Bonus Masterclass - Waitlist Launch plan

Hey, welcome to today's masterclass which is all about executing a launch plan that is going to get you more impact and potentially help you to reach your goals with your training courses, your academy launch, with your math classes, one to ones, whatever it is that you are wanting to launch. Now everything that I am going to teach out today is quite a lot to take in. It's all probably going to be new to you as well. And however, these are strategies that I have used over the past eight years plus in the education industry. These are strategies that I have helped other people in the beauty industry with training academies to use and it is a proven strategy that is successful. Now that being said, I'm so happy to share it with you. I'm so happy to share with you my experiences and what has worked for me. However, you can take this as you like, you don't have to use it, you can take little bits of it. However, it works best in the order that I am about to deliver it and with including every everything that I'm about to explain to you. So let's dive in and let's get straight to it. I'm just going to remove this little picture of my floating head so that you can fully concentrate on the master class. So the objectives of today and of this masterclass are to help you know how to structure launching your training academy and educational experiences for your students. It's also going to give you a checklist of things to consider before, during and after your courses go live. Because I imagine at this point you're a little bit like what do I need to do when I know I've got a lot to do? I just don't know how to sort of structure myself from here. So hopefully this will help with that and help you to know whether you've forgotten anything or things that you should be thinking about at a certain stage in your launch. And I'm also going to help you know how to strategically create a bigger impact and increase your course sales or meet your course goals for your launch as well. So hopefully this is going to be really helpful. So, so let's dive straight in, starting with step one which is preparing for your launch. Now this is, I am talking like two to three months before you actually launch your course in this masterclass. I'm going to call it your offer or courses because I know you might be wanting to launch beginners courses or upskill courses, but you also could be thinking about master classes or one to ones at this point and all of this that I'm about to run through would work for any of those. So I'll refer to it as an offer or a course and you can apply it whatever learning experience you're wanting to launch. So first of all, you want to get super clear on exactly what you are offering. And what I mean by that is this big list of things that you will need to think about when it comes to ideating your offer or your course. So things like a name for it. So for example, at the Nail Tech Org we have things like the exclusive Gel Journey, which is our beginner's gel polish course. We also have the Expert Experience, which is an upskill course for, for existing nail tech. So starting to think about exactly what it is that you want to call your experience that really fits in with your ideal client, that makes sense to your ideal client. And you don't want it to be too vague. You want people to look at it and kind of understand or have an understanding of what it's going to be involving. You want to start to think about what's actually included in your course or experience. So what does that person actually get? How long does the experience last for? So a lot of our courses are 12 weeks. So you want to think about how, how long it's gonna last for and maybe yours will be shorter than that. So you just want to think about what the experience looks like for the person involved. Who is it actually for? And this is so important. So I really want you to get specific on exactly what you are creating and who you would like your ideal client to be. So I really want you to think back to when we've done exercises around your values mission, your vision, exactly what it is you want to create and who for and why that's important to you. And remember at this stage, to stay in alignment with that reason we did those values exercises was to help you to get really clear when it comes to this part now and help you to make decisions as well as you move through the experience. What is the specific transformation? So who is walking through the door and who is walking out the door? We've gone through this in the training and what is going to be the price point? And remember, you need to consider absolutely, absolutely everything involved in the course. The cost of your time, the cost of products, the cost of the kit, the cost of opening your salon space for the day and all of those things. And what do you actually need to prepare? So if it's an in person course, what will you need to have ready for the day? Is that a kit? Is that Refreshments is that you know, whatever else you want to include. What do you need to have prepared and ready for when they come in? How long will you need to set aside to create it? So, so how long is it going to take you to map this out and to actually create the course content? So I've said at least two to three months before your launch, but you might actually think it's going to take you longer than that. And also which social platforms are you going to use to market your course? And that will be drilled down to which social platform you are used to marketing yourself on, because you probably feel comfortable on that platform. But also massively comes down to where your target client is in terms of social media. So wherever they hang out is really where you want to be placing yourself. That might mean getting to grips with a new platform, but it's worth doing for the sake of a successful launch. So first thing you want to do is just ideate your offer or your course, really understand what it is that you are creating. Step two is really getting clear on your launch