Helping A Student Create His Digital Product From Scratch

Whenever I find myself, um, stuck on how to execute something, the question I always ask is, what is a metaphorical equivalent of someone in a different industry who has solved this problem? So martial arts is really just another physical activity. And so how do personal trainers solve this problem? You know, how do weightlifters solve the digital product problem? How do nutritionists solve the digital product problem? And like, if you just start thinking about different categories of people, like the digital products are, they're all kind of staring at you in your face. They're all like, how does a personal trainer, like a personal trainer you gotta train with in person.

Right.

So like, how does a personal trainer solve this? Well, they have digital products around like, here are routines you can do on your own. Here are specific problems that you have and here's step-by-step instructions on how to overcome them. So we sort of just like go down the list. Like, I think first of all, the first big decision to make is if you go digital products for martial arts, the first big Uh, question is experience level. Like, are you creating digital products for a complete beginner who hasn't even started yet, or a beginner who has been doing this for less than a year but wants to take it more seriously, or someone who is more intermediate and has been training for over a year? And wants to get better or solve a very specific type of problem? Or is this someone who has been doing this for a long time and this year is the year they're determined to get a black belt? Like, these are all completely different people, right? So the first question is, who do you want to help?

You can pick any one of those.

You absolutely could. So is there one that jumps out to you?

Maybe someone trying to get their black belt.

Okay, if you, yeah, if you like, you know, working with that type of person, then great. The thing I do wanna point out, okay? And this is important to think about and understand depending on what your goal is. And there's no right or wrong answer. It's just being aware of these different variables. The further up the chain you go, with experience level, the smaller the group of people, right? So like complete— like what is the— what's the TAM? What's the total addressable market of people who haven't started martial arts yet? It's like everyone.

Yeah.

Right?

Huge.

It's like the whole planet. And then it's like a beginner, maybe the TAM is like a lot of people. And then someone who's more proficient, the TAM is like less people. And then someone who wants to get a back vault, the TAM is like a few people. So you just, that's just worth keeping in mind 'cause what you don't want to have happen is you don't wanna spend a bunch of time creating a digital product and then you go, wait a second, how come it's not as popular as someone who's targeting the broadest possible, you know what I mean? Yeah. So it's just a goals thing.

So is it better to start at the bottom of the ladder then and build up?

It depends on what your goal is. Like, if your goal is, uh, hey Cole, I'm really passionate about working with like close to expert level people and I just really want to help them like master the craft, then if you're optimizing more for enjoyment and working with that type of person, then that's what you should do. But if what you're really optimizing for is, I wanna make money selling digital products, you should always go further down the chain to more beginners. The mistake that people make is they go, I'm really, no, no, no, Cole, I'm really passionate about working with expert-level people. And they say they're making the decision from a place of fulfillment. And then 2 seconds later, they're like, how come I'm not selling as much as the person who's catering to beginners? So it's just about being conscious of like why you're picking what you're picking.

Yeah, okay, that makes sense.

Okay, so then let's say we pick this one. The next step is, so what problems does this person have? So give me a couple problems that this person's running into.

So they're running into making it functional, so trying to make it when they're sparring with people or fighting. They want it to work.

Can you expand on what you mean by that?

So, a lot of the time, a lot of people learn it just as techniques and they don't get to the point where it's actually functional because of how they've trained it.

So, meaning like they just sort of repeat patterns?

Yeah, they just repeat patterns without getting— they don't learn to read the situation. Okay. So, they don't apply the appropriate context.

Okay.

The same as I'm doing with this. I'm a white belt.

Okay. So, what's another problem that people have?

There's gonna be some technical problems as well a lot of the time in terms of like how they perform their techniques.

Okay. So, let's just pick— so, first of all, I would encourage you and for everyone here, When creating digital products, I think this is a very helpful exercise. Start with experience level, map out what are the 3 or 4 different experience levels. It's always the same. It's like, I haven't started yet. I started, but I'm not seeing traction. I've been doing it a while, for a while, but I'm running into these problems. I'm almost an expert and I want to go to the next level. It's like, it's always those same ones. Map those out for your niche, and then actually go through the exercise and write out what are the 10 different problems that each one of these different archetypes has. Because what you might find is as you do that exercise, you might find, "Okay, I thought I wanted to work with this person, but actually it's the person who's kind of just getting started that I actually can help even more because I'm even more aware of their problems." Yeah. So I would encourage you to go through that exercise and everyone, you should do that.

Yeah, okay.

So then—

I'll definitely do that.

Yeah, so then the third question, if you sort of notice like what we're doing right now, like this is actually what a digital product ends up being. Because let's say you wanna work with someone who's determined to get their black belt and you isolate this problem. They have some technical problems. Okay. So, then you go inside that problem. What is a technical problem that you could point out? And how would you tell someone to work on it?

So, how are we trying to see— this is where if I looked at someone doing it, I could give you 10 things straight away just by watching.

Okay.

So, let's—

yeah. Am I just picking like— sorry, go on.

Yeah. Let's pause for a second. So, So you say if I watch someone doing it, you could point out what they're doing wrong.

