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Download the Beta Launch Method Checklist here Transcript: [00:00:00] I'm about to beta launch a new course to a brand new market with zero audience and absolutely no content created for it yet. Most people spend weeks or months preparing to launch something. I prefer to do it in days. In today's episode, I'm going to walk you through the step-by-step beta launch method I developed that allows me to launch crazy fast to show you how easy it can be done if you just get out of your own [00:00:26]way. [00:00:26] [00:00:26] I've been a full time online entrepreneur since 2011 and I do things differently than most online entrepreneurs. I mean, I started doing it the way that everybody tells you to, where you create lots of valuable free content so that you can build an audience and an email list and then ask them what they really want and need. [00:01:00] Then you create a product that fills that need. You set up your sales funnel and then you offer it to people and you hope that they buy it. It can take months, if not years, to finally get your product service or course out on the market. And I know this because that's what happened to me. It took me, I think, a good solid two years to create my very first course and get everything ready to go so that I could launch it. [00:01:27] Now the problem with that method is that. There's no money coming in while you're doing all that. There's lots of money being spent and you're taking a ton of time creating free content and getting everything set up and paying for all the softwares, and honestly, it's really easy to start overthinking things and get caught in that fear of failure and not actually ever putting it out there. [00:01:51] When you finally launch it. You have no idea if all that time and money spent is going to be worth it. I mean, what if people don't buy? What if you spend two years getting something ready to go and making it perfect and then nobody buys it? Right? I used to do it that way, but it's so risky and there are so many unknowns. [00:02:13] Plus it just takes so long before you finally start making money. But two years ago I found a much better way and I basically do things backwards now. I start by selling the thing that I want to sell before I've created it before. I've done pretty much any of the other steps with very minimal audience building. [00:02:36] I know sounds crazy, but I'll explain how I do it in a bit. Then. I create it with the people who join and I listen to what they need as we go. It's really a cocreation process that's very interactive. Then I leveraged the money that I made by selling that beta course to build an audience faster and create a final, more polished version of the course. [00:03:01] After that beta courses done. And I use the success stories from the initial beta course to market and promote it in the future. So I really do things backwards and actually the first time I bade a launch like this was about two years ago when I pivoted my business from working with any kind of professional photographer to specifically helping people who wanted to pivot into personal brand photography. [00:03:24] It was honestly kind of accidental. I wasn't planning on doing it. But it totally changed how I launched. and I made . And when I did it that way, I made just over $70,000 in that very first beta launch, and I was able to hit seven figures with that course alone in less than 18 months because I was able to invest the money I made up front in that first beta course launch to grow much faster. [00:03:56] Now you can listen to all the details about that specific beta launch in here. All the reasons why I think beta launching is the only way to launch a new product in episodes 10 and 11 from season one of the podcast. But this upcoming beta launch I'm doing is a little bit different. Because this time I don't have an email list to leverage like I did in the last launch, and I'm offering it to a completely different audience and market. [00:04:23] It's a complete pivot with no overlap with what I've been doing. And so I've had to get really creative with how I'm going to market this and get it in front of people. Now I'm doing this because the coronavirus has cut my sales down in my photography education business over 80% and so they are way down from what they were. [00:04:45] Because frankly, if photographers can't be doing photography right now and so they're not spending money at the moment, so I'm choosing to see this time as the perfect time to launch something new and a completely different space instead of focusing on the fact that everything is failing right now in my regular business because people aren't spending money there. [00:05:05] I know that'll take off when they can get out and start working again. But in the meantime, it's kind of a beautiful gift to myself to be able to go after something new and try something that I've been wanting to do and teach for a long time, but haven't yet. So if you want to hear the whole story of how I came to this point, go back a few episodes to the start of season two and start listening from there as season two released right after the pandemic hit, and we are all starting to get the stay at home orders. [00:05:32]But in today's episode. I'm just going to give you the overview of the beta launch method that I'll be following to launch this new course in a brand new market. Then in the next few episodes, I'm going to take you behind the scenes and how I'm actually doing. Each step of the process so that you can do it too if you want to. [00:05:52] So this is really the big picture. I'm not going to tell you what I'm doing for each step here that's coming in the next few episodes. So definitely subscribe if you want to hear exactly how I'm going to do each of these steps in detail so that you don't miss them. I don't want you to miss a single step because they're really important. [00:06:10]So if you want to get a copy of this checklist that I'm going to go through today so you don't have to scribble notes really fast, or you know, if you're doing the dishes or something, you don't have to worry about stopping and taking notes I need to do is sign up via email for our weekly newsletter at personalbrandjourney.com and I'll send it right over to you. All right, so let's dive into the checklist that I'm doing in this beta launch method. [00:06:35] Okay. So number one, the very first thing I did, and this was really hard for me, was to get super aligned with what else I would do if I wasn't doing photography education, what's most true to me? what would I love to be known for? Now, I haven't asked myself this question in a few years, and so it was really hard for me to step away from what I've done in the past and think, okay. [00:07:02] What might I want to be known for if it's not personal brand photography or if it's not in the photography industry. If everything was opened up and I was starting from fresh, what would it be? So that's where I'm starting because I know