the beginning and take breaks and even break your participants into small group conversations. The idea here is to provide the environment where they can effectively get stuff done. I actually do this with a group of women once a month to work on our businesses… we all do our own thing for 25 minutes then come back together to regroup then have at it again. We do it for 2 hours. Once your refund window has expired, that doesn’t mean we should take the money and not care about our students’ course completion. Limited time bonus calls are a great way to re-incentivize your ghosted students. Think of it as a way to help these students get back on track. I have a client who offers fitness programs online. She always leaves a buffer in the course content so that if people can’t fit in their workout or meditation or whatever, they have time to catch up and there is no shaming them. You don’t need to be in fitness to help people get back on track! Our final bonus group of students is those people who complete the course they purchased. We want to have something to offer them after they complete. It might be a free success session where they share with you the takeaways and what they’ve learned and applied in their life. Or it could be upselling them into a virtual group program or one-on-one coaching/mentorship with you. When we go from in studio to online, there are barriers that fall away like place and time but new barriers arise – those are accountability, focus and follow through. Having <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/acuity/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Acuity</a> scheduling or another online scheduling tool will help you with these persistent barriers and help you truly connect with your students. <h3>So, have I convinced you? Jump into the Expand Online Community which you can get into at <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/community/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://techofbusiness.com/community/</a> or by sending me a DM on Instagram, I’m @<a href="https://instagram.com/techofbusiness/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">techofbusiness</a>.</h3> I look forward to hearing about all your online successes. Thanks for listening and reading these notes! And I love getting to know podcast listeners, so connect with me on any of the platforms listed here: <ul> <li>Download the <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/onlineproduct/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Online Product Phases</a></li> <li>Instagram: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/techofbusiness" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@techofbusiness</a></li> <li>Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/yourbiztech" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@yourbiztech</a></li> <li>The <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/community/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Expand Online Community</a> on Facebook</li> <li>Email: <a href="mailto:jaime@techofbusiness.com" rel="nofollow">jaime@techofbusiness.com</a></li> </ul>

104: The purpose of scheduling software within online course sales and delivery

Sure this is a podcast about the tech of business but so much of what we need to work through is the strategies in the business – the tech fulfills the strategy not the other way around. And that leads into my new offering and why it came to being in the way that it did. As of about 10 days ago as of the time of this release, I started selling website hosting. So, over on the resources page at https://techofbusiness.com/resources/ you’ll now see three options for hosting instead of just two. The two that were there before I started hosting were  WP Engine and A2Hosting. They are both affiliate links and are great for those of you who want to keep things streamlined and not have any “middle men” or “middle women”. But what was lacking and the need I realized was that I was perfectly poised to fill for many of my clients was that of taking something else off their plates. I’ve spent a lot of time in different hosting platforms, both the two I mentioned above as well as SiteGround, Bluehost, Cloudways, GoDaddy and a ton of others since I started working with WordPress sites back in 2010. And one thing I’ve noticed is that as much as they want things to be easy, it’s just not the smoothest of places for a business owner to hang out. There are a lot of subtleties and complexities at the same time. How are you supposed to educate yourself on hosting and how to do things without relying on your good friends Google and YouTube? And how do you know you’re getting advice you can trust and not advice being touted because of some back end affiliate program. Frankly, you don’t – and for a long time, I wished there was a better way to help my clients feel confident that their hosting platform would support them. Oh shoot… I jumped right into this rabbit hole without any context. Let’s take a step back and then we’ll get back into the accidental new product I’m selling and why I think it’s perfect for many of my clients! The lack of context is that domains and hosting and IP addresses and such are a bunch of buzzwords that most people don’t fully grasp. So, let’s imagine the internet as a super long street with thousands of apartments on each block. OK, let’s look at one block on that street. This block consists of a bunch of apartment buildings owned by A2Hosting. They bought the land and built the apartment buildings. Some of the apartments have wide beautiful views while others are just studio apartments. Some have snazzy elevators others are only accessible via the stairs. All the apartments have a security guard that you can employ, if you want. Each of the apartments are available for rent and, depending on how much you’re willing to spend you’ll get your apartment and it’s access. Renting the apartment is like buying hosting. Renting an apartment alone is never going to get your Amazon Deliveries and it’s not going to be a comfortable place to live. For that, you need to announce to the powers that be your address. And in the online world, this comes about through your domain name. But it’s not quite that simple. Buying your domain name without hooking it up to your host is like having the placard for your mailbox but not affixing it to your mailbox. We need to affix the placard. And that is done by setting your domain to use the address of the hosting platform. There are a few ways to do this but that’s beyond the scope of this story, so I’ll leave that as tech-magic. So now we have our domain pointing to our apartment and we can now get deliveries. But what about if you want to have a party? You can’t do that if there is nothing inside your apartment – and that’s where we begin to setup our website and our email addresses and our membership site and all that jazz. And that IP Address… it’s the address of your apartment building. Even if your apartment building has a fancy name, it still has a physical address… that’s what the IP address is. OK… I hope you haven’t tuned me out – and that you got some insight into what hosting and domains and ip addresses are all about. It’ll help so much as we move into why I now offer hosting to my clients. But before we get there… one critical piece of the story is that of the optional security guard. He or she works to make sure that your apartment is as safe as possible. That’s the goal of an SSL certificate for your website. There are paid SSL certificates which are important for financial transactions.  Then there are free SSL certificates which are much more like the security guard. The most popular free SSL certificate that I’m aware of right now is one provided by a company called Let’s Encrypt. And this free SSL certificate is one of the reasons I started providing hosting. I wanted to make it easy for my clients to have access to the Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate… and my hosting does this automatically as soon as the domain is pointing to the hosting. But that’s not the only or main reason I started offering hosting… the main reason I am doing this is because it is frankly way easier for me and my clients to get started on their projects. And I am 100% confident in providing the hosting that they need. My reseller hosting is through A2Hosting. I actually purchased the reseller level of hosting back in November 2018 with the hopes of bringing hosting into my business shortly thereafter. But I didn’t have a compelling need to do it. So it sat… that is until a little over 2 weeks ago when I realized that one of my clients was a perfect candidate for my reseller package. This client has hired me to build out her website and provide ongoing support and maintenance. It’s that last part that indicated to me that providing my own hosting would be a logical and mutually beneficial step for both of us. She was 100% on board and within a few days, I had it up and ready for her to purchase. I have another client who recently moved her primary site from Weebly to another provider. She hired me to setup redirection from the old Weebly links to the corresponding pages on her new platform.  She also hired me to setup a blog. I was giddy because I knew my hosting offering would be perfect for her. She’s already successful in her business.  She doesn’t have the time or desire to deal with the technology side of things. She and I are in the process of setting up a longer term working relationship.  This is so that we can continue to optimize her online platform and grow her business. All her Weebly links were under an SSL and accessed via https://. herefore we needed the new host to offer SSL as well. If we tried to do this with hosting from a provider that doesn’t have Let’s Encrypt then she wouldn’t be able to do the redirections which would cause her google traffic to plummet. And because she’s not taking credit cards on her site the Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate is adequate. If I have a client who is going to take credit cards natively on their site, I would still recommend they purchase an external SSL certificate. We can go into that conversation if you want! Hit me up on Instagram I’m @techofbusiness if that’s of interest to you. For years I’ve offered A2Hosting and  WP Engine as hosting options for my clients. So, what’s changed? Why do I now believe that I can offer better hosting to help you accomplish the tasks at hand? The shift was that I learned more about you! I learned more about what matters most in your business! And I found a way to deliver a better product. In the past when I’ve suggested hosting, I left the door open for you to find someone else who could give an alternate suggestion. And this would just make you confused. If you already have hosting and we start working together, I’m not going to force or even gently suggest we migrate you over to Tech of Business website hosting.  Why? Because we never need to do something with our tech if it’s not fixing a major problem or positioning us to reach a new goal or milestone. If your hosting is working– then by all means, stick with it like glue. It’s a PITA to change hosts. But, if we start working together and there is something intrinsically not working in your tech stack, we’re going to figure out how to get out of that mess.  We will  get where we need to be. And that may include jumping into the Tech of Business hosting plan. Our hosting plan is built on the A2Hosting servers and comes with the reliability that I have trusted since I moved over a couple of years ago. I’m confident that your needs will be met and that this is a quality foundational tool for your business. If you have questions about hosting or want to see if Tech of Business hosting is right for you, head over to https://techofbusiness.com/hosting and fill out the form. I will get straight back to you. Hosting is only available by application. And with that, let’s wrap this episode up with saying that it’s 100% okay to go all in on a rabbit hole if you have a pretty good idea where it’s going. That’s what I did when I brought hosting into my offerings. I knew it would be successful and I knew I wanted to make things easier for my clients. I was fairly certain that the reseller package that I’m on with A2Hosting was going to be a great option for fulfilling the requirement. Was offering hosting a must have part of my business… certainly not. But it was a necessary part of my business that became apparent recently. Do you have a new goal or project in the wings? Or are you wondering if your current tech is ready to support that new initiative? Let’s do a Tech Audit and help you make some concrete decisions and lay a clear path for your tech stack. Connect with Jaime:  Instagram: @techofbusiness Twitter: @techofbusiness Facebook: @yourbiztech LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaimeslutzky/ Email: jaime@techofbusiness.com 

