The key to building scalable products, as a single person or micro business, is using what you’ve got already.
Everything you do is already designed to be built and delivered by one person. Usually to another small or micro business as a customer.
Even if you consult large companies, you’re probably only dealing with smaller teams and a manager within that organisation.
This post is about taking what you’ve got and what you’re selling now, and turning it into a scalable product.
Half of these steps will be about doing what you do already and documenting it. The other half will be about using what you have already created and re-purposing it.
Note: when we talk about “products”, what I’m referring to is anything that you provide to a customer, which they see as valuable and they pay you for. Products could mean services, physical products, books, materials, resources, courses and more.
1: What does a customer get after they work with you?
Let’s see what products and results you can deliver to customers.
Fair warning, when I do this exercise with my clients, they feel a bit queasy.
For all our moaning about customers not “getting us” or wanting what we’ve got, after doing this exercise, we see we haven’t really got a huge amount to offer them.
Grab a piece of paper, turn it landscape and draw two vertical lines down the middle, dividing it into three list columns.
On the left column write “products“, in the middle column write “results” and in the right column write “benefits“.
Check out our example sheet here (no-optin).
List everything you sell under Products. When I say products, I mean ANYTHING that you deliver that customers pay for. Services, therapy, coaching, ebooks, courses, websites. Whatever.
Hell, include blog content and lead magnets in that too. People pay with their time to consume those.
Under the product column, write down all the things you offer to customers. Websites, courses, blog content, coaching, consultation etc.
If you feel your consultation or coaching is too broad, or maybe every customer is unique, feel free to write down a few topics that you coach on. Mindfulness, physical therapy, SEO etc.
Even if you’ve only delivered something once, write it down. Anything that customers can take from you that they buy (or consume).
If there’s room, write down a few of the features which that product provides. It’s true that people don’t BUY features, but they are sold on them. Benefits and results get me in and help me understand what I’m buying. Features are where I make comparisons and cement the purchase.
Now, in the middle column under “results”, write out the results that these products give. Try to be specific to each product.
A result is something that’s tangible. Something that they can measure and repeat and see. For example, a website with a blog IS a result. It’s not brilliant but it fits the result criteria.
More traffic from Google IS result. If I then looked at the top 10 customers and the traffic they’ve got, I could say “a 200% increase in traffic from organic SEO in 3 months”. The more specific and descriptive I am with results, the better.
It might take a bit of research. Maybe you need to talk to customers, get their testimonials.
“I can now run 10k without any hip pain” (sports therapist).
“3000 unique new email address leads in 6 months. 200x more than last year” (lead gen software).
“I’ve applied for 2 interviews and got a call back for one” (confidence coaching).
Explore the end result that customers get when working with you. Maybe you need to refer to the before/after list in the previous section. See what people get after working with you.
Finally, in the “benefits” column, list why that result makes them happier. Why does it improve their life? Why bother getting that result in the first place?
Benefits are really what people are looking for. People don’t want to run 10k for the sake of it. They want to feel healthier and not like a sack of shit.
Benefits are less tangible, they can’t really be measured or recorded. But people sure know it when they see it.
Talking to customers and asking how they feel and how their life is, is the easiest method for seeing benefits.
What does more leads in our email list mean? It means (benefit) that we can market our products to more people.
What does getting new interviews mean? It means that we have more confidence to go after jobs that make us happy.
- More time with family.
- Less stress at work.
- Clearer identity with ourselves.
Almost all results, be they marketing or sales or sport or health or whatever, lead to personal and internal benefits.
What’s interesting, is that we start from a wide range of products (or maybe not, but don’t feel bad about that). And we narrow down the results. Our results repeat themselves, because what we deliver is usually the same through different methods. Finally the benefits are even more narrowed.
2: What can a customer do/feel etc. after working with you?
Before we can start selling profitable, scalable products, we need to look at the “after shot” of the customer.
When we see weight loss or fitness adverts, they always start with a before and after shot. The secret, is that 1) customers can envision themselves as the before and easier visualise the after. 2) Almost all fitness products are identical. They use before and after shots because listing the actual work required and what you have to do to get those results is NOT appealing.
We’re going to make sure people can see our results and benefits. Before we start talking to them about what they need to do.
Grab a piece of paper and draw a vertical line down the middle, dividing it into two list columns.
At the top of the left column, write “before” and at the top of the right column, write “after“.