goals. And this is so important and this is the part that I see so many people skip. So I want you to think about how many spaces you wish to sell on your course and what would make it a success success and give you a return on your investment. So what I mean by that is actually really sitting. And you know, we've done a lot of visualization throughout this course, so this is where that comes in. Even close your eyes. If you want to get yourself in a nice environment, a nice calm and space and just have a little think about how many students you really want to intake into this course. Think about what would really feel good for you. You want to be realistic at this stage, but you also want to be ambitious at this stage. Also want to set yourself a little bit of a challenge. You want to make sure that you are creating the impact that you want to create with these courses, but also not putting too much pressure on yourself at this stage. So let's say for example, you want to give yourself a goal that is good, a goal that is best, and a goal that is mind blowing. So you're not just saying to yourself, I want to get 10 students in on my course. You might say, well, a good goal to have would be 10 students and best goal to have will be 15 students and absolutely mind blowing goal to have will be 20 students and that could be over like a 12 month period, for example. And then you can break down those goals. So let's say you really wanted to make this. Let's say you've got a financial goal. So let's say you're really wanting to make this a 10k launch. You'd love to make £10,000 as an extra income stream for yourself this year based off your courses. So let's say when you've looked at how much the course is going to cost you, you've drilled down that cost. Let's say you want to charge £1,000 for your course, then you know you need to get 10 students through your door in order to make this a 10k revenue course. Obviously you're gonna have to take cost out of that. Let's just look at it from a revenue perspective. That would mean you would need to get 10 students on your course. So that could mean you release five launch dates. Five course dates, sorry. And you have two students on each one. So that, to me feels like a super manageable goal. It also feels like something that would be a huge achievement if you were here to hit it. And it feels like an amazing starting point for you and your academy that would help you and allow you to really feel successful if you were to achieve that. So that's what I mean by setting launch goals. Really get specific to why you're doing this. Really get specific as to what you would like to gain from this, but. But also the impact that you want to create and what is going to be a good experience for your students as well. So what you don't want to do is pack loads of students into the room, which isn't going to create an amazing experience, but just helps you to get to the financial goal. You really want to think about spreading it out and making it so that it is mutually beneficial for you and your students. So that part is super important and also super exciting because you get to create this and you have done this for yourself. Now, once you have ideated your courses so you know exactly what your course is going to look like, you have a goal for your courses of how many of those you would like to sell, how much impact you'd like to have, how many people you'd like to bring into your space and over what sort of period. Then you can move into step three, which is introducing the wait list strategy. This is where it gets quite complex and there's a lot to introduce, so please stick with me on this. So at least two to three months before your launch, you want to start thinking about your waitlist strategy. Now, I say, at least ideally it's right now you want to Be thinking about your waitlist strategy. So it doesn't matter if your courses are three months away or six months away. Start thinking about this now. So the wait list strategy really is getting a wait list of people together who are your ideal clients or they're interested in what you're about to offer. It's a great way to segment your warm audience and the people who are ready to buy. So where I've said warm audience, I just want to put a little bit of context behind that. So your audience right now, and this could be your following on Instagram, you're following on TikTok, your existing email list, whichever way you choose to market yourself and have people following or watching or being a part of that community or whatever it is that you're doing. Inside your audience. You have people who are cold, people who are warm, and people who are hot. So people who are cold are people who might have only just followed you or haven't built a new like and trust factor with you. They don't really fully understand who you are or what you offer. So they're probably the least likely to buy from you. If you were to put a post on Instagram to say you were running courses, then you've got your warm audience. So these people know who you are and they know what it is that you do, but they would need more information in order to buy. So they haven't exactly got that new like and trust factor yet, but they are aware of. Yeah, they do. Maybe when they think about nails or doing a course or whatever, they might think about you, but they don't really understand why you are the person to solve their problem. They might have followed you for a little while, that might be why they know who you are. And they might have already been a part of your whale, but they need a little bit more information to help them to buy. And then you've got your hot audience. So these are the people who already follow you, they know like and trust you and they are likely to purchase your course or offer when launched. So these are like your Raven fans. These people might have already purchased from you. So they might have already done a one to one. Or they might have already been in your salon, they might be a client. Or these are the people who are saying, when are you