#107 - Stop doing these things if you want a 6-figure course…

And if you do that and keep doing it and focus on those few steps and making each of those steps amazing, you are going to see so much more progress, so much more momentum and it's going to make such a freaking difference.

This is the Doing It Online podcast with your host, serial entrepreneur, 6 and 7 figure funnel strategist and super nerd Kate McKibben. Where every week we're here talking, nerdy and sharing the things that actually work to help you do what you do online. But better, easier and with a ton more profit too. Are you ready? Let's do it.

Hey, hey, there it is. Kate here from hellofunnels and welcome to episode number 107 of the Doing It Online podcast. Today we're going to be talking about the things that you need to just freaking stop doing if you want to grow and scale your online course to whether it's six figures, multi, six figures, seven figures, whatever your big dream is, it's going to be a whole lot easier if you are not doing these things. Now, before we dive into the juicy stuff I wanted to shout from the virtual rooftops or is that audio rooftops? I'm not sure, but I wanted to do it anyway. That our much raved about six figure school live six day marketing and sales workshop. Try saying that six times fast. Designed just for course creators and course craze to be who want to crack that six figure ceiling and well beyond, preferably in the next 12 months or less. Well, the doors are officially open and for just a few more days you can jump on in, grab yourself a ticket and a virtual seat for just $33 which is half price. So if you want to come out with me, come out. Come hang out with me and my team. If you want to sit down together, have a virtual wine, map out your own six figure plus sales and marketing plan for your online course, including step by step, exactly what you need to do to be selling more courses in a reliable, sustainable and enjoyable way. Then you want to head to hellofunnels co school or grab the link down in the show notes. We kick off on July 25, so make sure you jump in now, grab your seat and I will see you inside. Okay, you done that. Great. Now onto today's episode. So as I said, today is about the things that you need to stop doing. These are the things I see people doing again and again. This is things I see clients doing, friends even doing that I know are getting in your way because I've seen what happens when people stop doing them or When I've stopped doing them in my own business. And I'm not coming in here being any holier than thou, you know, never make mistakes kind of person. These are 100% all mistakes I have made as well. I want to just kick off with that. So please know that I am saying this with love and if any of this does resonate, please write it on the post. It's stick it on a wall. So the very first thing that I need you to stop doing if you are wanting to create or scale a six figure course is you need to stop making it so freaking complicated. Please, please, please, please stop creating and launching multiple courses every year. Now I'm guilty of that. I told you I'm guilty of all of these things. Please stop trying to do weird crazy launches where you're doing something new and different every time. Please stop trying to make funnels that have got 15 different entry points and different. You don't need to do any of that. If you're sub six figures, you shouldn't be doing any of that. You need to take a step back. You need to create a doc somewhere which is shiny ideas doc. And every time you have a shiny new idea, you just write it down there and you can come back and look at it in a few months and see if it still seems desirable. And then you need to create a plan. You need to go, okay, what is the program or programs Max? Two. Okay guys, no more than two that I am going to be focusing on, that I'm going to go all in on. What is the best way for me to get the message out there and get people excited about and let people know about and get. People have had enough education and experience about this program that they want to jump in and join it if it is the right time for them. What is the simplest way that I can do that again and again and again. So whether it's a funnel, whether it's a launch, whether it's a combo of the two, it's about peeling it back, it's about taking out these multiple paths, multiple variations, multiple routes and going how do I get from A to B in as few steps as possible. And if you do that and keep doing it and focus on those few steps and making each of those steps amazing, you are going to see so much more progress, so much more momentum and it's going to make such a freaking difference. So step number one, please, please, please stop making it so complicated. Step number two is stop being a perfectionist. You just got to stop it right now. Your course will never be perfect. Your sales page will never be perfect. And you spending three and a half weeks going back and forth and getting 25 people's opinions on that sales page, on your course layout, it's probably going to improve it maybe a small fraction, but all of a sudden is taking up a bunch of your time, slowed down your momentum and your progress and it's gotten in your way. Just get it out there. You can fix it later. You will always be fixing it. Okay? You'll always go, that sales page that you once thought was amazing and perfect, in six months time, you're gonna look at it and go, oh, maybe I don't like those colors or I don't like those pictures, or we need to add this. Or I saw this on another sales page, I thought it was amazing. I think we should add it into ours. That's just life. And again, remember that shiny new ideas file? You need to put a lot of that stuff in there and go, I'm not going to spend my precious time, spend my precious energy and resources because again, if you're under six figures, you're probably doing most of this stuff yourself. So I need you to be focusing on the things that make an impact, not the things that make a tiny, tiny little difference. That's called procrastinating. We all do it. But you need to get better at recognizing when you're doing it and bring yourself back to the tasks that actually make a difference. The tasks that help you make sales, help you make more money, help you deliver an amazing experience to your clients. That's pretty much the only stuff you should be doing. Number three is Dr. Procrastina. I should have, I should have read my notes. But not just with this perfectionism stuff, but with, you know, your social media, your branding, your website. Trust me, it doesn't matter. A perfect grid does not make you more freaking sales. I've seen there's plenty of millionaires out there with really ugly