Check out our example page here (no optin).
In the before column, describe the customer before they work with you. This could be for your flagship product. Or you most popular website type.
List the ways they’re frustrated, what their goals are and what their problems are. Be as descriptive as possible while you explain where they are and what they’re doing now.
The more you write the better. It’s hard at first, but don’t stop until you’ve got 20 items listed. What does their average day look like? How do they feel? What do they have or not have? What do they want? What’s their status?
For example, if we sell e-commerce websites. Before working with you businesses…
- Have slow sales and no regular customers
- Don’t know how to market their products
- Frustrated at marketing and branding companies with selling logos
- Not spending enough time with families
- Want to generate more than $100K in a year
We list as many as we can. Talk to current customers, look at their emails, examine what they were like before they working with you. Use emotions, feelings and status as the most powerful “before” descriptors.
Now on the right hand side, under “after”, write down and describe what your customers are like AFTER they work with you. Don’t worry too much about the product or service yet, just look at how they feel and what they are after they work with you.
Use the before list as a prompt, describing the opposite or preferred outcome compared to the before description.
Do they feel frustrated because they can’t keep regular customers? Now they’re confident that customers will come back again and again.
Our job is to make this before and after list appeal to our customers. They recognise the before list and they aspire to the after list.
The “gulf” or gap between the before side and after side is what people are paying for. They’re not buying a website or coaching, they’re buying the journey from before to after. Or, as Al Ramadan says in Play Bigger, they’re buying “from/to”.
The larger the gap we can bridge, the more value the customer sees. Therefore, the more we can justify charging.
From “can’t run up the stairs without feeling out of breath” to “confident I can run a 26.2 miles in a marathon in under 4 hours” is a HUGE value gulf.
So when we boil it down and compare our before/after list and our P/R/B lists. The benefits we provide, with the results we get, are what customers receive in the value gap that we identified in the before/after list.
Maybe it turns out you only really provide 3 benefits and 5 results from 18 different products?
Those benefits and results are what you’re ACTUALLY selling. Freeing up your pre-conceived ideas on what you can deliver. If you create a course or an audiobook with the SAME results and benefits, it’s within your business. You have the skills and experience already AND you probable already have the content.
3: CAN someone else deliver that same end result? Don’t worry about how yet
Take a look at your results column. Those tangible, measurable and repeatable results come at the end of working with you.
So far it might have ONLY been you that has delivered these results to a customer. Maybe it’s something large like a website, maybe it’s something ongoing like SEO traffic or marathon training.
If we had enough time, money, energy and documentation COULD someone else deliver the same RESULTS. Not the exact same process or coaching you do (although that is an option we’ll explore later on). But the results that someone could get working with you.
Work backwards and look at the results you get customers. How could someone else deliver those same results? Think about what they can do afterwards and how they feel, rather than what they do.
Compare it to travel. Getting from London to Sydney is the goal. The result is to be in Sydney. While most will opt to fly, some might try a cruise, or even travel via train and car to cross Europe and Asia. Others will stop off in America or search for cheaper connecting flights.
If we boil down the goal of “travel”, maybe to seeing somewhere new or going away for a few months. Does Sydney have to be the only option? If you’re travelling from London, there are tons of destinations that’ll still let you be somewhere totally different.
What we’re saying is that the customers goals and the results they want, aren’t tied to the process or delivery you provide. If customers need more social media followers, consultation and coaching aren’t the only options.
You’ve got courses, guides, ebooks etc. All the options listed in chapter 3. And if you can create a series of worksheets and video guides, there’s no reason other people can’t do the coaching for you.
4: Understand you’re not that special or unique
I’ve mentioned this a bit and it’s the result of an unfortunate by-product of our current purchasing habits.
Business mentors and banks will often ask “what’s your USP?” USP or unique selling point, is a hangover from the 80’s school of marketing.
I’m still a big fan of what 80’s corporate marketing has done for our industry. But there are a few silver bullet ideas, like a USP, that reside in our business models.
If your USP exists, within your business, it’s probably you. You yourself are unique, some customers will buy from you just because they like you.
But other than that, your business probably isn’t that unique. In fact, even what you provide, isn’t that unique. Sure you might have your own methods and styles, but most of the time, the results you get are not that far off what others can provide.