starting your courses? I really want to come and do one. So those are the people who are your hot audience. So you might already have an idea already of people who sit in each one of these categories. So the idea of a wait list strategy is to move people from cold to warm or from warm to hot and lead them further towards that sale. So a wait list can be done gradually over a period of time, which is why you should start building your wait list of people who are interested in what you're about to offer as soon as possible. So once you have gathered together people's emails, you can then start to nurture these people through content that is specifically for them, that brings them value and leaves them wanting more. And I'm going to give you more information about this now. So to have somebody's email on your email list is a privilege. An email is such a personal thing and these days people don't often want to give their email away and don't give it away freely unless there is something in return for them. There are so many ways that you can also nurture your audience and build a good quality email list. The easiest way for you to do this is through your content, because content is something you're already creating day to day as part of your business, and it's something that you will hopefully find natural or find a little bit easier to create. So in your content, what you want to start doing is giving your people value. So this could be on any market and platform that you currently use. You want to start introducing content and topics that are similar to your end product. This could look like sharing tips, tricks, value adding reels, carousels, talking about the problems that your ideal client is having and how you're going to resolve them. This should all be free value to your audience at this point. So free reels, free carousel posts, free TikToks, free whatever it is, free emails showing that you're an expert and meaning that they'll naturally start to know, like and trust you. So this is where you start to give away the knowledge that you have. And don't worry about giving away too much information at this stage, because the idea is that people start to trust you when you start to solve their problems. You want to teach people things through your content that they don't already know before they watch it. So they want to gain information from you, where they're like, oh my God, I didn't actually know that. And you'll know yourself. If somebody has taught you something immediately you're like, I want to know more from this person, or you're more likely to buy from them. And also if you've taught them something for free, that person then has the mentality of like, wow, if they've given me this information and taught me that for free, imagine what I would get from them if I actually paid for it. So that's, that's the sort of buy in psychology that we are trying to tap into through giving people value. So at this stage, you just want to be doing this on your social media whilst expecting nothing in return from your audience. So don't be expecting likes to come flooding in, don't be expecting comments to be flooding in. It's great if they do. But all you want to focus on is simply providing as much value as you physically can and always adding a call to action on these posts for them to sign up to your email list if they're enjoying your content or they'd like first access to something that's coming soon. So just keep giving the value, keep plugging that email list and keep sharing content that is really valuable for the person that inevitably you're going to be helping through your course or through your offer during the stage. You just want to focus on positioning yourself as an expert and someone that your audience can trust. So the pathway here that you want your audience to follow is that they're scrolling on Instagram, they see a piece of content from you that is super valuable and they're like, wow, I didn't know that before. Like, I want to know more from this person. And then they see a call to action on that post that says sign up to my email list if that helped because I've got more coming. Okay, next you want to. So this is then pre launch content. So that, that bit that I've just gone through there is like pre, pre launch content. I'm gonna come onto into how to actually create your email list in a minute. So if that's in your head at the moment, like how do I actually pull these people together? What email platform do I use? How to actually send the emails? I'm going to touch on that at the end, but at this stage I just want to go through the strategy of what you're doing. So stay with me. Okay, so this is all pre, pre launch content. This is all from now, but as we start getting closer to the launch, you want to start creating excitement. So you want to start shifting your content to the more obvious link between the topic and the product that you're going to soon be launching. So let people know at this stage something is coming. So all of a sudden you've gone from just giving loads of value, teaching people stuff, not mentioning anything but your wait list, to now shift into something huge is coming. And I am sharing all of the behind the scenes of that on My email list. So I am sending regular emails now to a private group of people who are getting all the BTs of what I'm launching. If you're someone who wants to be a part of that, then pop your email in here and I'm going to give you access to that. So you're given hints of what this looks like on your social media and you're encouraging people to join your waitlist to get all of the insider action. You can be doing all of this whilst your course or your offer is in development. So you can give sneak peeks to your email list, which just gets them excited and gets them feeling ready to purchase. So what does that actually look like? So let's say, for example, over time you've been growing your audience on social media and you've been funneling those people into your email list. You've been taking the emails of people who really like your content