The last thing you want to do is put a ton of time and effort into building an online course
only to have no one buy it. Worst nightmare, right? So if you're sitting there thinking,
"No one's going to buy this thing, this is a stupid idea, I'm stupid, people are going to hate
it, people are going to hate me", and you're going down a total rabbit hole, you're in the
right place. I'm going to show you four steps to validate your online course idea before you even
build it or sell it. And this is my fair warning to you, if you don't do this, no one will buy your
course and you will hear the dreaded crickets. And if you're serious about this, I highly recommend
going to the link in the description below to download my free guide on the 10 Steps To Scale
Your Skill Set & 10X Your Impact (Without Trading Time For Money). Go grab that right
now and then, of course, come back to the video. So let's break down the concept and then I'm going
to share the four steps. And later in the video I'm going to share how a chef and a gardener used
this to validate their course idea and sell their programs. So these four steps today are part of
that process in getting your prototype version of your program to market, selling it, getting
real clients in the door, getting social proof as quickly as possible. Now, if you're sitting
there going, "I don't even know what the course topic should be", I have a whole other video that
I just recently created on that on how to pick a profitable course topic. You can check that out
in the description below. So the four steps we're going to dig into today, number one is internal
validation. Number two is external validation, and number three is data-based validation.
Number four, most importantly, human validation. Number one, internal validation. You can't teach
what you don't know or haven't experienced. The biggest problem with creating a business of any
kind, but particularly an education business, is people will often look at what others are doing
and try and copy that model of success. That is only going to take you so far and it's really
not a sustainable way to build a business that's built to last. So one of the most important things
to understand is the concept of a blue ocean strategy. Now, what happens when you look at what
other people are doing and try and copycat what's already out there and be part of the competition
is you enter into what's known as a red ocean. So let me break down what these two things mean.
This concept is from a great book I've referenced before called Blue Ocean Strategy: How To Create
Uncontested Market Space and Make The Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne.
So when you're in a red ocean, you're competing in existing market space, meaning there's tons
of competition already. You are trying to beat the competition and you're trying to exploit existing
demand. When you're in a blue ocean, you are creating uncontested market space. You're entering
into a whole new market space where there is no competition because it's so solely related on
your experience, your own unique take, and your own unique genius. And you make the competition
irrelevant and create and capture new demand. This is why I harp on going internal first and not just
skipping ahead, which is what most people do to the external validation. So by going internally,
you're going to identify a unique angle and take that is completely unique to you
that you can use to teach whatever it is that you want to have an impact on others with.
So in order to validate a need for your course, first and foremost, you need to have experience
with it yourself. So here are a few quick prompts to help you internally validate a course idea. A
challenge or hurdle you've overcome. How you've transformed a part of yourself,
your life, or your business, or done the same for other people. What do people most often
ask you for help with? If you could stop people from making the same mistakes and
going through the same frustrations and struggle you did, what would that be? That question is so
good. So I want you right now to pause this video, think about that for a second, and
comment below with the answer to that question. Next question, who are your favorite clients,
if you worked with clients, it's okay if you haven't, and what were their most amazing
transformative results? And what methods or strategies do you find yourself repeating
often? There are big clues in duplication and repeating things over and over again. That right
there is a key clue about what your curriculum could possibly be. The next part of internal
validation is keeping things outcome focused, because people are not buying the information
you're selling. They can get information for free on the internet. They're buying the outcome of
what it is that you're selling with your program. So what is the outcome they're going to achieve,
the transformation they're going to achieve? So we call this your transformation statement. It's
also known as a unique selling proposition. So you'll want to fill in these blanks.
I help blank go from blank to blank so that they can blank. Or, I went from blank to blank
so that I could blank. That's going to help you identify why, the big why behind what you do,
why you do it, and ultimately how it's going to impact people. Because impact is everything,
especially when you're creating an education business. Step number two is external validation,
otherwise known as proof of concept. Repeat after me, you can even comment below with this,
"Competition is a good thing." Okay, I know we talked about blue versus red ocean strategy
earlier and you're probably thinking, "But there should be no competition if I do this the right
way." Technically yes and no. What I mean by that is that you want to see that there is demand for
whatever it is that you ultimately want to teach people, that there are people seeking out that
kind of support, that help, that transformation, because that shows you and that leaves success
clues that there's a need for what you do. If there is no need at all and nobody out there
doing anything remotely similar, it oftentimes is a red flag. What is unique and what makes the
competition irrelevant is taking a unique angle with it because of your own unique experience
that no one else in the world has. Let me know if that makes sense. So if you do this right,
you're going to identify demand for what you do, and also, because you're using a unique
angle based on your unique experience, you're going to eliminate competition. So the first
thing you're going to do for external validation is see what else is out there. So, for example,
I work with a fertility doctor and he's incredible at what he does, so in order to start validating
his program idea, he would want to start looking in places like bestselling books on Amazon and
digging into the reviews of those books to see what's helpful and not helpful for people.