I’m not saying you’re not great at what you do, or that your customers don’t love you. But knowing that you can expand your business further than yourself is a liberating feeling.
You don’t need a USP. What you need is scalable and profitable products. If it’s about being first to a market, or unique to a market, I’d rather be first.
You don’t have to be unique, you have to be understood and trusted. You’d be staggered at how many businesses fail to be trusted and understood. They’d rather be unique. Different is enough, unique isn’t going to find customers.
5: You have to WANT to “get off the tools”
The largest roadblock to scaling your business, is often the metal barrier of control.
Giving up control is hard. We see other people do such crappy jobs so we think we’re the only ones capable of it.
Or maybe it’s wrong to charge money for a service that you don’t have 100% control over?
Does Colonel Sanders cook the chicken? Does Bill Gates write the code?
Businesses that succeed, even as small micro-businesses or single person enterprises, succeed because they build systems and processes that allow them to get off the tools
But you have to WANT to get off the tools. You have to want to build a process and start putting in place, people and teams that can take care of things for you.
If you’re worried about getting off the tools, it’s because you’re not confident in the instructions you’ve given to who is taking control. Maybe you don’t know how to write the processes or can’t think what needs to be done.
We’re going to cover that now, in this chapter.
Often, when we worry about control, it’s because our expectations are all over the place. We have what we believe we’re capable of doing and we don’t have confidence in the other party. If those expectations are written out and understood, it’s so much easier to hand over the tools.
Let’s look at how we can do that now.
6: What’s the process YOU go through to deliver a result to the customer?
We start off with a huge mind map. A big old journey plotting the process that we go through with our customers.
This takes the most time to create, out of everything in this book. It’ll go through revisions and revisions.
You’ll add details and remap pathways.
Have no fear though, it’s EXTREMELY rewarding to map out how your process works.
Take your before/after list and the P/R/B list. Take a large piece of paper or a white board and choose one product or service. Maybe your flagship product or the one you’re most used to executing.
At the top of the page or board, write the product or service that you’re focusing on. For our example, it’s a WordPress website.
At one end of the paper, the “start”, write a few of the before words and sentences, describing your customer. At the other end, the “finish”, write the result that the customer gets.
For example, if we’re website designers, the product is a website. At the start they don’t have a site, have few customers and they’re new to digital online businesses. At the end, they have a website that gets traffic.
Now write down the broad activities that you go through with that customer. From the first discovery workshop or the qualification worksheet they use.
Run through each stage that you need to complete and in the order it comes.
If you’d like an example, click here and see the New Website process I use.
Note: At this stage, it’s sometimes apparent that you either don’t have as much of a process as you’d like OR you think every customer is so unique, that they can’t follow the process.
Stick with the exercise and map out the stages that DO happen for each customer. Sure, every client is different, but you WILL run through similar stages with most customers. Our job is to find the similarities and start systematising what we deliver.
Map out and list the stages of a project or coaching or consulting. It doesn’t matter if this is a period of weeks or a period of months.
What we want is a high level overview of the process that you go through. The stages and system that you use to get your customers the results they need and want. We’re not going into detail yet, that’s in a later stage.
7: What templates/worksheets do get ready for the day/project?
When we look at your larger process or plan, think about the worksheets that you use with your customers.
When we say worksheets, what we mean is anything that you use with customers, to help them through a process.
Maybe your qualification questions, or discovery questions. Maybe you have a questionnaire for starting a project, or a series of questions that you always ask new customers.
Worksheets, forms, workshops, consulting sessions, marketing models etc. Anything that you share with customers when working on a new project.
For example, in our new website process we talk about our qualification worksheet (qualification is qualifying the customer is right for your business with the right budget, decision makers and project needs). We also have a marketing workshop, deep dive session and optin forms.
For each of these stages, I have a set series of questions that I always ask. Sure, I might go off on a tangent during a call, but most of the time I’m following a set series of questions that I have.
Having these questions and repeatable steps in each stage is CRITICAL to scaling your business to profit. During this part of the book, most businesses realise they haven’t got as much documentation as they think.
Most of it is habit and based on what they know at the time.
Spend some time to write down the steps and questions that you always ask or need to ask. Even if they’re really broad and you have to go deeper in them. Spend time to structure the way they questions are delivered.
With templates and models, or worksheets (for example, I run through a very basic high level version of the CVO from Digital Marketer), to my customers during the marketing workshop.
