You are listening to The Femtrepreneur Show,
and this is episode 28.
In this episode, we're talking about how to break down
creating and launching a course
into manageable two-week sprints,
and how that can save you time, and save your sanity.
Hey guys, it's Mariah.
- And I'm Megan.
- And my hair looks really weird today.
(both laughing)
I feel like I just have to get that out of the way, guys.
I'm aware that my bangs are unruly.
Okay, so we're featuring
our Launch Your Signature course students,
and this week's podcast is sponsored
by our very own Ashley Srokosz
who is from brandbuildblog.com.
She is a Launch Your Signature course student,
and she's also a registered holistic nutritionist,
essential oil educator, and a holistic business coach.
She's also a mom.
She basically does it all.
- She's got a lot of titles. (laughs)
- She's got a lot going on.
Some of you guys may have seen
my video interview with Ashley.
She's one of our super successful students,
so we love to show her story everywhere.
Her online course is called Brand, Build, Blog,
and it's a branding and blogging course
for holistic biz owners who are tech-shabby.
I love the way she says that.
- I know.
(Mariah laughs)
- Brand, Build, Blog is the step-by-step program
that shows you how to pick your ideal business,
pick your clients of your dreams,
build a website that attracts them,
and then turn that website into a marketing machine.
You can visit brandbuildblog.com
to get your free brand and website checklist.
Definitely check out Ashley.
She developed and created this course
while she was in Launch Your Signature course,
and we're super proud of her,
and everything she has created.
All right, so let's hop into the episode.
- Yeah, I'm excited.
You have been talking about sprinting a little bit lately,
and we've gotten some good questions about it,
so that's why if you don't know what sprinting is,
don't worry, we're gonna explain that
but Mariah, why don't you kick it off?
- Yeah, I've kinda been on this sprinting kick lately
because recently I taught a workshop
that was just like a free live workshop
that I feel inspired to do. (laughs)
Because I was having such a hard time prioritizing,
and developing my own sprints,
and if you're not sure what the hell I'm talking about,
just wait a sec. (laughs)
But I basically was having trouble with my own sprints,
so I did a workshop
to help me explain how I plan my time,
and how we manage our time as a team,
and so basically I taught a workshop
about these two-week sprints in your business
as a way to actually get things done,
and how to break big projects up
into little two-week chunks,
and then focus on only that little piece of the project
during that two weeks so that you're making real,
incremental progress instead of feeling really scattered,
or feeling really disorganized,
or a month later, you look back at your to-do list,
and nothing seems like it's happened.
It's usually because you're just unfocused,
and you don't really have a plan of attack,
so after that workshop,
which we will link to in the show notes.
You can get it at thefemshow.com/planning.
If you're listening right now,
and you haven't seen this workshop,
it's absolutely essential.
At the time of recording this,
more than 12,000 people have gone through that workshop,
and told us that it is life-changing,
so definitely check it out. (Megan laughs)
But someone asked after I did that workshop
how I would break up course creation and launching
into these sprints like using, at the time of the workshop,
I gave tons of different examples
of things that could be put into two-week sprints
but someone asked, "Well, how would you create
"and launch your course on this type of schedule?"
So today we're gonna be talking about how to break up
what can seem like a really big and overwhelming project
like launching this course into small chunks
that are called sprints so that you can actually get it done
just one little piece at a time,
and then by the end of all of your sprints put together,
you'll have your course ready to launch,
so (clears throat) we kinda want to go
into just very basic overview,
what we mean when we say a two-week sprint
but like I said, I explained this in a lot more detail
in this workshop that I did,
and you can watch it for free.
It also has a downloadable workbook
that goes with it that's super helpful,
so you can actually plan out your sprints alongside us,
and so that's at thefemshow.com/planning
but I just want to really briefly say
that a two-week sprint is basically a two-week period
when you start and finish a project
with no other outside distractions,
so you're working on a single objective in a single project
for two weeks, and you're not working on anything else,
so we're not trying to make a little bit of progress
on three different projects.
