How to Create a Course from Scratch: My Workshop at Craft+Commerce 2017

Are you guys excited to hear Matt?

Yeah!

Talk about some courses?

Yes!

I am honored to intro our next speaker. His name is Matt Ragland. He's my colleague and my friend, and we also both live in Nashville, Tennessee together. Um, one of the few things— one of the many things, but I'm just going to say a few— that I love about Ragland is his attention to detail, and he's one of the most thoughtful teachers, honestly, I've ever witnessed. He does all of our onboarding at ConvertKit, all of our training. He's so good with people, and he also has a side hustle. Where he teaches people about how to use sketchnotes. So he not only is an incredible on-boarder for ConvertKit, but he also teaches and has courses on the side as well. So I am honored to intro Matt Ragland. Please give him a nice warm round of applause.

All right, thank you, Alexis, and thank you everyone for being here. I've been super excited about this since they asked me to do it last week, and it has been so much fun. Putting together the slides and the content for this. Because I really, I'm just honored to be able to share this with you. Every single time that I get to talk to someone about creating a course, creating something that is gonna resonate with your audience and how we can build that in for their benefit and also for yours as well. That is something that really excites me. I love teaching. My mom was a teacher. Worked at a school just before ConvertKit, and so I've really enjoyed seeing how we can take some of these classic lessons from the classroom, from teaching, and apply them in ways that resonate online that anyone can grab. So you know about me. I don't know why I ever put that slide because I always introduce myself, but this is where you can mainly follow me online, just pretty much anything is @MattRagland, and I like to say I'm the head greeter at ConvertKit right now. Has anyone just, off random question, has anyone signed up for ConvertKit recently enough that maybe you got a welcome video from me or maybe you've heard this? Yeah, so I do these welcome videos. I'm like, "Hi, my name's Matt. Welcome to ConvertKit." And they're like, "As they—" It's fantastic. And this is something that we'll talk about this a little bit, but I think you could actually use this really well in your own courses, especially when you're talking about paid courses. Course, something that you are bringing people into, the power of someone hearing you say their name to them just resonates so well. I have gotten so many emails back from people like, oh my gosh, like, my, one of my favorites though was like, you got to tell me though, did you have like, just, you just got a bank of videos for all the different names? You're like, here's Joel. I was like, yeah, in a couple years, we'll be able to welcome the Zachs to ConvertKit. I know, but, ah, people are just so taken aback. So that's one of the things we're going to talk about is how can we make those personal connections, how can we resonate with our audience and with our students. So two things that I would love your help with as we get started. I would encourage you, even though I love the tactile feel of just doing that, I take a lot of notes on the iPad, on my phone, but if you have paper to write on, That's to me. Who's read Faster Better? The newest Charles Duhigg book talks about the power of like making that connection on the paper. So if you can do that, I encourage you to do that. And yeah, the second thing is we're definitely gonna have plenty of time for questions. I want to hear from you about how we're putting these courses together because I want this to be something that is very applicable to you and is answering your questions. So keep those in mind. Even though Mariah said in her talk that she despises the word reverse engineering success, this is a slide that I already had and wasn't going to change. I think it looks cool. So the way that we can kind of think about this though is what I've seen, you know, full disclosure, I have not built a six-figure course myself ever. I've been involved with and have seen so many ConvertKit creators put together these 6-figure courses. And what I want you to think about is how a couple of ways that I don't think we always realize this is how we build up to this. And so I want to kind of break down that roadmap in a couple of ways. The biggest thing that I would say is that it engages the students through multiple learning styles. I think that's really important. Instead of just having, say, instead of just having written modules, just, you know, we have our video. Being able to engage through written, through text, through audio, through video is something that's really important. We'll talk a little bit more about the audio and the video side of everything. But being able to deliver your content in a way that resonates best with different types of learning styles is really important. The second thing that I don't think a lot of people realize is that when you finally see like that 6-figure course, that's building on a bunch of past courses from that person. It's extremely rare like out of the gate that you see this like massive course launch. And so that's why we're going to kind of, you know, Tarantino it a bit and work backwards from the ending of seeing like this is what it looks like, how can we build on this and how can we recreate a foundation that builds this is something that's really strong. Another thing that can be overlooked is the amount of focus and intentionality that you can put into your community and accountability with each other. We'll talk a little bit about this later on, but as an example, one of the courses that I did a while ago was Jeff Goins. Maybe you guys know or have heard of Jeff Goins, writer. His Tribe Writers class. And within like a week of signing up, I get an email like, hey, we're gonna go through and we're gonna start preparing We're gonna pair you guys up into small groups that you can connect with each other, you know, you can have little masterminds about it. And that really helped a lot of us move forward because we had these small groups and Jeff and his team were really intentional about like, oh, these are the kind of things that, you know, Matt's writing about, creating content on. And there are still people from that that, you know, I stay in touch with to this day. And here's the other thing, it goes along with number 2 really well, which is building on that network of your peers. As you continue to show that you are a person that delivers, that puts out content, someone who creates things consistently, other people are gonna take notice of that. And I think, though I don't know the specific numbers on it, like most of these like really big course launches that you may see, they have— how many of you have noticed that like a lot of times there's other influencers, there's other top bloggers, podcasters that are also talking about it at the same time? That's no accident. But you don't just get that from your very first first course. It's delivering value. It's showing that you put things together and can create for an audience. So that's really where we're going to be going with this. And the one thing that I want to encourage you on also is if this is your first course that you're putting together, I want you to primarily consider it an experiment because there's a lot of ways that it can go. Maybe it'll go beyond your wildest dreams. Maybe it won't. And that's okay because you're going to learn so much in just shipping and getting it out. For a long time, I half-assed the course that I was putting together. It was kind of an email course. And Sean McCabe messaged me on Twitter. He's like, "What are you doing?" I was like, "Oh yeah." He's like, "How's