DesignClass

After nearly 2 years of creating class and building up our customer list, we have shut down DesignClass. The tough reality is that we could not overcome the high cost of producing the content and customer acquisition.
We were often in the position where we could not run ads profitably and none of our classes had the necessary organic growth to sell on their own.
Although it is sad; the good news is that there are much better things around the corner.

Launching our 5th DesignClass was probably the smoothest process so far. I connected with Karin, the teacher, months ago when I interviewed her firm for another project. I really liked their work and the focus they had on adaptive reuse architecture.
I setup the filming dates months in advance and filmed it!
Aside from having to wear a mask while filming, it was the cleanest process so far and felt like a well oiled machine.
The things that have helped me in the last few months are to create templates for each part of the class creation process. I have a script for pitching DesignClass, a template for questions, and even a template for Premiere Pro when videos are edited.
I think the one area that still needs improvement is the depth of each class. I want to add more depth and detail than I have ever done. I want to find a way to bring the viewer on a journey, almost like a documentary but still one-on-one education focused.

We launched our 4th DesignClass today! It is all about the wonders of illustrating a children's book.
This was a crazy class to put together, since everything was closing down because of Coronavirus, we rushed to film this class in one morning. We worked late into the night the day before to iron out all the details and then filmed like crazy in the morning.
The trick was to create something that was different than what we had seen before. We wanted it to be more than just illustration but to encourage people through the entire process of creating a children's book.
We added a ton of material about layouts, writing, and even self-publishing. My hope is that it inspires someone to take the leap and create something they've always wanted to create.

In trying to develop a marketing strategy, we begin to explore how design competitions could be used to bring in revenue and also be a way to interact with the community.
With the crazy Coronavirus situation unfolding, we decided to host the Coronavirus Design Competition. The goal was to encourage designers to think of ways that people could interact with this new world in a safe, fun, and beautiful way.
We offered a grand prize of $1,000 and charged small fee for entry. In about 2 months we had 100+ entries and this helped us achieve our most profitable month ever.
These entries were then put on our blog, (https://articles.godesignclass.com/) and shared with the world. To drive even more traffic, we hosted a public voting period where anyone could vote for their 5 favorite designs. This drove traffic by encouraging the 100+ designers to share their design on our blog in hope of getting more votes. We gained over 2,000 emails from this voting process.

You know that startup chart that always shows the peak and then a wide valley of despair right after? That was our February, coming off an encouraging launch in December, January and February basically fell off the cliff. We had no social, email, or marketing strategy to bring in new people who weren't on our email list. We had almost no one visit the new DesignClass site, at least no one that wanted to buy a $99 course.
We had to start putting in the work of getting DesignClass visible on Google, blogs, and social media.

After working to get GoArchitect, a publishing house about architecture, off the ground for a year, I was growing frustrated with the high cost of books and the low return from all my efforts. Needless to say, books are a hard business. You have to print in very high volume to get the price low enough for people to buy them at a reasonable price.
After thinking about how to move forward, my mind kept going back to how much I loved MasterClass and their classes with interesting and famous people.
I thought about how their are thousands of talented and successful people in the world, who are experts in the niche, but are not famous enough to get on something like MasterClass.
I was already interacting with these people as part of my day-job in architecture and in my endeavours with GoArchitect.
I thought about what it would take to create something like a MasterClass but geared towards design, art, architecture, and all the things I loved.
I reached out to my friend, Matthew Rosenberg, a design leader in Los Angeles and asked if he'd be willing to film a class about his architecture and development business. I told him it would be an experiment for a new direction in my business.
He was willing to do it and in November 2019 I filmed the class, it went on sale a few weeks later and we sold over $2,000 in just a few days!
It was definitely a learning experience and not everything came out perfect, the video is a little blurry for example, but it got me inspired to move forward. I decided to shift GoArchitect into more of a media company and focus on our newest product, DesignClass: online classes from leaders in art & design.