The Art of Selling Online Courses

230 How To Actually Pre-Sell Your Course

• John Ainsworth • Season 1 • Episode 230

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 35:42

Send a text

🔥 Need better results from your email campaigns? Get our FREE templates and see the difference with two proven email strategies! 👉🏼 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/templates

What would you do if you had no audience, an email list of 50 people, and zero courses to sell?

That's exactly where Trevor Dimoff was when he decided to figure out how to sell a course before he'd even built one. He talked to 50 people, listened to their problems, came up with a solution, and pitched it back to the same people he'd interviewed. The result was $2,000 in pre-sales for a course that didn't exist yet.

In this episode Trevor walks through his entire process step by step. How he found people to talk to, what questions he asked, the three things he did during every call that made the pre-sell possible later, and how he delivered the pilot course live on Zoom. He's also really honest about what went wrong after that and why he lost momentum trying to scale too fast.

If you're just getting started or thinking about launching something new, this is a really practical episode. Trevor doesn't sugarcoat anything and the lessons from his mistakes are just as useful as the wins.

🔗 Check out Trevor's work: https://trevordimoff.com
🔗 https://trevordimoff.com/aosoc

🔗 If you'd like to connect with Trevor or to ask him questions about having research conversations you can contact him at: https://trevordimoff.com/aosoc

Trevor would like to thank Jacques Hopkins, the Online Course Guy and his Online Course Show podcast. Jacques interviewed Trevor on episode 90: https://theonlinecourseguy.com

Trevor learned the process he used for market research and course creation from: Danny Iny, founder of Mirasee, where he helps online teachers and coaches monetize their gifts: https://mirasee.com
#OnlineCourses #SalesFunnels #CourseCreators #DigitalMarketing

🤝  Get In Touch
If you'd like to talk more about how you can grow your course business, email me at john@datadrivenmarketing.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm great at creating the course. The margin part is where I could make it happen. In retrospect, I probably should have started smaller with no five outcome rather than you've come up with your idea. I just drive contact with that. Software research. If one source, source.

SPEAKER_00:

Hello, and welcome to the Art Selling Online Courses. We're here to get winning strategies and secret hacks from the top performers in the online course industry. My name's John Ainsworth. Today's guest is Trevor D. Moff. Now Trevor's a full-time music teacher. Never planned to become a teacher, but he managed to make$2,000 selling an online songwriting course before he even created it. So if you're someone who's just getting going and you want to find out what did Trevor did when he got started, what some of the things that worked for him, or some of the mistakes that he made, so you can learn from that. This is going to be a great episode for you. We're going to be talking about how to pre-sell your courses. And why Trevor thinks you should enjoy the journey or your quick before you get there. Trevor, welcome to the show, man.

SPEAKER_01:

Great to talk to you today, John.

SPEAKER_00:

So who do you help with your courses? Who's your audience?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, my name's Trevor Dimoff, and I transform musicians into songwriters at epicsongwriting.com. I also uh am a music and band teacher, and today we're gonna learn how to stop making your saxophones squeak. But my secret identity is I'm a public school band teacher. I've been teaching music professionally full-time since 1999. I've taught university, elementary school, and high school. So um I never really wanted to be a teacher. It wasn't a plan. First I was gonna play and I studied saxophone for my undergrad degree. I got a master's music composition because I enjoyed writing, and then I started teaching part-time at university, saw the writing on the wall, and I knew I was never gonna get tenure tracker security, so I went back and got a bachelor of education, and now I'm teaching public school. So I've done online teaching as a sideline, a side hustle. That's where I'm at right now. Today I'm going to be serving a segment of your audience. These are the people. Um Welcome out in Podcast Land. Thanks for joining us today. Uh this is for you if you aren't sure what to do, how to teach. You've got something, but you're not sure how to get it together to start teaching it. Or if you have uh an established course, if you want to start something new. So I've got a process that I've learned that might work for you. Does that all make sense, John?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, totally. And talk us through like how are you reaching people, how you've been building an audience so far? Are you on YouTube or Instagram or anything like that?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I'm gonna take you back in time. So this is back to the very, very early days of the internet in 2018. There was no AI, TikTok wasn't a thing, and Instagram was still about photos. So I didn't really have an audience. I taught live, I knew how to teach, but I didn't have a big audience. So I had a blog, big songwriting.com, and I had this very small email list. I was doing content marketing and I wasn't, I didn't have anything to monetize yet, so I was struggling that way. So um, full credit, Danny Inney, D-A-N-N-Y-I-N-Y, at mircy.com, uh, teaches online songwriting courses. So I'd followed him and I signed up to learn how to teach online songwriting courses. So all of the good stuff, this is his process, and this is how I learned how to do this. So I just started talking to people. I knew I wanted to teach songwriting because I had a blog on that and I was looking to monetize it. So I just started asking people. I put every Facebook friend I could think of that might be interested, and basically I put out an invitation. So if you're trying to get started, it you'd obviously adapt for your niche, your niche. But what I said was, I'm interested in songwriting and I'm researching problems. Where are people getting stuck to see if I can help them? Are you interested in having a chat? And I'd set up a 20 to 30 minute video call. So I just talked to as many people as I could. I talked to professional songwriters that I I was aware of or I already that I knew professionally. I talked to other music teachers, I talked to people that had never written a song before at all and tried and failed. And I talked to people that had written a few songs but didn't have a songwriting process. So everybody. Now I had some expertise, so if you're doing this, you may be different, you might have to tailor it to who you're talking to. But essentially, you want to talk to as many people as you can. Just talk to them. Does that make sense, John?