that when we're most aligned with what we're doing and we are really excited about it and geek out about it in the craziest of ways, we will grow so much faster. [00:07:25] Next up. I wanted to get really clear on who this is for. Super specifically. A lot of people call this the ideal client avatar. There's lots of different ways to find this, but for me, I had to get very, very clear on exactly who I wanted to serve with this and who I could help most in this area of alignment that I wanted to be known for. [00:07:47] Step three was to identify the acute super painful problem that these people have that is going to get them to pull out their credit card now so that I can help them with the solution, which brings me to step four. Is identifying what wins are they going to get when they go through my beta course. Now I'm looking at both quick wins because people want to get some sort of result fast, but also what kind of longterm transformations are going to happen when they apply the method and the framework that I'm going to be teaching them. We need that quick win to keep that momentum going. Plus, that quick one really helps us with collecting success stories, which is super important when you're doing a beta launch. But you don't want to forget about how this all works long term. [00:08:38] So I like to have both of those. So I'll explain all of that when I talk through step four later in step five. And this one is really hard. You have to really sit down and say, what makes this new or different from what's already out there and not just better, better is not enough. Better is great, but it's really hard to sell better because if they've tried somebody else's course or method doing what you want to teach and they haven't gotten results with it, and yours is the same, it's just better. [00:09:10] You know? In your mind, are you trying to convince them that it's better. It doesn't matter because they're like, Oh yeah, I've already tried that. It didn't work. Even if I try it and do it better, I still don't think it's going to work. You have a lot more to overcome now when you have something new or slightly different from what other people are doing, it makes it so much easier for somebody to join because they haven't tried it before. [00:09:33] They're like, Oh, well, I tried part of it, but I've never tried it with this angle or this hook, and so having something new or different is really important . Step number six is getting really clear on what the exact offer is. What's the format going to look like? How much is it going to cost? [00:09:50]How am I going to deliver it? All of those things need to get outlined in very specific. Step seven is developing the content framework that I'm going to teach in this beta course. This honestly has been the most time consuming part for me because I am teaching something that I do naturally. I do this without even [00:10:12] Thinking and I have built it into my business in so many different ways, that having to extract it and putting it into frameworks that I can teach to others has definitely taken a lot of time, but it's also been the most fun thing I've done in a really long time. So I can't wait to share that with you and tell you a little bit more about the content that I'm going to be teaching when I get to the podcast. [00:10:33] On step seven. Step eight is really figuring out what messaging is going to resonate with people when I explain it to them. So they want to be part of the beta course. [00:10:45] This is super duper hard because I know that what I have to teach can help a ton of people. But it's different than what other people are teaching. And it's really hard to explain something that's new and different. So I'm going to talk with you all about how I'm going to message it and how I'm going to explain it to people so that it's clear and it shows them why they should join. [00:11:07] honestly messaging changes over time. As you're doing a beta course and as you are running your business and talking to your people and getting to know them, having conversations with them, it's going to shift and change. You're going to refine it. It's going to become more clear, but you've got to start somewhere. [00:11:25] And so that's all of what step eight is about, is trying to figure out how do I explain this? So people really want to have it now and are willing to try. A beta course with me before I've even proven that I can teach this effectively. Step nine is to really identify the barest essentials that I need to launch this, so what technical pieces do I need to have set up? [00:11:46] How am I going to communicate with people and what platforms am I going to use? All of that sort of stuff is what you figure out in step nine. Step 10 is about how I'm going to market this with the no audience. what am I going to do to get in front of the right people so I can start getting people into this beta course and get some momentum building. [00:12:09]Step 11 is getting really clear on how I want to build the audience, what platform I want to use. Am I going to use email? Am I going to use podcasting, etc. And where I'm going to grow this new audience. Step 12 is just the details of when I'm going to open my cart and what I'm going to do during the open cart phase to try and get more sales in to the. [00:12:34]Beta launch. [00:12:35]So that's the process that I'm using to beta launch something brand new and a new market where I have zero audience. [00:12:42] No, I'm totally going to share how the launch is going with you, and I'm going to tell you. All the behind the scenes stuff, as I'm doing it as much as I can so that you can stay caught up with me as I launch this brand new beta course. But in the meantime, if you haven't yet, please subscribe so that you don't miss any of the coming episodes that are going to talk through. [00:13:05]How I'm doing each and every step in detail. [00:13:08] And those are going to be coming right after this one. So subscribe now so you don't miss any of them. And if you want to get a copy of this checklist delivered right to your inbox, simply go to personal brand journey.com and sign up there and I will send it to you via email And finally, if you found any value in this, and if you know somebody else who's either moving into an online business after having run a brick and mortar business and is now shut down because of the pandemic and they really want to try launching something new, or if you know somebody and they're pivoting into something new and you think that they might find this useful. I would really appreciate it if you would take a moment to share this episode with them. [00:13:52]that would just be a really great way to. Say, thank you for the info you've learned here. [00:13:55] So that's it for today. Can't wait to see you in the next episode, or we're going to talk about step one, how to pick this new idea, this new course, and get super aligned with what you're going to be teaching so I'll see you there in the next episode right after this. [00:14:10]