You're starting and finishing one.
(clears throat)
This is how people actually get things done.
(both laughing)
- Yeah.
- And in terms of where this idea comes from,
so this is based on the methodology,
I guess as I'm reading scrum.
He kinda says that it's not a methodology but.
(both laughing)
- Oops. (laughs)
- It's from this idea of scrum
that basically talks about
like it's a way of project management,
and a way of productivity for getting things done
specifically it relates to teams
but we found that it works for individuals as well
especially for students.
- There is a Scrum book, so we'll put a link to that
in the show notes also
in case you want to actually read about scrum
because sprints and the scrum method kinda go hand in hand.
- They kinda go hand in hand.
Sprints are like one tiny little piece
of the scrum way of doing things,
and scrum is like its whole own beast in and of itself
but even if the only thing you practice
is focusing on one project for two weeks at a time,
I think that, in and of itself,
is gonna change the way you get things done,
so during a sprint, during this two-week period,
you don't work on anything else outside of that one project.
It's a very focused way of getting things done
start to finish so that you actually have something
to show for it at the end of those two weeks
instead of just incrementally creeping along
with 10 different projects feeling really scattered,
so basically it's like you're going to start
and finish creating of your sales page
or something in this two-week period.
Okay, so a couple of examples, like I just said,
one would be like during this two-week period,
I'm not gonna work on anything else.
I'm just going to create the slides
for modules one through four.
Okay, that would be a really good sprint.
Another example of a good sprint
would be like during this two-week period,
I'm just gonna get the sales page created,
so I'm gonna write the copy,
and then I'm gonna design it, and I'm gonna set it up,
and the sales page is gonna be done,
so instead of saying like,
"Oh I'll just kinda work on the sales page
"once a week as it happens,"
you're really committing to getting it done.
Another example of a sprint
could be like writing out your prelaunch content, right?
So that could be like, "Okay, for these two weeks,
"all I'm doing is writing emails, blog posts,
"and social media posts that I'm gonna be using
"during my launch."
Another example of a two-week sprint would be a giveaway,
so promoting and running like a viral giveaway
with KingSumo or something like that,
which we can put the link to in the show notes
(clears throat)
to be build your list, that would be a good sprint,
and another thing that I do want to mention
is that a live launch like your open cart period
is a sprint in and of itself
because you are 100% focused on that,
and you're not working on behind the scenes projects
during a launch usually
because you'll be busy. (laughs)
- Yeah, you will be doing other things.
- [Mariah] Yeah. (laughs)
- You've already mentioned some of the great benefits
of why we like to do sprints,
and why we recommend them.
For my little planning self,
I really appreciate that when I'm doing sprints,
I can actually plan at a launch in a more realistic way,
so I can say, "These are all the things I need to do
"to actually launch this course.
"I can break those up into sprints,
"and doing that will show me how long I need."
So I might start this process.
We have students do this where they're like,
"I'm gonna launch in one month,"
and it's like you can if you're willing
to like do nothing else except 24/7 to do this
but you could actually go through this process and say,
"Well, I need at least four sprints to do this,
"and if each sprint is two weeks,
"then I need at least eight weeks
"before I plan on launching my course,"
so I feel like it's a really smart way
to also project when you might be able
to launch your course.
- Yeah, definitely.
It helps you plan out realistically
how long is this gonna take,
and you don't try to squeeze in
like you can't say like,
"Well, I'll just make this scrint be."
The scrint, wow.
"We'll make this sprint be three days." (laughs)
Or, "This sprint is only gonna be five days."
It has to be two weeks,
so you're creating projects that are two-week projects,
so the first thing you're gonna want to do
in terms of translating, creating and launching a course
into the sprint system that we outlined,
you want to put everything into a logical order
that makes sense, so you gotta ask yourself like,
"What needs to happen first and what order
"in order for me to move on to the next step?"
So for example, you can't really start
creating the sales page for your course
until you have validated the idea or something like that,
so make sure that everything is laid out in a logical order.
