How to Launch a $5,000 Course That Actually Sells (Live Coaching) | 046

I started the company and built over 700 apartment units with construction value of $200 million.

Sean Sweeney is a real estate developer turned content creator.

I know how to go build a $45 million project. I do not know how to launch a course.

We talk all about taking the knowledge in his head and getting it out there to the people who need it most. Okay, well, let's dive in on this.

Let's do it.

So one thing that I want you to keep in mind through the whole launch is you need to be continually answering the question, why should someone buy this course now? You need urgency of some form. From watching your content, I think we can do a better job of converting from social to the email list.

Okay.

The way that I would do it is—

Yep, that's a good point. I think there's a couple different tiers that we're looking at.

I'm thinking about getting rid of package B. Is there really a difference between 3,000 and 5,000?

This is awesome. I mean, this is so great. I didn't know that I would like being a creator. There's a whole bunch of things that you said that I didn't know.

So Sean, you took an interesting path to the creative world that I'm in. And you did that through becoming a real estate developer. But even before that, you took an interesting path to being a real estate developer. So let's start there. Where, what were you up to before you got into the world of real estate?

Well, I have a, yeah, very untraditional real estate developer background. I had one of those, I'm not an overly religious person, but I had one of those experiences where in a 30-day period in 2016, my mom, who had been sick, passed away. We had our second kid. My roommate from college died. And my lifelong team, the Chicago Cubs, won the World Series. And this all happened in 30 days, right? 4 things that, like, are once in a lifetime, right? And I remember going outside one morning and just sitting there and it kind of like clicking in my head of like, my mom was 75. I was 38 at this point. I was like, What am I waiting for? I'm halfway there, right? What do I have to lose? And I basically went inside and decided I'm opening up my own shop. And thankfully, I wasn't 25, so I didn't start the next day. I had to manage it and figure out, but 6, 8 months later, I was off. And I had a theory that there's something missing in development. There's soul and heart. I started the company in 2017 and through 2023, basically when things started to slow down, I was a partner in 9 projects, built over 700 apartment units, you know, with construction value of, you know, a little over $200 million.

[Speaker:NATHAN] That's amazing. So thinking about a couple things here. First, as we talk more about the content creator side of it, it's actually a really small group of people that talks about things and puts them out there in the world. And so if you're doing good work, you can stand out online really pretty easily. There's something that I'm calling the 90-9-1 rule. So basically that 90% of people just consume content, right? We're watching Netflix, we're reading, you know, whatever's going on in X that we find interesting, all of that. There's 9% of people that actually do something, right? And so that's maybe, maybe if I love outdoors content, you know, then that 9% is the ones that say, You know what, I'm actually gonna go to Glacier and go on the hike that I saw on YouTube.

Yeah.

Right. Or, you know, if you were watching, uh, How to Build a Tiny House on HGTV, maybe the 9% are the ones that say, you know what, I'm actually gonna go build that tiny house that we've always talked about doing.

Yeah.

But then it's actually just that 1% that then says, not only am I gonna consume the content and learn about it, and then, you know, go out and do the thing in real life, And then you get down to the very last 1% that says, "I'm gonna talk about it." And that's a huge difference. I mean, even in your world, you probably know a lot of real estate developers who are in the 9%. They're actively doing the thing, but even then they wouldn't talk about it. And so on one hand, getting to that 1%, you know, puts you in totally rarefied air.

I think Powers said it once, it was like building trust at scale.

Mm-hmm. Right?

Yeah.

The amount of leverage that comes from that.

Yeah.

Absolutely. It's pretty amazing. Okay, so now where we're going from here is really looking at what does it take, what does it look like to scale this creator business?

Yep.

So I'd love to hear two things. First, what's your audience look like today? Mm-hmm. And then second, you know, as we dive in and get into things on the whiteboard and like what's next in your business, you know, what you're looking to tackle.

Sure. So the audience today is, I have about 86,000 on Twitter. Started a newsletter last fall on Kit, and we've got about 8,200 readers right now, which isn't as big as some folks for sure. But I feel like, you know, and we've talked about this, it's 8,200 people who are really invested in what I'm doing and really want to learn about real estate development and all that. So Twitter's 86,000. I just started on LinkedIn. And that's one of the things I've been doing in the past year, right, is my real estate business was very busy until 2023. The market is, you know, rates have changed, everything's kind of changed. Everyone's going through this transition right now. Now I'm starting to go on other platforms. LinkedIn is 5,000. Gonna start a video series on Instagram. So I have a total audience, I just kind of say like of 100,000 basically on the various platforms kind of combined.

Okay, so what clarity could we get you in the next 30 minutes or so on the course?