and you've been putting them in a list. So what you want to do now that that list is building is to start to nurture these people and prep them for what's to come by sending regular email updates. So the last thing you want to do is be like, oh, I've got something coming guys, come and sign up to my email list and then not send them any emails for three months time and then all of a sudden dump an email in there, a sale, like buy my course. Because again, it's not building that no like and trust factor. So once you've taken their email, you can start sending regular email updates. So either once a week or once a month, something that feels manageable and realistic for you, you can start to send them almost like a newsletter style email, keeping them up to date of the behind the scenes, giving them little snippets of what to come, making them feel excited, giving them that fomo, giving them that agency of oh my God, this person is creating exactly what I need and I can't wait to sign up. A good thing to remember here is that whilst these people will be interested in what you're planning, the main thing they want to know is how it's going to help them or solve their problem. So what you want to do when you send them these emails is to keep linking everything back to them, to their problem. Like, I know you're currently dealing with this problem, so whilst I'm creating this course, it's going to have this, this and this in it. So it's constantly linking back that psychology of I'm doing this for you. And when it launches, you're gonna want to be in on it. Another way you can take people's emails is by giving out freebies. So an option to encourage people to actually give you that email, which is all important to them, is to offer something for free in return for it. So this could include, but isn't limited to an ebook, a guide, a mini pre recordable masterclass, a template or something that solves one of their problems or scratches an itch, let's say. So for this section you want to think about your target students. So let's say it is an E file course that you are about to be launching. So you could potentially launch a. Or put on your story. I've created an ebook of how to effectively. I'm making this up on the spot. How, like basically how to effectively like shape your nails or how to be the best at nail shaping in your area or something like that. Where someone is like someone who would need an E file course would jump straight on that ebook because it scratches an itch of part of their problem that they haven't with or how to get quicker. And my full ebook on how to shave your appointment times down by 3:30 minutes. So straight away someone who's struggling with that is going to be like, oh my God, I need this guide. Click into it and you're going to be sharing all of your tips inside the guide and hinting at the bottom that you've got something coming that's even better that's going to support them. So you're constantly solving people's problems by giving them this free value. But if you do it in an ebook, it means they've got to give you their email first in order to get access to that ebook, which then means you're building your email list of people that are interested in your future offer or course. I hope that makes sense. So keep thinking about your target student. Keep thinking about a problem, a specific problem they're having and get really specific on it. Like I've just given an example there of spending too long at appointments and then solve it through the freebie that you give them. If you're launching a beginner's course, it could be something, I don't know. Your ideal client might be someone who's looking to create a side business that gets them an additional income stream of two grand a month or something like that. So it could be an ebook on how to launch a side hustle. Like that's one example. If they learn something from you, remember it builds trust. So the better the ebook or the better the guide, the more they're going to trust you afterwards and be like, oh my God, that guide was amazing. If they are launching anything else, I'm going to jump on it straight away because that really, really helped me. So the more you can really get into the minds of your ideal clients and solve something for them, the more successful you will be in answering their problems and building their trust. Sorry, that's just the same slide, I think. So next we come to the waitlist launch content in terms of giving early access to the waitlist. So this is when you have built your wait list, you have been doing it over a two to three month period, let's say, and you get to the point where your course is now built, it's ready to go and you're ready to launch it. So when you're at this point, you can give early access to your wait list, letting them know that this access is exclusive and it's going to be opened up to everybody else in X amount of days. So you could do two weeks, you could do a few date two days, but I would never do too long and I would never do too short either. So I'd say you don't really want to give longer than two weeks because then the people haven't really got any agency to purchase the course. And you don't really want to give less than two days because people need time to actually book on this. Maybe they need to ask the partner or get money out of a savings account or whatever else that might look like. So two days kind of gives them enough time to ponder over it, but still feel that urgency. What you could also do at this point if, when you give early access to your wait list is give these people along with the early access, an exclusive discount that is just for them and or some specific bonuses to reward them for taking fast action and being a part of that wait list. For example, the same way I did when I gave access to this bonus as part of taking fast action, it creates urgency and it makes those people feel special. It always, it also rewards those people because they are your people. They are the people that have been sticking around for a good few weeks or months ready for you