The delivery is so practiced and rehearsed that if you played two recordings of it back to back, they’re practically indistinguishable.
For each stage in the project, have your templates and questions and worksheets written up and saved. The fastest way to look 100x more professional that your competition is branded worksheets during a meeting.
Keep all these templates and worksheets safe as we’ll be using them later in other products.
8 Record via your phone all your interactions
Ok so maybe not all your interactions. But certainly the main meetings. I’ve never had a customer reject me when I ask them if I can record a meeting.
“It’s just so I can focus on our questions and helping you, rather than try to remember everything you say. I’ll go back over the recording later so I can better understand your needs.”
Makes you look mad professional and it’s EXTREMELY useful as a backup. I’ve left notes behind, had documents get thrown out and one recording has even spared me a lengthy court process.
So it’s real simple, get OneDrive or Dropbox and start automatically syncing your phone recordings to the cloud. Listen to them on the journey home and keep the MP3 as it’s going to TURBO CHARGE our content creation.
9 Go to Rev.com and get that audio transcribed
Since writing this post, Rev.com has released an app that allows you to record audio and get it transcribed in one sitting. Awesome.
So with your new MP3, hop on over to Rev.com and get that audio transcribed, word for word. You’ll get a professional and written up document with every word said on that recording.
Go through the document and remove any names and company details. Figures and lead numbers are OK. We want the content to remain anonymous, but still specific to a result or project.
Once we’ve got our edited transcript we can start to do AMAZING things with it later. But more on that in a bit.
Transcribing is pretty cheap, but $60 for every call is a lot. So instead, focus on one project and customer at a time. Read through the rest of this chapter and see what’s going to become of all this set up.
For example, with our new website project, I might record the initial skype call. Only 20 minutes which is about $20 with Rev.
If I take the questions and agenda from earlier and map each question to the answers, I’ve got a FAQ for website design customers.
Or if I take an hour long presentation and record that, transcribe the audio and keep the PowerPoint slides, I’ve got a very in depth blog post with slides and images.
11 Go to speedlancer.com and get that transcription re-written
With your new transcribed document, head over to Speedlancer and check out their content writing services.
From $70 you can get a 700 word blog post written on any topic and content. They’ve even research it and write it for $100.
Lead magnets, promotional emails, social media content, you name it, Speedlancer.com can get it written.
Use your transcription as the research material and foundation for a project. Write up a brief for the content and think about how you want that content to be useful to you.
Try on smaller pieces first like blog content. Your first stages of a project can often become FAQs, beginner guides and must know walkthroughs.
If you’ve consulted a customer on healthy cooking over the Christmas period, that recording and transcription becomes just that. “The ultimate beginners guide to healthy food over Christmas”.
Don’t over complicate the subject. Just think about the results or what the customer now understands. Marketing funnels? Bare foot running? AutoCAD?
Start with the end in mind and let Speedlancer do the rest, with your content. While they’re writing up whatever you need, you’ve got time to do something else.
This is one of the core components to scaling your business. It’s not always about employing people. It’s about taking tasks off your hand and letting someone else do it.
Speedlancer also has a 10k word ebook option. It takes about 2 hours to talk though 10 000 words on a presentation.
If you present two hour long webinars on the same subject, that’s an e-book right there.
12 Turn that content into blog content
So we’ve got all this content and now Speedlancer can help us get it written. But how do we turn that content into a blog post. What brief would we give?
Or if we’re doing it ourselves (still a perfectly viable option), how do we restructure transcription content? Remember that we want to write as little as possible. Taking copied text from the transcript and pasting that. Or even just removing speech based text and making it look better to read.
We have a few options.
First, and we’ve done this a few times, just release the transcript. Not really for meetings or calls, but for webinars and presentations.
We promote it as a raw transcript of our entire presentation. It’s full of keywords, looks authentic when it’s raw and lets us publish content fast.
If you want an example check out this post here.
Second, we’ll take the questions, presentation points or agenda points and use them as a heading. The just pasting the bulk of the presentation text under that heading.
For example, if one of the slides is on “social media traffic”, we’ll take that as a title and paste the transcript spoken words for that slide under it. Pretty soon, you have a few headings which you can promote as a FAQ or Should Ask Question series.
Third, we might take the content and pick out 3 – 5 main points. We’ll then structure the content into a how to guide or journal type post.