Well, what I'd love to talk about is, you know, as we've kind of gone through Even though I've been doing this for a little while now, I still feel new to it. I'm really interested in getting some guidance on launch strategy. And just my goal here is to create a sustainable business also, because what I've realized is when the real estate market is strong and I'm developing buildings, I can't be a full-time real estate developer and a full-time content creator. There has to be or a nonprofit in one of those two ways. Yeah, right. They both have to stand on their own two legs. And so what I'm trying to do is I want to launch this course. I want to get this information out there. But then I'd also love to figure out a way to make this creator business self-sustaining as a supplement or as a, you know, riding shotgun with my real estate business.

Yeah, sounds good. Okay, well, let's dive in on the board.

Do it.

Would you like gold or silver?

I'll take gold.

Okay, sounds good. First, let me just write down some audience numbers that you talked about. So on X, so these are the main ones. And so you said 8,100?

8,200 now.

8,200. Okay. And you've got the other platforms as well, but this is—

Those are the main two, right?

That represents the bulk of the audience.

Absolutely.

Okay, so now when we're talking about the course, maybe let's just get into pricing and positioning on the course and start there. So the way that I think about the course is like, what are the alternatives or what are you, What's the value that you're keeping? If someone goes through your course, what's the size of deal or project that they might be applying that on? Is this like a $500,000 project or a $25 million project or what?

So it can, I mean, it can range, but the way I think about it, and one of the things in the course that we talk about is we suggest starting with a smaller project. So like a 12-unit building, you know, the minimum you're building that for now is probably $2 to $3 million. So that's a minimum. You know, if you're doing something even a step up from that, like let's say you're going to develop a 40-unit building, you're looking at minimum $10 million. So these are not small undertakings, no matter how small you start, if that makes sense. Right. I mean, my last project, which was 204 units, was $45 million.

So I'm putting this up here just because we need context that the course lives in.

Right.

And so if I'm going in and, you know, on one of these projects, any set of advice that you give me could even for saving 5% here or, you know, the tiny, like, there's a huge amount of value to what you're delivering. And so whenever we're talking about pricing a course, the context matters so much. Whereas what people normally do is they say, what price should a course be?

And they're like, I don't know.

Well, I took this one cooking class and that was $30 and I did these continuing education credits for this other thing and that was $500. So, somewhere in there. And you have to put it in this context.

And there's some additional, just to add a little bit of additional context, you know, I also, as my profile grew, people were reaching out to me for consulting. Right? And I have people that ask me for half an hour, an hour of my time on the phone just to help them work through something. It's $1,000 for an hour. And I had somebody see my content, ask me to actually co-develop/consult on an entire project from beginning to end for them, a 32-unit project in Minneapolis that lasted a couple of years. They paid me $250,000 just to advise. And to your point about saving 5% here and there, I helped them with one, you know, we, I helped them, they were going to do underground parking and I looked at the whole situation and realized you don't need to. And I saved them, you know, $1.2 million. By not doing underground parking.

Yeah.

They like to joke, they're like, we would have paid you 5 times, you know, we could have paid you 5 times that and it would have evened out. But that's the, you know, it's not that, it's not about me being smart or any of that stuff. It's these are really important decisions and they're very, there's a lot of money behind each one of these decisions. So it's a, knowing this process is huge.

So there's a lot of value delivered. Okay, so let's talk about pricing. What do you have in mind right now for the pricing?

I think there's a couple different tiers that we're looking at. We haven't, you know, nothing's final. This is, and so I'd love your input, but I think there's a top tier of $5,000.

Okay.

Which would get you all the video, you know, obviously the entire course, all the videos. It would get you, we're doing handout, you know, there's a lot of documents that go with this process too. Purchase agreements, letters of intent, all kinds of things like that. Pro formas, right? All the stuff to help you learn. We're gonna, we would put that along with that. And then with the, included in that price too, some level of follow-up with me. Probably in some group format. We, again, we haven't finalized it yet, but it would be documents plus some sort of group format to get questions answered. Because the way I view the course is if you do it and if you really can understand it and digest it, I'm gonna get you 80 to 90% of the way there. I mean, I really, We've talked. I was hesitant to do this because I was like, I don't want to be guru-y, you know, I don't want to be seen in that light. But as I got into it, I'm like, I'm giving you the $250,000 consulting gig here for these prices, basically. Yeah.

And the nice thing is, you know, if I were to hire you for a consulting gig, right, and you and I are talking on the phone and you make a really good point, now I have to remember it and tell it to my team and on from there. Here I could be like, hey, watch video 4.

Exactly.

I mean, and you can go watch the thing 10 times.

If you have to, right? So that's the first year.

So we're here at $5,000 for the first year. It's the course, the group component of it, and the follow-up, and then, you know, all the docs, deal structure, all that. What's the package?

I think the second one is, you know, discounted from there, certainly. Maybe it's, and again, this is just kind of spitballing, like $2,995 maybe. And that's all of the videos, I think. I think that's the whole set of videos, but I don't think it's the attachments. And maybe it's like one follow-up with me. I don't know. We haven't, again, we're not.