grids. Okay, guys, I've seen sales pages and websites that are hideous, that colors are terrible, they don't look that good, they look like someone designed them on paint in the 90s, but they still exist and people are making money out of them. So, you know, there's obviously there's always. It needs to have the right information, it needs to load quickly on mobile. But going in, getting distracted by a pretty new theme that you've seen or wanting to update something because you've seen it somewhere else. All of that stuff, guys, it's what they call Little, small rocks. So when it comes to making big impact, making those big moves, getting some cut through, particularly at the start, particularly when you're doing it yourself and your time and resources and energy are limited. When you're sitting down and going, okay, this is what I'm doing today. You need to be focusing on the things that going to move you forward, not the things that are going to be like, oh, well, this is kind of fun. That shade of pink's been bothering me for a while now. I've seen it too many times. I want a new shade of pink or I'm going to swap to green or whatever it is that, you know, your justification is. Now I do want to just say that sometimes in business we do need an outlet. We need a creative outlet or just a non stressful thing that we can just play and have a bit of fun. And if, you know, for me, I love the design side of things. I love going in and, you know, redesigning a page or whatever. I do know that it is not a productive thing for me to be doing, but sometimes just to fill up my cup, give me a little bit of joy, that's okay. But it's more just coming down to like, how much time are you spending on these things? Majority of your time should be spent on those big rocks, those needle movers. Unless you're having one of those days where you're like, stuff it. I hate everything. I'm feeling burnt out. I just need to do something fun. Then go do it. But spending 45 minutes or hours every day scrolling through Instagram or rearranging your feed or trying to find that perfect shade of influencer pink, it's just not. None of that stuff matters, guys. Okay? So just ignore it. Even once you've got a team, none of that stuff matters. So we just need to be focusing on what is actually important. Number four, the fourth thing you need to stop doing if you want to crack six figures and beyond is you need to stop thinking that lower price or cheaper is easier to sell. So, so many times inside our program equals empire. We have people come in and they're like, oh, you know, we've got all these ideas for programs. It's great. I love ideas. I love people with big ideas. This is our favorite people to work with, you know, and we love helping them bring those ideas to life. But so often people like, well, I've got this idea for this amazing program. It's going to be, you know, like a big juicy media program. But I've also got this other idea for this $97 off. Maybe I should do that first. Or maybe they're like, well, I've got this program, it hasn't been selling very well. Maybe I should reduce the price. Maybe I should turn it into a low price membership instead. You know, there's always this sort of like knee jerk reaction to go cheaper first or that cheaper is easier. Now I do want again, Chuck, in one of my famous caveats, that if you are completely brand new to the online space and you've never sold anything online and you're not earning a decent amount of revenue or getting your revenue bump is not priority number one. Like you have a bit of breathing space. Maybe this is just your side hustle for now. You've. Or maybe you're working one on one still and you know this is a longer game, which it is. But really you're just kind of wanting to test the waters, to kind of learn how it all works, set something up for the first time, see what happens, see how checkout works, a shopping cart works, how to build a sales page, all that stuff. That is what we call a toe dip product. That is the only time where I would say, okay, do a toe dip product. Do you $97 product first. Just do it, learn the lessons, try it out, see how it feels, get a few runs on the board. And then when you're feeling a bit more confident, when you've kind of figured out some of that back end logistical stuff. So you're going to be able to then apply that next time to a bigger program, then move on to the bigger program. But 99% of the time that's not the case. 99% of the time people are like, oh, I want to do the cheaper thing because I think it will be easier because I think more people will buy it. And the problem is they haven't actually stopped and done the maths. And you need to do the maths. You always need to stop and do the maths. Whatever your goal is. Whenever you're coming up with a product idea, just stop for a second and do some basic calculations of okay, for this to be worthwhile. Worthwhile for me putting in my time, putting in my effort, for me to be going out there and you know, it taking up time in my emails and in my social that I'm going to be not able to talk about something else for this to be worthwhile. It probably is probably a dollar figure that it needs to be giving back to you in that first, you know, maybe 612 months. So that would Be your sort of that first goal. And when you look at that goal and go, okay, well, how many sales at this price point do I need to make and how likely is it I'm going to make those sales given how many people have on my email list, how much budget I have for paid ads, how big my network is, you know, all of those kind of things. Because the truth is, selling a $2,000 program is not 10 times harder than selling a $200 program. It's maybe one and a half times more difficult. So your conversion rates are not going to. Because you drop your price down to 10%. They're not your conversion rates don't follow it equally. You. It's not even. You'll probably end up making slightly more sales numbers wise of that lower ticket offer if you dropped your price. But you're going to have a whole lot less profit and a lot more customers who are needing your time, needing your energy, and potentially a whole different type of customer because, you know, different price points do attract people at different stages. So think about that. Do the sense check go, oh, do I want to have 500 customers at $37 a pop to hit my goal every single month? Is that even possible? And what is it going to be like to serve 500 people? How's that energy exchange going to feel? Probably not going to feel that great. So point number four, you've heard me say it before, and you know I'm not saying go, all right, go create a $20,000 offer or anything like that. I'm just, just. You just need to remove that belief that making something