Typically, we use the same structure in our presentations as our blog content.
Promise.
Problem.
Myth.
What’s changing.
Main points.
Most of our presentation content can be fitted into those headings. We’ll name and promote the content as a how to guide or regular blog post.
Finally, if you’ve got a long presentation or a series of transcripts about a subject. Think about creating a “ultimate guide”. A killer piece of long content that goes into great depth on a subject.
Killer content starts with a sales letter style introduction, really pitching the idea and method to the reader. By the end, they want the solution so badly they’d probably pay for it.
Instead, you’re going to give detailed help on that subject for free. If you have worksheets or handouts for that presentation, give them away too.
Ultimately, the point is to take the copy and content that we’ve got and turn it into something else. It’s not easy straight away. In fact you’ll think it’s s huge waste of time compared to writing it from scratch.
But stick with it. You’re learning a new skill and unfortunately it’s never quick. Remember too that Speedlancer and other freelancer hiring sites (Upwork, Envato studio, people per hour etc.) can rewrite a lot of content for you.
13 Get that content turned into a lead magnet
If you’ve got material that you’ve presented to customers or webinars or blog content. Then you’ve got a lead magnet.
What in the hell is a lead magnet? Well, if we’re going to scale your business and make it profitable, you need leads. We really want to build a list of leads that we can contact, so we need their email addresses.
In exchange for that email address and their name, we’ll offer them, a lead magnet.
A lead magnet is a specific piece of very valuable material. It solves a specific problem and can be used by someone to help them in some way.
Most businesses used to give away ebooks (fine but not great). Now we can give away cheat sheets, checklists, guides, software, templates, worksheets, webinars…the list is endless.
The key to creating a lead magnet that captures data AND is genuinely useful, is thinking about where someone will first see it.
For example, if you’ve taken your transcript and turned it into a blog post. Maybe that blog post is about SEO for e-commerce websites, think about how that blog post helps someone. What can they do after reading that post? Or what do they want help with?
If they read that blog post, what can they now do? If they took every word and syllable from that post, they could do SOMETHING by themselves. How can you help them get that result faster, or with less effort?
Offer a lead magnet that will give them clarity on the actions and steps they need to take. Checklists work WONDERS as lead magnets. Listing 10 – 15 steps that you talk about in the post to check off if they want the same results.
Lead magnets work better, when they’re clearly related to the topic of the post or page that the reader is on. A lead magnet about creating a running plan in winter, will convert much better if the post is also about running in winter.
Digital marketer’s guide to lead magnets here, is about as good a guide as you can get for creating lead magnets and they types available.
At its core, if you were giving the same content away over a conversation, what would you offer NEXT to get even faster results for that same person? Talking about social media traffic is great, lots of ideas. But if you really want to get social traffic, you could use our social traffic cheat sheet.
At a high level, a cheat sheet is like a worksheet with the gaps filled in. Sometimes we use a table to let people reference things quickly. Or we show them a high level overview of a strategy.
Resource lists are just that, a list of resources you use for that topic. Think websites, shops, books, tools and blog posts.
Worksheets are where you lead the user through a series of questions. The answers are usually brainstorms or lists of ideas, to offer clarity and get them to write things down.
There are HUNDREDS of ways to create lead magnets. But make sure you keep it relevant to the topic/subject you’re writing about. Keep it short and valuable (400 page ebooks aren’t that useful). Finally, think about if it can help someone get the same results they want and you can give.
14 Turn that content into an eBook
“But you said to stay away from eBook?!”
I know, I’m a man of contradictions.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with eBooks, I just don’t think they’re the best lead magnets available. But to offer an eBook to a qualified lead or even to create an eBook to SELL…that’s a different matter.
Writing an eBook takes time, but it’s a valuable investment. You don’t run out of stock, they can be sold for profit and they can position you as a authority within a niche or space.
I’m going to let you in on a BIG secret though. Serialising books has always been super popular. Alexandre Dumas, Charles Dickins and many more authors used to publish chapters or parts of chapters in newspapers regularly. Then, once a “book” or serial was completed, they would collate the written work and release it as a full book.
See where I’m going with this?
Your blog posts, assuming they’re all relatively related in subject matter and topic, can be collected together and published as a book.
To lower costs and keep profit margins high, we can create an eBook and sell that instead.