Yep. Okay. And so then what's C?

And C is probably, you know, and I don't know for sure if there's a C because part of me is hesitant. Like what less can I give you than just all the videos? But maybe there's like, if we're really strategic about it, you know, there's 45, 48, maybe there's 10 or 12 of what might be Um, you know, you, you want to watch all 48, but if you watch these 15 or 12, like, that'll get you 50% of the way there kind of thing, right? Some entry— yeah, that's a good way to put it.

And what price point are you thinking here?

$1,000? Yeah, I was gonna say $1,000.

Yep. Okay, so these 3 packages, there's a bunch of things that I like about it, and you and I have talked before, so you— everyone knows how much I love tiered pricing. And so you're already thinking in those ways. One thing that I love here is that you're bringing in all of the documents and the done-for-you type of things, right? And so it's like, hey, here's the hands-on stuff. Like for my book Authority when it came out, one of the things that I put in there in the higher package that ended up being the most popular was this 90-day plan for your book is coming out on this day. Let's work backwards 90 days and here's what you should do every single week.

I like that.

And people were like, oh, I have to have that. And I'm like, well, that's only one PDF. And they're like, but it tells me exactly what to do and when. I'm like, all right. So that kind of thing is really, really valuable. Now, as I think about this overall, I think it needs really good branding and positioning as to why each thing is in it. Have you thought any of the naming of these tiers of what they would be? Yeah, exactly.

No, I mean, I haven't. No.

So are—

That's a great point. What brought it up for me is this, like, this entry package.

Is there— maybe there's key stages in the development process. It's not like you randomly drew a line and said, these 12 videos are in the entry package and these, you know, 36 are not. There needs to be a story that we're telling around that. Right? Is it the, like, this package will tell you everything you need to know to see if your deal is even worth pursuing.

Yeah, that's a good, yep, that's a good point.

So how, you know, it's the validation package. It's the, what is entitlements? What's that stage called?

I think that's the question for that, this entry opportunity is, Is it more of a feasibility? Is it like, this is just, this is just to get you, like, is that gives you, it gets you to kind of a go or no-go place? Or is it more of an outline of the whole process, but it's not the whole thing? But I like, I, as I'm saying that out loud, I like the idea. I think it's more valuable and helpful if it's more of a feasibility, like if it just gets you to a point 'Cause it's almost, I feel hesitant to put down like what it would be like a watered-down version of the whole thing. Yeah. Because then I'm almost for sure creating holes for you in your knowledge, right?

Yeah, so what I would do—

Versus like you take the, this is only the first 15%, but you understand that this is only the first 15%.

What I would do is I would have two things in here. One is the overview, and this is, maybe it's a video that's in everything that's like, Here's, in 20 minutes, 10 minutes, here's the whole process so that now you can anchor the rest of this course. You know, now you know the steps that are involved. And then the next is like, you know, for your project, getting into the steps of feasibility and all of that. So that's where you're breaking it down. So then you're not just only giving someone —like the first 12 steps. Right, right. That's a good point. Yep. 'Cause there's also a version where if someone spends $1,000, they have a piece of land, they're pursuing it, and their buddy's like, "Hey, there's actually a lot more to this than you think." Yeah. "Why don't you go buy the $1,000 version of Sean's course and decide at the end of that is do you even want to pursue that?" Yeah. And so this could give you the right information. I like that idea. Then the thing that I like about this is we have a really clear upsell path. Right? Because if you have a green light, you know, on this, this is the stoplight version of it, right? We have a red light, green light aspect of this. And you can even include a checklist in here. I'm gonna include the project checklist to say, hey, should you go further? Because you're about to put best case $2 million at risk. You know? And so this checklist is very clearly worth $1,000, right? But if we end up in the green path, then it's like, hey, do, you know, then you should be upselling to this. And there's a very clear path for that.

Yeah. No, I like that. I think that's a really interesting way to think about it. And it would help. Yeah, it would definitely, it's better than a watered-down version of like, we have 48 videos, but you get 10 that are, you know, chosen on purpose, but created holes for you for sure, right off the bat.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Because we, as, you know, just in general as developers, we're spending, you know, much more than $1,000 every time we start down this path. Oh yeah. And there are times where, you know, we get hundreds of thousands. I mean, in some major markets, you're getting millions of dollars into something, and you're still hitting a red light and pulling the plug. Right. You know, so this is a good lesson in that, in that to some degree also. Yes.

I don't know where I'm going to throw this, but checklist. And so as I'm positioning this, you know, this feasibility package that I'm emphasizing the checklist. Yep. Okay. Right. And so it's these, it's these videos and the checklist. That's what you're getting for $1,000. I'm thinking about getting rid of package B. Okay. And the reason is 'Cause I'm wondering what its purpose is. Sure. If I'm spending, if price is my concern, is there really a difference between $3,000 and $5,000? Obviously on one hand there's $2,000. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? But on the other, you know.