your course coming?" I was like, "Oh, you know, Sean, a couple things." This is right here. I'm going to do another video. He's like, stop. Put it out there. What you have right now is enough for you to ship, learn, iterate, and do it again better next time. And 2 weeks later, I shipped. So that is something that he encouraged me on. I want to encourage you on as well. If this is your first course, this is primarily an experiment. I don't want you to slow down. Thinking that it has to be incredibly perfect. That is something that I see as a recurring theme from this weekend. That there is a lot that you can do, but if it slows you down to the point that it's just not happening for reasons that you can totally control, let's move past that. All right, so let's get to work. I want you to— yeah, sketches. I realized that after I did these, so I left my Apple Pencil that I do like all my sketches with in the car. So I had to use some old ones. And I realized that just having a couple of white people didn't seem overly unique, but this is what I had available at the time. And this is actually Nathan and Alexis. So I just have like a couple. So be uniquely you as long as it's like that. All right. So a little bit of context for what that uniqueness looks like. But I want you to really bring yourself. To this. Yeah, just like Levi was talking about in his presentation, like you have to bring that personality with you. And if you're just getting there like, "Hello everyone, I'm Matt and I like to do the sketches on the iPad and this is what it looks like." Be yourself, bring yourself to this. All right. So let's dive into the meat of this and talk about How I want to design lessons. The— I'm just realizing that you can't see my presenter notes, but that's okay. The things that I want you to see with this in terms of designing lessons is that there's a lot of things that you can do in terms of creating the content. I think this is a really good place to start and in terms of having a framework for what you can do. That is, I call it the 4-1-1 rule. That is to start off with 4 written lessons, 1 video, and 1 worksheet. You're putting together something that is enough to start with. Especially if you're thinking of this and this really is your first course that you really are starting from scratch, let's get to that. That's what I would encourage you on. Getting to 4 is a number that will— when someone logs on, they're like, "Oh, I'm gonna have 4 lessons." That is, you can really think of it as like a month of content if we're thinking about this, you know, in terms of a weekly drip, if that's something you choose to do, that you've got your month of content out. With the— I do believe 100% that you should have a video, you know, some kind of video on your course. It's not a reason to not ship if you don't have it. I don't want you to delay, but I think it is really important. We've heard this several times, and we'll talk a little bit, just a little bit about gear and how you can put that together really easily. Being able to put together, here are 4 lessons, 1 video, and 1 worksheet that are really breaking down the primary topics and problems that you can take away with your audience. So think about it in terms of that structure, and then you can just keep iterating on that. Like, okay, it's time for the next 4, it's time for the next 4. Okay, so if you think about that balance, then that's what I would move towards in terms of like designing the curriculum and lesson plans. And it's really intimidating to have Dave here, such a fantastic teacher. Inside of that, I would encourage you to, like I've been, I feel like I've been developing over the past several months, find the medium that fits you best. Okay, you might find that videos work better for you. That's something oddly enough that I found this year is in terms of like getting getting the words out can be kind of tough, like consistently. But like I'll flip on a video and I'll just start going and then I can edit that down just like I can brain dump over video way better than I can just with written words for whatever reason. And then I edit that down. So you may think, and I think we all get kind of stuck and like, well, it's got to be written, it's got to be like this. I would break all that out. If you find that setting up your iPhone, setting up your phone and getting the words out on video is better, or just like turning on your phone or having a handheld recorder made, just a good microphone that you can talk your way through the content, that's excellent as well. Don't get yourself stuck thinking that it has to be a specific way. It has to work for what is best for you. One of the reasons— the way that I put this content together, the way that I have been thinking about this for myself is I'm not necessarily— I'm not really going to give you a checklist at the end of this. Like, this is what you have to do, just check, check, check, check, check, and you're good. There are so many ways to find that. And, you know, you're gonna have— what I want to encourage you on, what I want you to have when you leave this is a flexible mindset for understanding how you can solve problems and how you can deliver the content that's needed for your audience. So whatever it is that works best for you on that, keep doing more of that. Okay? I give people— I say all the time, I think it's easy to want answers, and I can give you some of these answers. That's what all this is. But at the same time, what I found for myself, and I think what a lot of us get hung up on, is feeling like, well, you know, if someone else gives me the answer and then it doesn't work for me, then I can blame them for that. Not purposefully, but there's like a subtle mindset shift of like, this is what works for me, this is what I'm going to start doing, and this is how I'm going to get my work in the world, this is how I'm going to connect with others. Because the best way that you communicate on your particular medium is the way that you're going to resonate most with your audience. So if you think like, "Oh, it has to be written," but you're better on video, it's not gonna be the same. And if you're better writing but you feel like, "Oh, I gotta have 10 videos for this," it's not gonna be the same. Which leads me to the 80/20 rule of tech, and really anything. So we've all heard of like the 80/20 principle, 80% of your profits make up the 20% of your customers, I want you to think about this in terms of your text specifically. Let's take video for example. Levi talked about this a little bit. It's really a big talking point for video specifically. When you realize now, and Levi mentioned this also, is when you realize now that just getting yourself on video on your phone, you're going to get The way that I think about this 80/20 rule now is how can I get 80% of the benefit, 80% of the value at 20% of the cost. So a phone that I already have or I'm on my monthly Apple Pay plan for, doing that and getting a video out is way more effective than being like, oh, I gotta wait until I can get the, you know, Canon GX7, or I gotta wait until I can get a Canon 50D, or I don't even know if that's one of them, but a really nice camera. You don't have to do that. You don't have to have a $500 Rode microphone set up on it. You can get 80% of your video quality that's needed for 20% of the cost. So think about ways that you can do that. Yeah, right. One of the— I had a big like, oh my god, I don't turn on video, this whole thing, but my audience really liked it. And so all I did was go out and buy this tiny Shure mic for my iPhone. Have it right there. Best online. Oh, it is glorious. And you're like, it's $50. Like, what is it, like $6? I need to buy yours because that was under $50. Yeah, maybe $50. And a little tripod. Manfrotto.

