[79] Building Awesome Online Courses with Keith Perhac of Summit Evergreen
This is Bootstrap Web episode number 79. This is the podcast for you if you're the founder who learns by doing as you bootstrap your business online. And we might need a new tagline after last week's episode when we revealed we're not entirely bootstrapped anymore. Anyway, today we have a slightly different episode in that usually I'm the slacker and I am away. I'm with family.
Jordan Gal:I'm in Miami. I'm traveling something. Today, it's the opposite. Brian's being a slacker and this is Jordan and I'm here with a buddy of mine, Keith Perhak from Summit Evergreen. So we're gonna dig into what Keith is doing with Summit Evergreen, dig into online courses, and the right approach to go from where you are right now listening to this podcast to launching and profiting from an online course.
Jordan Gal:So let's get started by saying welcome to Keith and tell us a little bit about what you do and who you are.
Speaker 2:Alright. Jordan, thank you so much for having me on. So I'm Keith Perhek. I live out in the middle of nowhere Japan. I've been here twelve years, and I am the technical cofounder of Summit Evergreen.
Speaker 2:So Summit Evergreen is a platform that lets people who are creating products, information courses, that kind of thing, and lets them be able to easily create products that are great for their students, great for their customers, and helps to increase retention and sales. So we make it easy to create courses and makes it easy to sell them.
Jordan Gal:Awesome. And I I love this this arena. If I wasn't doing Cardhook full time, I think my focus would be on online courses. I think that's the best, it's the best bang for your buck all around.
Speaker 2:It really is.
Jordan Gal:I think that's what people get the most out of when they buy a course. And I think that the creator gets the most out of creating a course as opposed to a book. I mean, The ideal in my mind is a high value, high priced course that you can sell on an ongoing basis. To me, that's like the dream.
Speaker 2:Exactly. And you know it's interesting because a lot of people and the kind of course this online information has changed a lot in the last even five to ten years because when it started, it was all PDFs. Right? Everyone was like, oh, get buy my ebook. Right?
Speaker 2:Now no one buys ebooks. Ebooks are essentially I I won't say no one buys ebooks. People do buy ebooks, but the pricing of ebooks is probably max maxes out at a $100. Right? Like, most ebooks are sub 20.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you'll find a really good one for 50, but you're it's really hard to break that $100 barrier. Right? But courses can start at a $100. Like, I know very few courses that are less than a $100 unless they're a free email course. Right?
Jordan Gal:Right. It's even even the ebooks that people sell for more than 100, they're not actually ebooks. They're the ebook plus the interviews plus the background, plus the notes. So they're essentially a course in one way or another. Exactly.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And I know, like, right now in my business, I want to learn more about Facebook advertising and retargeting specifically. And I can read blog posts. I can read some email courses. But I know if I really want to get serious, the best thing I can do is invest in a course from someone that is reliable and trustworthy and is an expert.
Jordan Gal:And I'm going get the most out of that. If I pay $400 for that course, I'll get a lot more out of that than if I buy something for for $50.
Speaker 2:Right. And that's and that's really the cornerstone of what this online prioritization and the I I'm I'm tiptoeing around the word info products. I'm just gonna say info products because it's what everyone relates to. I don't actually like the word, but we'll say info products. It's what info products are based on, which is on the Internet, you can get everything for free.
Speaker 2:Right? There's everything all the information out there, but there's such it's so hard to curate it. Right? Like, there's so much bad information out there. And there's no way for a beginner if you're learning Facebook, ads or retargeting, there's no way for you to know what's good advice or bad advice.
Speaker 2:And that's where these info products really kinda hit home, and that's where their their target is is really well organized curated information from people you trust. So you know when you pay $400 for this course that you're gonna get something that's really gonna help you.
Jordan Gal:Every blogger that you see out there that's making a $100,000 a month, every podcaster, not everyone, but all of most of them, they're doing it through through these courses because it's the medium has evolved to perfectly align itself with with high ticket, high value info products. It's you get to give away everything on the blog, the email course, the podcast to prove that you know what you're talking about. And then when you ask for someone to pay a few $100 up to a thousand dollars for a course, they they kinda know what to expect. They they know that you're an expert. I mean, last week's episode, I talked about raising money for CardHook.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. And I talked through the process because I thought that was valuable to hear because I had an unbelievably hard time figuring out the right thing at the right time through the process. The term sheet, the suitability document, the purchase agreement, the promissory note, the C Corporation. Think about how much information there is out there online about raising money. There's too much information online and it was still impossible to curate.
Jordan Gal:I still had to hire the lawyer. If somebody had wrapped it up, which actually isn't a bad product idea. Who has done this, show it to me from someone I can trust. I'm willing to pay for it. It's valuable.
Jordan Gal:It's worth it. So maybe that's actually a great transition point.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And it's interesting because so I wanna talk one thing about that because we're gonna jump into, like, how you market this course and everything.
Jordan Gal:Right. Right.
Speaker 2:But a lot of people say, well, I'm giving out all this information for free on the blog. Why is anyone gonna buy? Well, because when you have maybe a year, maybe you have, like, a 100 articles, 600 articles, who knows, of great content on your site. It's easy for people to understand the value, but it's really hard for them to get the specific value they want in a contained narrative. Right?
