In this episode, host Julie Hood shares some of her biggest pet peeves (rants) and some of her most exciting things (raves) about course creation and marketing.
In this episode, host Julie Hood shares some of her biggest pet peeves (rants) and some of her most exciting things (raves) about course creation and marketing.
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KEY TAKEAWAYS
“You don’t need to be amazing to start, but you need to start to be amazing.” ~ Toyota
“Work the way we want to.” ~ Slack
“Start Your Impossible.” ~ Toyota
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Hey, it's Julie Hood from course creators HQ, and I hope you're in the mood this morning for a little ranting and raving from me. So let's get to it. Welcome to the course creators, HQ podcast, helping you navigate the latest techniques for creating and marketing online courses. And now here's your host Julie Hood. So I have to tell you the truth about this episode.
It actually started with me wanting to rant about some of the things that have been driving me crazy this past week. And then as I thought about it, that's not very positive. So I decided I would mix in my ranting with a little bit of raving about some of the things that I'm really excited about. So we're going to switch off and on,
and please let me know if you enjoy this episode or not, because it's something a little bit different. And I'm curious if you like these. So first off, I'm going to start with a rave and that would be a, for the 2020 Olympics that are actually happening in July of 2021. And there is something so inspiring about watching these athletes and how hard they have worked to get to the place where they are these days.
And to see them just go full out and perform for their, their countries. And actually my kids used to play club and high school volleyball. So I am thoroughly enjoying the volleyball and the beach volleyball that's been going on. So if you're curious, I put a couple pictures in the show notes of my kids at the net. So if you want to see David and Emily,
you can go to coursecreatorshq.com/53 and see those photos. So I hope you're getting as inspired as I am from the Olympics. And then let's start with a rant and it has to be all of the random pitches that I get for things that are not relevant either to me or to you as my audience. So the other day I got an Instagram pitch.
Actually, I got two of them wanting me to work with fitness equipment and share it on my Instagram account. And if y'all have noticed, I talk about courses and I talk about building your expertise online. I never ever, ever talk about exercise. So it's not something you'll ever see on my Instagram posts, unless maybe it's an expert who is teaching you how to do fitness,
but if I am not going to be talking about my own exercising, so it was just really a waste of their time to send it to me and a waste of my time to have to figure out what is this, what are they talking about? So whenever you're trying pitch either experts to promote you or other people that you want to work with, make sure you're the perfect fit for their audience.
Don't just do these random blasts of, let me just find accounts that have a lot of people on them, and I'm just going to send it out. So make sure you're pitching to the right places to the people who need what it is you're sharing. So that's my first rant, okay. Back to a rave and it would have to be this Kajabi special that is going on right now.
And I have to admit, I sort of lied to you, but it was accidentally because things changed. I told you all that the 90 days for $99 special was going to end on July 26th and Kajabi let us know yesterday this has been their best promotion ever. And because of that, they're adding in another five days, it's going to go through July the 31st.
So if you are a little bit interested, I'm going to put the link in the show notes. I have an incredible set of bonuses that I'm giving away. I was trying to make this just an absolutely irresistible offer for you to even consider signing up to test drive Kajabi over the next 90 days. And you get to sign up for $99 and you get a one-on-one call with me.
You get my workshop on how to create a mini course. And then we're going to do three live workshops with coaching on email marketing, on creating your sales pages and then on doing joint ventures. So it's an incredible way to spend 99 bucks. Let me tell you, plus I think you will love the tool once you get into it. So that's in the show notes coursecreatorshq.com/53. You actually have until July 31st now to take me up on it. So check that out if you're even a little bit interested. Okay. Rant number two, I jumped into a challenge last week because the concept of what it is that they were going to be teaching us sounded so good. I was so excited because it's something that I'm actually working on right now that my coach has said,
Julie wants you to work on this project. And I'm not going to tell who it is because that would be mean, but the person who was putting the challenge together has been around a long time and has taught a lot of people. And I gotta be honest. I couldn't believe how hard it was to be in this challenge because the emails that I was getting were all random,
like there weren't standard subject lines on the emails for the challenge. So I was getting emails from her, where she was promoting the challenge. And then there's a couple for the challenge that I was having to dig really hard to find the emails. And then once I found them, there was no information in them. Like there, it didn't tell me what was going on.
I didn't link me to, it may have linked me to the Facebook live, where she was going to be talking, but it didn't link me to the hallmark. It didn't link me to a workbook. I just wasted so much time trying to just find the content of this challenge. So the lesson that I want you to take away from this for every course that you do,
every challenge that you do, everything that you do for your students, make it easily accessible for them to find what it is they need. And I, I know this is tough and it takes another step of thinking about, okay, my person knows nothing. What can I do for them? So a few things you can make the subject lines always consistent.
So if you guys were in my topic entitled challenge, you know, that all of those emails had topic entitled challenge in the subject line. So you could get back to them. And then I had a page with all of the links on it on one page. So you could go there and, and jump in and get started. And especially when people are doing challenges,
they're usually are trying to work this in, around all of their other stuff. So you gotta make it super easy and efficient for them. So just an idea, think about your students and how you can make it more streamlined and easy, or for them to get to the information that they need. So they know what you're talking about. Okay. Rave number three,
it has to be all these free programs that we have out there. Now, if you think about it, most of the social media tools that are out there you can use for free communicate, direct message, even this podcast editing software that I'm using right now to create this podcast, it's free clubhouse, the social audio program, where I've met so many amazing people,
it's free all the Google tools, you know, for documents and Google spreadsheets and Google sheets for our Google, the, the presentations, all of these things are free for us to use. So I'm raving about the fact that we can use all of those. And actually probably the last one I'd throw in is how much we can do on our mobile phones right now.