But there's a bigger difference between this and this. There's a bigger difference between. That's a, yeah. And this came about before this really existed. Right.

And maybe the price point on this should be $2,000.

Yeah, or it's $1,500. Something like that. Yeah, yeah.

Yep. But what I'm wondering about is in pricing, especially tiered pricing, every single thing should have a job that it's supposed to do. Okay. And I don't know what this package's job is. And so we want people to go with this because the outcome that they're going to get, like we don't really want them to go through the videos. Right, right. And not have the docs or the additional support or that sort of thing.

Right. I mean, this is the best value. I mean, this is like, if you want to do this, that's— yeah. But I get what you're saying. Yeah, it makes sense.

Yeah, so I think what I would do is get rid of this package. Okay. I mean, I don't know, we'll just— oh, just cross it out. Yeah. Hey, that's all right. And then now I need $5,000 to not seem expensive. Right? Because we don't want someone coming in and saying, Oh, $5,000 is really, really expensive. You want them saying this is really, really cheap. And so when I revisit these packages, what I'm thinking about is $250,000 makes $5,000 seem really, really cheap. And $250,000 is not a made-up number. No, it's a real number. It's an actual real number. Yeah. And so then as we position it, Maybe it's something like, you know, if we're doing pricing tiers here, then we've got 2 packages here. So the one that I want you to buy, this is going, I don't know what, I'm gonna just say A and C for now, right? So this is our main offering at $5,000. And then this one, I'm gonna say $1,000, but we might raise it. [Speaker:NATHAN_BARRY] Okay. Then we have our consulting. And maybe you say $250K, maybe you say starting at $100K.

Yeah, it depends on the— it's very project specific, but that was used as kind of a benchmark of like, look, that was a 32-unit project. That wasn't a 204-unit project.

Yeah. And so this is one part, and maybe it lives up above the sales page or something, but we've got a few things going on here when we lay it out like this. First, the, the $250,000 project price anchors everything. And we might start with like, you know, the testimonial above it. We paid $250,000 to Sean on this, you know, 32-unit project. We could have paid him 5 times as much and still, you know, still gotten our money out of it, right? And then as we come down here, so now our price anchor, the course is only $5,000. I love that. Someone only wants to get started, they can drop down to another price point. And then if they're thinking like, oh, is it actually $5,000? Is that value there? Then it's like, hey, hire me for consulting. So this is probably the $100K. But I would say $100K plus. Whatever, I'm not gonna change it.

Well, 'cause that's, you bring up an interesting point as I'm thinking about this. 'Cause the thing that comes up as we're kind of going through this is like, there's going to be people, and this is a comment, but it's gonna turn into a question. You know, there's people who are gonna do this, right? Who are gonna do the course, who are gonna buy it, who are gonna get through it, and they're gonna be like, that was awesome. I did the, you know, the 4 Q&As with you online. I got a couple of my additional questions answered. "but I need more help." And I think given the audience that I have attracted, I don't think they're 100,000, you know what I mean? This was a home building company who like could afford to do that, could basically give me part of the deal for that. I don't think the average, my average follower, I think there's a step up in consulting from this for them. I don't think they can get to this or 100, but I have anticipated as they finish the course, there's gonna be some desire from some for like, I need more from you.

Right, that makes sense. So in this case, the offer, the job of this is just the pricing. Just the pricing, okay. The $500,000. So let's, you know, let's put it at 100. We're $100K plus. Starting at $100K. Yeah, and you've got the quote at the top. And then you can have another quote from, you have other things. Basically, the purpose of testimonials on a sales page is to reinforce any statement that you make. And then you have a testimonial that backs it up of, I say this, but now here's this other person saying it.

Who've actually spent the money saying it.

Saying it in a different way. So I think this is set up really well. You've simplified your offering. It's now just down to 2 of them. And there's a clear story behind it. Yeah. Because one is, hey, this is all the value that I have. Like, this is what you need to run a successful project end to end. And this is one if you just need to know, should I green light this project or not? Yeah. So the story behind the price tiers really matters. Okay, that's pricing. That makes sense, yeah. What else should we dive into next? Interesting.

I'll put an X there. Yeah, we're getting our Bs going. We've eliminated B. Well, so I think that's, I mean, as far as the launch goes, I mean, this was, you know, this was really the unknown for me of like, what's the best way to put this out there? I'm glad that you didn't push back on the $5,000. I mean, I feel pretty strongly about the value. And again, the benchmarking it off that.

Niche market, we've set the context for it, we've anchored it again. Like, it makes sense. Now the thing is, the question we could get into is how many of these people who can pay $5,000 are in the 8,200-person email list, right? And what segmenting have you done? That sort of thing.