Speaker 2:And that's what these courses are. They're taking all this information you have and packaging it into a contained narrative that helps people go from a to b to c. Right?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I haven't heard it put that way, contained narrative. It sounds I mean, you you do this for a living. Right? You do this every day.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So It's like
Jordan Gal:an evolved understanding and descriptor of why it's more valuable than digging through a 100 blog posts that are scattered and jog Yeah, that's really interesting. So before recording, we talked a little bit about I'm a an online course novice, but I have some experience. I sold a course. Mhmm. So I sold a course on how to build your sales funnel.
Jordan Gal:I said, will take you from understanding who your customer is, mapping out the path between where they are right now to where they want to be, helping them go step by step along that journey, coming up with what the right lead magnet is to put at the front of that process
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:How to write that content, and then how to make your offer at the end. And there's an endless amount of information online on how to do all these individual things. But I said, I will take you from lead magnet to email course to offer. And when you're done with the course, you will have this thing in place that goes from a to z. That someone can sign up, go through the process, get your content automatically, and then get an offer from you automatically.
Speaker 2:And that hold that hand holding is so valuable. And you look at
Jordan Gal:Right. That yeah. That was everything.
Speaker 2:Yep. Exactly. And then you look at it's interesting because that's, you're saying you're a novice, but that's you're already light head light years ahead of anyone else. Right? Because you're able to understand that enabled and you have that product out there.
Speaker 2:Right? Because ninety percent of people are gonna fail before they even get the product out because they they have those internal barriers. But I'm you know, I work with a lot of, other product creators and stuff. People are absolute top of their game. You'll you definitely know them.
Speaker 2:And the thing that they focus on most when you get that to that scale is customer service and helping people through the course. Right? Because even no matter how good your narrative is, no matter how well you're able to hold people's hand through a, b, c, and d, people are gonna get lost. And helping them get back on track is so beneficial both to your students and to yourself because of the revenue it generates. And the course is good because it helps people take that miasma of content and focus it down and lead them through it.
Speaker 2:And then if you're at that scale and you have a support person reach out, it's like, hey. I see you couldn't finish lesson three. Why don't we chat about it? Can you imagine what that feels like to the student? It's like, oh my god.
Speaker 2:They had someone from his office reach out to me and help me through this. And at that point, you pretty much have a customer for life. Right?
Jordan Gal:Right. It's as if you actually care about the money that I paid you and you care about my success.
Speaker 2:And it's an interesting jumping point because when you're starting out, you don't have a support team. You can't do that. Right? But at some point of scale, everyone realizes that, oh, crap. I don't have happy customers anymore.
Speaker 2:And they make that jump. Well, the successful ones do. The successful ones make that jump from, okay. I finally gotten to that scale where I have to help people through this in a in a high touch way.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And and that can only be done with a higher price point. Yep. You can't do that for $20.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You can't do that with people. That's insane.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Alright. So look. Let's think about the person who's listening to us talk right now. And they're saying to themselves, I'm a freelancer, I'm a designer, I run a SaaS, but I could use a more efficient way to make money and I have an expertise.
Jordan Gal:I mean, We're all sitting in front of a computer doing something all day. You do have an expertise whether or not you acknowledge it. So where does someone start? Do they look at what the market wants? Do look at the questions people ask them normally?
Jordan Gal:Do they think about the marketing and growing the list first? What's kind of the right approach for someone who doesn't have a course right now to get into a point where they're selling a course and and make money from it?
Speaker 2:So I I recommend three things to look at. First of I don't recommend looking at, like, the market as a whole. Because unless you really know your market, it's you're not gonna find the right information because there's tons of niches that you might not see. There's lots of competition that you might see that's going to discourage you, etcetera. What I would base your expertise on is, first of all, what your customers or what people ask you a lot.
Speaker 2:Because that's gonna be the number one thing. If you've had five to 10 people of your customers or people you know ask you how to solve a problem, there's probably another thousand to 10,000 to 50,000 to maybe a 100,000 people out there who wanna know that same information, right? So that's something very big, is that problems that people that you know have could be indicative of a larger problem, right, that you can solve. The second one would be something that you're interested in. So I made this mistake fairly early.
Speaker 2:I started a product. It wasn't a course, but it was a product that I had just zero interest in. And as I was writing the course and as I was writing the the product and writing the software and the marketing and everything, was just like, I I look down on my on my potential customers because I'm not interested in this. Right? I don't don't agree with the the problem that I'm solving.
Speaker 2:Right?
Jordan Gal:Or it's like a purely purely cynical play, which can make money, but is is hard to maintain.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Exactly. It's you're not you you can make the you can make the land grab. You can you can go for the the cheap buck, but you're not gonna have good customers. And once you do that, you're gonna be kinda stuck in that niche unless you just say, okay.
Speaker 2:Done. We're moving in a different direction. Right? Because let's say you have a bunch of people sign up, and let's not even take something like UberSynckel. Let's let's say you have a list of people who wanna know how to raise their horse.