to launch this. So these are the people that you want to reward for that. So if you can, if it fits into your launch strategy, then you could also give a small discount to these people. But then you've got to remember it might shift your launch goals. So let's imagine you're charging a thousand pounds for your course. Your Goal is to sell 10 spaces to get a 10K launch, but you're going to give your wait list £200 off as an early access bonus. So you've got to factor that in, which will mean you'll then need two extra people to book on the course to hit your waitlist goal, if that makes sense. So always make sure you factor it into your goals. So then once you have given your waitlist early access via email, you've sent your emails and I'll give you some email templates as well to go with that, you're then going to launch your course to everybody. So when you launch to everybody else outside of your wait list, this will be on social media, your general mailing list, whichever way you choose to market your courses. If you haven't yet hit your launch goals or there are limited spaces on your course and you've still got a couple left, you could then choose if you wanted to extend your bonuses and discounts for a short period of time. For those who take fast action in your general audience, you need to make sure at this point that you act in line with integrity. So if you've told your wait list that this bonus is going to expire and nobody else is going to get access to it, then you don't want to then go out on social media and give access to your bonus to everybody. If you have said it's fast action bonus, then you are totally fine to also give this bonus to people who take fast action outside of the waitlist. So you just got to make sure that you are always act in line with integrity, because that is important. So you're launching them to everybody else. So you're popping your post on social media, normal mailing list, your tick tock, whatever social channels or marketing channels you use and you are then gonna be promoting your course to everybody then. So that is sort of like the end of the actual waitlist launch. So it's building that wait list, positioning yourself as an expert on social media, then launch into that wait list of people first and then launch into everybody. Now step four is actually mapping out your waitlist strategy. So this is more of a checklist now that I'm going to move into so that you remember exactly what you need to do and when you need to do it. So I'm basically going to repeat everything I've just said, but in more of a checklist format so it makes sense to you. So let's go back to two to three months before the launch. So the first thing you want to do is start to ideate your course or your offer and set your course goals. You want to create your pre launch engaging content, so you want a content bank of really helpful content that supports your ideal client, that gives value, that teaches them something they didn't know before they came onto that piece of content. The more organized you are with your content, the better. So if you can get a bank of like 10, 20 posts together, that would be amazing. And remember, if you create a really engaging reel that does really well and seems to really help people, then look at the numbers. If you put a reel up there and it's got you 10 emails for your email list, create the same reel but put it in a carousel instead. Because once that piece of content has passed, it's gone. But who's to say you can't recreate or reinvent that content in a different way? So look at what's working and keep duplicating that style of content or that piece of content just in a different format. Again, the more organized you are with all of your content, the better. But this is something you can be thinking about too. To three months before your launch, set up your wait list page to collect names, email addresses and if you want to Instagram handles. This is not you don't need the Instagram handles, you just need name and email. But if you want to pop Instagram on there as well, you can do this can all be done via email marketing tools such as mailchimp. So I will show you that in a moment. And you can also at this stage be looking to create a helpful freebie to get more people onto your email market list. So have a little think about something you can can give people in return for that email that will also help you out. So you're not just relying on content, you've also got something else in the bag that you can dangle the carrot with and get people's emails off the back of one month before you launch, the things you want to be thinking about is launching your free resource and or promoting whatever it is that you are selling to your wait list whilst creating FOMO on social media and things like that. So 80% of the of your content one month before you launch should be directed towards oh my God, like I am planning something amazing. It's gonna help you. If you are this person, that person, this person. If you are having this problem, that problem and that problem, this is gonna help you. You really want to be on my wait list? Here's the wait list. All of those things, teasing the bonuses and exclusive discounts for being on the wait list. So I am having so much fun in my emails with a small group of of people that I'm given all the behind the scenes info on about what I've got coming up. If you want to be a part of this, then click here. If you are a part of it, I'm going to give you an exclusive bonus, exclusive discounts for everything that I'm planning. It's going to be amazing. If you're not in it, why aren't you in it? And that's the type of thing you want to be drumming up interest on about a month before the launch. And you also want to be using your wait list to, number one, send them regular emails, so almost like the newsletter format that we discussed. And also engage with those that have signed up on Instagram or in the DMs commenting on the profile and things like that. So go through your email list and if they've given you their Instagram handle