5 Steps to Start Selling Your Knowledge Online

Your Dream Business

English - July 20, 2020 00:00 - 23 minutes - 43.7 MB - ★★★★★ - 34 ratings
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Previous Episode: The benefits of being micro famous with Matt Johnson

Next Episode: Understanding Who You Are and Why With Sarajane Case

In this week’s episode, we are going to be talking all about launching an online product. Due to what we have all experienced in the world lately, lots of people are starting to think about how they could take their business more online, which means you can work anywhere, at any time. I want to help you by giving you all the tips I have learnt from having an online business and the things you need to do to get started.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCASTThe knowledge industry is anyone who can teach or serve from the topic they know and understand.Online products in the knowledge industry include; masterminds, coaching programmes, memberships and courses.If you sell a product right now, can you now teach it?The knowledge industry has opened up and we can now learn anything from anywhere.There is huge potential for you to earn money from selling what you know.No matter what you offer, it needs to be transformative.Understand who your ideal customer is and who would need support, so you know who you are talking to.There are many ways to deliver an online product and you may need to use some third party websites/platforms.Don’t try and do too much – we are all sort on time so too much content isn’t always the best way.Breakdown how your product or service comes together so you are clear on what your customers/members actually get.Look at who else is offering a similar product or service to you – do not get disheartened by this, just use it as research.Don’t take one person’s word for it – ask lots of people for their opinion.
THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…This is not a “get rich quick” option. Creating and selling your online product takes a lot of work and there are lots of things to think about, but it is so worth it.HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISSOnline Products in the Knowledge Industry 04:30Can You Teach Your Product or Service? 05:21What Transformation Can You Offer? 07:37Who is Your Ideal Customer? 09:49How Are You Going To Deliver Your Online Product? 11:44Research 18:19
Transcript below

Hello, and a very warm welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for joining me as always as I'm recording these episodes.

Cause I'm doing I'm batching some episodes at the moment. I've just had a lovely message into my inbox saying how much someone loves the podcast. And honestly, it makes my day. It literally makes every single thing I do worth it because I just love the thought that you're out there listening to this right now and you're getting something from it.

So if you're sat there and you've never DM me, or you've never tagged me into an Instastory, or if you've never gone and reviewed the podcast, then I urge you, please, please do so I really, really do appreciate it. Okay. So today's episode, we're going to be talking about launching an online product, and there's a couple of reasons why I want to talk about this.

One of the main ones is because obviously while I'm recording this, we are still in some elements of lockdown. And, uh, the pandemic is still very much around. And obviously that has had a massive, massive difference to our lives and our businesses. And during the lockdown, you might have really quickly jumped into action and taken elements of your business online.

Hello, and a very warm welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for joining me as always as I'm recording these episodes.

You might have followed and not done anything with the business and the business that you run today that you've reopened hopefully by now, if you've had to fill out or if you have to close, if it's physical shop, you might be looking at, okay, "What if this happens again? How am I going to protect myself from this going forward?" Or you might be one of those people that like said you jumped on it. You immediately started doing stuff online. And now you're thinking, okay, that was fine as a interim solution. But now, how am I going to do this properly going forward? Because it gives you another option. And that's what I particularly love about doing the online business. That when it happened, when everything shut down, I could carry on if in fact anything, I jumped into more action. So for me, it was very much a case of, I couldn't be more grateful for having an online business. I also love the fact that I can do my job anywhere and no one is expecting me to be in a certain place at a certain time.

And I don't have to deal with that. So for me, having an online business has been so freeing and also amazing because I can help so many more people. People that would never have been able to take my services when we offered it as consultancy or when I offered it as an agency. So there's loads and loads of reasons.

These are just a handful of reasons why having an online business is so good. But like I said, I wanted to talk about it today because you might have been floating the idea based on what's happened. And I want to just take you back a bit. Also you might not have ever even thought about it cause you might be sat there thinking, "Well, I can't for my business, it wouldn't work".

And actually I want to show you today that actually I think it can, and maybe you should consider. Whether this is something for you. Now, some of you are going to listen to this episode and go, "Nope, not for me". And that's absolutely fine. And some of you, I might open your eyes to a new way of doing business. But I think if anything is going to the fact that we had a pandemic and the world literally shut overnight is probably enough for most people to go, "Okay, let's just look at this".

So what if you're sat there going. One, I had to jump to action and sort of couple something together. Or two, I really want to be serious about this and think about doing it properly. How are you going to get started? How do you know if this is even a viable thing for you to do? And one of the very first things that you should be thinking about and having conversations with yourself about. And that's what this episode's all of about.