Speaker 2:Right? And but you have no interest in horses at all. You just went for the land grab. And what you really are interested in is critiquing fine art. The now that you have this list of maybe, let's say, 5,000 people who are avid horse fans, you're not gonna be able to pivot to what you really wanna do.
Speaker 2:Right? And you're going to And the students are not gonna be happy because you're gonna drop with their information. You're gonna stop responding to them because you're not interested in it. Right? So you wanna have something that you can be interested in for the long run.
Speaker 2:If you're not married to it, you can always pivot away, but it is important to have something that you're at least semi interested in. Right?
Jordan Gal:Right. If you plan on making it sustainable. And I always assume B2B is the way to go. I guess with a course, it's not necessary to go B2B. But I do think for higher value, selling course on Facebook ads, I think you can charge a lot more than how to raise your horse if it's not b to b.
Jordan Gal:Mean everything we talk about on this podcast, it has like underlying assumption of b two b.
Speaker 2:I would even say so b two b I would say within b two b, there's I wanna coin the phrase b two f. And what that is is business to freelancer. Because freelancers are not consumers, but they're not businesses. They have a very different kind of what they wanna do. They're not they don't have employees, but they wanna improve themselves.
Speaker 2:A a standard consumer is not gonna wanna do that. Right? So I would say that this is very b to f, where it's you wanna target you do wanna target bigger companies if you can, but it's much easier to target freelancers because they have a lot more spendable income. They're looking to improve themselves very quickly because a freelancer, usually hourly, if they're able to increase their rate or increase their productivity, that directly equals a lot of money in their pocket. And you can position that.
Speaker 2:Like, Brennan Dunn's double your freelancing rate. It was a $67 book when it launched, and that's a no brainer. Right? Because you double you even add $5 to your hourly rate because of advice in that book, and you pay for the book in two days. Right?
Speaker 2:And that's the that's the kind of balance that you want. It's like, okay. How much benefit can I give these my students for the price they're paying?
Jordan Gal:Right. The ideal combination is one person gets to decide on the purchase. So it's not an involved process on approvals and all that. And then at the same time still have an element of there's an ROI that I'm expecting. So if I'm going to spend x amount of money, the reason for that, the driving force behind that is that it's going make you a lot more money than what you're investing into it.
Speaker 2:Exactly. And you mentioned something that I think is key is that one person decides. Right? And especially when you're just starting out, think that's the number one thing you need to focus on is one person makes the decision, whips out the credit card, and buys. Right?
Jordan Gal:Right. I I make purchasing decisions with my business credit card. Right? They're both sitting in my wallet. My personal and my business credit card sit in my wallet, and I make decisions that I use the business credit card on very, very, very differently.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Definitely.
Jordan Gal:Yep. And and and you hesitate a lot less because you're you're expecting something back from it. It's investment as opposed to you take you you look at your personal card, and it's like, that's spending, and that's going against my budget for the month, and then that affects something else.
Speaker 2:Yep. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. And then the the last one that I wanna because we had we had three, was that don't assume that what you know isn't valuable.
Speaker 2:So people have this, and I I have this as well, is that you think that what you know because you know it isn't valuable. The things you know are so ingrained within you that you don't understand the intrinsic value of them. Yeah. This is tricky. It is very tricky.
Speaker 2:It's very tricky. And that's why I I really recommend what do people ask you and then using that. Right? Because it's very hard to see your own intrinsic value a lot of the time. And things that people think, oh, there's so much information out there, no one would buy it.
Speaker 2:You look at Nathan Barry who started his business with a design book. Because there let me tell you back in 2006, there were no design books ever in the world. Right? Like, he was the first person to ever put a design book slash course online. But he did it, and he did it very I mean, he had this glut of competition.
Speaker 2:He He had really nothing, but he did it really smart. He made an amazing product and now that's why he's where he is. Right?
Jordan Gal:Right. And then all the struggles he encountered in marketing it. Now that's actually just as valuable and arguably more valuable. And now he sells that also.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Exactly.
Jordan Gal:And now he's got a software product that goes along.
Speaker 2:Yep. Right. Exactly. Exactly.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. But it's it's really difficult to to to take stock of what you currently know and see it as valuable, what happens is, let's say there's a pyramid, you know, steps one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, up to up to 10. We always let's say you're on step number six, you're always looking at step seven, eight above you and saying, man, I wish I knew as much as they did. Right. And you forget that there's a huge number of people below you one or two steps.
Jordan Gal:And those are the people who would find the most value in what you already know and take for granted. It's really hard because all of us, especially, you're in Japan, but a lot of us in the Western mindset, the competitive capitalist mindset, we look at competition, we compare ourselves to other people. So we're always looking up. It's no fun looking down and saying I'm so much better than everyone else. You're always looking up and want saying I try wish I was to just
Speaker 2:improve yourself. Yep, exactly.
Jordan Gal:Right. So you're always comparing yourself and putting yourself down. Look, you want to start a course and you're looking up at Brennan, that's not good for you. You should be looking at is that doesn't matter if there are hundreds and hundreds and thousands of people that would find information that I have inside, the experiences that I have tremendously valuable.