The lead-up's gonna be very, very important. Yeah, and that's the other piece that we need to kind of nail down is just the best way to build this. You know, I'm thinking about it and I don't remember where I came up with the 30-day, but like kind of a 30-day launch. I don't— Okay, so it feels longer. Yeah, it feels too long to go much longer than that to me in this scenario. What are you thinking on the 30-day launch? I mean, I think it's, it's, you know, hitting the 8— hitting the list of 8,200 people. I mean, hitting all of the audience. But to your point, I think the large majority of the buyers will come from that. Yeah. I mean, there will be some from Twitter who aren't on the, you know, list and whatever that will buy it, but the large majority will come from that, I think. So I think it's, you know, I know like the last— let's say it's 4 weeks, right? I know week 4, it's probably what, daily emails? Or, you know, daily. And it, week 1 you get 2 or 3, week 2 you're getting 3 or 4, week 3 you're getting maybe 5, and week 4 you're getting a bunch. But what do they say exactly? You know, what is the point? I'm sure you're gonna say, well, what's the point behind each email, right? Like, what are we getting?

We'll get there, but we need an overall theme on some of this. Okay. So let's talk urgency for a second. Why should someone buy this course now versus next month or next year?

Well, it may or may not exist next month or next year. I mean, it will, but part of this, right? And we touched on this a little earlier, is, is this a sustainable business, right? And maybe this doesn't play into this, but it's just where my head is, is like, we're doing this now. We may never do this again. I mean, I think we will. I'm hopeful that we will. And I think there's a whole thing here, But part of the urgency is, you know, this may be your chance to buy this course. We may not have it open forever. The other piece is right now, this is the best time to learn this stuff. The market is slow. This is when you're not— I mean, yeah, I had kind of like going back to this, this window gave me the opportunity to actually create this. Right? I'd been thinking about this for a couple of years. I've been getting these DMs for a while, but it wasn't until things slowed up that I actually had an opportunity and had the time to dedicate to putting it towards this. Okay.

So first, you're talking about an open and closed launch. So there is a fixed window. And so the course is not available to purchase. That's a form of urgency. Second is when it comes to the market, what you're basically saying is because of interest rates and everything else, Now is the time when you should be learning and studying. Yes. So that you're ready when these deals start to pencil again.

Yes. Part of what I talk about in the course, part of what I teach is how do you find the right architect? How do you find the right general contractor? How do you find the right team players and all these various things? Part of the reason why now is good is those people aren't busy. They'll actually return your call. They'll return your call. They might even go have coffee with you. Right. Right? 2.5 years ago, good luck, right? You go into the voicemail and you never hear from them again. So there's a, there's a time. This is a key point right now because the other people that you need, this is a team sport. The other people that you need on your team, you might actually be able to get their attention right now.

So one thing that I want you to keep in mind through the whole launch is you need to be continually answering the question, why now? Why now? Okay. And so can I write that right now? Yeah, do it.

That's a great thing to remember.

And so, right, and if you notice under urgency, we've touched on this in two different ways. One is you will not be able to buy this course after X date. And then the other, there's probably a bunch more under like that we want to get into now under this copy positioning, all of that for why now. Okay, so now if we think about the 30-day launch plan, We need a cart open and a cart close. Yep. In here. Do you have any thoughts on how long to run that? My gut is like 7 days.

A week? Yeah, I've— I listen to this podcast. Yeah. I've heard, yeah, I mean a week sounds kind of the right amount of time. Okay. You know, we've talked about we think we'll be ready to launch by late October, early November. We run into the Presidential election. And I know your podcast and some others I've heard of, like, I don't remember where it was, but they talked about don't bother trying to launch something between Thanksgiving and Christmas because everyone's just paying attention to their family content and all that kind of stuff. So our goal right now, and, you know, this may change obviously given editing and everything else, but like we're shooting for a launch around mid-November.

Okay.

Like we're 15th, you know, I have to look. I don't know what the days on the calendar are, but somewhere mid-November, be open for a week. Someone did bring up the point to me about, you know, some people that are going to move into development or want to kind of take this path are working in finance and other things right now, and they do get bonused at the end of the year. And somebody made the point like, that's a really easy way if you get a $20,000— and I don't know what people's bonuses are, you know, whatever. But if you get it, it's a lot easier to buy a $5,000 course when you just got a $20,000 bonus and you're like, well, I'll have a $15,000 bonus and now I got John's course also, which which I hadn't thought about, but I thought was actually a really interesting point also. And I don't, you know, again, I'm new to this. I don't have a lot of strategy knowledge behind how long to keep it open, whether to just keep it open forever. And like, anytime you come across my content and you can go to my website and buy my course, or—

At least for now, we're gonna close it. Because you need urgency of some form. So, plus that gets you, that gets you these group calls too.

Like those don't go away. Those are not— Right? Those are gonna be, I think we're gonna launch in November, give people 2 months to go through the course, some, you know, some amount of time to go through the course. And maybe those are once a week in February for 4 weeks and that's it or something.

