The Deep Dive: Ben IssenMann of Supercreative
If you had 30 days to get your business off the ground or give up on it forever, could you do it?
Because that's exactly what Ben Issenmann did this spring:
In May 2020 I gave myself 30 days to create and sell an online course. If I succeeded, I would continue with it.
Going from zero to making sales in just four weeks is a daunting task no matter when you do it. But here Ben was, trying to do all of this in May 2020.
If you don't remember, not much was happening back in May. No biggie. Just worldwide lockdowns as COVID-19 ramped up, protests against police violence and brutality across the United States, and record high unemployment.
During a time when most people were stressed out beyond belief and businesses were failing nationwide, Ben decided to take on a completely voluntary challenge and try to get his product going.
So what did he do first? Where do you even start a project like this?
I locked myself in my bedroom… I set up a landing page and prepared an outline for a course to teach Webflow. The course would focus on hands-on coaching and last for a month.
By the end of the month, he had created Supercreative: an all-in-one resource for creatives of all types featuring tutorials, expert-taught courses, templates, articles, tools, and online events.
But he hadn't simply created the new project. He'd also found tens of users and gotten them to open their wallets to the tune of thousands of dollars. People didn't just like Supercreative. They loved it.
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So how the hell did he validate his idea so quickly and effectively? The secret, as it so often is, was all about doing something that didn't scale:
I announced the course with a LinkedIn video, explaining that I worked at Webflow, built hundreds of websites with it and was now teaching this tool. I had 10 students sign up within a week. It earned $4,000 and I got to meet and help awesome designers and entrepreneurs.
Once he realized what he was onto, Ben was addicted, and there was no going back. But in order to go forward, he would need a lot more than a LinkedIn announcement.
And the marketing approach he put together after those first 30 days has been effective, to say the least:
Right now Supercreative has about 15,000 monthly visitors and the newsletter is growing +100% every month. More than 2,000 people have bought or downloaded Supercreative resources in the last three months.
To find out more about how Ben has grown Supercreative from just a few users to a couple thousand, read the full interview.