Speaker 2:Yep. And one of the things that and this is the same for software production. This any product. Any product, anything you're gonna sell, most people don't realize that the actual creation of the product is a tenth or even a hundredth of the time that it takes to market it, right, in the long run. And what that means is you can't a lot of people get stuck because they're like, I have to make this product perfect, and that's not the case.
Speaker 2:You have to get that product out there. Once you get it out there, the amazing thing about the Internet is that you can instantly update it. It's like, oh, the I wanted to add another chapter. Add another chapter. Email out your list.
Speaker 2:They'll be thrilled. Right? It's it doesn't have to be perfect because it's a living entity. Your products are not this dead tree sitting on someone's shelf. They're a piece of content that can be updated, that can be improved, and people are happier when they get the free update.
Speaker 2:Right?
Jordan Gal:Right. People who bought the first version, you can always it's not about making it up to them, but you can always add value to them as you update the course and give them lifetime access. Okay. So look, let's let's get a little specific here. We can use my case study as an example and you can kind of tell me what I did right and wrong and all that.
Jordan Gal:Or we can talk about someone that you've worked with that you saw kind of go about it the right way. But I do want to focus on the type of person who does not currently have a course and wants to get one out there.
Speaker 2:So let's break this down into steps. So you talked a little bit about how you had launched your product. So let's go I guess let me start with the steps that I would recommend, and then we can talk about how that applied to your product, what you did, and also, like, what you found, hey. This didn't work for me or, oh my oh, man. This worked amazingly.
Speaker 2:Right? Yep. And so the first thing I would recommend is stand up a landing page. Right? I would stand up a landing page, get people's email address, and just gauge whether people are interested or not.
Speaker 2:And this has this is before you write a single word about the product, right, or a single word of the product. Right? So just landing page, can you use something like Leadpages. You can use something like ClickFunnels. You can use WordPress.
Speaker 2:You can use standard HTML. There's so many places that let you create a simple simple page with an opt in form. And you talk about the benefit that your product is gonna give. You talk about what your timeline for releasing it is, and then you say, anyone who's interested, sign up. Okay?
Speaker 2:And
Jordan Gal:Right. And and the key part is before you start working on the product.
Speaker 2:Oh my god. Yes. Because this and you need to look at this. So I've actually done this a couple of times and never launched the product either because time or people weren't interested or something. But this is going to help you gauge whether or not people are interested and how interested they are.
Speaker 2:Right? Because if you have a bunch of people sign up but you never hear from them, that's very different from you have a bunch of people sign up and then they start emailing you and they're like, oh man, I'm so excited about this course or what do you recommend about this? Like, you can really gauge how I was gonna say engage. Engaged people are with your with your product and with your idea. Right?
Speaker 2:Before you've even written a single word.
Jordan Gal:Yep. And I I think that's necessary, a, for managing your risk and b, for, motivation.
Speaker 2:And also I'd say c, market research. Because a, you know what product they want and b, if people are asking you questions, you know exactly what to put in your product. Right? So it's gonna help you improve your product specifically for the people that you're trying to market to with with the feedback you're getting. Right?
Speaker 2:So how would you promote this page? Jordan, how did you promote yours?
Jordan Gal:I told a few Facebook groups that I'm in that are, like, business focused about it. And then I I started running ads on Facebook for a webinar. Yep. So I basically I basically just said I'm doing this course, and I'm putting on a webinar on like three weeks from today. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And that that that was it. And then my plan was to basically gauge webinar sign ups as my interest gauge. So so instead of just a landing page that said, hey, in two months I'm launching, I just said, I'm doing a webinar on this and then I wanted to see, okay, how many people are gonna sign up? So it was like an accelerated version.
Speaker 2:Right. Exactly. And that's what I would definitely recommend for that next step or for your first step if you're doing an accelerated version, whereas make something that's a little more that costs the user a little bit more, cost your students a little bit more in terms of time or commitment, which is something like a one hour webinar and also helps you connect with them a little bit more. So I'm gonna ask so after the webinar, you had people opt in for the webinar, so now you have their lead. After the webinar, did you say did you do a preorder sales pitch?
Jordan Gal:So I I really I really went on an accelerated basis, and I would do it a little differently next time. So I just did I'm doing a webinar in three weeks on how to build your sales funnel. And then at the same time, ads for exactly that. And then while that got off the ground and started running the ad campaign, then I started putting the webinar together with the plan of I love the analogy or the saying, whatever the terminology would be of of showing the, what is it, what and selling the how.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Yep.
Jordan Gal:Okay. So that was my plan. My plan is I'm gonna show you how to put together a sales funnel. And there's no way a one hour webinar will actually give you all the details, so I'm just gonna give as much as I can. And then at the end, and this is what we're gonna be digging into in the course.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Jordan Gal:So so it was just, this is the benefit. You'll have a sales funnel up and running, finally. That was like my term. Finally, get this done. Because I I I know I struggled with it, so I figured other people are struggling with it also.