Sure this is a podcast about the tech of business but so much of what we need to work through is the strategies in the business – the tech fulfills the strategy not the other way around. <h3>And that leads into my new offering and why it came to being in the way that it did.</h3> As of about 10 days ago as of the time of this release, I started selling website hosting. So, over on the resources page at <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/resources/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://techofbusiness.com/resources/</a> you’ll now see three options for hosting instead of just two. The two that were there before I started hosting were <a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?afftrack=&amp;b=680030&amp;m=41388&amp;u=454846&amp;urllink=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> WP Engine</a> and <a href="http://www.a2hosting.com/?aid=8b0d948f" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">A2Hosting</a>. They are both affiliate links and are great for those of you who want to keep things streamlined and not have any “middle men” or “middle women”. But what was lacking and the need I realized was that I was perfectly poised to fill for many of my clients was that of taking something else off their plates. I’ve spent a lot of time in different hosting platforms, both the two I mentioned above as well as SiteGround, Bluehost, Cloudways, GoDaddy and a ton of others since I started working with WordPress sites back in 2010. And one thing I’ve noticed is that as much as they want things to be easy, it’s just not the smoothest of places for a business owner to hang out. There are a lot of subtleties and complexities at the same time. How are you supposed to educate yourself on hosting and how to do things without relying on your good friends Google and YouTube? And how do you know you’re getting advice you can trust and not advice being touted because of some back end affiliate program. Frankly, you don’t – and for a long time, I wished there was a better way to help my clients feel confident that their hosting platform would support them. <h3>Oh shoot… I jumped right into this rabbit hole without any context. Let’s take a step back and then we’ll get back into the accidental new product I’m selling and why I think it’s perfect for many of my clients!</h3> The lack of context is that domains and hosting and IP addresses and such are a bunch of buzzwords that most people don’t fully grasp. So, let’s imagine the internet as a super long street with thousands of apartments on each block. OK, let’s look at one block on that street. This block consists of a bunch of apartment buildings owned by <a href="http://www.a2hosting.com/?aid=8b0d948f" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">A2Hosting</a>. They bought the land and built the apartment buildings. Some of the apartments have wide beautiful views while others are just studio apartments. Some have snazzy elevators others are only accessible via the stairs. All the apartments have a security guard that you can employ, if you want. Each of the apartments are available for rent and, depending on how much you’re willing to spend you’ll get your apartment and it’s access. <h5>Renting the apartment is like buying hosting.</h5> Renting an apartment alone is never going to get your Amazon Deliveries and it’s not going to be a comfortable place to live. For that, you need to announce to the powers that be your address. And in the online world, this comes about through your domain name. But it’s not quite that simple. <h5>Buying your domain name without hooking it up to your host is like having the placard for your mailbox but not affixing it to your mailbox.</h5> We need to affix the placard. And that is done by setting your domain to use the address of the hosting platform. There are a few ways to do this but that’s beyond the scope of this story, so I’ll leave that as tech-magic. So now we have our domain pointing to our apartment and we can now get deliveries. But what about if you want to have a party? You can’t do that if there is nothing inside your apartment – and that’s where we begin to setup our website and our email addresses and our membership site and all that jazz. <h5>And that IP Address… it’s the address of your apartment building. Even if your apartment building has a fancy name, it still has a physical address… that’s what the IP address is.</h5> OK… I hope you haven’t tuned me out – and that you got some insight into what hosting and domains and ip addresses are all about. It’ll help so much as we move into why I now offer hosting to my clients. <h5>But before we get there… one critical piece of the story is that of the optional security guard. He or she works to make sure that your apartment is as safe as possible. That’s the goal of an SSL certificate for your website.</h5> There are paid SSL certificates which are important for financial transactions.  Then there are free SSL certificates which are much more like the security guard. The most popular free SSL certificate that I’m aware of right now is one provided by a company called <a href="https://letsencrypt.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Let’s Encrypt.</a> And this free SSL certificate is one of the reasons I started providing hosting. I wanted to make it easy for my clients to have access to the <a href="https://letsencrypt.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Let’s Encrypt SSL</a> certificate… and my hosting does this automatically as soon as the domain is pointing to the hosting. <h5>But that’s not the only or main reason I started offering hosting… the main reason I am doing this is because it is frankly way easier for me and my clients to get started on their projects. And I am 100% confident in providing the hosting that they need.</h5> My reseller hosting is through <a href="http://www.a2hosting.com/?aid=8b0d948f" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">A2Hosting</a>. I actually purchased the reseller level of hosting back in November 2018 with the hopes of bringing hosting into my business shortly thereafter. But I didn’t have a compelling need to do it. So it sat… that is until a little over 2 weeks ago when I realized that one of my clients was a perfect candidate for my reseller package. This client has hired me to build out her website and provide ongoing support and maintenance. It’s that last part that indicated to me that providing my own hosting would be a logical and mutually beneficial step for both of us. She was 100% on board and within a few days, I had it up and ready for her to purchase. I have another client who recently moved her primary site from Weebly to another provider. She hired me to setup redirection from the old Weebly links to the corresponding pages on her new platform.  She also hired me to setup a blog. <h5>I was giddy because I knew my hosting offering would be perfect for her. She’s already successful in her business.  She doesn’t have the time or desire to deal with the technology side of things. She and I are in the process of setting up a longer term working relationship.  This is so that we can continue to optimize her online platform and grow her business.</h5> All her Weebly links were under an SSL and accessed via https://. herefore we needed the new host to offer SSL as well. If we tried to do this with hosting from a provider that doesn’t have <a href="https://letsencrypt.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Let’s Encrypt</a> then she wouldn’t be able to do the redirections which would cause her google traffic to plummet. And because she’s not taking credit cards on her site the <a href="https://letsencrypt.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Let’s Encrypt SSL</a> certificate is adequate. If I have a client who is going to take credit cards natively on their site, I would still recommend they purchase an external SSL certificate. We can go into that conversation if you want! Hit me up on Instagram I’m @techofbusiness if that’s of interest to you. <h5>For years I’ve offered <a href="http://www.a2hosting.com/?aid=8b0d948f" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">A2Hosting</a> and <a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?afftrack=&amp;b=680030&amp;m=41388&amp;u=454846&amp;urllink=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> WP Engine</a> as hosting options for my clients. So, what’s changed? Why do I now believe that I can offer better hosting to help you accomplish the tasks at hand?</h5> The shift was that I learned more about you! I learned more about what matters most in your business! And I found a way to deliver a better product. In the past when I’ve suggested hosting, I left the door open for you to find someone else who could give an alternate suggestion. And this would just make you confused. If you already have hosting and we start working together, I’m not going to force or even gently suggest we migrate you over to Tech of Business website hosting.  Why? Because we never need to do something with our tech if it’s not fixing a major problem or positioning us to reach a new goal or milestone. If your hosting is working– then by all means, stick with it like glue. It’s a PITA to change hosts. But, if we start working together and there is something intrinsically not working in your tech stack, we’re going to figure out how to get out of that mess.  We will  get where we need to be. And that may include jumping into the Tech of Business hosting plan. Our hosting plan is built on the <a href="http://www.a2hosting.com/?aid=8b0d948f" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">A2Hosting</a> servers and comes with the reliability that I have trusted since I moved over a couple of years ago. I’m confident that your needs will be met and that this is a quality foundational tool for your business. If you have questions about hosting or want to see if Tech of Business hosting is right for you, head over to <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/hosting" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://techofbusiness.com/hosting</a> and fill out the form. I will get straight back to you. Hosting is only available by application. <h3>And with that, let’s wrap this episode up with saying that it’s 100% okay to go all in on a rabbit hole if you have a pretty good idea where it’s going.</h3> That’s what I did when I brought hosting into my offerings. I knew it would be successful and I knew I wanted to make things easier for my clients. I was fairly certain that the reseller package that I’m on with <a href="http://www.a2hosting.com/?aid=8b0d948f" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">A2Hosting</a> was going to be a great option for fulfilling the requirement. Was offering hosting a must have part of my business… certainly not. But it was a necessary part of my business that became apparent recently. Do you have a new goal or project in the wings? Or are you wondering if your current tech is ready to support that new initiative? Let’s do a <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/audit" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Tech Audit</a> and help you make some concrete decisions and lay a clear path for your tech stack. <h3>Connect with Jaime:</h3> <ul> <li>Instagram: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/techofbusiness" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@techofbusiness</a></li> <li>Twitter: <a href="https://www.twitter.com/techofbusiness" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@techofbusiness</a></li> <li>Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/yourbiztech" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@yourbiztech</a></li> <li>LinkedIn: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaimeslutzky/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaimeslutzky/</a></li> <li>Email: <a href="mailto:jaime@techofbusiness.com" rel="nofollow">jaime@techofbusiness.com</a></li> </ul>