Because if you think about it, you can just about run your business on your mobile phone. So it's pretty incredible that all of that is available to us for free. My third rant has to be something that a lot of people do, but it's something you can really easily fix if this happens to be you. And that is that you don't have links to your websites on either Instagram or your Facebook profile.
So the other day I was trying to look into a new expert. I'm constantly on the lookout to find the best people to share with you all. And there was no website on her Instagram account. So I couldn't, there was nothing to go and find out more about her. And then several times I've had this happen on Facebook, where I'll be in a group with someone,
and I want to see what they've got next. So you can click on the link to see their profile, but it takes them to their personal profile. And unless they've really done a good job, you have to go edit that info section of your Facebook profile in order to share more information. So you can share links to a website. You can talk about what you do and highly,
highly recommended because that's where people who are finding you on Facebook. It's one of the first places that they may go look to see more about you. So fill those pieces in so that we can connect with you and find out more about your business. Okay. Rave on number four has to be that email marketing. Oh my gosh. It's been around since the dark ages of the internet,
but oh my gosh, can you accomplish a lot with email marketing? And I'm really into this right now because I'm putting together our effortless email workshop for this week. And I think it's probably going to go into next week because there's so much content that I want to share, but I'll leave you with one really positive number. And that is for every dollar spent on email marketing businesses are seeing $42 worth of return on their investment.
So there's very few things that you can do that will give you that much return on the time and the effort that you put into it. So definitely think about adding in very consistent email marketing that you do. Well, I know people have been saying, oh, email marketing doesn't work and you're right. It doesn't work if you don't do it the right way.
So make sure you get some advice and some help, and you're doing email marketing the right way so that you can make it one of your most profitable channels for promoting your course. Okay. Rant number four was a summit that I attended and it was all about clubhouse. So I was really excited because I've been digging deep into clubhouse. And the very first speaker on the very first day started going into a long history of their business and how they have grown through the years and what all they've done.
And it had nothing to do with clubhouse. And so it was so frustrating. Me, you guys, and you guys will know when I have guests on this podcast. I don't really talk about their biographies maybe a little bit, but only when it's relevant to what you need to know. So suggestion, whenever you're either doing podcast episodes or you're working with experts,
or you're doing interviews on clubhouse, don't spend a lot of time on people's biographies. It's really not that important to your audience. Throw some things in as you're talking, if there's some relevant pieces of their bio, that's important, but otherwise skip that. It's just a waste of time. Get to the good stuff. Okay. So let me go back to my next rave.
And I'm curious if you all have noticed this too, it's gotta be the coaches that can take us to whole new levels. I just signed up with a brand new coach and I'm so much enjoying everything that she's teaching me pushing me to the next level and making suggestions and just all around being a cheerleader to help me get further and,
and go to new levels. So I hope you're having that same experience that you're working with some really amazing people who can help you take your business to the next level. So rant number five, and this will be my last rant, but it would have to be hiding pricing. So I am one of those unusual type of people that doesn't need a lot of persuasion when I decide that I want something.
So I can decide pretty quickly, like this sounds interesting. I want to know more, I might consider purchasing, but then my very next question is going to be what it costs. So last week we were looking at a software for a client and they wanted to get on a phone and talk with us, which I was like, okay, but can you please give us an idea of where the pricing starts?
Because I don't want to waste your time if it's way outside our budget. And I don't want to waste my time if it's not something that we could even consider purchasing. And the person that I was talking to was like, no, no, no. I can't even tell you where our pricing starts. You have to get on the phone to find out anything about pricing.
So I am just personally opposed to not having any kind of pricing. And I understand sometimes that people don't want to share their entire pricing because you price differently depending on who you're working with. But I think in those instances, it's a really good idea to say, pricing starts at blank and it'll save you a lot of headaches because you will eliminate a lot of the people that can't afford you that way.
So that's my personal rant on price. Always include some kind of pricing for the people who are interested in what you're doing. And then I'm to end with my final rave. And I'm curious if anyone else does this, or if this is just me, I watch TV and sometimes the commercials, and I'm always looking for comments or phrases that really inspire me or trigger me,
or, or like make a suggestion that I'm like, oh, that's a really good idea. So there have been several coming out of the commercials in the Olympics. So I want to share them with you because I think it just, it's good to hear these things coming from different channels and from different places. So the first one is from the slack commercials where they keep saying,
let's work the way we want to. And I thought, you know what, that's what I want for my course creators for all of you who are listening, I want you to be able to work the way you want to and have the revenue and the business that you want. So I love that from slack work, the way we want to. And then Toyota also had some really good quotes inside their commercials.
And the first one is you don't need to be amazing to start, but you need to start to be amazing. And I thought, oh, that's so perfect. Because a lot of times with courses, we'll hold ourselves back and just not get started because it feels like such a big project, but you need to start to be amazing. And then the last one I will end you with is the Toyota logo,
main thing that they keep sharing. And it says, start your impossible. And I just love that for you. So if you're thinking about what to do next, if you're thinking about a course or where to take your business next, I hope you will jump into the deep end of the pool and see what it is that could be your impossible thing to get started on,
or just take that tiny step forward with. So I hope you enjoyed my ranting and raving this week. Let me know if it was a good or a bad thing. Maybe I'll do more of these and have a fantastic week. I want to thank you so much for listening to this podcast for a following or subscribing for commenting, for reviewing. I so, so appreciate it.
And I thank you so much for being there and supporting what we're doing and letting other people know about the course creators HQ podcast. It's one of my favorite things to do every week. So I hope you enjoy it too. And I want you to have a fantastic, amazing, terrific week take care. And I will talk to you next time on the next episode,