Other online courses in the market, you can look at things like Skillshare or Udemy to
see if there's anything remotely out there like this. Popular blogs and forums on these topics,
popular influencers in this space that have followings that would match who your ideal client
is. If there are in-person conferences, workshops, et cetera, or they're networking groups on places
like meetup.com or even coaches or consultants who are already working in this space. And,
finally, looking at things like podcasts or YouTube channels that talk about this topic
and seeing if there are quality comments. It's not necessarily about the size of the audience,
but is there an engaged audience that is a huge clue for you. Now, if you're sitting there going,
"There is no competition at all. Isn't that a red flag?" Here's the thing,
you have to consider what you want to teach and think about the category that it's under.
You want to think about it as a six degrees of separation situation. So, for example, when it
comes to the fertility space and this fertility doctor, maybe you're not going to start by looking
at the exact thing that this person teaches. So getting pregnant naturally without the use of IVF,
that is a very narrow focus, and ultimately you're going to get to a narrow focus because
that's what you can uniquely teach. But in the beginning, in order to identify market demand,
you want to start broad so things and categories like getting pregnant, fertility, treatments and
options, naturopaths that are out there talking about this, other doctors that are out there
talking about this, all of the things that I just mentioned. So start a little bit broad to identify
category demand instead of trying to focus so narrowly on the very unique thing that you teach,
because, remember, that is the piece that's going to help you eliminate competition.
Number three, data-based validation. Now, this is really important. Numbers are helpful and they
support, but numbers are not everything. That's why I made this the third step because, if you go
straight to this step, it may feel like it's a bit of a deterrent for you. So just remember that you
want to, first and foremost, internally validate and then externally find proof of concept and
demand in the market, and then you can look at the things like the numbers to show you that there's
data to back this up. A really simple place to start to identify demand is you can use Google's
Keyword Planner. You can go on there and search specific topics. And also another really easy tool
that I absolutely love is I will use something called Keywords Everywhere on YouTube and I will
identify, okay, what are the numbers looking like when I search a specific topic? Is there demand
for that topic? And it will actually show you how much volume is behind that topic, and that
shows you, are people actively looking for this? And, remember, the broader the category, the more
volume there's going to be. But, as you narrow your focus, the less volume there's going to be.
That doesn't mean that it's not a viable topic. It just means that there is demand for the category.
You're just essentially creating and carving out a new market space within that category. So a prime
example of this is, let's just say I went onto YouTube and I looked up the topic weight loss,
huge topic, so much demand for this, but that's not something you'd want to create a course on
because it's so broad. You don't know who you're serving, how you're serving them,
or what the impact's ultimately going to be. That's when you can go, "Okay, there's a ton of
demand for this. Now, what's my unique angle?" So, for example, I have a client who found her
angle with this because of her own story. She was like, "Yeah, I work in the weight loss space,
but it's not really been something that's been super successful." So she realized,
"Well, my biggest tipping point for myself was when I had a baby and I was postpartum
and I just could not figure out how to lose the weight, lose the baby weight." So weight loss
for postpartum moms narrows the focus and helps prove and validate that program offer that helps
you identify your unique take and carve out that market space. Now, the fourth piece of validation,
which is hands down the most important aspect of this and you want to do all of them for sure, but
this one you can't miss, it's human validation. If you don't really find out if there are people out
there who truly need what you have, it's going to be tough to actually sell your programs.
This is a key piece. So I mentioned earlier that there was a chef and a gardener that used this
process, they're both clients of mine, and they were able to sell their programs with
great success, so I wanted to just share those quick examples with you. Number one,
Jordan uses gardening to help people with their mental health, which is a really cool, again,
unique angle he's taken with his program. He's pre-sold eight of the 10 spots by really
validating this with real human beings, and he had such high demand, 281 people expressed interest
in working with him. One of the things that he mentioned worked so well was part of this human
validation process. He joined every gardening Facebook group in Canada and answered their
questions, added value, and that allowed him to build a targeted network of people that were super
pumped when he actually had something to offer. The next example is Jared, who helps executive
chefs become leaders in the hospitality industry, and his results are quite remarkable. He launched
his program, he pre-sold his program, he enrolled 17 chefs into his program, and generated $66,000.
So we have a process that we walk our clients through in essentially creating 50 real human
being interviews where they actually speak to people via Zoom and interview them about
what they truly need in a program. And it's purely research-based. It's not about selling,
but it allows you to build a really, really hyper targeted market without having an audience on
social media or anything else. Now, a really good question came in my comments on another video
recently from Russell T. Recommends. He asked, "Very good stuff, but I have a question. I'm all
for interviewing people, but maybe I missed it. Where do you get the people to interview?" We call
these ICA interviews, ideal client interviews, and the recommendation is to do 50 of them.