This could be like you need to build your email list, right?
'Cause you can't launch without an email list
so that should be a priority.
Creating a freebie and landing page.
That needs to be a priority.
Validating your course because you can't do anything.
You can't start creating modules
until your course is validated, right?
So when you put things into a logical order,
you're gonna start to see it takes shape
as like, "Oh yeah, I can't."
it's sort of like how in a sauna,
it has like that like waiting on-- (laughs)
- Yeah.
- Thing where it's like you know that you can't move on
to this next thing without having the first thing done,
so that's kinda how you figure out the order of things.
Obviously in Launch Your Signature course,
we give you the order of things
that makes the most sense
from us doing this and working with thousands of students,
so if you're kind of confused on like what to do when,
then it's very much laid out in exhaustive detail (laughs)
in our program too.
- I would also say if you don't know,
give yourself that chance to just brain dump
like, "Okay, I'm not gonna worry about the order yet.
"I'm gonna like dump everything out,
"and then once I have like this brain dump of tasks,
"then I can go ahead, and put it in a logical order
"that makes sense." - Exactly.
- But putting it in order is very important.
- Yes, 'cause that's the order
that you're gonna actually do the two-week sprints in.
Okay, so then what you're gonna do
is break down each piece
of a creation and launching of your course
into small projects that can be accomplished in two weeks,
so for example, if right now you are looking
at this brain dump,
and it's like all the stuff that you have to do,
how can you collect those things into two-week projects
that are related, right?
You don't want to have like create module one,
and write the launch emails at the same time.
Let's try to keep it so that everything is cohesive,
and almost like a batch, right?
- That's what I was gonna say.
You want to be focused kind of in the same mindset
just like when people say,
"You should do all of your writing in this one period
"because you can really develop a rhythm, and write faster,"
than writing, and then all of the sudden,
you're creating a sales page.
You're being creative, and then all of a sudden,
you're doing something else so--
- Yeah, even just like this week,
I was, so right now as we're recording this,
I'm in the process of re-recording
all of our Webinar Rockstar course,
and like literally remaking the entire course
from the ground up, and I've realized that sprinting on it
is it's like when I was trying to just update that course
in the gaps between other projects,
it was so difficult to jump back into it
because I was like, "Where was I in the slides?
"Where was I in the outline?
"Really what was I in the flow of saying?"
You can't really remember.
It's so hard to jump in and out of a project
whereas in the last week because I was sprinting on it,
every morning, open up the same document.
I know exactly where I am.
I know where I left off the night before.
I'm just jumping back into the momentum that I already had
instead of feeling like, "Oh if I open this document,
"I have to read through everything
"'cause I totally forget where we were."
- That's such a good point.
- So it's really important.
Like you said, it's the idea of batching,
and getting into that flow.
You're already doing it.
You know how it feels.
You know what you're doing.
Okay, so I want to break down everything into small projects
that are realistic to be accomplished in two weeks,
and I will say right off the bat
that you will get better
at estimating what takes you two weeks. (laughs)
You will not be good at it at first,
and then you will get better at it,
so like if your first couple sprints end up being like,
"Oh a lot of stuff gets bumped into the next sprint,"
don't worry about it.
It takes all of us that time to figure out
what really is realistic for us to do in two weeks.
For example, like creating an entire course,
like create my course, you can't put that down
as a project that you're gonna do in two weeks.
That's just not gonna happen.
We need to break it down into smaller chunks, right?
So something like creating that sales page in two weeks
maybe just like creating three modules or something
because you're in the flow,
and you can get half the modules done
or something like that, and like I said,
what you can personally accomplish in two weeks,
it depends on your time, and your life,
and your responsibilities, if you have a job.
We have a team of six full-time people,
so us working on a sprint for two weeks
looks a lot different than a solopreneur
working on the side of her day job. (laughs)
- Yeah but the strategy still works,
and we talked about this in the last episode
about how to find time to create a course,
and so I don't want to rehash that whole thing
but you can find time to do this no matter your situation.