075: [Deep Dive] An Accidental New Offering That I'm Thrilled About

Last week on Instagram, I started using #expandonline as a hashtag in my posts... This episode goes along with the start of that hashtag and who this podcast is truly for... Let's start with expand online.  That's what I help my clients do. I help you expand your business online. Note that I didn't say "start their business the right way with the right tech and the right processes and systems" and all of that.... nope it's EXPAND Online. This means I work with men and women who already have a business that is thriving and that they love.  And it's time to expand and do something new... We all started our businesses for a reason and no part of the plan is to stagnate. Expanding an active, real in person business online is a great way to keep from stagnation. The episode title indicated this, and I'm calling it out -- the niche and the #expandonline initiative is for artists because this is an audience that I feel truly has gifts for the world that need to expand beyond their local communities. This is artistic professionals who teach their craft.  I have worked with musicians. And I have worked with artists. I have worked with photographers. And I have worked with many other artistic professionals who want to do something online. And these are my people.   These are the people who I get out of bed every morning and say, “How can I serve them?”  I chose to double down on this and say that that's what I'm here for. That's who I'm here to help. And that's who I'm here to take the tech burdens and the tech obstacles out of their space.  Artistic professionals are creative. So sitting in front of a computer for hours on end trying to figure out how to make a shopping cart or an email marketing system or a website work is a waste of their time.  That's what I'm here for. I'm here to help you #expandonline and take away all of your tech headaches. It is so exciting to finally be here.  And I have a brand new gift for you -- I'm breaking down the five phases of an online product in an easy to use downloadable file. This is an overview of what steps -- what phases -- that product needs to go through before it's in the hands of your next customer. What if you want to refer to your customers as clients or students or members? Totally just using "customers" as a placeholder -- the term you're going to use depends on the type of product that you are creating. For example, if you're a composer and you've created some sheet music, your online product may be a one time downloadable purchase. Let's set up a Shopify store or a shop on another platform. Or, maybe you are a choreographer and you want to teach people how to properly stretch.  An online course would be the perfect container for this content and your customers will be your students. Or, maybe you want to get together with all the other musicians in your town and put together a membership program where you get all sorts of different instruments or different styles and a multidisciplinary learning environment. We would then create a membership where people from all around the world could access the resources that are rich in your community. There are so many ways to go. The underlying theme is that we are going to expand your business online! There are a variety of reasons why an artist may choose to get into teaching or instruction. And there are also many reasons why you may choose to expand online and let's give you three of those right now.   Your studio is maxed out.  You cannot take on any more students, because there's only so many hours in the day. There's only so many hours that the students are actually available to invest time in their art. So expanding your business allows you to serve many students in the online space through courses or virtual lessons. You've maxed out your local community. You've got to a point where everybody in your town has taken them.  And maybe they know somebody three towns over who wants to take your class, but can't drive in and physically be at your studio. So by expanding online, you're really opening up the opportunity to have more students, more people that you work with in that variety. Reduce number of hours worked. Leveraging the online space allows you to stop working so many hours. When you expand online, you open the doors to some level of passive income. Passive income is elusive, and is not truly passive. We will get into that a whole lot more.   By bringing your business online or an element of your business (a passion of yours or a subset of your business) online and expanding in that way, you make it so that you can touch more people's artistic hearts than you would be able to if you're simply trading time for money. I am so so excited about expanding online and bringing the online space to the artistic community and making it so that your art style gains a larger audience. Now here's the dirty truth: I don't even know who I'm going to be attracting with this message!  I don't know who you are yet! I want to know what you teach and what your passions are. I want to know why you create art. How can I help you expand online?   Click here to get an email where you can download the five phases of an online product workbook.  When you do, you'll get an email from me with the link to download... and go beyond downloading and reply to that email!  Let me know how I can support you through the podcast through emails through the Facebook group, which also is called Expand Online.   And if you haven't yet -- join the Expand Online : Strategy, Support and TECH community which you can access at techofbusiness.com/community. I'll be able to let you right on in. You can ask your questions and meet other professionals. I am just so inspired by your gift to the world. It is my wish that together we get that to your next phase of clients. Get that to your online audience.  And a final note... I have seen so many amazing art instructors, art teachers, choreographers, musicians, and culinary artists. And I have seen so much beautiful art on Instagram. I've seen so many instructional videos on YouTube. Those are pathways to profit. Those are not the profit generation sources themselves. So if you have a strong YouTube presence or have a strong Instagram presence, that is a fabulous foundation to help you successfully expand online.  Connect with Jaime:  Expand Online Freebie: Five Phases of an Online Product Workbook Instagram: @techofbusiness Twitter: @techofbusiness Facebook: @yourbiztech LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaimeslutzky/ Email: jaime@techofbusiness.com 