Jordan Gal:So my whole pitch was a way to finally have it done. And then I did the webinar and at the end of the webinar, I said, if you want to go to the next level, if you want to see exactly how to do this, this is what we're going do over the next few weeks. And I'll be releasing, you know, a lesson every week for for five weeks. And by the end of it, you'll have your sales funnel up and running. And then at the end of the webinar, here's the page to go in and purchase.
Speaker 2:Yep. Yep. So you actually mentioned something that I'm hesitant to mention this only because if this gets popular, then it's gonna stop working. But the word finally is such a converter. Like, finally, solve this problem.
Speaker 2:Finally, do what you've always wanted to do kind of things. Right? Like, it's because the number one thing that prevents people from doing something is and if you're listening to this podcast and you're like, oh, man. I wanna I've been wanting to do a course, but I haven't I haven't been able to get out there. I don't know what the steps is.
Speaker 2:What if someone says, finally, you can launch your course. Right? Everyone has these problems of being held back by themselves or held back by society or held back by situation, I should say, rather than society. And that finally keyword is such a convert of multiple clients I view have used that on their sales pages. It always converts better.
Jordan Gal:Very interesting. I I did it kind of accidentally or organically. Mhmm. Or maybe I saw it somewhere else and it made sense to me and I didn't realize it, but but it makes it makes sense. All of us procrastinate and create excuses real or imagined.
Jordan Gal:I know I have several things ongoing in my business that if somebody came up to me and said, hey, do you want to finally start writing blog posts?
Speaker 2:Like, yes. Sign me up right now. Yeah. Exactly.
Jordan Gal:Cool. So I would I would do it slightly differently next time. I wouldn't go so direct and so like compact. Mhmm. I would do the landing page and get emails.
Jordan Gal:And then, like you said, escalate it. And I would do and I think Brian did exactly this for Productize. He got a landing page, got people interested, didn't commit to the product yet. Then send out an email to that list saying I'm doing a webinar on this topic. Still did not make the pitch on the webinar for the product.
Jordan Gal:Right. And Brian can correct me if I'm wrong, but this is what I I remember. And and that all helped him gauge interest and how motivated people were. And then after that, he might have done several webinars and then offered the product. Yep.
Jordan Gal:So it was like it was really like testing out the waters before fully committing and doing a ton of work.
Speaker 2:Well, it's also doing yeah. Definitely. It's testing out the waters, but there's also another psychological thing that's going on is that they're built he's building trust with his list as that time goes on. And that's something that a lot of peep so there's there's kinda two camps of people's mentality when they talk about selling. One is, oh, I shouldn't even talk about selling because people will get pissed off.
Speaker 2:Right? And I I hate to stereotype. I'm one of them, but a lot of developers think that way. And I think that way as well. It's like, oh, I can't even mention the word sale because people get pissed off and oh, no.
Speaker 2:No. No. And Right.
Jordan Gal:The the wrong people get pissed off by the way.
Speaker 2:And what I would say to those people is you're not pitching off. And then there's a lot of people who are the opposite, and they're like, sell sell sell sell sell sell sell I have a friend who he is trying to build up his list right now, and he's not sending out any content. He's just sending out sales emails constantly, absolutely constantly. And that's you've gone to the other side of the of the the fence there, and you're not giving any content so people don't trust you. Right?
Speaker 2:So you have to get that balance of it's okay to send sales emails. People expect sales emails. People are not gonna get pissed off of it. The the right people are not gonna get pissed off of it, but you also need to be sending out content. And really that's what Brian is doing there, and I think that's very smart, is that he's building up that trust before he even mentions the sale.
Speaker 2:Right? He's talking about the course, and the landing page is talking about the course or the information or what you're doing to get people interested in it, to gauge interest and also to create that communication and to build that trust. Then at the end he's like, and you wanna learn more? Check out this course. Right?
Jordan Gal:Right. By that time he's seen as the expert in it. Exactly. So, yeah, there's there's a lot of interesting dynamic that happens. I know I felt it personally.
Jordan Gal:Just by virtue of saying, I'm doing this course and I'm putting on a webinar. Mhmm. Just that alone escalated my credibility and authority dramatically. Oh, yeah. Just because I was willing to
Speaker 2:step out and say, hey, I
Jordan Gal:have the confidence in this topic to go out and say, I'm gonna sell a course on this and I'm gonna do a webinar on it. I'm gonna put myself behind the microphone with the stress on me of people listening and watching. And and just by doing that, you do a lot for your credibility.
Speaker 2:Exactly. And for for people listening, the key point here, I think, is that you're not saying, hey. Buy my course. You say, I'm doing a course. It's not a say that's not a sales message.
Speaker 2:That's a trust building. That's a social proof building message is I'm doing a course, and here's a webinar about it. Right? Because Right. It's building up that trust, but it's not saying, and now give me your credit card.
Jordan Gal:Right. And the truth is you're going to be giving value upfront anyway before asking. So even if you do an email course or a webinar, most of the people are not gonna buy, but they're still gonna they're still gonna perceive you as an expert. And that gives you the opportunity to continue being an expert and maybe make a sale down the road.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Exactly.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So if you know, if you're listening to this show right now and you design mobile apps, trust me that you might look at some experts in your industry and be intimidated. Oh, they'd go so much more. But I guarantee you there are a lot of people that would love to know more about what you do and how to do it. And just by saying, I'm doing a course on how to design a mobile app from the ground up.