Yeah.

So literally I'd be in a coffee shop like, I have an idea. And no, people don't care. People by Starbucks are like, oh, video time. I just make a video and then that's it. But it got me in the habit of it. Yeah, and let me— oh good, a lot of spam comments on the live video. That's fun. So you'll see it's just this right here. So yeah, it's a Shure microphone. This one was $150. It looks like I gotta check on that. And but even like, so I've been getting myself a little stuck over the past couple of months thinking I was like, oh, I'm ready to get a new vlogging camera, a new video camera. So that's gonna cost $1,000. And one of the main reasons was like, well, I want a little bit better video quality, and I especially want better audio quality. I was like, well, wait a sec, I can get like a $50, $100 mic that plugs directly into the phone that is going to give me this same type of quality. I spend $100, $150, and that's done, and I can keep going. So I want you to think about where can I get 80% of the value for 20% of the cost that I already have and keep moving forward. So this is— This is something that obviously with James was really important. Let's talk about how you can organize your content around ways to help your students continue to move forward. The best way that I can think about it, and I'm getting all these ideas just listening to the talks, but being able to help your students stack on habits, I would recommend that your first couple of lessons be on the shorter side. Let's ramp up the time needed because we want to give We want to give people those, we want to give our students those quick wins. We're just kind of those type, we're kind of those types of humans now that we look for quicker wins. And it is something that we want to be able to deliver is an experience where you're like, "Ooh, I got that done already." Just that little like, "Hooray, I was able to do it," and then let's move forward. And you can do that for the first 2 or 3 lessons, I think, and then start to kind of ramp up, not necessarily the complexity depending on what kind of course you have, but giving people a way to feel really good really quickly about, about the kind of lessons that you're teaching them. And I love Mariah talking about just the number of different— like, I'm sitting there thinking about, like, what I do with sketchnotes. You know, she's talking about frontier, frontier niches and thinking about ways that you just, you just help people with, with the problems that they have or the things that they want to overcome or something that they want to learn. That's incredibly valuable. Time that, uh, giving them a couple of quick ways to get a win, to like feel like they've checked something off mentally, is a way that you can help them stack those habits right away. And I would give them something, not just make it a like short piece of content, but what is— think to yourself, what is a win that I can give them at the end of this? Something they can literally do, not just read, literally do. So right at the beginning of my SketchNote course, I— the very first lesson, besides Besides, like, I even have a welcome lesson, which is a great way to feel like you've made some progress and you haven't really done anything at all, but it's a little trick. The first primary lesson is I just have them write down the 5 primary shapes, 5 simple shapes. I'll show it to you in just a second, just as where it sits in ConvertKit right now. But the 5 simple shapes that you can use to start sketchnoting. And they're just shapes. Like, you can draw shapes. And anyone can do that with whatever they have on them. I even show, like, Even if you just like bring up your phone and use your finger, you can make 5 shapes. And people are like, "Oh, okay." Let's go on to the next one. So keeping it shorter, keeping it actionable, giving them a small win right at the beginning helps build, helps stack those habits. And yeah, I love James— I can't remember them all right now, but his 4 steps of like needing, wanting, desiring, and having. That sounds close enough.