SPEAKER_00:

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

All right. So basically, I wanted to know what problems there are and what people had tried. So what are the struggles? Uh my basic questions were what's your musical background? Um, what uh what's your experience with songwriting? So I I could slot in where they fit in the continuum between never done this before and professional. So I wanted to talk to everybody. Professionals, how did you get started? Um, people that hadn't written, how do you what have you tried? So once I knew where they fit into that, I wanted to know struggles, uh, hopes and dreams, just you know, the basic stuff, and ask open-ended questions and leave lots of space. The whole idea is just to listen. So talk to as many people as you want. Uh, to do this successfully, I would say you'd have to talk to at least 20 people. I would say I talked to about 50 people. Now, all of this just depends on what you have available. Because this is my sideline, this uh I didn't have a lot of time to talk, so I had to have very specific times. This process took me, I'm gonna say, three to four months. You could certainly accelerate this if you had more free time. Use a calendar calendar app so you don't have to negotiate things. And essentially you just want a 20 to 30 minute conversation with them. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00:

So who were you reaching out to to book these in? How are you finding these people?

SPEAKER_01:

Um I start with the closer you know someone, the better the conversation, especially if you already know them at least a little bit. So I started with personal contacts, anybody that I knew. Uh Facebook, um, phone, anybody. So I have professional colleagues that I spoke to. I know some professional songwriters um that are local, so I spoke to them. And then I started looking further. So I Facebook groups, follow the rules, make sure you know the rules for a Facebook group. But you could even put a post there. I'm researching songwriting, looking to find out more about how people struggle with it. Um, or you could be slightly less obvious. Um posting, I uh what kinds of struggles do you have with songwriting? And then engage people a little bit, and if it's allowed, start email, uh messaging them and try to set up a call. So essentially, I wanted to talk to anybody that may or may not be within my audience with an interest in songwriting to get the broadest perspective as possible. When you're trying to come up with course ideas, don't limit yourself too much because you might be cutting off a potentially very uh successful operation. You know, you might if you're focused on this, there might be something nearby that's important as well. So I was trying to talk to just about anybody that would talk to me.

SPEAKER_00:

So once you'd done those 50 calls, what was next for you?

SPEAKER_01:

Let's talk about the call real quick. Because my goal for this conversation is that people listening are able to at least get a big overview of what's going on. So when I set up the call, I was listening for problems and problem language. So if you're an expert or have some expertise in a field, you talk about it differently than someone that is new to it. You talk in jargon that they don't understand, and the way you phrase problems is very different. So you problem language is how they describe it. This is something you use later in your marketing. It helps you uh helps them understand how that you can relate to them. Does that make sense? Then I'm looking for patterns. So I was where are the problems, where are the sticking points for people? Because I had some expertise when I was make taking these calls, if I knew that they were a beginner, I would offer them some advice. If it was a professional, obviously that wouldn't be quite as appropriate. So the I tailor the call to the person. But I'm looking for patterns, so I'm looking for solutions or problems, and how can I provide a solution? So at this point, I'm looking for what kind of course perhaps would be possible. Does that answer your question?