cheaper will make it easier to sell or easier to deliver or easier to create, because it's not necessarily true at all. Yes, the pricing has to match the value, it has to match the market. But just slashing your prices in the hope it'll make your marketing easier, you're probably going to be sadly disappointed. Okay, last point. Point number five is you need to stop getting distracted. You need to sit down, you need to map out a plan. You need to make sure that that plan is actually a plan that is actually going to be likely to work. That's actually going to fit in with where you want your business to go. So I would recommend that you get some help with making that plan. You don't just sort of pull it out of the air or rip it off Google or Pinterest like you want to actually usually have some kind of mentor or coach or someone who can help you with that plan. But whatever it is, whether you're doing it yourself, you're doing it with help. You know, we do this every six months with our clients inside of ecosystem. We help them to sit down, to set their goals, to reverse engineer what needs to happen to hit those goals, both sales wise, both, you know, creation wise, promotion wise, launch wise, all that kind of stuff. So you need to sit down, you need to make that plan, and then you really need to stick to it. You really, really need to stick to it. Because it's not going to be an overnight thing. All of the cliches that you can think of to do with entrepreneurialism, it's, you know, it's never a straight line, it's a roller coaster, blah, blah, blah. The reason those are cliches, because they are true. I know when I made a big shift from, you know, I shut down a bunch of our programs, I went all in on what is now Ecourse Empire. It has had a few name changes and iterations over, over time, but when I went, I just want to be able to help people to create an amazing program to automate that, to start making regular, reliable sales. Like, I love funnels. I love sales and offers. I love marketing. I just want to go all in on this. When I made that decision and decided to move away from what I had been speaking about, I sat down, I made the plan, I went, okay, this is what the offer's gonna look like. This is what the price is gonna be. This is how many sales we need every month. This is gonna be how we're gonna promote it, how often we will launch it. That what our funnel is gonna be. I went, I created the opt in. I created the funnel. I did the first launch and, you know, we got some sales and it was great. But, you know, it was slow, it took time. And so often I got these great shiny new ideas coming in, like, oh, there's this Instagram strategy, or there's this, like, mini webinar or whatever it is. It took a lot of willpower to go, nope, nope, nope. I have my plan. I'm sticking to my plan. Because I knew that it has been one of those mistakes that I had made throughout my various businesses that did keep me stuck is that I was far too likely to jump on over to a new plan, a new idea. When things went a bit slower than I wanted them to, I was like, oh, that was an overnight success. Okay, get rid of it. New thing. And the problem with that is that you never get to be able to make anything better or master it because all you're doing is restarting. Which means everything is new, everything is untested, everything hasn't been iterated or improved. It's just that everything is a first draft. And your first draft is never your best work. So if you're wanting to master anything, and that is how you grow, by creating assets, by mastering these really important pieces of your business and stacking all that over time on top of each other, that's how you grow exponentially. It's not something some post on Instagram that gave you one little idea that you implemented and then boom, you're a millionaire. That happens to pretty much no one. You need to make your plan. You need to, you need to commit to the plan, make sure that plan works for you to start off with, that you feel confident in the plan, be okay, that it's going to take a little bit of time, stop getting distracted. Because the thing is, yes, even if you want it to happen tomorrow, it's not going to, it's going to take six months, 12 months, whatever. But that six and 12 months, it's actually going to go really fast. And when you get there and your plan that you followed has made you, moved you forward and gotten you like to your goals, beyond your goals, close to your goals, whatever it is, you're going to be so glad that you did it. Not, you know, 12 months down the track like that. 12 months is going to come regardless, right? 12 months down the track, you're going to be there and you're going to be like, oh, this new thing, I'm trying this new thing and you're still stuck at the start. We don't want that for you. You don't want that for you. That was my top five things, guys. Number one, stop making it so complicated. Number two, please stop being a perfectionist. Number three, stop procrastinating. Get an app that blocks all those sites you procrastive on if you need to. Number four, stop thinking cheaper is easier. It's 100% not. And number five, make a plan, stick to it and stop getting so distracted. So now you know what not to do. How about what you do need to do? Well, I got you there as well, of course. And that is exactly what we cover inside six figure school. As I mentioned before, it is our live and amazing six day sales and marketing workshop where yours truly will help you to literally map out plan out step by step, your six multi, six, even seven figure core sales and marketing plan. We're gonna help you to set those goals, make sure the right goals for you. Reverse eng engineer them. We're going to help you to update your office so they sell better. Set up your launch plan. Design the funnels that are going to work for you. Like it's insane the amount of stuff you're going to get through in just six days. It's kind of crazy that we are only charging what we are charging, but this stuff is so important. I want it to get in as many hands as possible. It's super value packed, really action focused and right now the doors are open and just for a few more days you can get yourself a ticket for a crazy low $33 which is half price. All kicks off on July 25th. Like I said, it's live. It's going to be super fun. Just head to hellofunnels co school or grab the link below, grab yourself a ticket and I will see you inside.

Thanks so much for listening to the Doing it online podcast. If you love this episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. And if you're ready to take your online course sales to the next level with your own six or seven figure funnel, let Kate show you exactly how today@StealMyFunnel.com.