Yeah, I would do some as people are going through the course. Go sooner. Okay. As well, 'cause then that's a reminder to go through it and all that. But yeah, I would make sure to have that in there. Okay, so if we break this down, we'll just say the weeks.

I like that I'm just taking random notes on that.

That's what it's there for. Okay, so week 4 is launch week. Yep. One very quick thing that we're gonna do is after week 4, we're gonna do a downsell. But that's like to a subset of the list.

Okay. Is that like you get it at a different rate or a different—

All we're gonna do is we're gonna take the people who were interested in the course, who clicked links, all of that expressed interest and didn't buy. And we're just gonna email them this feasibility entry-level offer. Got it. We might add in something slightly different or make some small tweak, but it's just like, hey, I saw you were really interested. Here's the offer. Okay. That can get you in. If you buy this in this new window, maybe you throw in a call dedicated to feasibility and how to greenlight a project, right? Yeah, okay. So maybe it's like with call bonus. And you end up going back and adding that to everybody who bought that package.

Bought that, sure, sure.

So it's not like, oh, 'cause you waited to buy it, it turned out better. You don't get— Okay, so week 1, as we're working backwards, I think is all about the audience. Okay. Because if we look, the number of people from watching your content, I think we can do a better job of converting from social, to the email list. Okay. So that's what week 1 is all about. Okay.

The more, more just direct asks to go to the email list.

Do you have a lead magnet of any kind?

Something? We have a, the one thing we've come up with is like our 5, like we have, we call it the 5-day course where it's just like the 5 of all the newsletters we've written, it's like the 5 most impactful ones that you can read. So if you sign up on that link, you get those first as opposed to having to go through the whole kind of cadence. And then, We can always create something new, certainly too. Yeah.

Yeah, so I would play, I would play with that. I would do, I'm looking for a resource. I would find something out of the course that's a document, a checklist, something like that. And I would, that you already created and I would pluck that out and give it away for free. Okay. In trade for the email list. So I'd probably try 3 different things between now and the course. The course launch, or really between now and the conclusion of that first week. We're trying to get as many people on this list as possible, right? Can we go from 8,200 to 12,000, 15,000, right? That'd be a pretty big bump. The other thing to think about is can you do any guest content on other people's newsletters, right? Is this the sort of thing? I'm gonna write on here.

Yep, do it. Guest. Content.

Is there a— can you reach out to, uh, Nick Huber, Chris Powers, some of these other people and say, hey, I'd love to write an essay for your newsletter of the 5 lessons I've learned, you know, developing $200 million in real estate, you know? That's a, that's a great idea.

One of the things that happened on Twitter the other day was Moses Kagan made a comment about more people should become developers. I saw it and I quickly jumped in and was like, hey, by the way, I have this newsletter. And then Moses thankfully saw that, reposted it like, hey, my friend Sean has this great newsletter. And we had a bang. We had a huge day that day. You know, we had 200 and some subscribers that day. Yep.

Just from somebody else saying you should read this. Yeah, so you deliberately reach out and say, okay, who else has my audience? And say, hey, how can I do that? Because that's how subscribers find content is creators talking about other creators. Then what we're doing is weeks 2 and 3 leading up to launch is all about, the way that I would do it is week 2 is the tease, week 3 is the decision. And so here we're really focused on the email list. Now you're still posting to social. Yep. Because these people, the email list, they follow you on social as well. And you can annoy people with too many emails, but you can like get the same amount of touchpoints if it's like, oh, I saw the email and— And I saw the, yep, okay. And I saw the other social post. The other thing that I love is the same way that you did this like work in public idea with your buildings, you know, we're just saying, hey, here's what I made. Do the same thing with the course. Okay. So make sure to share the behind the scenes, especially on social. Here's what I'm up to, all of that.

Does that start, are you saying start that now or start that in this sequence?

I would do a little bit of it now to make sure people know it's coming. And then, and then do it a lot around this time. So the thing that most people do is they tend to tease right before the launch. Here's what's coming and all of that. And they try to get you to make the decision during the launch. One thing, we talked about this on a previous episode, but that I really want people to do is I want them to, I want to separate those two moments of being able to make a decision about whether or not you want to buy and actually being able to buy. So that I want you to decide, I want this. Oh, sure. And then—

So you're ready, so the second this opens, you've already decided. You've already decided. You know.

So I might even do something in the decision.

Yep.

I might tell people like, hit reply and let me know if I wanna buy or if you wanna buy or something like that. Another decision that you can make in this is based on your price point, you can close this with phone calls. Now I don't know if you want to, but it is worth your time to get on 10-minute calls with people. Sure. To help them understand if it's worth the buy. So somewhere in here, right, if you're teasing the content, why it's useful, what's in it, the lessons learned, you know, here's where you're like, the $2 million mistake that I made so you don't have to. Right? Those kinds of things. And you're telling these stories and you're having a ton of value. Then as you get into the decision, you're saying like, here's why you should buy it. Here's the offering, here's the packages, all of those details. And then you say, hey, if you're unsure if this is right for you, just hit reply and like, let me know and I'll give you the candid advice on it. Because the last thing I want to do is take money from someone who It's not a good fit, right? Because you're like, I'm going to be developing real estate for the next 40 years. I don't need, you know, right? No, I don't need your $5,000.