Like it.

Think about how you can work that in. To your lessons. Another thing that I loved from Chase's talk was, and I would think about this for every single lesson that you have, how do I get my students from 0 to 1? Every single lesson, how do I get my students from 0 to 1? How do I help them feel like they've gotten 1% better, that they've made one more little step towards becoming the type of person who is going to, like, see success with this? Anytime you go into this, I believe that people are buying courses because they have problems that they want to solve. And that's what you get, that's what you get to help them move through. And it's a really exciting, it's a really exciting thing. One of the ways to know this really well though is just to ask them. So you want to think about, they're literally at a crossroads. Ella Luna has a great talk, podcast, iterated on it a ton of times. It's fantastic. The crossroads of should and must. And you're helping them like make that switch. I should do this, and your course, your content, the way that you create is a way that you help them make that switch from 0 to 1, 1% better, and go from I should do this to I must do this because this is going to help me in this way. This is going to solve a problem that I have. All right. Let's talk about the best of traditional classroom openings is the fail rate on online courses is astronomical. It's over 80%. I don't know if the Thinkific or Teachable team have more. People actually getting all the way through is not super common. So how do we help people? But you'll see that a lot of times the— I know we always want to improve the graduation rate at our traditional schools, but it's so astronomically higher than people who maybe aspirationally buy a course and like, "Yeah, I bought this. I'm going to just learn it through osmosis and I'm going to fall asleep on my computer and I'm going to wake up and I'm going to know what it is." And I always wish that I could do that with science, but traditional classrooms excel at this. And what are some— what are the things If you want to think, I encourage you to think about this, like write down this question and think like what is it about being in the place, which is part of the answer, what is it about being in the place that makes people so much more likely to finish and succeed? And what we have to try and recreate is this ability to have people feel that accountability, that community to show up to show your work and be in a community of others where you have that social accountability and that social proof that is like, I did this, this is awesome, this is great. So I would encourage you to think about how can I take the best of what traditional classrooms offer and turn that into the flexibility of what online courses can give as well. When you— one of the best ways to do this obviously is by building a community within your course, within your product. This is something that I think a lot of course creators kind of miss out on a little bit. I think, you know, if I, if I build it, they will come and then they will stay and they will tell their friends and they will learn. And we just see over and over again that that's not necessarily the case. It takes intentional commitment. You know, Mariah does an amazing job with this with her Femtrepreneur community. They are all, they are all connected. There's a lot of, a lot of people. I mentioned Jeff at the beginning, Brian Harris, who's also in, also in Nashville, or He's in Franklin. Don't tell a Franklin person that they're from Nashville. They don't want to hear that. But Brian, he runs Video Fruit and 10K Subs is his flagship product. But Brian does a very similar thing. He'll gather people into a group. One of the things that Brian is really great at is he asks people, he's like, I'm going to tell you how you can exponentially increase your ability to actually do these things. Has people put like actual stakes. Not like, sorry, not like meat. But S-T-A-K-E. A stake in the game. And so, say like, what is something— this is a really powerful way to do this is like, what he did was he wrote like a $100 check, a $1,000 check or something, gave it to a friend. He's like, he gave it to a friend along with a list and a deadline. These are the things that I'm going to do. If I don't do if I don't get— so Brian's a huge Auburn fan, and he's like, if I don't do this by this time, then you are to take this check that is made out to the University of Alabama Athletic Boosters and send it to them. And he got it done in record time. And so if you are brave enough to put like that kind of stake and put those kinds— yeah, put that kind of stake in the game and encourage your readers to do what as well, no matter what you're doing, it will increase results. Now it is scary and you really, like, nothing talks like money, so I would encourage the money side. Like, well, you know, I gotta go do this, or like maybe some kind of minor public shaming like wearing a chicken suit or something, I don't know. I heard a version of that to write a check to like your most hated organization and then give it to somebody to send it in case you don't fulfill, like cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo spam or something like that. Yeah, I know, I've heard that. A lot of— depending on which political alignment you have, that could be another way to get yourself fired up about not sending money to that organization. But building the community And it doesn't need— and when you build your community in this way, it doesn't mean that you have to be the arbiter. I probably don't want a bunch of your students just sending you those kind of checks. But it gives, like, hey, you two can connect together. You three can connect together. This is where we can build a community of accountability and people who will