SPEAKER_00:

No. So what was next then after so you've gone through, you've done that, you've combined all of you got all that information from people, which is great, right? So now you know what kind of language they're using, what problems they've got, you know, their hopes and dreams, what kind of topics they want covered. Once you'd done all of that, what did you do next? What was your next step?

SPEAKER_01:

So my next step was trying to figure out what to teach. So I started with what's the promise? Uh, what's the goal that I that I can give them? So I dreamt big. I thought as as I was learning how to songwrite, I have a master's degree in music composition, but I couldn't write a pop song. For me, the stumbling block was lyrics, but I didn't have a songwriting process that was useful for me. So I decided, I called it the ultimate songwriting jumpstart. And I struggled with this for a while. I didn't know what to teach, but I thought, you know, every time I found something, it was only a little piece of it. What if there was this big thing that could go from beginning to end? So I came up with the the big picture. And if you're struggling to do this yourself, you can write a sales page first and then work backwards from that. But start with the goal, what do you want to teach? And then you have to figure out how to actually teach it, break it down into smaller steps. So once I had that, um, I outlined the course. So in my case, I started with an introduction and some basic myth busting and uh a very basic process. One of the problems a lot of people have is they start writing at the beginning and then they get stuck and they just can't get past that. So instead, I brainstorm, come up with ideas. So I thought, okay, start with brainstorming and then outline your song. So if you have a goal, just like the chorus, if you have a goal, it's easier to get there. So if you're writing, come up with your big picture for the goal. How do you get there? So I had uh the introduction, then I taught lyric writing. Uh, another module was on uh chord progressions and writing the music. Then I came up with melody writing, you've got the chords and the lyrics, how do you fit that together, create a melody? Then how do you take each piece of the song and put it together to create an arrangement? So ultimate ultimately, my tagline was if you can play songs, I can teach you to write songs because I taught people how to use the skills they have and apply them to their own music. So from beginning to end, how do you come up with an idea, uh, model other songs and generate lyrics, put them together, create the lyrics, music, put them together into a melody, and then create an arrangement for the song so that I cut I can go from idea to a finished song that I can play on social media, for example, uh into my phone.

SPEAKER_00:

Got it. So that was was that like the biggest problem that your audience had that you kind of chose that as the the course to create, or how did you decide that that was what you were gonna cover?

SPEAKER_01:

It was a huge struggle because I I I it was difficult for me. Uh in retrospect, I probably probably should have started smaller with saying for musicians.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Um ultimately this was a really, really big project. And I my pilot course was uh six lessons. I added one because students asked for it, where I I am um I gave them a bonus lesson on melody. So uh they've a few of them thought, I need more on that. Uh I get that part already. What else can you give me? So I just recorded an extra module that way. So in retrospect, I probably should have kept it smaller, um, minimal viable outcome rather than the biggest thing you can possibly come up with, which will solve everyone's problems.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

We'll talk about some of the things I made mistakes on later. But that's ultimately come up at if you're doing this yourself. What's the problem? How can I solve it? And then how can I get that person from problem land to uh happy land where they've they've got the solution solved? In retrospect, I should have started smaller.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. So you recorded that course? Was that the the next step after you'd kind of planned this out? Or did you do this live with some people, or how did you do it?

SPEAKER_01:

So first I had to find people. I had no audience, I had an email list of maybe 50. Um, I was still learning how to content market and my lead magnet wasn't strong, and I just didn't have a lot of traffic. So I've as you're making the call, three major, huge pro tips. Number one, ask, get consent. Can I record this call? John, can I record this call? It'll help me focus on you. And this is for my notes only. Nobody else will see it, but if you'd like, I can share a recording with you. This will free me up so I can pay more attention and listen better. So get consent. This helps you review later when you're looking for pro patterns and problem language. Pro tip number two, can I follow up with you? I'm gonna do some more research and talk to more people, John. Is it okay if I contact you when I've got some results and I can share them with you? So you're getting permission to talk to them again. And make sure that if for me, it was a long period where I wasn't, I'm gonna say three months from the start of the calls until I came up with a good idea. So the conclusion of my research. So check in with them by email a week or two later just to make sure that they remember you. And so later on you can pitch to them. And third most important tip, John, it's been great talking about songwriting. Is there anybody else you can think of that maybe would like to chat with me? So that also gives you more leads. So once you've come up with your idea, I just pitched, so I contacted them back. This is the results of my conclusion, you know, this is the results of my research. I've discovered X, Y, Z, and I've got a solution. And then I described, I'm gonna teach you about how to outline your song, how to write the lyrics so that you're not frustrated and getting stuck halfway through the first verse. Uh, once you've got that, how you can come up with a chord progression really quickly. Uh, then I'll show you how to take those lyrics that you've got and put them together with your chord progression to create a melody. And finally, I'll show you how to get from the verse to the bridge to the final chorus so that you can write a song from beginning to end. What do you think? So pitch to the people you've spoken to. If they're not ready, no worries, but you will also get feedback. Well, what would make this better for you? What would make this a no-brainer? So that helped um not just craft your pitch and getting used to talking to people, but it also gives you uh feedback for your outline. So I had uh all of these steps as I've just as I've described, but I didn't have all the details. So this was just a bullet pointed list. And I uh for professionals, I spoke to some music teachers. What would you add to this? What am I missing? Professional songwriters. Would this have helped you when you were first starting out? What else would you add to this? Is there anything I I didn't think of? Um feedback I got was talk more about emotions, because I tend to be analytical, even though musically I do write from emotions. So I was still looking analytically, and he suggested, well, throw in something about how do you get emotions. So I talked more about metaphor for lyrics, things like that. So you've got an outline, you get some feedback. I started with the professionals first. What did I miss? And then once I was more confident and I'd spoken about it a few times, I got used to pitching, I just started contacting people that I'd spoke to. Now, I spoke to all kinds of people. There were people that were never ever going to afford, be able to afford it. You're looking for people that do they have are they interested enough to actually do the work? Do they have the time to do the work? And do they have the money to pay you? Because I mean, if you want to put a freebie out, that's great. I mean, one of the problems with content marketing with a lead magnet is you're attracting freebie seekers. So this is why tripwires were advanced.

SPEAKER_00:

So you talk to you you get back in touch with all the people who you'd originally talked to. So you talked to 50 people originally, you come up with this bullet point list, you get back in touch with all 50 of those. How many of them did you manage to talk to a second time, do you think?

SPEAKER_01:

Aaron Ross Powell Oh I would say well, not counting the people that weren't that were definitely not a fit. I would say 75 to 80 percent.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

And in some cases it was they couldn't they they weren't available or we couldn't find a time that worked. I was talking from I'm in Eastern uh Atlanta, Canada, so I'm four hours behind Greenwich. I was speaking to people in India, uh not a fit, uh several people in Australia. Um so sometimes it was a time zone thing, too.

SPEAKER_00:

Aaron Powell And then what was your net so were how many of those people that you talked to the second time were then interested in the program that you kind of planned?

SPEAKER_01:

Books eight people. So I had eight for my pilot. My goal, my goal was ten. At the last minute, I got two more. Um The other thing about this is sometimes it's not who you talk to on these interviews that's the right fit for your course. Sometimes they know someone. So I fortunately talked to a talent agent, someone that had was booking uh singer, songwriters, and and uh musicians. So she set me up with a few of her clients who were up and coming that needed this kind of training. They gave me great insight into someone that was just trying to break into the market, and two of those people signed up as well. So I sold$200 spots and I sold 10 of them.