Okay. So let's start talking about what an online product is. I am not talking so much about selling your product online, as in, if you are a physical shop and you have, you know, you sell cards, greetings cards, and you put those online. That's not so much what I'm talking about. I am talking about online products that normally come in the knowledge industry.

So the knowledge industry. Is anybody who can teach or serve from the thing that they know and understand. I don't think that was an exact definition and I'm sure I probably could have found a better one, but anyway, it just came out at the time. So it tends to be things like masterminds. Coaching programs, memberships, and courses.

They tend to be the types of online products that I'm talking about. And like I said, there are lots of you that can do those. Have a great example of someone locally that has a food product that they sell. They sell spices for Indian food. I use them. They're amazing. And she was doing prior to lockdown, she was doing in-person cookery lessons.

And doing in-person catering and obviously locked down happened and she couldn't do it anymore. So she then started a subscription program for her spices, where she would send you a spice or a couple of spices every month and give you a recipe. And I think there's a video alongside it or whatever it is.

So, you know, even if you sit there thinking, well, I sell a product, that's not gonna work for me. She's proof that it can. And it does. So, like I said, these are the first things you need to think about, you know. Is it something that if you do sell a product, is it something that you could teach? Because there's no reason why in her example, for instance, she couldn't go online and teach people online and have that part of a course or a membership.

And you just need to look at some of the celebrities. Like I know Gordon Ramsay is known worldwide. You know, he has done something, I think it's a teachable, I can't remember where he teaches you how to cook like him. And it's a, it's a course and he sells this course online. So. Now we're in a world that actually the knowledge industries opened us up so amazingly that I can learn anything from anywhere. Whether it's how to play guitar, whether whether it's you know personal development, whether it's baking a cake or learning how to do photography or whatever it might be. The knowledge industry is huge and there's huge potential. Not only for me to learn things, but you to earn money. For us to sell and promote our, our services and our products.

So that's the first thing, like I said, If you sell a physical product, if you do something physically, like maybe you do nails or maybe you're a masseuse or whatever, is there a way you can go on and teach that online. Now you might not want to. And that's absolutely fine. Not a problem, but I'm just trying to give you ideas that if you did want to go and do something online, that's where I would start looking.

So those are the kinds of things I'm talking about. So let's go through, I've got five steps that I want to tell you about that I think you should consider doing before you go down the route of trying to find a platform and working out and doing all that sort of good stuff. So step number one, I want you to sit and think what is the transformation?

What transformation can you offer someone with an online product? So. Is the transformation that you're going to give them a new skill? Like I said, it could be teaching a musical instrument. It could be show me how to use my iPhone better. It could be telling me how to do accounts. Is it going to get them more customers?

Is it personal development? Is it going to develop them? Is it going to be, and I've been member of online coaching programs where I've been part of a group coaching that's helped with personal development. Is it going to make them fitter? Are you a personal trainer? And you can take that online. Is it going to teach them to cook?

What is it that it's going to do? What is it that your, your product or service that you're going to sell online. What's the transformation. So what will, if I have it, what will the transformation be to me? So a great example of this is one of the, well, not the, one of the first, the very first interview I ever did on the podcast was Pat Flynn.

And he has this amazing story. Where he was in the legal that is obviously a long time ago, so please excuse me if I get some of the details wrong. Um, and he had asked to pass an exam. I'm sure it was a law has to pass an exam. And when he got major down turn, he started helping people. By telling them how to pass this exam or telling them kind of giving them skills and advice about how they could pass this exam.

And he started to sell it online. And he'd take this years and years and years ago, and that was how he started his entry into the knowledge industry and having an online business. Because he passed this exam. He was very good at it and he just shared his knowledge and other people wanted it. So what's the transformation.

So that's the first thing I want you to write down. What is the transformation that you provide? In your product or your service that you can sell online. So my transformation is I help businesses market themselves better and get more customers. I help them grow their businesses. So that's the transformation that I offered through my stuff.

Okay. Number two, who can you make this transformation happen for? So. Who is your customer is basically what I'm asking, who is the person that this transformation will be brilliant for, or who is the person that wants this transformation. So obviously for me, mine are business owners, you know, someone who doesn't own their own business is not going to come and join.

One of my programs or do one of my online things, because the whole point is that aimed at business owners. So who is the person that needs that support. I've got someone who supports mums and has a online sort of personal development membership where she supporting mums do better mums. So obviously that is for mums.

I've got people who are doing training programs for personal training, and again, they, they help a certain type of person. So I want you to write down who is it for? And I want you to try, do as much detail as possible. I want you to sit there and think like, if you've got any customers that have bought this thing already or do this thing already, but just not in the guys that we're talking about, maybe it's an in person thing.

