#141 - 5 Biggest mistakes people make when launching their first course

If you're someone who really wants to help people, who's passionate, who I said you've done some hours, you are an expert, you have something to offer, you have value to bring. We want you to be able to do that and get rewarded when you do.

This is the Doing It Online podcast with your host, serial entrepreneur, six and seven 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.

Hello. Hello everybody. It is Kate here from hello funnels and welcome to the Doing It Online podcast. Now today we are talking the five biggest mistakes and most frustrating and I think soul crushing mistakes that we see people make when they're launching their first online course. And to be fair, it's not even just their first online course. People make these mistakes over and over again when they're launching online courses, creating online courses, and I'm here to shine a big light on them and tell you what to do instead. So the first big mistake, super common mistake and one look, to be fair that I have made myself many times, even though I know better, is they create what we call a kitchen sink course. And now a kitchen sink course is when you create an online program, online course doesn't matter whether it's a self study style signature course or a more premium offer or a membership, but where basically you throw everything into it and therefore it kind of becomes this jack of all trades, kind of good at everything, but not particularly good at one important thing. And that means it becomes really, really difficult to communicate the value to your potential customers and clients. And also when they come in and look at your sales page and like, oh my gosh, it does this, this, this, this, this. Rather than it being the which, what we hope it does, which is I think the reason that people put so much into it. So rather than it being this good thing where people go, oh my gosh, I get all of these things. What it usually does is have people come and go, oh, that, oh, that seems like a lot of work. That seems a bit hard. I don't, that's gonna take a lot of time, I don't wanna do that. Quick little bonus tip for you. The best online programs in the world are the ones that actually have less content, that have the absolute bare minimum that is still gonna get people the best results because people don't want to have to Watch hours and hours of videos to be able to take action. They want the minimum that they have to watch to know what they to the only the top line of exactly what they need to know, none of the extra fluff and then any other tools and things added into it which are going to make it easier, make their results better, make it more likely they're going to get a good outcome. So mistake number one, creating a kitchen sink course, being too broad, not having enough confidence to go all in on one specific outcome and therefore just overwhelming and underwhelming your audience at the same time, which just isn't great for sales, isn't great for conversions and also also isn't great for those that do buy because they're going to just be fire hosed with stuff to do, stuff to watch once they're in there and they're more than likely not going to complete and not going to get the outcome that they wanted. All right, mistake number two. And some people, this might, might hit them in the feels a little bit, but that is teaching something that you're not actually an expert in yet. I used to see this so much in the blogging days and I know that it has kind of migrated now over into online courses and that is that people, they start learning something, right? They're in that beginner phase and it's super exciting and like this is so great, I love this, I'm so passionate about this now I'm going to go and teach it. But the problem is they haven't actually mastered it yet. They're still a learner themselves. Now I'm not saying you have to be absolutely mastered all the way through from step zero to 10 to be able to teach step one, but there's people still learning step one, teaching step one. And if you are not actually an expert, if you're not actually someone who can really confidently say, hey, I can help you with this outcome, you've got no right to be teaching it. And I don't say this to, you know, I hope this doesn't upset anybody and if it does, I'm, well, I'm sorry, but it's true. Because you need to actually get really good at that thing that you were doing before you go out there and tell people you're really good at it because all you're doing is perpetuating one of the sort of dark sides of the online course industry and that it's not regulated and blah, blah, we're not going to go down that hole. But so for anyone listening to this Going, oh, but oh, hang on, I guess I'm, you know, I'm not the best at this in the world yet, therefore I shouldn't do it. No, I'm not saying I don't want to let anyone's imposter syndrome step in here. So, so now before you let the imposter syndrome kind of come in, which was probably already seen, they go, oh, actually I'm not the best in the world, Kate. You're saying I shouldn't be doing online courses, I shouldn't be teaching, I shouldn't be helping people. Oh, okay, that's cause I'm not good enough. This is not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about self doubt. I'm talking about have you actually done the reps? Have you done the hours? Can you say that you can actually help people with a specific outcome and maybe the outcome, like I said, if you're, you know, maybe you help people with steps one and two because you've done those, you've done them more than once and you're actually able to help them with those rather than saying, hey, I figured out steps one and two, so I can definitely help you with steps four, five, six, seven and eight. Now again, another thing is you don't have to have ever done steps 7, 8, 9, 10 yourself. Like Olympic coaches don't necessarily run, you know, compete in the Olympics. But you have to know enough about, you have to mastered how to teach them, you have to have mastered how to coach them. And the best way to do that is usually to start small, to start specific and to start by doing one on ones and to be being honest and open with your first clients and saying, hey guys, this is a new offering for me. I'm really passionate about this. I'm going to be working it out and I'm going to be charging appropriately while I do. So they're going to get really great hands on service from you and you're going to learn a lot. And then once you've been able to create a system or create a process that can be either taught or replicated and that does consistently get good results and you go, okay, cool, well I've mastered this now. Now I can go out there and turn it into an online course or turn it into a program. Now I'm actually a master at this. Now I can go teach it. Don't just be like, oh, I read a book, it's exciting. You know, like it's totally fine to be excited about something and to want to go and Share it with the world. But until you know that five people can come to you, all slightly different and you're going to be able to actually help those five people. Please, please, please. You're not an expert yet. Don't claim to be. Don't create an online course around it. Do the reps first, learn it first, do the one to ones first, so you get to do those learnings. I'll get off my, I'll get off my high horse now, I promise. Okay? Mistake number two is not actually having anyone to launch it to. So now this is really common where again, when people are kind of coming in and they've been told and sold that creating an online course, it's the future. It's the way to create your six, seven, eight figure business, right? And so you come in and you just want to run straight away before you've rolled over, before you've crawled, before you've walked, you want to get straight to running and you're like, I want to create a course and I'm just going to, just going to launch it and get out there. Now, the old school way of doing this was to go, okay, no, no, hold on. Do your list building first. Spend a couple of years building up thousands and thousands of people on your list, and then you can launch a program. But that takes too long. No one wants to do that either. So we've kind of come up with a bit of a hybrid.