SPEAKER_00:

And then how did you deliver that first program? What was your what was your next step there? Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

So when I did my outline, I was my goal was four to six, and this is Danny's suggestion. This is for a$200 to$500 product, final, final product idea. So to just to give you a sense of the scope. All right, so I set up five lessons about uh the plan was 50 to 60 minutes with some time left over for uh questions and answers at the end. Really, you want feedback as much as possible. So with those five lessons, um I also booked a follow-up call once again for feedback. So I recorded the the lesson, um, posted it on a uh webpage, uh password protected webpage on my website. I'd give them PDFs if necessary. When I booked them, I said, look, you need a 75, 75 to 90 minute call once a week. Watch the recording if you can't make it. Uh expect to do one to two hours of work, uh, homework during the week, and I also had a Google form. So it was just a feedback. Uh, what surprised you the most in this lesson? What did you already know isn't necessary? Uh I was also worried about sound and video quality, so I asked them to rate that on a five-point scale. Just did it sound okay? Did you understand everything? And any questions or anything missing. So with that feedback, I would either oh, and I also offered email support. So if I had any questions that I couldn't answer right away or that other people needed to hear, I'd give uh like if it with a question in an email, I'd give them enough to get to next class, and then I'd incorporate that off the top of the next lesson. So last week we talked about the couple questions were, and then I'd go into, once they were answered, everyone was good. I'd go into that that week lesson. At the end of every lesson, you know, is there anything that you're not sure about? Um, is there anything I missed? What would you add? Any questions? And and that feedback helped me build a better product. Did that all make sense?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So what was what was the output at the end of that? So you've done your your six sessions, you've uh got feedback from everybody. Um how did you like what was the kind of overall feedback? Were people like this was exactly perfect? Was it like there's tons of stuff to change? Like how did you feel it had gone at the end of that?

SPEAKER_01:

I felt it went really well.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Um of the those that completed, which was almost everybody, um, I would say in general, everyone was good with it. A few things to add, but that mostly spilled out during uh during the during the the during the program. And then I also did a follow-up call with everybody that wanted one. So I also taught them a little bit at the end, but basically uh another one-on-one at the end. How are you feeling about it? You know, is everything good? So uh collecting as much feedback as possible. I felt really good about it. And I thought, all right, I've done this once, I've proven the concept, now it's time to go build the four course full course. A little bit of a mistake there.

SPEAKER_00:

All right. Talk as certainly.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And and here's the thing you don't know what you don't know. And I didn't realize how much I didn't know and what I need to know more of. So I had done the course on Zoom, Webcam, and PowerPoint slides. And I thought, you know, that's that's kind of it's okay. But I wanted something that looked better. Now I was watching a course that was produced by a company with a team and editors and multiple people, and I was solopreneur. So I've got shoosting budget, I've got this money that I just got. I've always wanted to upgrade my camera. So I bought a$1,000 DSLR, which was great. I love photography and it wasn't really necessary, but it was really cool. I had no idea how to shoot video. Um, I had to learn how to edit. I had struggled with uh sound. Um honestly, I just tried to scale too fast. I thought I I know I can teach, and unfortunately, um yes, I can. I can't market. So that was really where I got into trouble. I lost my momentum. And in retrospect, what I should have done was to at least two more um two more times through through the pilot process, build a little bit more money so that later on I can hire people to help me or get consultants and get, you know, coaching, that sort of thing, and have a bit of uh cash to play with when I actually am ready. So in retrospect, I should have gone back and done the process again. But being impatient and big vision, I went for it and fell on my face. So I did get the course done, but lost momentum. Uh I also did some infrastructure things, so I got a better lead magnet. Uh my lead magnet originally had been how to write daily, so how to do little small tasks, but it wasn't really taking off. So I instead created a lead magnet that went straight to that course. How do you write a song? How do you write a song course explained in 10 minutes? Quick 10-minute video. How do you come up with uh a very simple formula, come up with a title, and then fill around it so you've got the lyrics, pick three chords, play around with them, pick an order, sing it to it, blah, blah, blah. So basically a super condensed version of the course. Um I never got the numbers of the traffic. I mean, I had a sales page, uh, thought it was good, but I just didn't get enough people on it to really get the data to know. So in retrospective, I should have gone back and tried to punch at my weight class instead of going after uh a vision that I had where I didn't have the support to do it. I had to learn how to do all of this stuff, and uh it was a struggle. So that was the big takeaway for me.

SPEAKER_00:

Aaron Powell You mentioned content marketing before that you've been working on that. Is that something that you're still working on uh now, trying to build out your audience?