Write them down. Think about them. What age are they? Where do they live? What type of thing? It's not a, what kind of jobs did they have? Do they have children? Do they not have children? What's the pain that you're fixing. What is the thing that you are helping them to solve? So the transformation is helping them with that pain.

So for instance, if my transformation for my Academy is that I help you market your business better and get more customers. The pain of my customers is that they need more customers is that they want to grow a better business. Is it that they're overwhelmed. So that's step number two, who is the transformation for who would be the perfect person to have this transformation?

Okay. Step number three. So we've already talked about what the transformation is. We've talked about who it is, and now I want you to think, and this is where we go slightly more into the online product itself. How are you going to deliver that thing or what is instantly in your head about how you can deliver it?

So I want you to think about the different ways of delivering some of the different things I talked about, coaching, masterminds, courses, memberships. I want you to think about how you going to need to deliver the thing. So for instance, if you are going to do something that's personal development, that is very much around growing someone from where they are at this point, it's going to have to be fairly high touch.

You're going to have to know the people that you're talking to, and therefore you might want to do a small coaching. Sort of group program that only has 10 people in it. You might not be able to do a membership with thousands of people in there. Whereas if you're teaching something, it might be that you can teach in a one of course.

You only need to do the course once the information doesn't change and you can put all that together, they can do it in their own time, on their own watch. And that's as much as they need from you. And they don't need anything more than that, your knowledge. So I guess, you know. If it's something where you need to develop, it might be a membership.

So for instance, if I talk about, I don't know, learning to play guitar, that might be a membership because it might be, you know, you go in and you need to pick what level you're at, or you need to go through things and they can add things every single month or every single week or whatever it is. So for me, the membership for the Academy was really important because I knew that one of the best ways I can help people is through answering their questions.

And it was no good just saying here's a course on Instagram or here's a course on Facebook ads, or here's a course on creating content, which is all in the Academy. And I needed those courses in there. But there was no point in me just giving them the courses, because one, they wouldn't know where to start.

They wouldn't know whether it was relevant to them. They wouldn't know, you know, should they be on Instagram? And I knew that they'd have questions. So for me, I needed that to be a membership more than a course. However, I am in the process of putting together something else. Little bit hesitant to tell you what it is because it's in such early days and I've reviewed it.

And it can't be a membership, it has to be a course because it literally is you need everything there ready for them. And it's kind of a full like start to finish things. So you don't need the kind of constantly adding of the membership. So. I want you to think about that. I want you to think about what is it likely to be, and in the same section, I want you to think about what other mechanisms are you going to need to deliver this content?

So for instance, if it's a membership, are you going to be doing live videos? Are you going to do coaching calls? If it's a course, are you going to be on video or is it going to be worksheets or is it going to be screen recordings. I mean, this is really going to come down to what it is you're trying to get across.

So like I said, if you are teaching a cookery lesson than it probably needs to be you filming yourself, cooking it. If you are going to be teaching guitar, then again, I'm probably going to need to see the guitar, but then I might need a download to the music. So I need you to think about. What sort of big mechanism does it need to be?

Is it a course or is it a membership is a coaching thing, is it a mastermind? And then, Hey, might you deliver some of that content. So is it going to be a membership that has a monthly coaching call or is it going to be a course that has a Facebook group, because you will need to answer some questions afterwards.

So how to think about that in step three and see how. Uh, what kind of comes up there and this isn't set in stone, by the way, this is really just a brainstorm of right. If I was going to do this, "How might this look?". The last thing I want you to be careful of in step three is that you don't try and do too much.

Our kind of default position is to go. Right. Well, I probably need to do a course every other week and then a five downloads and then a live and then a coaching call and then a, this, this, this, and honestly, I'm exactly the same, but so is everyone else. And we always try and do too much. Too much content isn't always the best way. Like if you could give me something in five words, rather than five worksheets. I would rather have it that way because we're short on time. So I don't necessarily want to go through reams and reams and reams of stuff. So don't fill then the trap of, "Oh, that doesn't look enough value or that doesn't look good enough".

Just go with how you feel. Okay. Step four. This is where, what you think about what they get, which kind of ties into what I just said. So in step three, you thought about, What is it that you, or how are you going to deliver it in step four, I want you to go, okay. How does this look in reality is it? So now, you know, okay, I'm going to need to do videos or I'm going to need to do some kind of coaching call.

I want you to always, almost map out what they get for their money. So you're almost like thinking about how the product comes together, how the service comes together. So if you are doing a group mastermind, it might be that once a quarter, they get an in person event, or once a quarter, they get a so do call with you,...