We call this our Ignite playbook inside Ecoursempire where we teach people how to list, build and launch at the same time so they can be making sales much, much faster. But you need to know how to do that. You need to have a strategy that's built around that. You can't just go, all right, here's my offer. I'm going to do some Facebook posts, I'm going to do some ads, I'm going to send some emails and expect people to buy. If you don't have either a specific strategy for making a big impact on a small list or a really big list, because otherwise you're going to spend all this time, all this effort, and you're not going to get the sales, and that's going to be disheartening. It's going to be a waste of your time and we don't want that for you time, there isn't enough time in the world. So we want to make sure that we're using it for the right things. Mistake number four is going too fancy with their first launch. So if this is a Brand new space for you. If creating online programs is brand new for you, if selling them and marketing them and creating content and creating the different assets for promotions, for launches. All this stuff like you need to keep your first launch simple because it's everything is untested, Everything takes a lot of time and energy and it's really freaking hard. And the problem is, I think a lot, again, people put so much expectations into this and if you come in until launch with an unproven offer and an unproven list and unproven everything, there's chances are some of that stuff just isn't going to work. And the more complexity you add to it, the more things that have a chance of not working. So you've just taken up a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of energy and you're going to come out the end of it and go, it didn't work. But why, you know, the way that we always teach, whether it's doing funnels, whether it's doing something live, is we wanted to break it down to the simplest we possibly can and do it step at a time, test as we go, build on layers as you go and prove like, so once something's proven, okay, great, we're going to do that again. We're going to add the next piece, the next piece. So if you come out and get too fancy too soon, particularly when they're not things you actually know how to do yet you haven't done them before, you're learning and obviously everyone needs to learn, that's fine. But you don't want to be go learning 15 different things all at once. It's going to be really hard to get good at any one of them. So don't get too fancy with your first launch. Keep it a super stripped down, you know, minimal viable product, or we call it a quick and dirty beta launch, that's what you want to do. Because the purpose of the first launch isn't to make you hundreds of thousands of dollars, is to get out there and make sure that people actually want to buy your offer. And once you know that some people want to buy your offer, then you're going to go and build on that, add more layers so that more people want to buy your offer and they want to buy it more consistently. So don't get too fancy with your first launch, guys. Okay, lucky last mistake. And there are more of them, but these are the biggest ones that we see people make when they're launching their online courses, is guessing how to market it, guessing how to Sell it. Just having a look around, seeing what other people are doing and go, oh, okay, I'm just going to do that. Plus that. Plus that. And not actually knowing the strategies, not actually knowing why you send this many emails or what days you send them on, or why you do or don't need a webinar or what an early bird is or whether you need one or how to do your pricing or how to do your. There's so many little nuances that only really can be learnt over long periods of time or you know, can be sort of taught you if you get a mentor or go through a program that actually teaches specific. So if you spent the time, if you spent the energy of creating an online program, which is no small thing, you don't want to do a disservice by just guessing how to market it, guessing how to sell it. Because more than likely your guess is going to be wrong because it's not based on facts, it's not based on the experience, it's based on just what you've kind of seen a bunch of other people doing. So I mean one of our favorite strategies inside Ecoursempire always blows people's minds is our waitlist dynamite method. And that is really simple strategy. You can add in, it's a kind of a little play on the traditional wait list kind of strategy. But it means that you know, 99% of people who they use it, they literally get sales the first minute or of their launch. But if you don't know what these strategies are, you don't know why they work or how they work or how to implement them or how to put them together, then you could have that horrible, horrible experience which I is so gut wrenching of putting an offer out into the world and sitting and waiting and it's crickets and you don't make any sales and that's can be, that's when a lot of people go, ugh, I'm no good at this. My office sucks. Nobody wants what I want. I'm going to give up. And all that time and all that effort is down the drain. And we don't want that for you, we don't want that for anybody. If you're someone who really wants to help people, who's passionate, who I said you've done some hours, you are an expert, you have something to offer, you have value to bring. We want you to be able to do that and get rewarded when you do. If you've made any of these mistakes, guys, please know that so have I. So have all of the people that you look up to in your industry.

These are absolutely super common mistakes and really the only way around them. Uh, well, it's just two options. One is to put in the hours, put in the years. Like I've been doing this since 2007 so I've like, that's why I've had the time to make many of these mistakes over and over and learn not to do them. So you've either got to put in the five, the 10 years or whatever it is learning the stuff yourself or of course you go and you borrow someone else's hours and someone else's knowledge and you go and get a mentor or a program. And I mean this is what we do inside eCoursempire, right? So if you need help with creating, launching, scaling your online program to multi six figures and beyond in a reliable, repeatable, non stressful way, that is what we do and that's what we help people with. And at the moment, applications for our next round are actually about to close. They close on the 27th. So if you want to come and grab one last spots, head on over to hellofunnels co click on eCourseMmpire and pop your application in. Or you can grab the link below. We love to see you inside. We love to help you either create your course, help you make your course sell better, get your funnel set up, get away from stressful launching, scale, scale, scale. That's what we do. That's what we love to do. And we can't wait to see you inside. So guys, if this episode has been valuable, don't forget to share it. Don't forget to leave a review. That's how we get the word out. That's how we get to help more people and make a bigger impact with people's online courses. Online program, online world. Thank you so much for spending the time with me today. Have an awesome week and I'll see you next week with more Doing It Online. Bye.

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.

Sam.