About

Did your business get hit as hard by the pandemic as mine did? I know it was very shocking to see all new sales stop and to see my membership drop by almost half simply because my clients and the audience that I work with is struggling themselves and none of them are allowed to work. They're all non-essentials and they can't do their jobs from home. So. I did get sucked into a fear for about 10 days, but then. I spent some time reflecting on how I wanted to use this space, this opportunity, and see it as something good instead of bad. And I decided to use this time to pivot into teaching something new to a new audience in a new market that I've never. Taught before, and I'm going to be beta launching this course really soon, and I promise to take you behind the scenes. Now. In the last episode, I walked through the step by step process that I'm going to be using to do that. In today's episode, I'm going to be sharing the very first. Step, which is how do you decide exactly what to teach in a beta course? So the first thing that I had to do was try and separate myself from my past. Now that sounds really funny. It might sound weird, but. I keep thinking about who I've been serving in the past, and you know what I've always done and how I've always done it. And it was really hard to break myself away from that, which I have to do because right now, photographers aren't spending money. I've been an online entrepreneur since 2011 and I absolutely love sharing what I know with other people. So it was really exciting for me to think about teaching something that I know to somebody completely different and trying out a brand new marketplace. Now the problem is I've got like a bajillion ideas. That I could share. I'm a homeschooling mama with six kids, with all the people crisis schooling right now, I have tons and tons and tons of information and resources and help that I could provide for those people, and it's a huge need right now. So that was one option. But I also have all this online entrepreneurial experience. I mean, I've been doing this successfully for what, nine years now, and I absolutely love it. And there's so many different things within the online business space that I could teach. And that's another area where people are really excited right now because they're home. They've got time to spend with, their families, but also with growing themselves, like if they are in a non essential job and laid off right now. They have plenty of time to think about starting and growing an online business, and there's tons of knowledge that I have that I could share with them on doing that. Not to mention I love to quilt. There's just all these things that I could do really any of my passions. I love sharing with other people and you don't have to be like some crazy expert in order to teach people online. You just have to be able to teach people who are one step. Behind you. So if you're, avid quilter, for example, and maybe you've been quilting for a couple of years and you really love it, but you don't feel like you really know everything. You could still teach quilters how to get started. You could teach them the basics, because right now is a great time for people to be started getting into hobbies because they've got extra time on their hands. For me, it wasn't a lack of ideas. It was just trying to narrow them down to figure out which one was going to suit me best during this time. And if I love it. I may continue teaching it after this time as well. I fully believe that my current business with photographers is going to pick right back up again once photographers are able to get out there and start shooting because it works really well. It's been a phenomenal movement. I know that it changes people's lives, so I know that that will come back and I will be able to continue moving forward with that. But right now, while that's kind of on a standstill, I want to use this time to try teaching something new that, if I really love it, I may continue to teach afterwards. So. All right. Here's some of the things that I was thinking about as I was trying to decide what I was going to teach. Okay, so number one was if I were starting over for the first time today, what is it exactly that I would want to do and become known for? Now, the reason I asked myself this is because everything's easier when you are fully aligned with and excited about what you're sharing. If you're just doing something for the money in your heart, really isn't in it. You're going to have a hard time truly being successful because our energy is so. Contagious. It just flows out of us. And when we get excited about something, other people get excited about it. Now, that's not to say that there aren't opportunities out there that you could do to make some money in the meantime, but if you really want to do something that you might continue doing longterm, I highly recommend it. Thinking about what you're super excited about and what you would geek out about just for fun, and I know for myself that when I'm really excited about a topic. It doesn't feel like work to me. I just get really excited about sharing it and that excitement flows over into the students who are taking the course with me. So I wanted to really think about what I would do if photography wasn't an option. And what really made me excited today, because. My interests have shifts shifted a ton in the last nine years. I love my photographers. I love the industry because I know it, and it really gave me my start into becoming an entrepreneur. But it's not passionate. I wouldn't pick photography today if I was starting over fresh and for my photographers listening, I don't want you to feel like I don't love you. I'm just trying to be really honest with myself and where my passions are. And part of that is because photography introduced me to this online business space, and that is really exciting to me. And so I've used this online. Marketing information that I've learned to apply to photographers and to teach to photographers so that they can grow their own businesses using these principles. Because that's the people I knew that's who were in my network. But today. I just get super excited about the online business strategy and working with entrepreneurs more than anything. There's nothing I love more than talking business and strategy. In fact, it's why I invest multiple five figures every year to be in a business mastermind where we get to travel to see each other three times a year. And sit around and talk business for a few days because that's like my dream vacation. Traveling, having fun and hanging out with other people who think that online business is just as fun to talk about as I do it is a really weird thing. I know I'm an oddball, but online entrepreneurs are my people. It's why I've been doing this podcast for free for the last year and a half without really making any money from it. Simply because I want to help other online entrepreneurs. I just absolutely love talking about business and strategy. there's tons of different ways that I could serve that audience. I had to start thinking about. How