You just adapt the sprint to meet the time you have,
so like Mariah said, 40 hours a week times six people
is like you can accomplish a lot more as a team
than you can if you only have one to four hours a week
as a solopreneur but that's okay.
Still do the strategy.
You're just gonna make it more digestible little chunks,
so instead of doing three modules, maybe you do one module,
or maybe you just rough outline all of the modules
really quickly, or maybe you do one module at a time,
so it can work.
You'll just probably be doing smaller, smaller projects
than we might give examples for.
- Yeah, definitely.
Okay, so now what you have to do
is schedule all the stuff into a sprint.
I just slightly changed my sprints that I had planned
live while we are recording this
(both laughing)
because I realized that some of the things
are kind of happening at the same time,
and this is something that you're gonna,
so the cool thing about sprints,
the cool things about scrum
if you do end up reading the book Scrum,
which is really good,
it's very flexible.
It's designed to be how people actually work,
which is things take longer than you think they're going to,
and it has to be flexible, and you actually come up with,
you can't plan for six months down the line
'cause you're gonna come up with a different idea,
or you're gonna come up against a different challenge
that you could not anticipate six months earlier,
so you only plan really these two to four weeks in advance
knowing that things are gonna expand and change,
so basically here is an example of the process
of creating and launching a course
in a really sort of broad overview.
It shouldn't be super detailed
'cause it's like this is what you're gonna be working on
for two weeks, right?
- Yeah.
- So here is everything,
and don't stray from what is included in that sprint,
so I know it can tempting to be like,
"Oh I feel really inspired to write a blog post right now,"
but if you really need to be working on your sales page,
you just have to work on the discipline
of finishing one project
before you move on to the next project.
If we let ourselves constantly have half-finished projects,
and moving on to the next one because we're like,
"Well, it's still working.
"I'm still making progress."
Then nothing will ever get done.
Trust me.
(both laughing)
So please, please just stick with it, and people say,
"Well, how do you learn that?
"How do you learn that skill of discipline?"
And it just takes time.
It'll just take a couple of sprints.
- Just practice, in time,
and learning yourself, self-awareness is key
but you'll get better.
- You'll get better.
- So we're gonna map out.
You're gonna go through.
This is six sprints
that you're gonna map out? - Yes.
- Okay.
- So six sprints, each is two weeks.
That'll happen over a 12-week period.
Okay, so what you want to do is the first two-week sprint
would be just the first thing you should do
is set up a freebie on a landing page,
and start getting traffic to that landing page.
This is part of the process of validating your course,
so those first two weeks of you being like,
"I have an idea for a course."
The first thing you're gonna want to do
is get a landing page up.
Get that idea out there, and collecting interests, right?
We just call it like kinda getting leads
that are maybe interested in your course topic,
and using that to validate your course,
so those first two weeks, you need to do a couple things
to validate your course like within these two weeks,
you're gonna be collecting those emails.
You might do a couple of surveys.
You might create a poll on a Facebook group
full of your ideal customer
to see if they like your ideas,
or if you have two or three ideas,
you could see which one they're more interested in.
We have students of ours right now
who are going through Your First 1K
who are using polls in groups
to get really good feedback on their ideas,
and it's been really successful, so things like that.
It might also include co-pi-su-king of course,
which is doing all the research on the desires,
fears, and questions that your ideal customers have,
so you're validating your course during those first weeks.
The next two weeks is gonna be building your presale page,
and your presale page looks the same as your sales page.
There's just a couple of tweaks,
and this is stuff that we go over
in Launch Your Signature course but really the final form,
and the only true form of validation is making sales,
which is why we ask that you presell your course
before you create all the content,
so you want to start preselling it,
so very kinda early in the game,
you're gonna be creating a presale page.
This presale page is gonna evolve
but I want you to spend the next sprint,
the second sprint of two weeks
getting that presale page ready to launch.