Last week on Instagram, I started using #expandonline as a hashtag in my posts... This episode goes along with the start of that hashtag and who this podcast is truly for... <h3>Let's start with expand online. </h3> That's what I help my clients do. I help you expand your business online. Note that I didn't say "start their business the right way with the right tech and the right processes and systems" and all of that.... nope it's EXPAND Online. This means I work with men and women who already have a business that is thriving and that they love.  And it's time to expand and do something new... We all started our businesses for a reason and no part of the plan is to stagnate. Expanding an active, real in person business online is a great way to keep from stagnation. The episode title indicated this, and I'm calling it out -- the niche and the #expandonline initiative is for artists because this is an audience that I feel truly has gifts for the world that need to expand beyond their local communities. This is artistic professionals who teach their craft. <ul> <li>I have worked with musicians.</li> <li>And I have worked with artists.</li> <li>I have worked with photographers.</li> <li>And I have worked with many other artistic professionals who want to do something online.</li> <li>And these are my people. </li> </ul> <h3>These are the people who I get out of bed every morning and say, “How can I serve them?” </h3> I chose to double down on this and say that that's what I'm here for. That's who I'm here to help. And that's who I'm here to take the tech burdens and the tech obstacles out of their space.  Artistic professionals are creative. So sitting in front of a computer for hours on end trying to figure out how to make a shopping cart or an email marketing system or a website work is a waste of their time.  <h3>That's what I'm here for. I'm here to help you #expandonline and take away all of your tech headaches.</h3> <h3>It is so exciting to finally be here. </h3> And I have a brand new gift for you -- I'm breaking down the five phases of an online product in an easy to use downloadable file. This is an overview of what steps -- what phases -- that product needs to go through before it's in the hands of your next customer. <h3>What if you want to refer to your customers as clients or students or members?</h3> Totally just using "customers" as a placeholder -- the term you're going to use depends on the type of product that you are creating. For example, if you're a composer and you've created some sheet music, your online product may be a one time downloadable purchase. Let's set up a Shopify store or a shop on another platform. Or, maybe you are a choreographer and you want to teach people how to properly stretch.  An online course would be the perfect container for this content and your customers will be your students. Or, maybe you want to get together with all the other musicians in your town and put together a membership program where you get all sorts of different instruments or different styles and a multidisciplinary learning environment. We would then create a membership where people from all around the world could access the resources that are rich in your community. There are so many ways to go. <h3>The underlying theme is that we are going to expand your business online!</h3> There are a variety of reasons why an artist may choose to get into teaching or instruction. And there are also many reasons why you may choose to expand online and let's give you three of those right now.  <ol> <li>Your studio is maxed out.  You cannot take on any more students, because there's only so many hours in the day. There's only so many hours that the students are actually available to invest time in their art. So expanding your business allows you to serve many students in the online space through courses or virtual lessons.</li> <li>You've maxed out your local community. You've got to a point where everybody in your town has taken them.  And maybe they know somebody three towns over who wants to take your class, but can't drive in and physically be at your studio. So by expanding online, you're really opening up the opportunity to have more students, more people that you work with in that variety.</li> <li>Reduce number of hours worked. Leveraging the online space allows you to stop working so many hours. When you expand online, you open the doors to some level of passive income. Passive income is elusive, and is not truly passive. We will get into that a whole lot more. </li> </ol> By bringing your business online or an element of your business (a passion of yours or a subset of your business) online and expanding in that way, you make it so that you can touch more people's artistic hearts than you would be able to if you're simply trading time for money. <h3>I am so so excited about expanding online and bringing the online space to the artistic community and making it so that your art style gains a larger audience.</h3> Now here's the dirty truth: I don't even know who I'm going to be attracting with this message! <ul> <li>I don't know who you are yet!</li> <li>I want to know what you teach and what your passions are.</li> <li>I want to know why you create art.</li> <li>How can I help you expand online? </li> </ul> <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/multiply/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Click here to get an email where you can download the five phases of an online product workbook.</a>  When you do, you'll get an email from me with the link to download... and go beyond downloading and reply to that email!  Let me know how I can support you through the podcast through emails through the Facebook group, which also is called Expand Online.   And if you haven't yet -- join the Expand Online : Strategy, Support and TECH community which you can access at <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/community" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">techofbusiness.com/community</a>. I'll be able to let you right on in. You can ask your questions and meet other professionals. I am just so inspired by your gift to the world. It is my wish that together we get that to your next phase of clients. Get that to your online audience.  <h3>And a final note...</h3> I have seen so many amazing art instructors, art teachers, choreographers, musicians, and culinary artists. And I have seen so much beautiful art on Instagram. I've seen so many instructional videos on YouTube. Those are pathways to profit. Those are not the profit generation sources themselves. So if you have a strong YouTube presence or have a strong Instagram presence, that is a fabulous foundation to help you successfully expand online.  <h3>Connect with Jaime:</h3> <ul> <li>Expand Online Freebie: <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/multiply/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Five Phases of an Online Product Workbook</a></li> <li>Instagram: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/techofbusiness" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@techofbusiness</a></li> <li>Twitter: <a href="https://www.twitter.com/techofbusiness" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@techofbusiness</a></li> <li>Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/yourbiztech/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@yourbiztech</a></li> <li>LinkedIn: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaimeslutzky/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaimeslutzky/</a></li> <li>Email: <a href="mailto:jaime@techofbusiness.com" rel="nofollow">jaime@techofbusiness.com</a></li> </ul>

