8-step formula for building a course in public to guarantee sales

I get emails from people who want to create a course all the time. And that's great because you and I both know that online education and the creator economy have been skyrocketing over the last few years

I always ask if they've thought about the three most important things:

1. Do people need your course?
2. What should go into the curriculum?
3. How will you put the course into the right people’s hands?

Having clarity on these three questions will bring you wild success with the course, but a mind-boggling fact is that many people new to course creation actually don’t think about them.

For someone like me who has a few digital products and a sizable audience already, I still hone in on these three questions every time I build. Because if I don’t, I’ll have a failed course no one wants!

And this is why I want to document the eight steps I used to create my video course, Easy Content Magic. I want to show you how I did it from validating the idea to selling the course.

Are you ready to jump in?

1. Validate your early idea using data

My students at Build in Public Mastery often ask me, “Kevon, how do you validate an idea?”

In short, there’s only one way — you listen to what people are saying. This is why Product teams do user research and interviews to get raw data.

So if you have some people in your community right now, there are so many ways to get people to tell you things. I have done the following:

• Tweet specific and slightly open-ended questions to hear what people say
• Send out a short survey and promise to pick two winners who will get something free
• Chatting people up in private messages
  I gathered 400+ data points across a year and saw that my audience had the same pain points:

This made me go, “What can I do to make <thinking about what to share> easier?” This was how the early idea of Easy Content Magic came about.

But now you might be saying “What if I don’t have a community or audience yet?”

Well, I intentionally put “chatting people up” on the list above because I want you to know that no matter how big of an audience you have, this is still the best way to get data to validate your idea.

When you see patterns of the same questions, frustrations, or complaints, you know enough people are interested in getting “this thing” resolved. It is then up to you to solve it for them.

P.S. At this point, it is not about pitching your idea.

2. Set up a 60-min live workshop

If you’re itching to jump into building your course now, don’t! This is another mistake new course creators make and I just have to stop you now.

The reason is that you might have some ideas about what to teach to solve this problem for people, but you haven’t really proved that you’re on the right track. The next step is not to spend 100 hours building the course, it is actually figuring out the one thing that requires your minimal effort to validate that people indeed need this.

Now let me ask you a question. A video course is about you showing up on video to teach people, so what do you think people care about before they buy a course?

Okay, giving you 3 seconds here. 3-2-1.

They would want to know whether you know how to teach, whether your delivery is easy-to-understand, whether you’re an interesting teacher to listen to, etc.

And what’s the fastest way to get proof that you can do these nicely?

For me, it is a 60-min live workshop where you teach a small group face to face. If people leave the workshop screaming “This is AMAZING!” You know you have what it takes to create a course that will make terrific sales.

You can also find out immediately what parts people find boring so you can remove it from your course or at least move it to the second half of the course (front-loading your value-add makes people are happy).

But if you now go “Kevon, alrighty! Let me design a workshop now!”

Don’t! Not yet. Remember about the “minimal effort to validate that people indeed need this”? You don’t know if people want this workshop yet, so this is what you’re going to do.

3. Draw people into the workshop

What you need to do now is to design a workshop sales page to pitch how you’re going to resolve this struggle for people.

If you have an email list or social following, use them to get signups for the workshop.

Should you make this a free workshop? No.If you’re doing a workshop to build your audience, you can absolutely do it for free! But in this case, you’re trying to validate the idea for a paid video course you’ll build. This is why you cannot do it for free.

Free means you attract a lot of people who won’t pay later. Free means their feedback is not as relevant. Free means people care less and the word-of-mouth effect is weakened.

Only when you make it paid can you get a sense of how many people are willing to pay how much for your teaching. I set it at $19 because I wanted it to be a no-brainer price that people could act on in less than a minute.

If you don’t have an email list or an audience, then go back to my greatest wisdom ever shared: Chat people up privately.

In my early days, I definitely shared what I was doing a lot as I talked to people. A casual mention can draw a lot of people in. And people appreciate that they’re getting an invitation instead of a mass email.

If you are not sure whose door to knock on, here’s my bad news: Then you’re likely not ready to build a video course.

If you don’t know who the student should be or where to find them, you don’t have the right data to validate your early idea. And building the course cannot solve this for you.

Instead of moving forward, you want to go back to step 1.

If you’re ready, then I have one more tip for you. I mentioned to these live workshop signups that they were beta students for my new course. And when I finally built out the full course, they would get it without paying more. This made it super attractive for people to want to get in right away.