Now, this can go very smoothly when you get a clear handle on who you're trying to target and
when you get super specific, which by this point you're already validating the direction you're
going in, so now you know who you need to speak to. So where do you actually find these folks?
Here are a couple of ways that our clients are able to do it. First and foremost, you can start
with your existing network, so asking current clients or customers or people in your friends,
family relationship circles and getting their input if they are a match for what it is that
you're going to serve people with. And a really good clue if you do have current or past clients,
and it's not necessary to create a program, but if you do, think about your most successful clients,
because, again, that's a huge clue. How did you help them specifically?
And that very well could be the program and the curriculum you create for more of those ideal
clients that you just would love to duplicate. Now, the other places you can find these folks
were actually mentioned earlier in the video. By identifying popular podcasts or YouTube channels
or influencers or blogs or going on places like Meetup or even Amazon, you are going to
find people who are engaging in this space and are looking for the help that you're going to
be providing. So by connecting with these people and friending them, following them, commenting on
their posts, answering their questions, providing value to them, Facebook groups, as I mentioned
earlier, a great tool and resource, there are forums out there, your people are out there
waiting and if you can just start searching in the category that you want to serve, you're going to
find this community. And from there, it's your job to not be the cool kid at the party and wait back
and sit back and hope clients come to you. Your job is to start creating value,
sharing how you can help sharing tips and tricks and tutorials, and sharing your
knowledge to start positioning yourself as an authority and to start really serving people,
because by serving people and helping people creates reciprocity and relationships,
and then those folks become the people that you can then interview to identify how you can best
support them. That's how you find interviews. So, from there, one of the most important questions
that you can ask is, what are you most challenged by, frustrated by, or struggling with when it
comes to blank? So a few real examples from our program, what are you most struggling with when
it comes to breastfeeding in the first year? What are you most struggling with when it comes
to up-leveling your tennis game? What are you most struggling with when it comes to dancing
in public. Those are all programs that have been created in our program, the Authority Accelerator,
and that's a really, really good starting place to identify, what are the pain points of your ideal
client? In order to serve at the highest level, you need to know, what is the pain point they're
dealing with now and what is the outcome that they ultimately want to achieve by taking a program
like yours? That's how you create a curriculum that's really impactful, really helpful,
creates great client results, and ultimately can scale. Some other questions that you can ask when
you actually do speak to these people are, what is the number one thing that you wish you could
learn to overcome this hurdle or this challenge? And the other great question to keep it outcome
focused, because people are ultimately buying into the transformation you can provide to them,
and the outcome you can provide with your program is, if you were to learn how to solve this,
what would the ideal outcome be for you? What would you want to achieve at the end of it? And
that's going to allow people to share with you an emotional level and also on a tactical level what
they really, really want out of a program and what they're really seeking in terms of help. And this
is something that you can get super creative with. So, for our clients, we have a whole
library inside of our program and we call it the ICA Outreach Library. And it's all these examples
that have worked really well for our clients to find the best people to speak to, to do these
research interviews, to create essentially a list of clients who are so excited to work with them.
Now, these four steps have now allowed you to validate your course. How exciting! So
you know when you go to sell this thing, it's actually going to sell,
and you've built a foundation for a business that is actually built to last. It's not just
a flash in the pan. It's not just a one and done situation. It's going to last and continue to get
clients in the door and make a big impact. If that is exciting to you, let me know in the comments,
because it's exciting to me. It's really the key to building a super strong business that can grow
for the rest of time. So from here, what you do is you essentially create that prototype because
now you have the information you need to create a curriculum and to create a minimum version of your
program to sell to people that is going to create that impact that you're seeking to create. And I
have a whole video on how to do just that, and I'm going to share that with you in just a second.
But this is really just the tip of the iceberg. If you're serious about doing this, we've helped
so many people create their programs in so many unique niches, and we have clients that are doing
all the way up to hundreds of thousands of dollars a month consistently with their online programs
without massive audiences, without posting all of the time. But just by being super strategic,
intentional, and in working with the right people. So if that's of interest, be sure to grab that
free guide, you got nothing to lose, on the 10 Steps To Scale Your Skill Set & 10X Your Impact
(Without Trading Time For Money). Grab it in the link below, and like I said, the next step from
what we just discussed is actually creating that prototype so you can check out this video next on
exactly how to do just that. Thank you so much for watching. You have an important message to share,
you have an impact to make, so what are you waiting for? I hope this was helpful.
Can't wait to read your comments. They're my love language. And I'll see ya in the next one. Bye.