Expand Online - FOR Artists

Today's topic is probably the one that I get into the most with my clients as we get beyond content creation and they know that the vision is going to become a reality… we’re discussing what is needed to effectively administer and deliver your online course. Often the easiest part of an online course is the content – it’s really everything else that goes into the course that feels daunting. And that’s because it’s new and different and most course creators don’t have a strategist or mentor or adviser to help them get from idea to active selling. And that’s really what we’re going to break down in this episode. Part 1: Delivery There are dozens of different tools that are designed to fulfill the delivery. And truly, the exact set of tools you choose will work and it could look different than someone else who is listening to this podcast right now. There is no one right set of tools. It’s more important to know what content we need to deliver and when we get to the second half of this episode, we’ll focus on tools more… Course delivery consists of content delivery, encouragement delivery, feedback delivery and over-delivery. If you’ve listened to the podcast for any length of time, you know how much I love to overdeliver… but I really should talk about the other facets of delivery first. Content delivery. This is where your actual course material is presented to your students. Course content is best delivered in a methodical, organized and logical manner. The first thing I have most of my clients do is to put their course outline into their course delivery platform of choice. This might be a WordPress site with a learning management plugin, an all-in-one platform that provides a course delivery mechanism or a dedicated course delivery platform. Once you have your outline in place, then it’s time to look at that outline and figure out how you’d like to guide and support your students through that outline.  Are you going to give them the ability to jump around the material? Are you going to require them to finish everything in order. Perhaps you’ll have sections of content that they can do in whatever order makes sense to them and then they can move on by passing a quiz or completing a survey.  I like to have a good idea how people are going to progress through the outline so that I can identify where I might want to send encouragement emails, offer my feedback on their progress or otherwise. When we put ourselves into the shoes of our students without getting sucked into the content itself, it’s much easier to create our administration plan. We can always add more administration as the course gets closer to launch. The key here is to identify when and how we’re going to give our students the material they need to succeed and take action. Another part of course delivery is complimentary or tangential delivery mechanisms.  What are we providing via email? Is content being presented in multiple formats? What is downloadable versus streaming only? Are there any other platforms that we are going to use within the course delivery. (this one is really asking if you’re going to do Zoom calls or Facebook Lives inside a group for your students to host Q&amp;A sessions or office hours.)  I would really love to do a deep dive Q&amp;A type episode on course delivery – what questions do you have? Send them over to me on Instagram @jaimeslutzky or via email to jaime@techofbusiness.com – and if you would like to have your voice on air, send them over as an audio file 😊 Feedback, encouragement and over-delivery and what the heck I mean by them! I was speaking with my friend Dana, she’s in LA and loves the idea of potentially learning from teachers in other parts of the country… but her biggest hesitation of not being in studio with her teacher is how to get the hands on and one-on-one feedback about her work in progress. And that’s really where I started to dig deep into how to do effective feedback with an online course. I have come up with several mechanisms –  An online community or forum where feedback can be provided by peers, mentors and instructors A structure for uploading work in progress within the framework of the course Unstructured but readily available upload functionality for students to use on their schedule  And of course, there is also the option to do a combination of the three. It somewhat depends on the topic of instruction and the type of work the students are creating. Ariane Cap that I interviewed back in the fall teaches the bass in her online course. She needs her students to be able to send her audio and video files for feedback. Whereas Mr. Mo who I also interviewed around the same time helps artists become storyboard artists – and he needs to see what his students are creating, so they need to be able to upload images and graphics. Once the material is uploaded, how are you as the instructor going to provide feedback… it might be audio or video or image or text. And here again, this is why we want to define feedback delivery before students are begging for it! Encouragement delivery is equally important. We want our students to continue to make their way through the content and it’s so easy for them to get sidetracked by life and shifting priorities. Knowing the most likely points where  your students are going to appreciate “keep it going” type messages and “you did it” type messages. “You did it” messages help your students see that you care and that you are watching their progress where as “keep it going” messages might be the difference between someone putting your course on the backburner and pushing through a difficult module! How good does it feel to know well in advance what sticking points will likely arise for your students and already have a plan for getting them through them? And those times when we plan to over-deliver – well, those are giving bonus material that will help the student or a personal message or otherwise helping them get more out of their purchase. One or maybe two bonuses is all your students need to convert them into lifelong clients. One thing that makes over-delivery different than feedback and encouragement delivery is that you can have a pool of potential bonuses and pull them out on a student to student basis. One student might get a bonus lesson or bonus course based on the progress they have made in this course or another student might get a discount code for a one-on-one call with you because they are getting confused by a methodology or strategy that you are presenting. I hope you can see how delivery and timing are important facets to administering your online course! Course administration Let’s get into the second part of this episode which is the actual administration of the students, the platform and course progress. I know, I know, you want me to tell you what platform to use. But I’m not going to. If you’re starting completely from scratch with absolutely nothing online yet, then we’ll evaluate Thinkific and MemberVault to determine which one of those is the best starting point for you. Those links are to podcast mini-series I did on each of these platforms. I generally recommend these two platforms above others because they check all the boxes for what you are going to want and need. They both are great for content delivery and integrate well with ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign which are my preferred email marketing platforms. We need there to be a strong integration between the course content platform and the email marketing platform to be able to implement the delivery administration! So, those are four platforms for you to start looking at. Another reason I tend towards Thinkific and MemberVault is because those platforms have user password management functionality built in. If a student has the login url but cannot remember their password, it’s straightforward for students to be able to reset their password without involving you. This is a major headache we can absolutely avoid – you’re welcome! Active administration means taking time each day or each week to review student progress or lack thereof, posing discussion questions in your Facebook group or other online forum, answering content and technology related questions, finding and patching holes, offering workarounds or advanced techniques. But most of all it’s a matter of making sure that you are visible – because the people who buy and enjoy your first course are far more likely to buy your next course and recommend you to their friends and family. I personally like to have the tools in place to make it super easy to spot what I need to spot regarding student progress. While built in tools inside platforms work really well, I’ve found that spreadsheets often work that much better. Sometimes it’s just a matter of asking the platform to output a CSV file with student progress on it, other times I use Zapier to pull and organize the content for me. When you’re just starting to administer your course, especially if your enrollment is people you already have a relationship with, it’s sometimes super challenging to push yourself to do it the way you developed in your systems and processes. But it’s so worth it – when we put the foundations in right, it’s so much easier to grow and iterate. I cannot wait to see what you do with your courses and I’m totally open to answering any questions you have about administering your course or anything else related to getting your courses online! Just send me a message over on Instagram – I just changed my username to @jaimeslutzky ~ it would be amazing if you could send me a quick DM letting me know you saw the change! I look forward to hearing about all your online successes. Thanks for listening and reading these notes! And I love getting to know podcast listeners, so connect with me on any of the platforms listed here:  Download the Online Product Phases Instagram: @jaimeslutzky Facebook: @yourbiztech The Expand Online Community on Facebook Email: jaime@techofbusiness.com Contact Page: https://techofbusiness.com/contact/ 