Jordan Gal:Like, you you've established yourself as apart from the crowd just by having the balls to do that.
Speaker 2:Yep. Exactly.
Jordan Gal:And then and and I I know what Brian what happened to Brian was, once he said that and started collecting emails, he did the very classic technique of, you're confirmed from my email list. Oh, by the way, what are you having problems with when it comes to productizing your service business? Then you get questions, and then you have material to send emails on and talk about on your webinar. Yep. Exactly.
Jordan Gal:Once you just get the process started, it starts to roll on itself. But it's a mental hurdle to say, I don't really know what I'm going to create. I don't have the full confidence in my product being awesome, but I'm just gonna take the plunge and get started anyway.
Speaker 2:And that's and that's one thing a lot of people and myself as well wrestle with, which is I don't think I have enough content for a full course. And you get and that's why you don't release the course out into the void. Right? That's why you get this feedback. You get this process before that's why you do a launch process instead of a, hey.
Speaker 2:Here's the book or here's the course process, which is you're getting feedback from people, you're solving their problems, and you're gonna get so much more content and so many more ideas based on what your potential students, your leads tell you. Right?
Jordan Gal:Right. It's also looking at it a bit longer term. Exactly. It's saying, I'm not gonna sell this once and expect to make a $100,000 from it. I'm gonna sell it for probably cheaper than I wanna sell it for.
Jordan Gal:And the first version isn't gonna be the best version. But then once it's done, you have a foundation to work off of and improve and learn and then sell again and increase your prices. You know, the people we see now making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month selling courses, they probably didn't start off with that from the beginning. Even the king himself, John Lee Dumas, making 500 ks a month from a podcasting course. You read his story, his first product failed.
Jordan Gal:And he kept going and then eventually he learned that, hey, you know what people really want? They really want to know how I do what I'm doing. Yep. And then he started building a course on how to, you know, launch and promote your podcast. And now after a long time, it's now it's an amazing product and he has the confidence to sell for $1,500 a
Speaker 2:pop. Yep. But but it's an evolution. Yeah. And you can't look at that.
Speaker 2:You can look at that as the goal. I would not look at that as a stepping stone. The one of the problems and I get this a lot creating products is that you start at step one, and you're looking at step eight. Right? And you you said the same thing.
Speaker 2:It's like when you're you're always looking and you were talking about it as how much better those people are. But you're also, when you're creating the product, you so you're putting your pen to paper and you're like, oh, man. I wanna include these videos, these audio, these, these interviews. I wanna create this PSD and everything. And it's like, oh, I'll just start on that now.
Speaker 2:And you get so mired in that. You're looking at what the these people like Dumas are are doing where they've been doing this for years. They have a they have a very specific process. They have all this polish because they have all this revenue that they can put into the products. Now you can't do that right off the bat because even if you had all the money in the world, you don't have all the time in the world, and you don't have all the expertise in the world.
Speaker 2:Right? And that's why it's really smart to start small like this because the number one killer of ideas, believe, is feature creep, scope creep. Right? Like, it's the idea of I wanna add on this, I wanna add on this. My marketing page has to be this cooler.
Speaker 2:I'm never gonna launch it out there, and that kills everything. The best thing to do is just launch it and then improve afterwards.
Jordan Gal:Right. I would say you price it a little bit more than you're comfortable with, and that's probably the right approach. It just has to have the kernel of value and then you can layer things on top of it. I'll tell you right now I'm a Leadpages customer and I use Leadpages for Cardhook. It's not that simple.
Jordan Gal:It's it's not. I mean, I'm not a technical guy. I'm not developer, but still it's connecting a lead page with your email software and your webinar software at the same time and having it's a little harder than you think. Honestly, somebody offered me right now a course for a $100 on exactly how to do it the right way and get a system down. It's valuable.
Jordan Gal:I'd probably do it and I've had a lot of people listen to this know a lot more about how to get that done than I do. It's like it doesn't have to be this rocket science thing. A lot of the value that you have that you take for granted is is really valuable. It can make a lot of money for other people. Yep.
Jordan Gal:Yep. Was gonna say, you know, I can't I can't let you off the hook. Look. You run Summit Evergreen.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:This is a piece of software that hosts courses. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 2:That's correct.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Right. And you've got a whole bunch of stuff around at different layers and, you know, releasing content at different times. All the things that you would kind of expect out of a software that that that does this. And I love your pricing by the way.
Jordan Gal:It's the same pricing that I have for Kartok.
Speaker 2:Oh, awesome. Thank you.
Jordan Gal:We're on the same page. So I have to ask someone in your point of view. You've got to give us some goods on what do you see working? What are people succeeding with in online courses on your platform? And kinda what's you know, what do you see as these differences between people succeeding and not succeeding?