or their social media handle as well, start engaging with them. Because again, the more they see your name pop up, if you're commenting on their posts or you're chatting to them in the DMs, they are more likely to naturally want to buy from you. And you want to get to know these people anyway. If they're going to be your students, you really want to start building a relationship with them now. And you'll have a lot of fun whilst doing it. So start to build relationships with those who are in your warm audience. Two weeks before you launch, you want to keep pushing the waiting list on your socials and to your email list. Ensure your sales page is ready and people are able to purchase your course from you. So you want to think about how you're going to be selling your course. If you need some kind of sales page or landing page, you want to think about setting that up, which I think is something that you could also do through mailchimp. We'll have a look at that in a minute. And also prep more social content and emails to your wait list ready for when you launch. So just being ahead of all your content on socials, on emails and things like that, so you know that you're prepared for the next stage of what's to come for your launch. One week before you launch, you want to think about launching your course or offer to your waitlist and sending them a sequence of emails with a countdown to your bonuses and discounts expiring. I've given you a little template for that and you Also want to create FOMO on your socials by sharing who has signed up and how many spaces are left. So that could look like things like oh my God, I've just given something amazing to my email list. X amount of people have signed off. If they're tagging you in their stories, be sharing that, be celebrating these people keep updates on how many spaces are left. If it sells out. Amazing. Put up that it's sold out. You really want to get people's attention at this stage and utilize the launch that you're doing to your wait list on socials to kind of create that fear of missing out when it comes to the launch date. Then this is just going to look like launching a series of informatives content across all of your marketing channels and doing this consistently. So showing up every day on social media, being in stories, being on the grid, given different style of content, looking at what worked over the full launch periods and utilizing that data to create more of that type of content. And if this, at this stage, if spaces haven't sold out then you could promote them on your social media. And if spaces have sold out then you want to do a series of stories to show that and allow people to click the link to jump on the waitlist to be the first to hear of the next intake. So even if spaces are sold out, you don't always want to cut that off. You want to be creating a wait list of people who want to be on the next course because that's super important as well to be thinking ahead and thinking of the future. Once you have completed your launch, there are other things that you can do to help you continue to make sales. So after the launch, post launch we call this as you're delivering that course. So let's say it's the first student course. You want to share what you are doing as you're doing it. So you want to take people like come with me for the day as I teach a beginner's course or come with me as I teach a one to one. Share what you're doing, share your student results, make it really engaging, create lots, multiple pieces of content, set your camera up in the room and just let it roll, set it from different angles. Take pictures. Also create a little group where your students can put pictures in it because they might take pictures throughout the day that you can use as well. Take people on a full behind the scenes whilst you're continuing to promote the wait list. So selling something whilst you're actually doing it is a great way of giving people proof that what you're doing is going to help them because it makes people, people put themselves in the position of your students at the time whilst you're showing that. And it makes them sort of ideate the opportunity of being on your course, what that would mean for them and creates that FOMO and urgency for them too. You should also take testimonials from every single student and create engaging content from each one. So pull out certain quotes that your student might have said that are really engaging and eye catching. And also follow your students journey and any successes that they have that they believe are down to the amazing support they've had from you. You can also create testimonials or content from and be sharing that. And also you want to analyze what content worked and what didn't. What is really hard to do is take the emotion out of a launch. Like say for example, you do your launch and not many people buy. It happens. It's happened to me. Don't be shocked if it happens to to you. And the worst thing you can do is attach your self worth to that. Everything you do provides you with data and what your job it is to do is not to emotionally attach yourself to that data and start telling yourself you're not good enough. The reason people haven't bought is because your courses aren't very good or your experiences aren't very good. You're never going to be a good enough educator and stop promoting and stop creating courses. What you want to do instead is take that data as evidence of what worked and what didn't. If you didn't make sales, go back through the process of your launch and have a look at where it was all going well and then where it dropped. And where it dropped is the part that you need to work on for next time to get that little bit better. As I said, I have launch courses that haven't sold and all that has done is told me that something in part of that launch has not worked. So I analyze the data, I look where we fell down. Was it that the emails weren't good enough when linking to our ideal client? Was it that the social content we were putting out there just wasn't engaging wasn't