Today's topic is probably the one that I get into the most with my clients as we get beyond content creation and they know that the vision is going to become a reality… we’re discussing what is needed to effectively administer and deliver your online course. Often the easiest part of an online course is the content – it’s really everything else that goes into the course that feels daunting. And that’s because it’s new and different and most course creators don’t have a strategist or mentor or adviser to help them get from idea to active selling. <h3>And that’s really what we’re going to break down in this episode.</h3> <h2>Part 1: Delivery</h2> There are dozens of different tools that are designed to fulfill the delivery. And truly, the exact set of tools you choose will work and it could look different than someone else who is listening to this podcast right now. There is no one right set of tools. It’s more important to know what content we need to deliver and when we get to the second half of this episode, we’ll focus on tools more… Course delivery consists of content delivery, encouragement delivery, feedback delivery and over-delivery. If you’ve listened to the podcast for any length of time, you know how much I love to overdeliver… but I really should talk about the other facets of delivery first. <h4>Content delivery.</h4> This is where your actual course material is presented to your students. Course content is best delivered in a methodical, organized and logical manner. The first thing I have most of my clients do is to put their course outline into their course delivery platform of choice. This might be a WordPress site with a learning management plugin, an all-in-one platform that provides a course delivery mechanism or a dedicated course delivery platform. Once you have your outline in place, then it’s time to look at that outline and figure out how you’d like to guide and support your students through that outline. <ul> <li>Are you going to give them the ability to jump around the material?</li> <li>Are you going to require them to finish everything in order.</li> <li>Perhaps you’ll have sections of content that they can do in whatever order makes sense to them and then they can move on by passing a quiz or completing a survey.</li> </ul> I like to have a good idea how people are going to progress through the outline so that I can identify where I might want to send encouragement emails, offer my feedback on their progress or otherwise. When we put ourselves into the shoes of our students without getting sucked into the content itself, it’s much easier to create our administration plan. We can always add more administration as the course gets closer to launch. The key here is to identify when and how we’re going to give our students the material they need to succeed and take action. Another part of course delivery is complimentary or tangential delivery mechanisms. <ul> <li>What are we providing via email?</li> <li>Is content being presented in multiple formats?</li> <li>What is downloadable versus streaming only?</li> <li>Are there any other platforms that we are going to use within the course delivery. (this one is really asking if you’re going to do Zoom calls or Facebook Lives inside a group for your students to host Q&amp;A sessions or office hours.)</li> </ul> I would really love to do a deep dive Q&amp;A type episode on course delivery – what questions do you have? Send them over to me on Instagram @<a href="https://instagram.com/jaimeslutzky/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">jaimeslutzky</a> or via email to <a href="mailto:jaime@techofbusiness.com" rel="nofollow">jaime@techofbusiness.com</a> – and if you would like to have your voice on air, send them over as an audio file 😊 <h4>Feedback, encouragement and over-delivery and what the heck I mean by them!</h4> I was speaking with my friend Dana, she’s in LA and loves the idea of potentially learning from teachers in other parts of the country… but her biggest hesitation of not being in studio with her teacher is how to get the hands on and one-on-one feedback about her work in progress. And that’s really where I started to dig deep into how to do effective feedback with an online course. I have come up with several mechanisms – <ul> <li>An online community or forum where feedback can be provided by peers, mentors and instructors</li> <li>A structure for uploading work in progress within the framework of the course</li> <li>Unstructured but readily available upload functionality for students to use on their schedule</li> </ul> And of course, there is also the option to do a combination of the three. It somewhat depends on the topic of instruction and the type of work the students are creating. Ariane Cap that I interviewed back in the fall teaches the bass in her online course. She needs her students to be able to send her audio and video files for feedback. Whereas Mr. Mo who I also interviewed around the same time helps artists become storyboard artists – and he needs to see what his students are creating, so they need to be able to upload images and graphics. Once the material is uploaded, how are you as the instructor going to provide feedback… it might be audio or video or image or text. And here again, this is why we want to define feedback delivery before students are begging for it! Encouragement delivery is equally important. We want our students to continue to make their way through the content and it’s so easy for them to get sidetracked by life and shifting priorities. Knowing the most likely points where  your students are going to appreciate “keep it going” type messages and “you did it” type messages. “You did it” messages help your students see that you care and that you are watching their progress where as “keep it going” messages might be the difference between someone putting your course on the backburner and pushing through a difficult module! <h3>How good does it feel to know well in advance what sticking points will likely arise for your students and already have a plan for getting them through them?</h3> And those times when we plan to over-deliver – well, those are giving bonus material that will help the student or a personal message or otherwise helping them get more out of their purchase. One or maybe two bonuses is all your students need to convert them into lifelong clients. One thing that makes over-delivery different than feedback and encouragement delivery is that you can have a pool of potential bonuses and pull them out on a student to student basis. One student might get a bonus lesson or bonus course based on the progress they have made in this course or another student might get a discount code for a one-on-one call with you because they are getting confused by a methodology or strategy that you are presenting. I hope you can see how delivery and timing are important facets to administering your online course! <h2>Course administration</h2> Let’s get into the second part of this episode which is the actual administration of the students, the platform and course progress. I know, I know, you want me to tell you what platform to use. But I’m not going to. If you’re starting completely from scratch with absolutely nothing online yet, then we’ll evaluate <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/series/thinkific/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Thinkific</a> and <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/series/membervault/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">MemberVault</a> to determine which one of those is the best starting point for you. Those links are to podcast mini-series I did on each of these platforms. I generally recommend these two platforms above others because they check all the boxes for what you are going to want and need. They both are great for content delivery and integrate well with <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/convertkit/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">ConvertKit</a> and <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/activecampaign/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">ActiveCampaign</a> which are my preferred email marketing platforms. We need there to be a strong integration between the course content platform and the email marketing platform to be able to implement the delivery administration! So, those are four platforms for you to start looking at. Another reason I tend towards <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/thinkific/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Thinkific</a> and <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/mv/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">MemberVault</a> is because those platforms have user password management functionality built in. If a student has the login url but cannot remember their password, it’s straightforward for students to be able to reset their password without involving you. This is a major headache we can absolutely avoid – you’re welcome! Active administration means taking time each day or each week to review student progress or lack thereof, posing discussion questions in your Facebook group or other online forum, answering content and technology related questions, finding and patching holes, offering workarounds or advanced techniques. But most of all it’s a matter of making sure that you are visible – because the people who buy and enjoy your first course are far more likely to buy your next course and recommend you to their friends and family. I personally like to have the tools in place to make it super easy to spot what I need to spot regarding student progress. While built in tools inside platforms work really well, I’ve found that spreadsheets often work that much better. Sometimes it’s just a matter of asking the platform to output a CSV file with student progress on it, other times I use Zapier to pull and organize the content for me. When you’re just starting to administer your course, especially if your enrollment is people you already have a relationship with, it’s sometimes super challenging to push yourself to do it the way you developed in your systems and processes. But it’s so worth it – when we put the foundations in right, it’s so much easier to grow and iterate. I cannot wait to see what you do with your courses and I’m totally open to answering any questions you have about administering your course or anything else related to getting your courses online! Just send me a message over on Instagram – I just changed my username to @<a href="https://instagram.com/jaimeslutzky/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">jaimeslutzky</a> ~ it would be amazing if you could send me a quick DM letting me know you saw the change! I look forward to hearing about all your online successes. Thanks for listening and reading these notes! And I love getting to know podcast listeners, so connect with me on any of the platforms listed here: <ul> <li>Download the <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/onlineproduct/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Online Product Phases</a></li> <li>Instagram: @<a href="https://instagram.com/jaimeslutzky/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">jaimeslutzky</a></li> <li>Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/yourbiztech" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@yourbiztech</a></li> <li>The <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/community/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Expand Online Community</a> on Facebook</li> <li>Email: <a href="mailto:jaime@techofbusiness.com" rel="nofollow">jaime@techofbusiness.com</a></li> <li><a href="https://techofbusiness.com/contact/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Contact Page: https://techofbusiness.com/contact/</a></li> </ul>