SPEAKER_01:

So I learned how to write really well. Um I can I've learned how to write copy. You know, I've learned all of these things, but for some reason, and I I still can't figure it out, I never quite I I never went viral, right? Like that's what everyone everyone wants to do. And I just Can't find that audience. So I've got a YouTube channel. I went back and I started um putting song videos out. Everything from why your lyrics suck, uh, rhyme crimes, that one actually did pretty well. Um, but still, it never went huge. So I learned how to content market, but I never got all the pieces together. And some of it I think was that I'm not a professional songwriter. Uh a lot of people have these myths about songwriting supposed to be easy, but I never found it that way. So I taught people how to write deliberately. So deliberate songwriting was my universal, my USP. And instead of saying, okay, I'm I'm gonna hope that I get this inspiration and I'm gonna be able to follow it through till I write this song, I mean, that only gets you so far. And usually it's the third line and you crash. So I with the ultimate songwriting jumpstart, I gave you a process that you could go through all of these steps so that anytime you couldn't make the intuitive leap, you could make some decisions to get yourself there. So start off with, you know, I want to write a love song, and that gives you fewer choices that you have to make. So eventually you can narrow yourself down. You know, I want to I want a certain tempo, I want a certain style. So all of that very quickly gets you closer to the finished product. So if you have an outline, you can get there. But most people don't want to do that. You know, they think that I'm supposed to be able to sit down and write a song in half an hour the way uh Sia does, or uh these other professional songwriters. Yeah. If you if you actually read into the story, most of the time they wrote the lyrics in a half an hour. Or the music was already written and they top-lined it. Sia's famous for doing stuff like that. Um they wrote the first verse, but they didn't write the second verse, the bridge, and all the other stuff. So that that initial inspiration, the that songwriting is easy part, is actually a myth, and people don't want that dispelled. So some of it I I think is I was too contrarian. Um honestly, I I could I've tried to autopsy this and I don't have a definitive answer except to say I tried to scale too fast and I didn't have the infrastructure, I didn't have the marketing expertise at the time. Whatever I did never really I think if I had more bandwidth and more time, if I had put in more reps, maybe I could have got there and I just I couldn't give it enough time because time's going by. So ultimately, pardon the pun because it's the ultimate songwriting jump start, uh I I'm great at creating the course. The marketing part uh is where I I I couldn't make it happen. I'm not good at collaborating, so maybe I should have reached out to other content marketers, uh, collaborated with other YouTubers, uh, even just you know got accountability partners and had conversations with people. So I was too much in my own silo and in my own head, uh, so that I never got out there, you know, the way so many of your guests have.

SPEAKER_00:

What's next for you now, now you've learned all these lessons?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh I've learned a lot, and it's been a very interesting journey. Uh part of my problem is I have a full-time job, it's secure. Uh through COVID, I was paid. Um, you know, so I I I don't have this burning the well, the bridge isn't on fire. I haven't burnt the boat. So I don't need to do this. So for me, you know, sitting in Hobbyland is it's not comfortable. I don't want to be here, but I can survive. So if I had more urgency that way, I think I would have also would have been a contributing factor. What's next for me is I'm thinking smaller scale course. I'm thinking a niche more aligned with what I do. So I'm now looking at saxophone. I have two YouTube channels, one where I'm epic songwriting, and I mean people are still getting help there. And and impact is important for any teacher. I do appreciate the fact that, you know, I've done some stuff that was helpful, but I really like to get it past the hobby stage so that it makes it worth my while that I can create even more and help more people, you know, spread the word further. So at this point, I'm looking at saxophone uh specifically. I've got a few ideas. One of them could be more for a very general niche, but I think I've got to keep it to something small enough that I can really, really do it well, rather than sort of floating around there and and you know being mediocre. So, saxophone, I'm looking at a couple ideas. First one would be a the saxone workshop where I just we're focused on fundamentals. There's a lot of beginner and intermediate players that are struggling with just getting a good sound. When I teach, I focus on fundamentals, doesn't matter what the age is, even university students are working on that. I do a lot with improvisation, composition, so there's some ideas that way as well. But I'm thinking smaller scale. Um I mean this this piloting process works for other things. I wrote a book when I was still teaching elementary music about simple songs, and I I literally had 25 songs and a process and you know, some some games that went with each song that could work for an elementary teacher. I spoke to elementary teachers, they tried it out. The response wasn't good enough. I changed jobs now. I'm teaching high school, so it's it's I'm not in that niche anymore. So uh this process works for other things. I've got to get it working for saxophones. So that's my next step. I've done the workshop. I uh went to a Sax group where you're allowed to post um profession as prof as a professional. I you're not allowed to charge that way. So so I I gave it for free. It was originally 60 minutes, but with all the back and forth, it's about a 90-minute class. And I'm looking at producing that just a little bit better, not getting lost in the production like the last time, and I've learned a lot, so it'll be easier, uh, but just getting really good quality and then inviting people in for free. So come in and try it out. What I'd love to do is have them play for me, play on video for me before and then play after so that there's a difference and get a quick testimonial out of them and then maybe put it up for sale. I've got uh honestly, I have to limit myself. I've got so many ideas. So lots of smaller things where someone could fit them together to get from A to B instead of one product in a series of products, so they can come in halfway through, pick and choose. And I'm looking at for this one, maybe a$50 to$97 kind of price price point. So a small stable of products that way rather than this big something.