help drive each other forward. That can be on Facebook. You can have a Slack chat. You could— whatever it may be. There are some membership sites. Sites that'll have those kind of membership. I'm not sure if Teachable or Thinkific does that kind of community aspect, but those are like any way that you can do it. Again, I wouldn't worry about like having the perfect solution at the beginning, but being able to move forward with the solution that you can get. All right, so let's talk about I did a little bit of this last week when I learned I was going to be doing this workshop. A couple of times in Slack I just dropped in and was like, "Hey, I'm going to be doing this workshop on courses. What are the things that you really want to know about this?" There's a couple of questions that you can ask. One is just to ask of yourself and the other one is to ask your community that will give you— Sean, it's kind of an iteration on something that Sean brought up yesterday, but will give you all of the content ideas that you need, especially especially for your first, second, third course, whatever. 'Cause you don't need 100 ideas. Like if you have 10, that's fantastic. If you have 4, if you have 5 at the beginning, and then you can start building on that. So this is how I built my first course was the first question that I asked myself about sketchnotes is, what do you wish you knew about your topic when you got started? Because if you can put yourself, it's really powerful to put yourself back in the beginner's mindset and ask yourself that question Because when I ask myself, I was like, okay, what did I wish I knew about sketchnotes when I got started 5 years ago? Like, well, I wish I would have known about the simple shapes that you could create that would help you start making sketchnotes. I wish I would have known that. I wish I would have known like some basic layout techniques. I wish I would have known like something really like specific and seemingly a tad random or unnecessary. What kind of pens aren't gonna bleed all over the page? What kind of paper is gonna be sturdy enough to hold up? What kind of apps can I use on my phone to capture these sketchnotes and share them digitally on social media? And how can I start, how did I start building that visual library myself so that when I think, oh, the key to this is, I'm literally like, oh, it's a key going into whatever it is. And just right there, those became my first 5 lessons, just answering the question of what do I wish I knew about my topic when I got started. The second question, how are you using this course in your life? And this is a little bit different than Sean's question that he gets from Supercharge Your Writing, which is, you know, what's something you're struggling with, what's something you're frustrated with. What I found with sketchnotes, and you can iterate on this question all that you want, you should be asking a question of your new students. But the reason I didn't find that one as frustrating— the reason I didn't find that question as useful for my audience was because a lot of them had no idea how to do this anyway. So like, I'm not frustrated by anything with this, it's so neat. And that is super unhelpful. And so being able to ask them instead I said, "What do you want to use this for? Like, how do you see this helping you in your life?" I was able to really kind of even niche down even further and see that the vast majority of people just wanted to create these, like, simple images that were going to be eye-catching in their courses, in their blogs. In fact, in James' talk yesterday, all those, like, graphs and everything, he drew all of those. Like, that's just something he did. He did all that. So I remember we were talking about about that a few years ago. He's like, "Yeah, I started to do like these little hand-drawn things. I think they look really nice." I was like, "Yeah, they do look great." It can be as simple as that. It can take a graph, a chart, a pie chart, bar graph, whatever it is, and you can give it a little bit more personality that way. I've found that that's what people were using it for, just by asking instead of, "What were you frustrated by?" or "What do you struggle with on this?" this. If you find that you're kind of in maybe one of those frontier niches and people don't quite know how to even use the thing, they're just intrigued by it, asking this iteration of the question is a little bit better. And again, I want to come back to I don't want you to get stuck thinking that you have to do like, like I went to this course, I went to this workshop where Matt told me how to do all this core stuff and I got, you know, check, check, check, check, and I asked this question I want you to think. I want you to make a switch in your mindset of being able to solve the problems proactively that are coming up for your students without being like, well, let me go look. Let me go look at Matt's slide deck here. I don't know why you would be looking at it like this. That's totally impractical. But that is something that you can— I want you to think through your problems proactively, and that will help you think through your students' problems in a better way and help them solve them as well. As well. The other thing that you can ask, and this is especially useful, this is especially useful after people have been through some of the content, follow up and ask, "Is anything missing? Is anything unclear?" And they're like, "Oh." 