Yeah.

In reality, how many different things could they really do with a specific, like I know nothing about martial arts, but let's say I go to, I don't know, throw a punch or do a kick or something. There are probably only like a couple things that I do wrong in that motion.

Yeah, no, that's true.

Okay. So, let's pick one. So, what is like one motion and you isolate what are a couple things that I might be doing wrong?

So, okay. So, yeah, it's gonna be their foot positioning. It's gonna be how they rotate. And then, yeah, and then their hand positioning. And then there's gonna be like— 3 or 4 different things that are gonna be wrong in one of each of those.

Okay, great. So let's go— Yeah, so we're going to just— Let's go to just food posi— or foot positioning. What are like the couple things that might be wrong there?

So they'll either be too narrow or too wide. So they won't have any balance.

Okay. And can you point out or can you say, how does someone know if it's too narrow or too wide?

Because of what happens when they throw the shot.

Okay, so you know if it's too narrow or too wide when, and what happens?

Yeah.

Okay, so can you tell me what happens?

So they'll either fall, they'll fall forward.

Okay, or?

Or they will not be able to retract their technique quickly and they'll get hit.

Okay. So here's— now let's just pause for a second. Let's just look at this. We went technical problems, we went into one technical problem, we isolated what are the 1 or 2 or 3 things that could go wrong, and then we talked about, and here's how you know if it went wrong. Everyone else, drop in the chat. Did everyone else here just learn something about martial arts? I did, I didn't know any of these things. I didn't even know foot positioning was so important.

Sweep the leg, like it.

Okay, so this is like, this is the whole, this is the aha, is this is what the digital product is. The digital product is because you are a practitioner, you take for granted all the information that you have.

Mm-hmm.

And second, this is like the even more, this is the harder skill to build, is oftentimes with education of any kind, people think, "I have to be in person," or, "I have to see it." But the reality is, if you just sit there and ask yourself, you're like, "Okay, hypothetically, if I couldn't be there," How many different things are there really for me to pay attention to? Like, if I saw someone do something, it's not like you're gonna notice between like 500 different mistakes. You're gonna maybe notice between like 3 different mistakes, right? And as you become more aware of that, you realize, oh, I can explain all of this. I just need to isolate each individual variable. Now, all of this is helpful because it is helpful information, but I will tell you where digital products go to the next level. The next level for digital products is when you can connect information to action and information to assets. So what this means is let's just go technical problems. Let's just go one single problem, foot positioning. You're explaining, you're giving information of it could, it could be too wide, it could be too narrow. You'll either fall forward, you'll have a hard time retracting back. All of that stuff makes sense. But the most helpful thing you can do is then tell the person, now here's what you should do, AKA action. Action. To fix it or to improve it. And ideally, pair it with some sort of asset. So what's an asset that we could give someone here? Could we give them a training routine to work on foot positioning? Could we give them, uh, morning stretches or exercises to work on foot mobility? Yeah. Could we give them a checklist of different actions as they adjust their foot positioning to know if they're doing it right or wrong? Could we give them a pair, like a training regimen with a partner? To practice just foot positioning? Like, how— how—

Regimen.

Like, what— this is the most important part, is you go, yes, I'm explaining this thing to you, but now I have to tell you what to do about it. And this is where you pair actions with assets. And of course, because you're teaching something visual, like, maybe it makes sense to pair all of these things with a training video. Maybe it makes sense to pair all these things with like a cartoon diagram showing different people doing the different actions. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Yeah, that makes sense. That's the drills that I do in class.

Exactly.

Video them.

Yeah. The, the, the skill with digital products is realizing all it really is is a more organized version of all the stuff you're probably already explaining in person. You already know all the answers.

Like, I—

if I ask you the questions, like, you tell me all the answers, right? And so the digital product is really just you sitting down and going, okay, let's just take this slowly, step by step. What problems does this person have? Let's isolate each problem. If I saw someone making this problem, What would I notice? What are the 3 different things I would notice? What would I tell them to do in each situation? And if the person wanted to get better at any of those individual things, what would I give them? What would I tell them to do? What little training exercise or what? You know what I mean? And you're sort of just repeating that loop in your brain over and over again.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Cool. Any follow-ups?

Awesome. No, that makes complete sense. I just need to, like you say, pay attention to what I say every week.

Yeah. Yeah. I would— I mean—

I take it for granted.

I would encourage too, for you and for anyone else here, I think one of the most underrated technologies that has happened in the past 5 years has been transcription software. When I was running my ghostwriting agency 10 years ago, I used to have to pay thousands of dollars every month to get our client calls transcribed from like a transcription service. Now you could literally just run an entire martial arts training program for an hour and just put your phone nearby and record the whole thing. You could record it in Otter, you could record it in Fathom, and then at the end you take the recording and most of these AI platforms will transcribe the entire thing for you in real time. And then you could take the transcription and upload it to Claude and just say, hey Claude, like summarize for me what are the things that I taught today? Like you already are creating all the content, just record it.

That's a good idea.

You know, awesome. It's a great question. Thanks for asking.

Thank you very much.

Yeah. Really good question.

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