SPEAKER_00:

There's a couple of episodes that you might find interesting to go back and listen to of people who've kind of gone through who are a lit just a little bit ahead of where you are now and kind of seeing what they'd done. So there was one with uh Jack from Banjo Skills. Um I'll see if I can find it.

SPEAKER_01:

Does he do clawhammer banjo? Is that the one?

SPEAKER_00:

He does, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay. I I think I heard I heard you reference him in one of your one of the episodes, one of your Yeah, he's a good friend of mine, so I kind of talk to him all the time.

SPEAKER_00:

So he does he does come up on this podcast. He's like a uh Hey Jack, if you're listening. Um He's like uh uh a running character, but he actually came on the podcast and um let me find that episode.

SPEAKER_01:

While you're looking, Jack, shout out to you. Your retargeting is working because I touched one of your Facebook ads. I'm gonna say four or five different versions of what you've been doing. The retargeting's working for you, brother.

SPEAKER_00:

Episode 172. Um and then the other one I think could be interesting is actually I think episode one, which was with um Alan Matthews, and he'd gone through so he's now um very successfully running uh a membership and course business called Classical Guitar Shed. But he'd gone through three times, I think, trying to start it, it not all working out, him just putting it back on hold, coming back to it again a couple of years later, giving it another go before he eventually managed to get there. He started in 2013 and then I interviewed him in 2021. And there'd been a few, a few false starts in between. And I think that, like, you know, looking back, it's very easy to look at it and go, oh, he shouldn't have stopped in between, he should have just kept going, because clearly he's now succeeded. But at the time, it probably felt to him like, ah, this is pointless. Why am I even trying this? You know, so it's like uh I think there might be some good lessons there in terms of his his journey. And anyone listening to if you've listened to this episode with Trevor and you're like, man, I'm in the same position as Trevor, I haven't quite got it all going yet. I think those might be good episodes for you to listen to as well.

SPEAKER_01:

I was grabbing a pen. What was the first episode?

SPEAKER_00:

They're so episode one with Alan Matthews. Got that one.

SPEAKER_01:

I'll look those up. Yeah. Um I mean, in retrospect, like you know, this was over a span of years. And thinking back on it, it's like, well, you know, I did spend a year trying to build a YouTube channel after I built the course. And the course was still for sale. I just wasn't getting enough traffic there. And, you know, I I took a bit of a break, but it wasn't really that long. And I was blogging the whole time, and I did have an email list, and you know, I was sending out a weekly email, but you know, over time it's just you know, it's further and further away. In retrospect, it doesn't seem that long, but it was a long time. And uh with all of the the sunk costs, you know, the the the energy I put into it, it was really hard to to step back and say, you know what, this isn't working, close it after a year, and what could do it, what what could I do again and get back talking to people. Like really, that's what it comes down to. And you have to listen with an open mind. These research calls, uh you uh talk as little as you can. Really, you want to be listening. And what are the problems, where are the struggles, what are the pain points, and where are they getting stuck? And that's what I didn't, I don't want to say I didn't hear it, but I also had this idea of I was trying to create something that worked for, would have worked for me, and it was too big. And so if I had gone back to, you know what, I'm hearing a lot about lyric writing, and that was one of my struggles too. Maybe I need to get into lyric writing. So at the time, if I had said, you know what, let's do a lyric writing workshop, we're gonna spend time and we're gonna workshop this stuff. And, you know, we'll sit down and go through. I I did a bit of that with with my beta course, focusing just on that, that might have been the success. You know, folk um retrospect. Hindsight's just 2020, and there's so much I could have done. And looking back on it, really take the lessons, give yourself some grace, you know, tried something that didn't work, should have pivoted sooner. Okay, here's here's where I am now. This is a pivot.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's good. There's like, I think the thing is, right? So mostly the people who I interview on the podcast are people who've already managed to break through and get to some point of success. Maybe they're making 10,000 a month, maybe they're making 200,000 a month, whatever it is, right? And the thing that nearly everyone has in common is that they've got really good at some kind of content creation. It's nearly always YouTube. In them in the music space, that fits really well, but in like almost every niche that we work with, it's it's almost always YouTube. There's a really good connection between people who watch long-form content on YouTube, not shorts, but long-form content, and people who buy courses. So there's a good crossover there, and that works really well. And then the second thing they've got good at is they've managed to find product market fit for their audience. So they've made a course that didn't really sell, but oh, but this one, oh no, that didn't really work either. Oh, but this one, that kind of it's like, and those two things are not insignificant. You know, those are two big challenges, and like then we help people who've managed to do both of those things to then work on their funnels and their email marketing and make much more money. But those two things are like, they're not easy. There's a lot of people who've started and never managed to build up enough audience or they've never managed to make a course at Quite High Product Market Fit. And so it's like that is like a whole um it's a whole big two big challenges that you're doing simultaneously in spare time while trying to get it all going. So it's like I uh I respect you for like keeping on going with this, and I think it I'm I'm sure you'll manage to figure it out, you know, and to get it working. And if it does take a bunch of full starts, it's like, well, that's just how it is. You know?

SPEAKER_01:

One of my goals is in 12, 2, 18 months, we I'd like to be having a whole other conversation with you about how I'm raking it in. But we'll see.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, it's me and let's come back on again. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

I will, don't worry about it. Um really, it comes down to can you figure it out? And everything is learning, right? And you don't go from I don't know what I'm doing to I'm an expert at it. I mean, you know, Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours is uh a big oversimplification, but it is true. I could teach, but and then I had to teach online and learn how to do that, and there are subtle differences. Then I had to learn how to edit video, then I learned how to edit the audio. I could already do it, you know, in a digital audio workstation, but how do I do it, you know, when I'm trying to get the hiss out of my voice and there's too much ambient noise and I'm using a little clip on instead of a real microphone that I'm used to. So there's a learning curve about all of these things. Even just learning how to light your your set on you look great. Um this is not the best backdrop for me. For those of you watching the podcast, it's a gray wall. So there's there's so much that you have to learn that you've got to give yourself grace when you don't have time to do it all. You've got to see what you can do about finding the most important thing. So focus and getting an external perspective, whether it be a collaborator, someone at your level, someone a little ahead, hiring a coach, all of these things. A teacher will get you farther. So if you're trying to learn how to do video, get yourself a teacher, right? Um, the same for marketing, if you're able to. Now I was running on a strew shoestring. I, you know, I've got a good job, but I had a small budget for this, my hobby money, right? So I didn't have$3,000 to drop on a coach. I didn't have$3,000 to pay for a, you know, uh uh an editor or something. So I had to learn all of this stuff on my own. And I mean, I've learned a lot of stuff. I just haven't made it profitable yet. That's the next step.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Yeah. Trevor, this is awesome. I love your story. Thanks so much. I look forward to hearing you come back on again when you're uh raking it in and you're absolutely smashing it. Um, and seeing how you get on.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh it's great talking with you, John. Thanks so much for everyone for for listening to all the way through this.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you so much for listening. And uh just a reminder, those other podcast episodes I mentioned, it was 172, the funnel that makes this banjo player five grand a month. And episode one with Alan Matthews, which was Build the Trust of Your Audience Using the Tripwire funnel. So go check those out. Thank you so much as always, and we'll see you guys next time.

SPEAKER_01:

Thanks, John.