1: 3 Steps to Overcome the Fear of Launching your Online Course

Welcome to the Course Creators MBA podcast. I'm your host, Destiny Kopp. And in this podcast, we're going to cover actionable tips to help you grow your online course business. And today, we're going to cover three steps to overcome the fear of launching your online course. And I've had so many entrepreneurs come to me after they've bought course after course. They bought program after program, but they never launched their online course into the market. Others had launched their course once or twice, but they didn't get the results they wanted and they were scared to take the next step. And after speaking with these entrepreneurs, I found that there were several mindset blocks holding them back. Some of them were, and this is a big one here, they think that they were charging too much for their online course, so they thought it was too expensive, and that's why people won't buy it. And what I always tell them is, do not undervalue your course just because you assume someone else cannot afford it. Remember that people will pay you to get the transformation they need. We just need to make sure it's properly communicated in the marketing material. Another one was they were waiting for the perfect time to launch their course. What I found is that there's never a right time and your online course launch will never be perfect. Your online course, you'll continue to tweak it, but what I found is that you only learn by taking action. You launch your course and then you tweak as needed by reviewing the data and the feedback. Another question or mindset block that they have is, should I do X first? Like write a book? And that's a big one to build my expertise in the market and then launch my course. So my advice on this is I do not want you to get sidetracked by the next shiny object. If you want to publish a book, but you haven't gotten your paid offer into the market yet, I want you to focus on what will make you money and sustain your business and family. Then, when the time is right, you can continue to work on your other goals, like writing a book. And one of the biggest ones or biggest mindset blocks was, I am scared no one will buy my online course. And almost everybody has the fear of failure. We think of the embarrassment of low or no online course sales. But I always ask, you know, what is the worst that can happen? The reality is you'll have a few core cells and you'll be able to review your data and figure out what to do to improve upon in your next launch. So let's talk about what we need to do to overcome what mindset blocks. And I really want to make this actionable for you today. So what we're going to start with, we're going to start with one of your goals. Because when you set a goal, and a goal is anything that moves your business forward from status quo, kind of where you are today. So point A to where you want to be in the future, which is point B, it can be a revenue goal, an enrolled student goal, launch your course by X date goal, or putting your course in an automated evergreen sales funnel. And when you set a goal like this, what happens is your mind starts hearing all of these reasons why you can't do it right? So let's make it very actionable. And I'm just going to talk about a goal here, and we're going to use this as an example in this episode. So a goal that I hear a lot from course creators is that they want to make $10,000 per month through their automated evergreen online course sales funnel. Okay? So whenever they set a goal like that, immediately your brain will start telling you why it won't work. And these are obstacle thoughts. So that's what you're hearing. So your brain starts saying all of the reasons why we've tried this in the and why it won't work for the future. So an obstacle thought, or anything that produces a block to keep you from meeting your goal. And we're going to talk about three steps to overcome the fear of launching or relaunching your online course by working through all of these obstacle thoughts and how to turn it around into actionable thoughts items. So step number one is, after you've made your goal and your brain starts talking to you, I want you to write all of these obstacle thoughts down. So when your mind starts producing these thoughts, I want you to listen to it. Listen to what your mind is telling you, and we're going to turn this list into strategies to help you achieve your goal. And again, the goal that we're talking about here in this episode as an example is $10,000 revenue per month from your online course. So your brain may say, I don't know how to find 10 students per month, or I don't know how to do a webinar, or I don't know how to set up my sales funnel, or I've tried Facebook ads in the past and they didn't work, or I don't feel comfortable transitioning my sales pitch during my webinar and asking for the now all of the obstacle thoughts are going to be different for each of us because we've had different experiences in the past. But you write down all of your obstacle thoughts, that is step one. And then in step two, we are going to translate these obstacle thoughts into goals. And remember that obstacles do not block the path. They are the path. So we're going to use these obstacle thoughts as the path. You achieve goals by overcoming obstacles. So first I want you to think about what do I need to do to overcome these obstacles. And this is when these obstacles become strategies. So going back to our example, let's assume that your obstacle thoughts are number one. I don't trust Facebook ads to gain leads. Therefore, I don't believe I can find enough prospects for my sales funnel. Or I don't feel comfortable doing a live webinar and transitioning to a sales pitch at the end just makes me feel icky. Or I don't know how to audit my sales funnel to figure out what's working and what's not working. So what we're going to do, we're going to take each of these obstacle thoughts and we're going to translate them into strategies. So what you would do, you would look for solutions, such as for the first one, when we're talking about I don't trust Facebook ads, a strategy would be I need to improve my knowledge of Facebook ads. If you were talking about I don't feel comfortable doing a live webinar and transitioning to a sales pitch at the end makes me feel icky. A strategy would be I need to improve my webinar and presentation and sales skills. Or if your obstacle thought was I don't know how to audit my sales funnel to figure out what's working and what's not working, a strategy would be to improve your data analysis skills for your sales funnel. Now, step three is my favorite one because this is when you will write down all the actions you are going to take and you're going to make them measurable. So you're going to put a date on them. So the first one was that we're talking about here. In our example, we need to improve our knowledge of Facebook ads. So your tactics here could be any and number of these. You could search for a program, a coach, a course that helps you really understand how to run Facebook ads so that they convert. You could test out a few Facebook ads and tweak them until you find a formula for you that converts. Or you can review the ads of your competitors that are converting well and you can modify Again, not copy but modify for your business or online course and how you make it measurable. You put a date in there, launch your Facebook ads, buy X Date. The second one you need to improve your webinar presentation and sales skills, your tactics. One could be practice, practice and practice right on friends, your family, your pet. Or you could find a program that helps you structure your webinar so it doesn't feel icky or salesy. And your action would be to launch a webinar by X date. You know, really just putting a stake in the ground and moving forward so you can learn from it. The third one was to improve your data analysis skills for your sales funnel. So your tactics may be you can review blog posts, you can review podcasts or any other free resources. You could talk to friends. You can invest in a program that walks you through how to audit and tweak your sales funnel to make it actionable. You put the dates in the ground, conduct a sales funnel audit by X date and make any necessary improvements by X date. So what is so magical about this process? What I love about it is that you're learning along the way. Achieving your goals is all about self improvement. It's the process of growing, learning and moving your business and yourself forward from where you are today, which is point B to point B. And I always want you to remember obstacles are put in your way to see if what you want is really worth fighting for. I hope you enjoyed this episode and bye for now.