'Cause that's when you can find out really when there's some frustration, when they're like, "Huh." Like I ask this a lot in ConvertKit 'cause what I do even just as I'm helping people get started ConvertKit, after the first week I'm like, "Hey, is ConvertKit working the way that you expect it to? Is anything missing? Does anything feel a little unclear?" And they're like, "Yeah, now that I'm into it I don't know how to do this." And I'm like, "Great, let's talk about that." So being able to ask after a little bit of time using the course, the product, the ebook, "Do you feel like there's anything missing?" They're like, "Yeah, I do feel like there's something missing. Thank you for asking." These are the things. And you know what? When you ask that, more content for you. And it's applicable to them in a specific way because you know you're solving their problems directly. All right, let's— Haley, do you know how we are on time? Does anyone? 12:07. 12:07. Okay. Yay me. Let's talk about setting up your course. We're going to talk a little bit about setting it up in ConvertKit. Kit. Uh, just as like a— I do like encourage you, if this is your very first thing, it is totally acceptable to just, you know, set this up as a starter like drip email course inside of ConvertKit. Like, again, if you don't want to get bogged down and like right at the beginning of thinking like, oh, I gotta, you know, pick a platform and I gotta like learn that platform, I can get everything out and I gotta like get the domain name, like just— I'm starting to think about all the check— all boxes that now you have to check by choosing to go that route. So let's just see, how can we make something in ConvertKit right at the beginning that is gonna serve people? This also works as a really great opt-in or lead magnet for your site. So instead of saying, "Hey, join my newsletter," that's totally okay because it's also the default, but to me that's a default response because that's the default thing on any email provider. You're coming to this event because you're not people by default, and I want you to think about how you can deliver that value, whether that's with a content upgrade or a free course like this. So I'm gonna actually switch over to ConvertKit product. How about— so really in ConvertKit, all All you need to do here is just start putting your content in and start putting these emails in. And this can be your first, this can be your first course. You can even, if you're using, you can even connect with a program like Gumroad or Coach or anything or anything like that. And you could trigger, you could still sell an email course that's just sitting in ConvertKit and like have that like purchase purchased course in Gumroad, and then it just kicks off this sequence. Purchase this course on Coach, and it just kicks off the sequence inside of ConvertKit. So this is totally doable. It can be a great first step. So let me— so I can show you right here, it says using simple shapes. It's just the first one right there. And this is it. So it's like, hey, can you draw these 5 simple shapes, you can create sketch notes on it. And so already, they're not even 300— let me see how many words this is. So that's all of it. So maybe 200 words in at this point. And you're like, ah, got a little win on this. I can draw these, no problem. So I'm already getting them going. And then I was like, you know what you can do? You can take this, find art piece of putting people having a great day outside. What I'm trying to teach and think about ways that you can do this also is my entire thing is as you're doing this, it's not about how it looks. It's about how it makes you think about the problem that you're trying to solve or the message that you're trying to communicate. Yes, Saul. Is there any issue with posting the video or the graphics? What a great question. Thank you for asking. There's not. With ConvertKit, you just, I would just click on add and insert an image right there. Now I did do a little visual judo here because this is not really a video. This is a screenshot of a video. And so I just dropped that there, and then in ConvertKit you just add the link in right there and they go out to it. I'm not gonna really talk much about video hosting. This is going out to YouTube right now because I've been doing a lot more on YouTube. But if you want something— I actually want people to go to YouTube, crazy as that might sound. Because I've been doing more there. But I've also had it go to a Wistia page, and even if you don't want people to go into the wormhole that is YouTube, just take the embed code, drop it on a page on your site, and that way you can still deliver the message right there. Make it a page, not a post, that you can link directly to it. It doesn't necessarily show up in your chronological feed of your blog. Blog, but that is another way you can do it. But YouTube, Wistia, and Vimeo are all great. Wistia is, to me, still far and away in terms of like private hosted video is still the best. But I'll say also like Thinkific and Teachable both have video players that you can upload directly to. So an understandable concern is like, well, I don't want my video course videos just out there for anyone, you can upload them directly. Is it still in beta, the course, the video player for Thinkific? For what? So you can upload it, you can host it as well? Yeah, I thought so. Yeah, I just wanted to make sure. So that is, yeah, so you can just upload it directly there and it will stay hosted there, which is great. And then we just keep going through it, so you can change the You can change the delay up here by day or even by hour. You can just keep delivering your content. I have my toolkit here. Oh yeah, what are the best tools for creating, for creating such a— I did this for a long time and this is the thing that Sean started holding my feet to the fire on. He's like, why do you still have this as an email course that you're not charging anything for? Because it's 5 right now and then a pitch, it was like 12 emails. Mails. He's like, this is silly, like take 4 or 5, the rest, the rest is your first course. I was like, yep, it was. Can I ask a question about that? Yes, do.

