I was first introduced to Grant Baldwin a while back as he joined my mastermind group, which is based in Nashville, TN. While he's an accomplished speaker, he's also a great guy, who's funny, but is as genuine personally as he appears when he's on stage. I was able to hear him speak at FinCon2015 and was greatly impacted by his message, which he shares about in this podcast. I knew that Grant had put out some online courses but was really impressed with the article that he wrote for Pat Flynn's Smart Passive Income blog, titled, "From Course Concept to $141,659 In Sales In 6 Months". He shares the process he took when he build, sold and marketed his online course. In this podcast he goes in depth on this topic and additional insights.
5 reasons why a public speaker should create online courses
I've worked with speakers over the years and respect what they do. Speakers have a message to share and are passionate about their topic. Many times they motivate or encourage life-change in their message. While most speakers have books, CDs, DVDs and other programs, many don't have online courses to provide to their audience for back of the room sales, or on their website. If you're a speaker, you'll love this episode of the Online Course Coach Podcast, I share 5 reasons why a public speaker should create online course.
- It allows them to create an additional revenue stream
- It gives something else for back of the room sales
- It can supplement your talk, book or other media you sell
- It allows you to build your platform, email list and fan base while giving them long term value
- It lets you build a community, which can 10x your success and significance
Online Course Coach Podcast Guest Questions:
- Give me background of your speaking career
- Tell me about your first course and how it didn’t meet up to your initial expectations?
- Why was the title of your course a reason for poor sales?
- Why did you decide to create a new online course, rather than just improve your original one?
- Why is the validation phase of the process so important?
- How did you sell to the beta tester group?
- Was it hard to sell to the beta tester group?
- How was the new launch compared to the original launch?
- What marketing strategies have worked the best?
- What lessons have you learned in your joint ventures to sell this course?
- How do you use your free 9 part email course?
Online Course Coach Podcast Show Notes:
- I heard him talk at FinCon 2015
- He is an accomplished speaker but wanted to create a course
- His first course was called, "Clarity Course”, to help people find clarity in their work and find or create work they love, but it wasn’t as successful as he’d hoped
- You need to find where your target audience is and serve them
- Think about what questions you constantly get asked and develop a course on that topic
- His second course, to speakers, was very clear in what it offers
- He wrote an article that outlines some of the details of his process http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/from-course-concept-to-141659-in-sales-in-6-months/
- Sell something before you create it to validate your course idea by polling your audience and telling them what you’re planning on building it.
- There’s a difference between pre-selling your course vs doing a free beta
- Grant did Facebook ads to direct people to webinars to drive sales
- He uses LeadPages, Google Hangouts and Chatroll for his webinar
- He has a free 9 part email course at bookedandpaidtospeak.com
- His website is found at GrantBaldwin.com
What online courses are you working on? I'd love to hear what you're working on.