Speaker 2:So the number one thing that I think a lot of people who come to our our system start with is that I have a PDF and I wanna turn it into a course. Because as we were talking about earlier, a PDF, the max you can charge for it is about a $100. Right? But a course, because it's a course, it's a three week course or a six week course, suddenly that idea, like, that's that's a that's a lot of value. Six week course.
Speaker 2:Oh my god. I'd pay $500, a thousand dollars for that. Even if it's the same content as the PDF, but it's over the six weeks. Like, that just it it has a much higher value proposition. Right?
Speaker 2:So one of one of the things that we've seen doing really well is instead of focusing on the PDF first, focus on the course. And a course can be laid out just like the PDF. It's chapters with lessons, but you get a lot of bonuses. Like, you can have worksheets or quizzes or journals, right, and video. The two big ones I see right now are video.
Speaker 2:Video is just dominating the online course industry right now. People don't want to read all this stuff. And they wanna see a video. And watching a video gives you two things from a psychological perspective. One is that it's easier to digest for a lot of people because you don't have to sit there and scroll and read on your computer, which honestly for large amounts of content sucks.
Speaker 2:The second one is that if you're listening to someone's voice and occasionally seeing their face, you're connecting with that person. And so you have a higher trust to the teacher, to you as a product creator than if it was just text on the page.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I mean podcasting does the same thing. Imagine reading this conversation on a webpage, pretty boring. But actually listen to us much much easier Exactly. To to digest.
Speaker 2:So I I was a big fan of Marco Arment's podcast. I can't remember the name. Was years ago that was listening to it. But now I keep whenever I see a product made by him, I'm like, oh, yeah. I'm sure that's a great product.
Jordan Gal:Right.
Speaker 2:Why? Why? Because I listen to his podcast.
Jordan Gal:I I Well, you feel connected.
Speaker 2:I do. I feel connected. I have trust in him. I have trust that he's not going to, like, screw me over.
Jordan Gal:And So what so what you're seeing in terms of courses in the marketing as well as the execution of the course, videos and and audio.
Speaker 2:Definitely. Oh, video and audio, especially for the marketing testimonials. Video testimonials are great. I think it's Derek Halpern has a great article on how to get the best testimonial. I highly recommend looking that up because I see a lot of people do really crappy testimonials, and there's a real science behind how you get a good testimonial, especially a good video testimonial.
Speaker 2:And and that just converts gangsters. So I wanna talk about two things because I know we are also kinda running low on time.
Jordan Gal:No. We're okay.
Speaker 2:Okay. Oh, awesome. Then we're then we're good, and I'll continue talking for another three hours. Another thing that we've been seeing a lot of that's really important is kind of this feedback worksheets or journaling. And this is something we've put into Summit Evergreen actually from the beginning where we can get feedback from the users inside each of the pages, so inside each of the lessons.
Speaker 2:So at the end of the lesson, say, what were your biggest takeaways from this? Or now give me the five companies you're gonna reach out to or give me the five strategies you're gonna implement. Right? And so this gives us two things. Actually, this gives us a lot of things.
Speaker 2:One is that they're putting their ideas and their information into the the course. Right? So this is the same reason Facebook has such a hold on every single person is that all their content is in there. Yeah, I can go to whatever the new hotness is for social media, but all my content is still on Facebook. I'm gonna go back to Facebook because that's where all my pictures are.
Speaker 2:That's where all my family is. That's where my my information is for the last how many years I've been on Facebook. Right?
Jordan Gal:So you're talking about people contributing content into like their own account?
Speaker 2:Exactly. Exactly. So it's essentially they're doing homework or filling out worksheets. It's not published to everyone, but it's their information, their data in your system. And that creates
Jordan Gal:Oh, that's interesting.
Speaker 2:A bigger bond than if you were just reading a a PDF and writing down in your own notebook. Right? Like, write down your own notebook. What's important? The notebook is because that's where all your notes are.
Speaker 2:If you're doing it in the course, then the course is important. You gotta log in. You gotta be part of the course again because that's where all your important information is. That's one thing that it really gives you. A second thing it really gives you that it we didn't realize at first.
Speaker 2:And then as we started seeing more and more customers doing this, it really just kinda a light bulb flicked on in our heads. So we talked about you don't know what you know. Right? You don't value what you know because you know it. You don't think that it's valuable.
Speaker 2:And as someone goes through a three or six week course, they're growing, right? You're helping them to grow. You're helping them to improve. And at the end of the course, there's a very big trend for people to look back at the beginning and go, oh, of course, Right? Like you're on lesson six of a six week course.
Speaker 2:You look back at the first lesson where it talks about the basics and you're like, of course, like that makes perfect sense. Like I knew that. But you didn't you forget that when you started the course, you didn't know that. Right?
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And people are very bad at understanding their own growth and their own growth over time.
Jordan Gal:They think So what do do about that?
Speaker 2:How do you Yeah, what do you do about that? And the answer is the surveys. And what a lot of our customers have been doing is putting together like a journal page. And it's like, hey. Here's where you were six weeks ago.
Speaker 2:Here's where you are now. Look at how you've grown kind of things. Right? And or using the final lesson to refer back to the first lesson. It's like, okay.