And that's that, you know, you bring up a really good point that's super important to me for this is this is going to be really, really impactful and helpful for the right people. Yeah. But this is not something that I want, that you should buy. I mean, there's no value in it if you don't want to develop real estate, right? Ignore the— Yeah, no, I mean, but that's exactly right.

But you're saying don't buy it. Absolutely. And you're getting very, very clear. That's one of the best ways to build trust is if you genuinely say, okay, listen, I understand. Yeah, no, you shouldn't buy this. Yeah, no, absolutely.

But you should listen to me on—

I did a podcast. Yep. You know, that has some good direction. You know, you're too early. You're— Right. So if you break that down—

No, I think that's— I love that because that's, that's exactly right, is, you know, I, and I think that plays into the pricing and it plays into the whole thing, is, you know, of those 8,200 people, or if it's 10,000 or whatever it ends up being, you know, how many of those people is it truly a good fit for right now? Right. You know, I mean, hopefully, hopefully enough that it may, you know, is impactful for them. But yeah, I definitely, I love this idea. I definitely want to give people the, you know, I'd love to hear their story and be able to say, you know what, you know, you got to read some books. I mean, you're still at real estate 101 because the other part about development that, you know, isn't always out there is like, it's kind of real estate on hard mode. I mean, it really, it's so much easier to go buy an existing 12-unit, 40-unit, even 204-unit. It's the same process to buy those deals. And it's less risk and it's less time and it can be done in 90 days. I mean, you could say to me today, I want to buy a 100-unit apartment building and within 6 months I could probably help you do it. And if you said, I want to build a 100-unit apartment building, you know, if we get it done in 3 years or 4 years, we've done well. I mean, it's a totally different beast. So I love that idea because I absolutely don't want people to buy it if it's not going to be impactful for them. And all of that builds a lot more credibility.

So the thing I was getting at is with this group of people who are unsure, I would have them, I would get on a call with a bunch of them. Just say, hey, hit reply. Like, if they hit reply, here's why, here's my question, all of that. Then you can reply with those answers and say, hey, if you still have questions in your reply, drop your phone number. And then when you're out for a walk, just call them and say, give that 5 to 10-minute call.

Yeah, I love that idea.

And then I would get those commitments before launch time comes. So figure out the way in an email and a couple different ones, hey, if you're in, if you're going to buy when this launches, hit reply and tell me. Because then you're getting people to solidify that commitment before the launch comes. And then you can, you know, organize them as a label in Gmail. You can follow up, you can do all of that. Because it's totally worth 20 minutes of follow-up for a $5,000 student. Absolutely. Absolutely. Let me see if there's anything else in here. This is awesome.

This is so great.

The other thing is, I was gonna say, we're doing our selected form of urgency is an open and closed launch. There's other ways that you could do it. Price increase, bonus, that kind of thing. I probably, I would entertain the idea of in this 7-day window for the launch, you play around with shortening it. I think day of the week matters. This is a business activity. So I wouldn't close a launch outside of business hours, for example. That makes sense, yep. We're not closing on Saturday at midnight.

I mean, I even thought maybe it opened again, just not looking at the calendar, but maybe it opens on a Monday and people have 5 days, and then we keep it open over the weekend knowing most people aren't going to be paying attention to it, and they have that following Monday as maybe the last day to—

Yeah, something like that.

Gives it like, okay, you got one more chance here on that last Monday.

You might be closing at 5, but you might find that's too long. Yeah, that's true too. But, you know, don't let it go beyond 7 days. Okay. I would have some sort of thing that you could offer that if they buy in like the first 48 hours they get. And it might be a call that week where you're gonna, you're like, I'm gonna do 2 feasibility breakdowns live on the call this week. And anyone who buys before that call gets access to it. And maybe, you know, you bring 2 example projects and you're like, here's ones that I've broken That's how they work.

Yep.

You probably have a bunch of deals that you're like decided not to do. Oh yeah. Because, you know, so you're like, hey, here's what I saw the difference between this deal that I did and—

This other one that didn't work.

And this other one that didn't work. Here's the nuance of it and I'm going to break it down live on the call. Okay. Right? But that gives people a reason to buy early in the week and you're not relying on a single deadline. You have multiple deadlines. And then that lets you send another email You know, say Monday you open, Wednesday is the close for that call. It lets you send that Wednesday email and say, hey, here's the last chance to get access to this call. Here's what we're gonna be covering. And this is the type of stuff that there's way more of it in the course. Yeah. No, I think that's good. There's more.

This is great. Yeah. There's more we can get into. Let's sell this thing. Yeah, exactly.

