Course Creators Weekly #60 🗓 August 16th, 2021 - Get Your Ideas to Actually Spread

"Ideas That Spread, Win"—Seth Godin

What makes an idea spread and how to come up with such ideas? Pat Flynn and Jeff Goins talk about this in episode #499 of the Smart Passive Income podcast.

What types of ideas spread?

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  Ideas that spread are interesting—almost crazy, yet true—they challenge assumptions
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  Interesting ideas inspire curiosity—people might say "no way, but what if?"
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  People reject absurd ideas, ignore the obvious, but find those in the middle interesting
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  Interesting ideas generate word of mouth because they're remarkable (remark-able)

How to find interesting ideas

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  Pick your category, study what's come before, learn the rules, break 20% of them
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  Try saying it in one sentence—"everybody thinks X, but what's actually true is Y."
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  Take two seemingly dissimilar ideas and combine them—make an old thing new again
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  Take a belief your audience has that's holding them back—challenge it in a helpful way
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  Challenge what the biggest influencer in an industry is saying—make a legitimate case

Listen to the episode to learn more!

Janelle Allen believes that every course creator should start with a service. In this video, she tells us why that can be an advantage, and how marketing and selling a service differs from a course (spoiler alert: not much.)

Here's why having a service business can be an advantage when you create a course:

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  You have a business—people paying money to solve a specific problem
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  You understand the needs of your target customer, their motivations and struggles
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  You know how to solve your audience's problem(s)
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  You have a proven process you can productise and package up as a course
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  You know how to market and sell to your audience—you understand their objections
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  You understand your audience segments, what's valuable to them, and what's not

Marketing and launching a service doesn't differ much from a course. You need to:

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  Build awareness—take your audience across the five levels of awareness
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  Educate—deliver value to your audience to help them get some quick wins
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  Entertain—build affinity with your audience by sharing more about you
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  Agitate—emphasise your audience's pain point + what happens if they don't address it
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  Pitch—ask for the sale

A few other reasons to start with a service:

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  Generate revenue, so you can take the time you need to build and launch your course
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  Collect testimonials, frequently asked questions and marketing copy for your course
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  Find out if you truly want to serve a particular audience, or if you should pivot

A course can be a great way to scale a service business, acting as an additional source of revenue that helps you achieve the dream of trading less time for money.

Kevon Cheung writes about finding our tribe, why it's hard, and what we need to understand to get better at finding them.

Understand these about human interactions

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  People tend to hang out with like-minded people, but in small groups
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  There are always tribal leaders because humans love to follow other people
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  But, tribal leaders are often too busy, or may lack enough incentive to connect

6 Steps to find and connect with your tribe

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  Find the tribal leaders—the ones who share a lot on a topic and people talk about
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  Identify the members surrounding the tribal leaders, who are engaging the most
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  Befriend the tribe members—engage with their tweets in a genuine, helpful way
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  Become one of them—use every opportunity to help your fellow tribe members
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  Establish your reputation—start creating value and sharing your own points of view
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  Be on of them—treat it like a community where you could be their audience too