valuable enough? Was it that the bonuses weren't good enough? That the pricing was not right? Like you want to look at every single part of the launch and even get feedback on people who were a part of the wait list. If they haven't bought in a couple of weeks time, circle back to them. Hey, I've noticed you haven't purchased this course yet. I wanted to let you know it's still available and if it's not for you, please let me know. Why? So that it can help me for the future. You may even get some feedback from people who are on your wait list. Remember, everything is data. It's not about you and your self worth. Okay, so what I'm gonna do now is I'm just gonna flick to showing you this which is mailchimp. Now mailchimp is a email marketing tool that is really going to help you to send out emails automated and also create your mailing list. Now when I first started I started using Outlook, I sent manual emails to every single person on my mailing list. I wasn't even aware that something like mailchimp existed. So if you're someone who is a technophobe, that is not something that can put you off doing a wait list launch. Because even if it takes you like this is not easy. This involves hard work and you have to be willing to put the work in. You have to be willing to learn on the job. You have to be willing to do things the hard way before you then understand what the easy way is. You have to be willing to be a beginner before you can then become an expert. And that's exactly what I did. So I started off sending manual emails. I had like 10 people on my wait list, 20 people on my waitlist list, 30 people on my wait list and I was sending, I was typing out these emails manually and sending out each individual one. Then I came across mailchimp and I set this up myself and I fumbled through it to find a way of using it that worked for me. That is what you will also do. YouTube is packed full of tutorials on how to use Mailchimp but I'm just going to show you really quickly how to get started. So you literally type in mailchimp.com and you click sign up here. Now Mailchimp is a tool that allows you to sell send bulk emails to a specific list of people. It also allows you to create a list of people and create a form for somebody to fill in to join that list. So it's all linked and it gives you a really easy link to put on your social media. Once you click sign up you have these options. Now I am in South Africa at the moment. So the prices that it's to going given here are way off because they're in South African rand. So you can just ignore this. The price in pounds or dollars or whatever it is that you need is totally different. Okay. One of the options I want you to look at is the free option. The next option you should look at is the the Essentials option. Have a little look at what both of them offers. Like with the free one. This is a great place to start. And if it is not giving you all the features you know, you can then Upgrade to the essentials 1. But here it shows you the monthly email send. So you can send a thousand emails a month, you can send them to one audience, which is what you need it for. You get email support for the first 30 days and it also allows you to set up forms and landing pages, which is what you need now. I would say maybe sign up for the Free one if you need to, then upgrade to the Essentials one. Or if you really want to make a go of this, just sign up for the Essentials one straight away and just get going with it. Click Sign up or Buy now, log in and you will see how to create your first list. Move through it like that. There's a team that you can chat with if you need support with it. There are videos on YouTube. It wouldn't be an effective use of my time to talk you through how to use an email marketing platform when there's so much information out there. And I also learned myself by doing it. And that was the best way for me to learn because then it became better and better and better at it. I got to know it's a features and I started using the features one by one. You are on a journey. You're not going to do everything perfect straight away, so give yourself that grace. The other thing I just want to mention before I close off is that when you are doing your wait list, do not expect every single person on your wait list to purchase from you. So people will sign up to your wait list and then they might forget, they might have other priorities. Things might come up. So if you have a certain amount of people on your wait list, you always want to imagine that less than 50 of those people are going to buy from you. Usually it can sit between anything from 5 to 30% of those people will actually purchase when you do your launch. So that's why in order to do a successful launch, you want to get as many people on your wait list as you possibly can because it gives you more chance of hitting those goals for your launch. The more people you have on your wait list, the more opportunity you've got in a percentage format for those people actually buying or coming on your course. So in a nutshell. We've looked at how to structure launching your training academy and educational experiences. I've given you a checklist of things to consider before, during and after your courses go live. And I've also covered how to strategically create a bigger impact and increase your core sales. Can you now see how this is so different from just putting a post up on Instagram and hoping that people buy your courses? I would hope that they would, but this gives you a more strategic way to create that bigger impact. I am absolutely rooting for you and so are all of the team at the Nail Tech. Org. As I said, take this as you want to take it. Don't feel pressure that you have to implement it if you don't want to. I just want to share with you my experiences, what has worked for me, what has worked with the academy owners that I've had the pleasure of working with in the past on our retreats and things like that. And yeah, good luck. I hope it goes so well for you and you know where we are if you need anything.