106: How to efficiently deliver and  administer your online course

Lindsay Padilla

Have you ever thought about creating and teaching an online course, but thought it was just too much to take on? Or that there would be so much involved that you just couldn’t do it? Today we are talking with Dr. Lindsay Padilla the mastermind behind the Build a Better Beta Program. Lindsay’s program is all about creating a simple Beta course with minimal tech. Let’s get into it! Rather than starting with something new, Lindsay built her business from the in person classroom as a sociology professor at a community college.She recognized that entrepreneurs weren’t sure how to teach, organize content, and what technology that they needed in order to be able to deliver content. This led her to create her signature “Build a Better Beta” program. It’s all about how to launch a course as quickly/easily as possible with as little tech as possible. She is excited to help people who have been sitting on courses too long because of all the things they thought they had to have ready in order to launch their program. You grow your course based on the feedback. From the beta, not from what you think someone else wants to learn. You just need to put the idea out there and work collaboratively and iteratively with your first set of students. When someone comes to me and says, “Jaime, we need to get this out there.” My first response is to ask them how many phases that is launch. We need to get phase 1 out of the way as quickly as possible so we can learn:  what our students actually want where they get hung up where we need to expand and evolve  It’s funny, I never realized it before but as Lindsay pointed out, most of the time courses created by marketers are basically textbooks. That is, they are material but they are not true learning experiences and don’t reside in a construct for completion and implementation. “I believe courses are true learning experiences.”- Lindsay Padilla Lindsay wants to change this perception and create an actual learning environment similar to what you would get in a college course. In this space, there are multiple factors including the textbook. She’s reframing the idea of what it means to TEACH a course. If she gave you a textbook and said go learn this and then she tested you in a couple weeks how good would you do if all you had was a textbook? As you heard, Lindsay called me out on using the term “Minimum Viable Product” because it’s a software development term. A better beta is more like a minimum awesome course. What makes it awesome is that it’s an intimate co-creative experience. Lindsay’s program teaches her students to not pre record anything or pick a platform until you have live taught in a workshop setting because it helps you to really show up for the people that pay for your expertise. This gives you the most flexibility and allows you to truly listen to your students in a LIVE setting. You are allowed to charge money for this kind of experience. Phase one should really only be how can I get my students from point A to point B. You and your expertise are what is valuable NOT how fancy your graphics are. It’s truly about you and your students. We all know there are so many tech options out there for virtual courses. Most of the ones the gurus are using are going to work. But you can get stuck in the weeds with this little detail of which platform they should be on. I see people crowdsourcing on social media all the time... asking things like what platform they should be on. This is where I pop in and say, “Can we have a conversation about this?” If I know where someone wants to be in 6 months to a year I can easily suggest 2-3 pieces of software to help them get there. But if I’m one comment in a thread of 400 comments, my value isn’t demonstrated. Those people are no more clear than when they asked the question in the group. What is the fastest way to get someone from “what they want” to “seeing the result”? In this online space, a lot of our validation comes from outside. The issue with this is that it puts doubt in the minds of people who really do have information that they could teach -- they ask themselves questions like am I qualified enough? Lindsay has found that her customers are largely already very credible. Therefore, the thing that is truly going to move their business forward is starting to serve people. Lindsay and I both see would-be online creators put tiny decisions like choosing a platform in their way just so they can avoid the real true hard work of putting yourself out there and selling something. People are trying to avoid rejection. Predictably, the biggest fear is often that nobody is going to buy your course. Which leads to a mindset spiral.. If someone doesn’t buy our course then the knowledge we are offering isn’t valuable. It’s not possible to avoid these fears. But we do need minimize the emotional/mental toll regarding the results. And then we can realize that this result is not connected to what we actually know and our value. We are literally JUST testing out a product. If no one buys your course,your material is likely not the issue. It’s likely the marketing message not the content!! The mindset of running a beta is that you are collecting data. If you sit around deciding which platform to use then you never collect that data. Time is money. You just need to start teaching... that’s where the value is. Let’s go back to the textbook reference. The teachers who teach classes are excellent teachers because they are teaching what they know and they are using the textbook as a reference. I could write your textbook and you could teach and we could not ever have any contact. But you might be far more successful than I am at TEACHING the material because you have made a connection with your audience. You have sold them into your philosophy on how to interpret this material. This is something that sticks out to me. I work in the back end of a lot of courses making sure that everything fits together so the content is delivered correctly and on schedule. Technology can either enhance or ruin good teaching because it is the tool to create the experience. When Lindsay is recommending tools for her students she keeps it as minimum as possible. She tends to recommend things like:  Google Docs- workbooks, lesson planning, being able to edit the doc live on the fly when something comes to you. Using Google Docs creates flexibility in the first stages. Zoom Pro- making sure you can record a video and be a workshop style thing when delivering content. Getting the package that allows you to livestream is great if you can do it.  “If the textbook is the content you are creating, then Facebook is the classroom where they can talk to each other and get to know you a little better.”- Lindsay Padilla Lindsay likes to stream the workshops directly into the Facebook group for a beta course. This way there is no need to worry about recording video and uploading and details like that. Another benefit is that some students can’t attend a Zoom event because of their internet or download situation but can easily (and often LOVE) attending on Facebook. And this also allows the Facebook post to house the session comments. That opens up engagement! Everything that Lindsay teaches in Build a Better Beta is designed to make it easy for students/clients to have success and help you improve on your initial ideas. Yup -- we’re going there → One of the messiest aspects of online courses is collecting payment. In the early days of “Build a Better Beta” before moving to MemberVault, Lindsay taught people to use a Paypal.Me link. But when it came to setting up a payment plan or subscription, it got a little messy. Then she started working with MemberVault. This platform does some really great things. AND all of the premium features are available for you to use up to 50 members. I ran a full series on MemberVault which you can access here. Most of Lindsay’s students Beta programs are less than 50 people. Membervault has been such a game changer because of all the integrations it allows. It also allows you to create payment plans for people who need that and you just send them a link. It’s so easy! I was seriously blown away when Lindsay dropped this brilliance on the podcast. This use of MemberVault is genius. She teaches her students to use one element of MemberVault and not worry about the other {amazing} features. This doesn’t differ from one of my core values → keeping a very streamlined tech stack. That means keeping as few pieces of tech as possible. It’s also important to implement everything you possibly can with that system. What Lindsay is telling her students to do in phase one is to focus on and implement:  the payments work on your relationships teaching what makes value  Then once that phase is done, if your clients wanted this course off Facebook you put your content into MemberVault because they are already using it for their payments. I am not saying you have to implement everything in a system all at once. Rather, it’s more that have to exhaust that piece of software until it no longer serves you. I really like the fact Lindsay does a stair step approach when it comes to MemberVault like you would do with any other piece of software. Zoom - A powerful low cost solution Zoom is a very powerful tool. Zoom Webinar is the addon that allows you to livestream into Facebook. A Zoom meeting cannot be streamed, but a Zoom Webinar can. Using this addon, you are streamlining it for the user without adding a lot of complexity for the teacher. It does take the price of the tool from $15 a month to $55 a month. Zoom makes it really easy to remove this addon when you are done with your beta and add it back in when you’re ready to do another round of webinars or run your course again. . Most Beta program for Lindsey’s students are about 6-8 weeks long. Lindsay will ask her clients, “Is it worth investing $80 so you don’t have to do all the downloading, uploading, and allowing students to live attend?” For Lindsay it is because she knows the time it takes to do all those things. Lindsay teaches people to organize their Facebook group by units and modules. Facebook becomes the true classroom. It will have the workshop that she taught live, the Q&amp;A session she did separately, and maybe some relevant posts from her students all in one place. Live streaming your course into Facebook allows you organize your content so that someone can come in and quickly get the material they need. It’s saving her time to spend the $80 and she can turn it off really easily. “Paying for ease of use in tech...you are buying back your time.”- Lindsay Padilla There is a whole component that Facebook has added to their groups that Lindsay is taking advantage of to make it easier for her students. She is using a Facebook Group in a way that allows the modules. Facebook has become a great tool to recreate a classroom online without a huge amount of overhead. Lindsay just told the entire Tech of Business audience that they can launch a course and spend around $200. What a way to just get started! Maybe it’s time for me to create a course! Connect With Jaime:  Instagram: @techofbusiness Twitter: @techofbusiness Facebook: @yourbiztech LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaimeslutzky/ Email: jaime@techofbusiness.com  Connect with Lindsay:  Website: https://www.lindsaympadilla.com (might be under construction still) Instagram: @drlindsaypadilla Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drlindsaypadilla/ 