My course funnel is a 7-day free challenge. I have a hard time breaking up the content between What goes in the challenge to give someone a quick win versus what goes in the course? And the specific challenge for me is that I'm teaching people how to do their own SEO for e-commerce. There are really no quick wins in SEO where you can see the effects of what you're doing. I teach them something that they can research or whatever. But how did you— when Sean kind of called you out on that, how did you decide to split up what you're— Did you just give them the first lessons for free and then jump them into the paid content? How did you split that up?

Yeah, that's a really good question. What I do is that I try and take— I took what I believed were literally the 4 to 5 best lessons that I thought a beginner should start with and make them as great as I can. Because then if you can hook people in literally with your best content, content at the beginning, then even if like you think like, well, the rest— and it's odd that the paid stuff is maybe a step down, it won't seem that way to your students in my experience and several others because you've set the bar high. You've set the bar high. You have shown that you're going to deliver value for them. And when they go into that paid content, they come in with such a high— they come with such a high expectation. You're still going to deliver, right? You're still going to deliver on that. But I would take the content, the challenges, everything that you think is your best, probably your best 10%, 10 to 20%, and that's the free stuff. And then the rest of it is going to also seem really great.

So when you pick your 5 best to include in this free course, do you do shorter versions of it and save more content to add on to the other discussion or toolkit that you put into the course itself? Or do you put all of that? You just go all out and put all the information in?

Yeah, so for the email, for the drip course specifically on email, there is some stuff that I leave out and then add in, but it's still So like the best of the best of that. Because I also don't— and you get a lot, like I've realized that when I create content, you get a lot of how I feel like I enjoy creating content. So I personally don't love long emails. And so I don't write long emails for like lessons that are coming through email. Now all of this content is like on my course page all this content is also sitting as like if someone were to stumble across the course page, this is all like the free trial on my course as well. So it matches up. Yeah, those are great questions. Thank you. A couple of quick looks under the hood of Thinkific and Teachable. Real quick just to show you a couple of the primary things that you should you should have an eye out for. This is Thinkific. Both platforms are great and I encourage you to check them both out. I've used both for different things. But here in Thinkific, here's the primary thing that I want you to check out because you can go through and you can test out how you actually put all the content in there. I decided not to spend a lot of time on that because it just would've been me clicking around and copying and pasting things, and I didn't want to do that so I didn't think you would want to do it. You would want to watch it. Maybe I'm wrong. But that's also why I think the Kenteachable are here, that you can go ask them. But the main thing that I just want to point out from a ConvertKit perspective is right here on site integrations. Right here, ConvertKit, you're gonna put in your API key, don't steal mine or everyone's going to get these stick figures in their inbox. Box and they're gonna wonder what the hell's going on. Edit your configuration. Here's all the different tags that you can add with all the different ways that you can tag someone from Thinkific into ConvertKit. Quick distinction, and a lot of this kind of depends on if you ever wonder like, why am I doing my tagging in Thinkific and then on the Teachable side you actually do your tagging inside of of inside of ConvertKit that I'll show you in a second. And just a little behind the biz, a lot of it is just based on who writes the primary integration. And so Thinkific wrote the integration. They did an amazing job. I really like it. And then we wrote the primary code initially for Teachable, so that's why it's inside of ConvertKit. Same thing with like— so if you ever wonder like, why is Gumroad Gumroad, Teachable, Shopify, why are those in ConvertKit and other ones are on the other tool? It just depends who writes the primary code. But I'll do like full enrollments. There we go. Once it's created, tags, sketchnotes starter. So you can add everything that way. And then it's a very similar thing. And so in here's— keeps switching me out, of course. But here's one that we did a while back just as a test of everything. And it's the same, it's the same thing. You'll set up your webhooks in, you'll set up your webhooks in Teachable to connect with ConvertKit. And then your automations right here is where you'd say add a rule, purchases product, purchases on Teachable, and then you would say add a tag right there like purchase kitchen starter course.

And did you say that you can do a Gumroad purchase that triggers a sequence in ConvertKit?