can I narrow that down a little bit? So for me, I realized that I really want to work with higher level entrepreneurs, not people who are just starting a brand new business. So if I'm going to launch this beta course, I'm not going to be launching like how to start your first course and what's all the tech you need. Like I want to talk. Strategy. I want to get into the nitty gritty stuff that's going to help people really accelerate their results, but I want to be surrounded by people who already have a base of knowledge and get it. They've been doing it. They've got some level of success, but they want to be in an incredible community together, geeking out over how to take this and grow it in a big way. Now, my superpowers are visioneering strategy and connection. And so I started thinking about how have I used those in my business already very successfully, and how can I bring this to. A group of higher level entrepreneurs in a way that would actually help them get results. So I know that my superpowers have been really great for running high level masterminds. But right now with people unable to meet in person, that's off the table. So maybe in the future, actually. I want to do that in the future. And you can listen to season one. There's lots of episodes that talk about masterminds and they're amazing, but right now that's probably not the best thing to beta launch because we can't meet in person. So I was thinking about what else I've been able to do with those super powers that might be unique to what other people are doing out there and teaching out there . One of the things that I've been able to do with this is build a crazy, loyal group of customers that have offered to help me with pretty much anything I need for free. In fact, I've had over a 10% of my paying clients join a Facebook group that literally for that exact purpose where they've said, Hey, Jamie. You know, if there's ever anything I can do for you, please let me know. I would be happy to help, and most of them feel this way because I've helped transform their own businesses and they're just thankful. I know for me, I would do that for Stu McLaren and a number of other entrepreneurs that I know because they've impacted me so deeply. That's, it's the least I can do to basically thank them for the progress that I've made in my own business and the success that I've had. That's huge. Like having over 10% of my people willingly join a group like that. Many of those came because I was getting email after email from people saying, Hey, how can I help you out? What can I do to help you move forward? And it's such a touching thing to have that. But I know that it's also a really rare thing and that many businesses do not get that kind of feedback from their customers. And so I was really thinking about how can I help online entrepreneurs who already sell something, create more of these advocates who are really willing to step up and do free marketing for them and be a part of a greater movement in their business. And. It's kind of like a free marketing group, right? And they're just these crazy, loyal customers that love me, that love what I'm doing, and genuinely want to help other people get the same results that they've gotten. It's a beautiful thing, and this is something that I've cultivated into my business really intentionally. And so as I was thinking through my superpowers, as I was thinking about the stuff that I geek out about, I realized. That this is the thing that I can bring to the table and help people grow in their own businesses. This is something that every entrepreneur who already has a product figure out, figured out, who already knows that they can sell it, can benefit from, because we all want to see our clients. Getting more results and being so thrilled with our business that they want to help in any way and they want to help others get results. And it's one of the most valuable things you can create for your business. So that's what my beta course is going to be about. So if you're thinking about doing a beta course, and you need to pivot right now, here's what I would ask yourself to figure out what it is that you would want. To teach? What could you bring it to the world that is gonna help somebody up, right? What could you beta launch? So number one, ask yourself what you're most passionate about and what you geek out over. Number two, ask if you were starting over from scratch, what would you want to be known for? And I know for me, that changed so much in the last nine years. I never would have been able to teach this nine years ago. But now with all my experience, it's. Easy for me to say, Oh yeah, I do this, this, this, this, and this thing to help get these results and to make these people feel connected to not just me, but my business and the deeper purpose behind my business. Like it's a whole movement that they want to be part of. So what is it that you know you can do now that maybe you couldn't have done a few years ago? Try and get really honest with yourself and say, okay. Today starting over? What would that thing be? And that's hard because we have all this like junk in our mind from what we've done in the past and what we're currently known for. Try and let that go as much as you can and say if it was brand new. Clean slate. What would I want to be known for today? Then ask yourself, what are your super powers? What are you really, really good at? And then how have you seen that play out in your current business? Like how has that shaped the successes that you've had? And is there any way that you can take these unique successes that you've had because of your gifts? And bring them to the world. So that's the process that I have used to pick the topic for my beta course. I hope you found this helpful. In the next episode, we're going to be going into step two, which is where we're going to talk about who this is for super specifically. Now, this is the place where most people make the biggest mistake, and if you make the biggest mistake here. You're going to end up probably not having anybody in your beta course. And so I know that sounds really obvious, like of course I know who it's for, but we're going to go a little bit more in depth in the next episode on why you need to get crazy specific on this and what that actually means. And then why that's so important to the success of your beta course. So if you haven't yet, please subscribe to the podcast. I'm going to be going through all 12 steps that I am following to beta launch this new course, taking you behind the scenes. you can get the entire checklist by going to personal brand journey.com and entering your email. We will send it out to you via email so that you can follow along. And then I'm going to be doing these little podcast snippets quick to explain each and every step so that you can get more detail on what each step looks like, so that if you want to beta launch a new course, you can too. So hope you found this helpful. If you know somebody who needs to hear it. Man, it would mean so much to me if you'd pass it on to them. And with that, I will see you in the next episode.