4. Deliver a WOW learning experience

It is showtime! No matter how many signups you get, you run the workshop. Yes, even if there is only 1 student. This is your chance to practice showing up on camera to teach - an important skill if you want to have a super successful video course.

Your one job here is to delight your attendees so much.

What I did was that I was honest and upfront that the workshop was a beta version. This way my attendees adjusted their expectations and were more willing to share their feedback. If I didn’t mention it, most people would take the workshop, make a quick judgment call on their investment, and move on.

If you deliver a mediocre experience, you leave a dent in people’s minds. You don’t want that.

There’s something you should know. I sold 22 seats to this live workshop and 15 people showed up. Not everyone will show up and that’s okay. Some people want to get in early for a good deal. Some prefer to watch the replay. Everyone has different needs and learning styles. It is all good.

5. Observe, gauge, and ask

After the live workshop, most new course creators evaluate how it goes by feelings. “I think I did a good job!” You don’t want this.

There are a few ways that give you a signal on whether it is a job well done:

1. Did the attendees show enthusiasm and reactions throughout the workshop?
2. Did they stay behind to ask you questions?
3. Did they share positive and constructive feedback with you after the workshop?

If these are the signals you want in order to gauge, you have to design them. I usually ask my students to tell me how they're feeling with a show of hands.

I also tell them at the start that I was happy to stay behind for 10 mins to answer any questions.

I designed a short survey and clearly stated there were only 2 questions and that it should take 1 minute. I sent them right after the workshop wrapped up.

I got 11 responses out of the 15 live attendees. You want to hear from them when they’re still feeling the “high” from your workshop.

And if you want to increase the response rate, offering a small reward is always going to help. You can say once they complete the survey, they will get a link to <one of your valuable creations>. It can be a paid product for free or simply a link to a free product

6. Iterate and repeat

After the workshop, it is time to be honest with yourself. If you don’t, it is only going to waste all your effort in building a course that no one wants.

• Did you run a workshop where people scream “AMAZING”?
• Do you feel that you’ve won new supporters?
• Which parts can you improve to make the workshop better?

If you feel that you can do a better job, it is a brilliant move to run a 2nd workshop to fine-tune this with a new group of people. Why is this brilliant? Because with each workshop you run, you’re showcasing yourself and your ability to more people. These people give you feedback. They become your community. They are the source of your testimonials. It means you have more of everything!

These days, people want non-fluffy, straight-to-the-point learning. So you want to take out all the parts that people don’t want. I purposely made Easy Content Magic less than an hour long because I want my students to spend more time executing my frameworks, not watching my frameworks.

So because I have experience building courses, I decided I didn’t need to run the 2nd workshop. But if you’re new to teaching, it might be a good idea to get better at teaching and connect with your audience live.

7. Validate again by selling early

Whenever you feel ready, you can start planning a pre-sale. At this point, you don’t even need to have your course fully built yet. All you need is a clear direction and a plan to execute.

If you think you need another four weeks to finish the course, then set the launch date at 4 weeks and the pre-sale at two weeks.

The best thing about having run the live workshop is that now you have a relationship with all attendees. You can use their feedback from the survey as testimonials. You can even ask them to write a few new lines. Another signal to you: If you did a good job, they should say "yes" easily.

You can also ask them to help out and spread the word.

I decided to offer the same price of $19 to the first 20 pre-sale signups. Then later I would price the course at $27. If you have more room between the live workshop price and the final price you’re thinking about, you can definitely offer something in between for pre-sale.

Since you've been building the course in public, you just need to bring up the pre-sale once in a while and people will gradually sign up for it. It is more about getting sales over time; not having an explosive day.

When you have pre-sale numbers, you can also use them to create extra momentum for the big launch.

8. Launch your course

If you've followed the steps carefully and mindfully, you should have a course that people are dying to learn from.

Throughout this process, the exact words that you hear from workshop attendees and your audience should be used to improve your copy on the sales page. If you speak their language, they'll resonate. If they feel you understand them, they’ll take your course.

When you’re close to your big launch, you can ask all the people who you’ve interacted with so far, especially the workshop attendees, for help. If you give them a ton of value, they’ll be more than happy to help you even though they had to pay to attend the workshop.

If you’re new to the course world, your video course should not just be a tool for you to make passive income. It is actually a way for you to add value to people’s lives. It is you helping them. This is a perfect place to kick-start relationships. They might want more of your help in the future, and they will also help you spread the word for all your future creations.

That’s the beauty of building a course in public.