Speaker 2:Now take those five strategies you were gonna accomplish and do this to them. So each part of each lesson, each time they're giving feedback, you're building on that to make them look back and say, okay, this is how much I've grown over the last six weeks. And not only does that make people feel get more value out of the course, feel more value, that they got more value out of the course, it's also going to make them feel more supported and make them more willing to trust you and to go to the next levels. Maybe if you have a second course or an advanced course, go to the next level on that. Right?
Jordan Gal:Right. Or just talk about you or at the very least consider their investment in your course a success and continue that goodwill into the relationship, into recommending other people. I mean, that's what you want.
Speaker 2:A good way to imagine it is, so I do a lot of consulting work for marketing and for development. And one of the things that a lot of people ask me to provide at the end is an ROI report. What did we accomplish? What did we improve? And how did that affect my bottom line?
Speaker 2:Right? And that's what you're kinda doing here, is at the end of the course, you're going back and you're saying, hey, this is what you did. This is where you started. This is where you are now. This is what you've accomplished.
Speaker 2:Isn't that awesome?
Jordan Gal:That plus the tangible deliverables, let's call it, of what you actually accomplish, what you finish, write, complete, launch, whatever it is out of the course Mhmm. Is the that's the value. Right? It's not just in the sales funnel that you launched, and it's not just in what you learned. It's the combination of, like, leveling up.
Jordan Gal:Like, I paid, and I upped my game in this arena through this course. And if if you do that, you're gonna walk away from the course happy.
Speaker 2:Yep. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Awesome. And well, I mean, I'm very happy that you came on. I love this topic. I think freelancers, entrepreneurs, anyone in our arena has so much built in expertise that they deserve. They should look at courses as a real avenue to make income.
Jordan Gal:Potentially a lot of income, potentially adding on to whatever they're doing, but it's a real channel for monetizing your expertise.
Speaker 2:Exactly. And, you know, we we talked about this. I I think it deserves reiteration is that the hardest part is just starting. Getting that landing page out there, taking that first step is honestly the hardest part because everyone goes product first. Like, I have to have a product in order to sell it.
Speaker 2:You don't. The most important thing is finding the market, finding if there's interest. I had a I had a friend who he stood up, like, 40 landing pages of various ideas with various headlines for each idea. So he'd have, five headlines per idea. And then he just bought a bunch of Google Ads.
Speaker 2:And he's like, okay, which one had the most clicks? And that's the one we're going to use as our promotion. Right? This is the one that obviously people are interested in. And so it's a really cheap way to do a lot of high scale market research.
Jordan Gal:Yeah, instead of just one guess at a time. But even that, as long as you get started, and it's interesting coming from you, you run a product that makes money and gets people on board when they actually have a course. But you're still advocating that's actually not the key part. The key part is figuring out what you want to offer, do people want it. And then if you do get to the point where you say, hey, there's interest here, then you could go to Summit Evergreen and actually get your course up there.
Jordan Gal:But it's very interesting to hear the founder of a software company saying it's not actually about the software. It's figuring out what people want first. Right. And then just hosting and delivering and keeping and organizing that content, that's what your your software's for.
Speaker 2:Exactly. The software is a tool. The software, especially our software, the entire focus on it is not about the sales funnel. So a lot of other course platforms are like, oh, you can create sales pages and you can do all this stuff. Then you purchase the course and they're like, and now you're done.
Speaker 2:Like, no support once you actually purchase the course. Right? And that's horrible for your students. And we took the opposite approach on purpose, which is there are so many ways to create a a sales page. There's lead pages, there's click funnels, there's everything.
Speaker 2:Right? It's so easy to do, but it's so hard to give your students a really great experience. It's really hard to follow-up with them. It's hard to get good feedback from them. It's hard to get testimonials from them.
Speaker 2:So let's have something that makes the students love the product Because the the sales side of it changes so fast and there's so many people doing it. It's good to let them focus on that and then we focus on creating an amazing experience for your students. Right?
Jordan Gal:Yeah, that goes along with my experience as a course creator also. So I think you guys are onto something.
Speaker 2:Awesome.
Jordan Gal:Keith, thanks very much for coming on the show. Really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. Had really good time talking with you.
Jordan Gal:Awesome. Well, that wraps it up for us, guys. As always, I'm Jordan. If you guys wanna hear the backlog of episodes, we're up to number 79 now. So we're we're getting pretty deep in there.
Jordan Gal:To listen more, head over to bootstrappedweb.com. If you're listening to the show, you're enjoying it, you're finding value from it, please head on over to iTunes and hook us up with a five star review. We'll mention your weird handle name on here if you leave us a five star review. So, you know, starfighter one zero one. I I think I had mentioned starfighter because I associate you with the Khalsami.
Jordan Gal:Is is that what starfighter is?
Speaker 2:Are are you referring to me? Starfighter is No. Patrick. Yeah. Patrick Patrick is starfighter.
Jordan Gal:Patrick Patrick Yeah. That's why I pulled starfighter out of my memory and making fun of people's handles. Cool. Have a good day, everyone.
Speaker 2:Have a good day.
Jordan Gal:Cheers. Alright. Cheers.
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