Yeah, so what I would do, like, say specifically for that, I would say purchases on Gumroad, uh, how to sketch, go to conferences. Man, really missed an opportunity there. Add a tag, uh, Conference ebook now on sale for free, and then subscribe to sequence. This is already set up, but I just want to show you. Station Conference. Actually, that's not the right one. So that's all you do. So that's how you can set that up, and this is the way that you you can sell just a simple email course in ConvertKit. All right. Okay. Do you want to— we just have a— we've talked a little bit about this. I'm just going to move on past this slide. But both— I would encourage you to talk to both Thinkific and Teachable teams. I think they both have deals for attendees of this conference. I think the Teachable deal, you'll have to go check with them about it, but I think the code, because I don't know if they put it on there, so if you just put the code Ragland, and the Thinkific team has those as well. So just talk to them. But both are great, great platforms and partners with us. The one, the last primary thing that I want to show you is 3 automations that you can set up with within ConvertKit that I would encourage you to do. So let me just show you this also in ConvertKit real quick, and this will be— we've talked about it a little bit, but I want to show you specifically what we can do here. Really wish this part went further up. So what I do, back to this course just as an example, so right in here at the bottom is where I have my first soft pitch. Like, if you've enjoyed these first 3 lessons, it's just the beginning. You can see the rest right away with more lessons on the mastery course. See more details and pricing here. So you saw this in a way with automations this morning. New and lovely automations, but I'm gonna create a link trigger here that says when someone clicks on this, I'm going to tag them as being interested in the course. And then I know these people are interested. If they go all the way through and they buy, then I'm going to create an automation. I'm gonna create an automation that says— I'm gonna create an automation that says add to the buyer tag. And remove the interested tag. So now I know these are the people who have purchased, these are the people who are interested but have not yet purchased, and these are the people without any tags who haven't clicked on anything yet. And so I want to know really specifically these are the different types of groups so that I can tailor my messaging to them, because the other thing that I'll do is if they go— so here's the last— here's the big pitch right here. Here's the big pitch, and what I'll do is if someone did purchase in the initial kind of soft pitch, then I'll add a filter. I'll add a filter that says tag them, exclude this tag from the email, because yeah, how many of you have been re-pitched on something that you've already purchased? Something I ask in every single workshop, and it always happens. So this is a way that just with one click you can keep this from happening. Happening inside of just that email. You can do the same thing with conditional content, but this is the easy— sometimes it's kind of funny with ConvertKit, there are many different roads to the same destination in terms of doing some things that you want, but this is one of the ways that I found it to be the fastest. And then the other thing that I'll do here is if they go all the way through, they go through the big pitch, at the end, they still haven't purchased but they're interested, then I'll have— I've turned it off recently, but I'll go ahead and add a course interest follow-up sequence. So like maybe a week or two weeks later, and it's the question that I'm asking there is like, again, is there something missing? Is there something that didn't connect with you? Because every single— if you are like, hey, why didn't you know— just keep it short short and simple and just ask like, "Hey, I saw that you were interested but didn't purchase. Was there anything that you found confusing or something that you wanted to see but didn't expect?" Any response you get to that, that is an immediate change that if it makes sense, you're like, "Oh, that is an immediate change that you make to your content, that you make to your sales page," because that is something that's keeping people from buying. They just can do that automatically inside of ConvertKit. I would delay that first email maybe by, you know, a week after tag is added, 10 days depending on how long the rest of your pitch sequence is. So those are the 3 primary automations to create. And you can do the same thing with— so a buyer follow-up automation, hey, thank you for buying. Interest, why didn't you purchase? And then no interest, I would do a quick follow-up email with them, but then the other thing that I do is I add them into just an evergreen sequence that they start getting relevant content and I make another soft pitch at the bottom of everything, you know, kind of out and conditional content down there so the buyers don't see it. The biggest thing that I've thing that I want you to take away from this is please don't let anything slow you down on this. It is something that is doable. It is something that's actionable. It's something that every single one of you has the ability to do on your way home, to start mapping this out, to start putting things down onto the page, recording the videos, putting, putting the microphone in front of your face and talking. That is something that you're all incredibly capable of. And I think it's really exciting, the opportunity that we have, the tools that we have to create these things, the platforms that your content, that your lessons can sit on top of with Thinkific and Teachable is fantastic. And it's an incredibly exciting time. That was something that resonated with me when Sean was talking yesterday. And if you follow Gary Vee, something that he just hammers all the time. It's like, this is the best time. That 10 years from now, you'd be like, you were there 10 years ago in 2017 when, like, courses, they're so new. And I think a lot— I know this is something that I have, and you get a lot of my opinions when you hear me talk. When, when you think of about what you're capable of. It can feel a little scary, but I want you to keep moving forward because the world really does literally need what you have to offer. You have a specific skill that you can teach that other people are going to resonate with. And if you ever doubt that, think about Cassidy making $100 grand on succulents. I was having dinner right before I flew out, well not right before, but the night before I flew out just to this conference. And the friend that I was eating with, he's a lawyer, and he was like, "Ah, so you're going to your blogger conference, that's nice." I was like, "A lot of them make more than you." And he was like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." I was like, "No." I was like, "You need to like—" We had like probably the one that I'm most interested in hearing is a lady who's making $100 grand on succulent blog. He's like, "What the fuck is a succulent?" I was like, "It's like a cacti, you know, ice plants, aloe vera." And he's like, "Why don't you just say cactus?" That's not what it is. I know things now, and I've also been married long enough that I know what succulents are, and many other things that I didn't know. But please don't let anything slow you down. If you feel yourself getting caught and it needs to be a little bit better. I need to do this. You start like making these mental checkboxes of like, you know, the if-then, if-then, when-then I can get this done. Just put it out there. Learn. Iterate. Remember it's primarily an experiment. And you're going to keep building on those courses. You're going to build your network. You're going to build your community, and you're gonna get to the point where you're talking about reverse engineering your own 6-figure course for people as they learn from you. Thanks everyone, I really appreciate the time. See? None of that. If you went to the video one, you know that you never say now. Like, alright, we're gonna recap everybody, and they're like, If you have any questions, I'll, you know, I'm here, and you can email me. It's just matt@convertkit or @mattrogan. Thanks again.