For example, let’s say as a digital traffic coach we have 12 posts, roughly 1000 words long each. That’s a 12 000 word eBook.
Assume the 12 topics are SEO traffic, PPC traffic from Google, content marketing, organic social traffic, automating traffic, PPC from Facebook, PPC from LinkedIn, YouTube traffic, conversion measuring, Google analytics, email traffic and remarketing.
That becomes the “the guide to getting traffic to your website”. That’s a really shit title for a book. But it’s a start.
Now think about the niche or target you want the book to serve. Small business websites over 3 years old? Under 12 months old? WordPress websites? Small businesses without a marketing budget?
By creating a result and market combination, you’ve got a very powerful eBook title and topic. Something that becomes very valuable to an audience. It’s also very easy to get a #1 bestseller the smaller your niche.
Something I’ve seen a few times is taking the different types of blog content, and cutting that up across the book.
Of 12 blog posts, let’s say 8 are regular guides and blog posts. 1 is a resource list, 1 is a quote post, 1 is an interview post and 1 is an ultimate guide.
I’ve seen other businesses split the quotes across the 12 chapters. Then taking the resource list content and using that at the end of each chapter is a roundup. The interview post becomes its own chapter.
The ultimate guide becomes a final chapter that talks the user through how to complete a task. Very quickly we’ve got a varied and interesting book that we can sell.
Create an introduction and a summary chapter and whip up an eBook cover. We’re good to go.
Try and sell the eBook via PayPal or sell it via Amazon Kindle. You need to market it and sell it like any other product, but it never runs out of stock and starts to become a recurring revenue pathway for your business.
15 Turn that e-book into a webinar
Webinars are a fantastic way to connect with an audience that you couldn’t present to in person. Stretching across the globe, a webinar lets us help people from our laptops.
If you’ve never done a webinar before, essentially it’s an online presentation. Simple. We might use a webinar software like Zoom or Google Hangouts to present the content. But the concept is the same.
Pick a date and a time and promote the hell out of it. Even if only 10 people arrive, the power of a webinar comes from being recorded and reusable.
So how do we structure a webinar? Well it really depends on what you’re trying to do with it. If you just want to demonstrate value and show yourself as useful, by helping people do something, then we focus on content.
Or if you’re using the webinar to sell something, we need to have calls to action in the webinar.
At a high level, we’re going to take the 5 main points from your eBook (or any content really, but presenting a webinar based on a book gives instant credibility and weight) and demonstrate them to an audience.
Let’s start with this webinar as just a valuable supplement to your audience. Based off your book, this is a high level overview of what you can help them with.
This is how you structure your presentation. Each point is ONE slide with very little text. Think headlines not paragraphs. This structure by the way, is taken from Oren Klaff’s book, Pitch Anything. It’s brilliant.
Promise
Make a promise right at the start of the presentation. What do you PROMISE they’ll get from this webinar?
Problem
What’s the big problem you’re helping them solve? What’s the big issue that faces them?
Myth
What do most people do with this problem? What’s a myth that doesn’t work when solving this problem?
Changing
What’s changing in the industry or world that makes things easier or harder for your customers? What’s something they need to be aware of or take advantage of. The 3 areas to focus on are economic, technological and sociological. Money, tech and people all change.
Knife twist
“And to top it all off…” what’s another thing preventing them from doing what they want? Another problem or a road block with the way people usually solve this problem. Cost, information, snake oil merchants. What is the final knife twist?
Solution
Now we present the solution. In a value webinar we use an agenda here. Explaining what you’re going to be talking about.
About you
A common mistake people make is introducing themselves too early. By doing it now we’re showing 3 things. 1, I just want to show you something cool. I’m not that important, the content is. 2, people who DO want to know who you are will be desperate by now and this’ll satisfy them. 3, we can show off what we’ve done and why we’re right for this topic.
Tell them ONE great result you’ve got (not two or three) and how you help people.
Results
Very quickly go over one big result that they’ll be able to get again. Affirm why they’re here and what they’ll be able to do.
Main points
Now we get into the meat of the presentation. Teach them 3 – 7 useful points. Use screen shares or bullet points. However you want to explain the process they need to get results.
Call to action
It’s always useful to add a CTA. Even if you don’t have an automated product, give your email or office phone number (no cell or mobile numbers, trust me on that) and get people to call you. Make it easy for them to contact you.