Let's go. Let's go. Let's sit down and recap a little bit of this. Okay, yeah, absolutely. When you were making the trip out to Boise, all of that, I'm just curious how you're feeling about like the course launch, the plan for the creator side of the business then versus how you're feeling now.

I'm feeling a lot better now. I think my, where I was, you know, a couple days ago was in a good way. And this is different than I felt 3, 4 months ago before creating the course, right? I had mentioned I had some apprehension about, is this really gonna provide value? Having created it now, having gone through it, having filmed all of these videos, like I feel really good. I will put my name on it. Like I'm not worried about the content at all. This has been extremely helpful because this is like, black hole is maybe a bit of a strong word, but like this is the stuff that, you know, I know how to go build a $45 million project. I do not know how to launch a course. Right? Right. So having like, just hearing all of this has been, Like, that's why you can see all my little scribbles everywhere. Like, I'm going to take a picture. I mean, this is fantastic. This has been really, really helpful. It's— there's a whole bunch of things that you said that I didn't know, right? You know, that, that'll be really helpful to doing this because it's what I, what I want to do much more than make money or any of that, right, is like, I really feel like now I feel like I spent 3 years online showing what I do, talking about myself and my projects and all that. And I feel really fortunate that it resonated with a subset of people, right? And a bunch of those people have then reached out to me for help. And I finally have gotten to a place where I created something to help them. And now I just want to make sure that they get it right. I want to make sure that it's going to them and that they're getting it in a way they can buy it. I love, frankly, I love that we eliminated price tier B. I really do. I think that was just me, you know, like I want there to be a cheaper option for people 'cause I don't want it to be, you know, I don't want somebody to be like, God, if I only had another $1,000, I really wanna buy this course, right? But being able to have a big difference between $5,000 and, you know, $1,000 or $1,500 is huge, I think. So no, I'm, I'm excited about it and I'm grateful for you for taking the time to help me think through it. But I feel good. I feel good about it. I'm excited. And you and I have talked about this a little bit and I don't know how we're doing time-wise or whatever, but I didn't know that I would like being a creator. I mean, I didn't know that I would actually like the teaching piece of it. I actually always kind of thought I wouldn't, to be honest with you. But it's really in the last year, it's really made me feel good and I'm actually, now I'm really providing value, right? I'm not just posting about my projects or talking about myself or, I mean, I post, I think a lot of helpful stuff on X for free that guide you in the right direction. But really now I actually kind of feel like a real creator, if that makes sense. You know what I mean? I always kind of was like, well, I kind of, I post on Twitter, but Um, like, I really feel good about it now.

One thing that I love about your work and where you're headed with all of this is the, like, the leverage and impact that you can have on society as part of it, right? Because something that you and I are both passionate about is affordable housing and, like, people having a path into a great place to live that doesn't cost a fortune. And we know that the single biggest way you can have an impact on that is by building way more housing, right?

Right. No, absolutely. I mean, developers get And some earn it, but a lot get a really bad rap. And honestly, developers are the solution, right? A lot of developers, you know, that— and that's why, like, I want people who care. I want to find those people who want to do this, who want to make an impact and don't know how, and help them.

When I think that's the leverage through the creator world is that you can say, hey, here's how to do beautifully designed projects, you know, at scale and not like break the bank and like the deal still pencil. And so, you know, you can build thousands of units in Minneapolis yourself, but this way you can scale that messaging and it is ultimately going to go out to tens of thousands.

Yeah. Having, having the— I mean, even getting some of the emails, I had a guy on Twitter the other day say, I just, you know, he tagged me and he said, I just started an 8-unit building because I've been following your content. And I was like, I was like, "That's fricking awesome. I can't believe I had an impact on that guy who I didn't even know who he was or never saw his name before." And I was like, "That's amazing." So yeah, I'm hopeful to be able to pass this course to use this. I mean, I feel like for whatever reason I got the microphone and I was really hesitant at first about how to use it, but I really think that I can, I'm hopeful that there's like a, as you just said, like an impactful way I can do it. Turns this into a real business that ultimately is something that's a huge net benefit for society and for the housing market and all those things.

Yeah, sounds good. All right, well, where should people go if they want to sign up to the newsletter and follow you on X?

Great. Well, X, uh, Sean D. Sweeney, um, is where to find me on X. The newsletter is The Bright Build. That's what we, what we named it. We set it out to call it Sean Sweeney's Newsletter, uh, and it's on Kit, but it's, uh, thebrightbuild.com is where you'd go to, go to sign up for it.

Sounds good. Well, thanks so much for coming on.

Awesome. Thank you so much for having me, Nathan. It's been a pleasure.

If you enjoyed this episode, go to the YouTube channel, just search Billion Dollar Creator and go ahead and subscribe. Make sure to like the video and, uh, drop a comment. I'd love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were and also who else we should have on the show.