Have you ever thought about creating and teaching an online course, but thought it was just too much to take on? Or that there would be so much involved that you just couldn’t do it? Today we are talking with Dr. Lindsay Padilla the mastermind behind the Build a Better Beta Program. Lindsay’s program is all about creating a simple Beta course with minimal tech. <h3>Let’s get into it!</h3> Rather than starting with something new, Lindsay built her business from the in person classroom as a sociology professor at a community college.She recognized that entrepreneurs weren’t sure how to teach, organize content, and what technology that they needed in order to be able to deliver content. This led her to create her signature “Build a Better Beta” program. It’s all about how to launch a course as quickly/easily as possible with as little tech as possible. She is excited to help people who have been sitting on courses too long because of all the things they thought they had to have ready in order to launch their program. You grow your course based on the feedback. From the beta, not from what you think someone else wants to learn. You just need to put the idea out there and work collaboratively and iteratively with your first set of students. When someone comes to me and says, “Jaime, we need to get this out there.” My first response is to ask them how many phases that is launch. We need to get phase 1 out of the way as quickly as possible so we can learn: <ul> <li>what our students actually want</li> <li>where they get hung up</li> <li>where we need to expand and evolve</li> </ul> It’s funny, I never realized it before but as Lindsay pointed out, most of the time courses created by marketers are basically textbooks. That is, they are material but they are not true learning experiences and don’t reside in a construct for completion and implementation. “I believe courses are true learning experiences.”- Lindsay Padilla Lindsay wants to change this perception and create an actual learning environment similar to what you would get in a college course. In this space, there are multiple factors including the textbook. She’s reframing the idea of what it means to TEACH a course. If she gave you a textbook and said go learn this and then she tested you in a couple weeks how good would you do if all you had was a textbook? As you heard, Lindsay called me out on using the term “Minimum Viable Product” because it’s a software development term. A better beta is more like a minimum awesome course. What makes it awesome is that it’s an intimate co-creative experience. Lindsay’s program teaches her students to not pre record anything or pick a platform until you have live taught in a workshop setting because it helps you to really show up for the people that pay for your expertise. This gives you the most flexibility and allows you to truly listen to your students in a LIVE setting. You are allowed to charge money for this kind of experience. Phase one should really only be how can I get my students from point A to point B. <h3>You and your expertise are what is valuable NOT how fancy your graphics are. It’s truly about you and your students.</h3> We all know there are so many tech options out there for virtual courses. Most of the ones the gurus are using are going to work. But you can get stuck in the weeds with this little detail of which platform they should be on. I see people crowdsourcing on social media all the time... asking things like what platform they should be on. This is where I pop in and say, “Can we have a conversation about this?” If I know where someone wants to be in 6 months to a year I can easily suggest 2-3 pieces of software to help them get there. But if I’m one comment in a thread of 400 comments, my value isn’t demonstrated. Those people are no more clear than when they asked the question in the group. <h3>What is the fastest way to get someone from “what they want” to “seeing the result”?</h3> In this online space, a lot of our validation comes from outside. The issue with this is that it puts doubt in the minds of people who really do have information that they could teach -- they ask themselves questions like am I qualified enough? Lindsay has found that her customers are largely already very credible. Therefore, the thing that is truly going to move their business forward is starting to serve people. Lindsay and I both see would-be online creators put tiny decisions like choosing a platform in their way just so they can avoid the real true hard work of putting yourself out there and selling something. People are trying to avoid rejection. Predictably, the biggest fear is often that nobody is going to buy your course. Which leads to a mindset spiral.. If someone doesn’t buy our course then the knowledge we are offering isn’t valuable. It’s not possible to avoid these fears. But we do need minimize the emotional/mental toll regarding the results. And then we can realize that this result is not connected to what we actually know and our value. We are literally JUST testing out a product. If no one buys your course,your material is likely not the issue. It’s likely the marketing message not the content!! <h3>The mindset of running a beta is that you are collecting data.</h3> If you sit around deciding which platform to use then you never collect that data. Time is money. You just need to start teaching... that’s where the value is. Let’s go back to the textbook reference. The teachers who teach classes are excellent teachers because they are teaching what they know and they are using the textbook as a reference. I could write your textbook and you could teach and we could not ever have any contact. But you might be far more successful than I am at TEACHING the material because you have made a connection with your audience. You have sold them into your philosophy on how to interpret this material. This is something that sticks out to me. I work in the back end of a lot of courses making sure that everything fits together so the content is delivered correctly and on schedule. <h3>Technology can either enhance or ruin good teaching because it is the tool to create the experience.</h3> When Lindsay is recommending tools for her students she keeps it as minimum as possible. She tends to recommend things like: <ul> <li>Google Docs- workbooks, lesson planning, being able to edit the doc live on the fly when something comes to you. Using Google Docs creates flexibility in the first stages.</li> <li>Zoom Pro- making sure you can record a video and be a workshop style thing when delivering content. Getting the package that allows you to livestream is great if you can do it.</li> </ul> “If the textbook is the content you are creating, then Facebook is the classroom where they can talk to each other and get to know you a little better.”- Lindsay Padilla Lindsay likes to stream the workshops directly into the Facebook group for a beta course. This way there is no need to worry about recording video and uploading and details like that. Another benefit is that some students can’t attend a Zoom event because of their internet or download situation but can easily (and often LOVE) attending on Facebook. And this also allows the Facebook post to house the session comments. That opens up engagement! Everything that Lindsay teaches in Build a Better Beta is designed to make it easy for students/clients to have success and help you improve on your initial ideas. Yup -- we’re going there → One of the messiest aspects of online courses is collecting payment. In the early days of “Build a Better Beta” before moving to MemberVault, Lindsay taught people to use a <a href="http://Paypal.Me" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Paypal.Me</a> link. But when it came to setting up a payment plan or subscription, it got a little messy. Then she started working with MemberVault. This platform does some really great things. AND all of the premium features are available for you to use up to 50 members. <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/series/membervault/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">I ran a full series on MemberVault which you can access here.</a> Most of Lindsay’s students Beta programs are less than 50 people. Membervault has been such a game changer because of all the integrations it allows. It also allows you to create payment plans for people who need that and you just send them a link. It’s so easy! I was seriously blown away when Lindsay dropped this brilliance on the podcast. This use of MemberVault is genius. She teaches her students to use one element of MemberVault and not worry about the other {amazing} features. This doesn’t differ from one of my core values → keeping a very streamlined tech stack. That means keeping as few pieces of tech as possible. It’s also important to implement everything you possibly can with that system. What Lindsay is telling her students to do in phase one is to focus on and implement: <ul> <li>the payments</li> <li>work on your relationships</li> <li>teaching</li> <li>what makes value</li> </ul> Then once that phase is done, if your clients wanted this course off Facebook you put your content into MemberVault because they are already using it for their payments. I am not saying you have to implement everything in a system all at once. Rather, it’s more that have to exhaust that piece of software until it no longer serves you. I really like the fact Lindsay does a stair step approach when it comes to MemberVault like you would do with any other piece of software. <h3>Zoom - A powerful low cost solution</h3> Zoom is a very powerful tool. Zoom Webinar is the addon that allows you to livestream into Facebook. A Zoom meeting cannot be streamed, but a Zoom Webinar can. Using this addon, you are streamlining it for the user without adding a lot of complexity for the teacher. It does take the price of the tool from $15 a month to $55 a month. Zoom makes it really easy to remove this addon when you are done with your beta and add it back in when you’re ready to do another round of webinars or run your course again. . Most Beta program for Lindsey’s students are about 6-8 weeks long. Lindsay will ask her clients, “Is it worth investing $80 so you don’t have to do all the downloading, uploading, and allowing students to live attend?” For Lindsay it is because she knows the time it takes to do all those things. <h3>Lindsay teaches people to organize their Facebook group by units and modules.</h3> Facebook becomes the true classroom. It will have the workshop that she taught live, the Q&amp;A session she did separately, and maybe some relevant posts from her students all in one place. Live streaming your course into Facebook allows you organize your content so that someone can come in and quickly get the material they need. It’s saving her time to spend the $80 and she can turn it off really easily. <h2>“Paying for ease of use in tech...you are buying back your time.”- Lindsay Padilla</h2> There is a whole component that Facebook has added to their groups that Lindsay is taking advantage of to make it easier for her students. She is using a Facebook Group in a way that allows the modules. Facebook has become a great tool to recreate a classroom online without a huge amount of overhead. Lindsay just told the entire Tech of Business audience that they can launch a course and spend around $200. What a way to just get started! Maybe it’s time for me to create a course! <h3>Connect With Jaime:</h3> <ul> <li>Instagram: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/techofbusiness" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@techofbusiness</a></li> <li>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/techofbusiness" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@techofbusiness</a></li> <li>Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/yourbiztech/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@yourbiztech</a></li> <li>LinkedIn: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaimeslutzky/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaimeslutzky/</a></li> <li>Email: <a href="mailto:jaime@techofbusiness.com" rel="nofollow">jaime@techofbusiness.com</a></li> </ul> <h3>Connect with Lindsay:</h3> <ul> <li>Website: <a href="https://www.lindsaympadilla.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.lindsaympadilla.com</a> (might be under construction still)</li> <li>Instagram: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/drlindsaypadilla/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@drlindsaypadilla</a></li> <li>Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/drlindsaypadilla/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/drlindsaypadilla/</a></li> </ul>

070: Creating Your Online Classroom with Lindsay Padilla

It's super important to make sure you have a solid online product idea before you start to create it. This episode highlights several ways to perform product validation (and this comes WAY before pre-selling!!) Connect with Jaime and share your feedback:  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techofbusiness/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yourbiztech/ Expand Online Community: https://techofbusiness.com/community/ Email: jaime@techofbusiness.com  

It's super important to make sure you have a solid online product idea before you start to create it. This episode highlights several ways to perform product validation (and this comes WAY before pre-selling!!) <h3>Connect with Jaime and share your feedback:</h3> <ul> <li>Instagram: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/techofbusiness/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.instagram.com/techofbusiness/</a></li> <li>Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/yourbiztech/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/yourbiztech/</a></li> <li>Expand Online Community: <a href="https://techofbusiness.com/community/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://techofbusiness.com/community/</a></li> <li>Email: <a href="mailto:jaime@techofbusiness.com" rel="nofollow">jaime@techofbusiness.com</a> </li> </ul>

102: Knowing when  an online product idea is worth pursuing  and why validation is key.

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