How to launch a course before even recording the first lesson

Let's talk about how I launched a brand new course without having even recorded the very first lesson. Now, if that has you thinking, “Oh, that feels really uncomfortable.” Or maybe thinking like, “How the heck? What is going on?” I'm going to break it down for you in today's post.

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Here's how I launched a course before recording the first lesson

I'm going to show you exactly how I did it because I'm a huge believer in launching a course before you've invested all of the time into creating it. Or if it's a group program, launching it before you've created the program. Same with the membership, same with almost any kind of digital product. Because when you launch it, that's when you get to test whether people are willing to pay money for it.

And then only once people have paid money for it, then you go and create it because you've validated the idea. You know it's something that people want and are willing to spend money on. So how I launched my brand new course Boost Your Brand's Superfans back at the end of February was, off the back of Launch Magic Live, my live virtual event that I ran, we ran an offer for founding students. So founding students for Boost Your Brand's Superfans. And in return for being the first round of students to go through, they got a slightly discounted rate. But obviously, there's always the risk that when you're the first round of students to go through the course, isn't going to be perfect yet. And my students understand that.

 

Fortunately for them, the first round ended up being pretty much perfect. So off the back of Launch Magic Live, I launched that course to my new founding students. And I had a week after doors closed before they were going to get access to lesson one.

 

So what happened was only after people signed up, did I actually start creating the slides and recording module one. I had an outline of what I wanted to teach in the course. So it's not like I was making it up as I was going along. I knew what I was going to create and I knew what I was going to teach, but I hadn't spent any time creating slides or recording content yet because I wasn't sure if people actually wanted the product. And my time's limited. I know your time's limited as well. So it's not about creating that entire course and spending all that time creating that course before you get it out there into the world.

 

Once I knew people wanted it, and fortunately, quite a lot of people signed up on day one of doors open, once I knew those people wanted it, that was when I sat down and started creating the content. And it did feel a little bit tight, especially because I knew I was about to fly off to the US as well, a couple of weeks later. So I knew I really only had about two weeks to create four modules of content.

Now, when I say four modules of content, I'm a big believer in keeping lessons short and making them very actionable. So each module was maybe only 30 minutes to an hour of recorded video content. So it wasn't a huge amount of content to record and edit, but distilling down what I wanted to teach in those short lessons, that took a while, because I don't want to teach my students everything under the sun, if it's not going to help them, because content you include, if it's not getting them from point A to point B quicker, if it's not getting them from where they are right now to the transformation your course is promising quicker, then it's slowing them down and it's doing them a disservice.

 

So I actually spend a lot of time distilling what do I want to teach and what do I not want to teach here. That's the most time-consuming part.

 

So then I recorded module one, released module one on the date that I said I was going to release it, created all the bonuses and released them on the date that I had said I was going to release them. And from there, released each module week by week with a Q&A call each week for the founding students, which is as much for my benefit as it is for their benefit, because I get to find out where they are stuck, which means I know where I need to improve the course content for future rounds.

 

So that's the real nutshell of how I created this course after I had launched it. You can use this method with anything. You can use it with a group program, especially if you're teaching it via Zoom live each week. You can use it with a membership where you're releasing content each month. Any kind of online program, course, digital product, you can use this method.

 

Another thing you can do is if you are teaching a course, you can do the approach that I did with the first two rounds of Launch Magic, where instead of having prerecorded lessons, I just taught the lessons live via Zoom and then uploaded the recording into the course portal so that students who couldn't make it live could watch the lesson then. So you don't have to prerecord your entire program before you launch it. You don't have to hire a videographer and do all of the fancy things to launch a course. You can have that idea, have that outlined and launch it.

 

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