Do’s and don’ts
Wrap up with do’s and don’ts. This is the easiest summary in the world and works a treat. It retells them what you’ve told them and wraps up the call. At this point as well, I like to open it up to questions and answers.
16 Split your content into 6 large topics that gets someone the result above
Have a think about the results that your content can get people. From your before/after list and P/R/B list look over the results and benefits you can give.
You’ve got a webinar and blog content. Now we’re going to look at a seriously scalable and relevant product. A course.
Courses are NOT just for educational businesses. You can teach people to do anything. If your fear alarm is ringing “but if I teach them to do it, they won’t need me!?” then take a deep breath.
People don’t work like that. What we’re offering is a solution. Courses can be much cheaper than hiring you. But people who DO go through the course WILL want to hire you to help them.
Help them help themselves, then YOU help them. Show them how it’s done, show them how to do it, then YOU do it for them. That’s the scale and the pay works up too.
Don’t worry about delivery methods or course technologies, we’ll cover that later.
Take your broad subject or result and use that as the course title. Similar to the book, we might want to focus on a benefit or a niche to give it specificity. But overall, this is your course.
Be specific and narrow too. Courses on “digital marketing” don’t sell well. Remember the previous content and products we’ve created. eBooks, webinars, blog content, lead magnets. They all work because they’re specific to each other.
Whatever your business does, take another one of your products from the P/R/B list and look at the BENEFITS that your product or service gives. Be that kind of specific.
If we’re a digital marketing coach, maybe we have an analytics and reporting product. We teach how to measure conversions and optimise them for better results.
Now we need 6 broad topics that fit into that subject. You could take 6 individual blog posts you’ve already got. Or map out the mini journey that you take. Look at the agenda you created for a stage in your delivery process. Or the process overall.
What are the 6 topics that you can talk about on that subject to that audience.
For analytics and reporting, we’d take-
- What conversion is and how it’s measured. What it means and how it helps your business.
- Installing an analytics tool.
- Setting goals.
- Measuring traffic.
- Measuring conversions.
- Optimising conversions.
Those would be the 6 broad topics that we cover in our course.
17 Split each topic into 6 lessons teaching them how to do something
Now we get to the meat of our course.
Each broad topic needs to be broken down in to 6 (or more) lessons. Teach them how to accomplish something. Think in small steps rather than whole processes.
Each lesson should only be up to 10 minutes long. No need to go longer than that.
With 6 lessons that over 1 hour of lesson content.
For example with our analytics and reporting course, the second lesson is installing an analytics tool.
- This would probably be broken down into-
- Creating an analytics account.
- Copying the tracking and embed code.
- Overview of the sections and panels.
- Testing.
- Creating a report.
- Support and trouble shooting.
We need to do this for each broad topic. Every lesson then teaches how to accomplish a small step.
Ideally, each lesson also has a worksheet or template or something to use, that supports the lesson. Again, think lead magnets and how they’re used. Think of a useful piece of content that adds value.
By this point, you’ll have 1 course with 6 lessons and 6 topics in each lesson.
If your course is behind a paywall, you can charge people to access the course. You don’t need complicated Learning Management Software (LMS) yet, you can get away with a simple WordPress site. There are simple paywall plugins that protect pages so people have to pay.
Or there are tools like Udemy and Thinkific, but they have control over the pricing and promotion.
What we’re trying to do, is create a piece of valuable, teachable content that doesn’t run out of stock. You could have 10 000 people buy your course tomorrow and each delivery would be exactly the same.
It means you can focus on promoting products too. As you don’t have to build a course every time you sell it.
Think about creating courses with 1 lesson and 6 topics too. Like a mini version of a full course that you can use as a bonus lead magnet, or even a splinter product.
Remove yourself for all your activities
The goal is to remove yourself from all choking points. All activities that require your input are taking time away from growing the business.
As a business owner, even a small or micro business, it’s your job to grow the systems and processes that allow the business to grow.
If you’ve attracted an audience and you’re growing your customer base, think about how you can build platforms that let others deliver work for you.
If you’ve got a regular blog to attract traffic and grow your email list, do you need to write the content each time?
Do you need to produce the reports or coach customers? Can someone else repeat what you do?
Often when we think about having other people deliver the work, to our customers, we think that no one else can do it.
What this really means is that you’re not confident in the brief or process you’ve got. Someone else couldn’t follow it and get the same results.