Okay, the next sprint, the third sprint is gonna be creating
the first couple modules of your course.
This could be creating modules one and two,
creating modules one through four.
The idea here is that once you started getting validation,
and you started making presales,
it's time for you to create
the first couple modules of your course.
When you actually open up,
and do your real launch at your full price,
that's when you can start creating the rest of your modules
but I do encourage you before you launch
to have like either two to four modules
that are already ready to go when you do launch.
The next sprint I have down is to do a webinar blitz,
and so this would be two weeks of you doing webinars
with joint venture partners,
or just doing webinars on your own
but it would be doing webinars to pump up your list,
and build your list before you launch,
and also test out some of your content ideas.
We have students who use pitch-free webinars
to test out their course ideas basically.
Does anyone sign up for this?
- And you get good questions too.
This is the first time you're really teaching this topic,
and you're gonna realize that there is like a gap
you kind of forgot that not everyone knows,
or like this area you always thought was common sense,
you're gonna realize isn't,
so it's really enlightening.
I agree.
I love the idea of this being pitch-free.
I think that's gonna really help you
just gather more strategic leads
for when you do launch and yeah.
- And one of the things we talk about
in Launch Your Signature course
is creating what we call a signature webinar,
which is a webinar that you deliver multiple times
during a launch, and that you will repurpose a lot
in the future as well, so some of our students,
if you're doing your first couple webinars,
you're not sure what's gonna convert,
or you're not sure what's gonna be the best idea,
so doing a couple of weeks of testing out
two or three webinar ideas,
seeing which one gets the most signups,
and gets the most engagement is a good way to say,
"Oh well, that's the one that I should turn
"into my signature webinar,"
that you're gonna do on a bigger scale
during your real launch, so it's a really good way
to kinda like test out.
You don't want your first webinar
to be your signature webinar,
and have it be a flop. (laughs)
- Yeah. (laughs)
- So it's good to test it out,
and just do a couple of pitch-free webinars,
and see what people are signing up for, or responding to.
Yeah, so I kinda put that in there
as like this period of doing a webinar blitz,
and then the fifth sprint
is gonna be creating your launch content,
so you're getting closer to your actual launch.
At this point, you want to write all of your launch emails,
and all of your social media posts, and any of blog posts,
or anything else that you're gonna be putting out there
as prelaunch free content that's gonna be going out
in the four weeks before you actually launch your course,
so I like to do that all at once
because I find that there is a lot of overlap.
To me, there's always overlap in like I write all the emails
in a big, long, flowing document
like it's just this one document with every email,
so I write that in a big batch,
and then I notice that a lot of the phrases
that I've said in those emails,
I want those to become Facebook posts,
and I want them to become Instagram captions,
so I write all of that content all at once,
and then some of it also become blog posts,
or podcast episodes, so it could become any of that stuff,
so it's good to just create all that free launch content
that you're gonna be releasing all at once,
and then your final sprint, sprint number six
would be setting up all the tech, testing it,
and then actually doing the launch.
Not that you're like waiting till the last minute
but kind of the final thing that you do
is set up your actual course,
load it all into your course platform.
Just make sure that your payment buttons are working.
Usually do that two weeks before your launch,
or a week before your launch, or something like that,
and then you're gonna open up your actual launch.
- Yay.
- [Mariah] That's that.
- I know that's a lot
but at the same time breaking it down into those two weeks
like when you're in sprint number one
where you're doing your freebie, and you're validating,
you can literally block out any stress
or thoughts you have on the modules.
You can say, "Not right now.
"I'm not gonna worry about what module three
"is really gonna look like right now.
"I'm gonna focus on building my list,
"and doing this freebie, and validating my course
"before I get stressed out
"with what slide design will I use for my course,"
and I think that by, I remember we talked about this
when we started implementing sprinting
that that was kinda hard to do at first.
You're not used to restricting them
like the average person is usually letting their thoughts
guide them (laughs) wherever they go.
- You're used to getting stressed about something
that you're gonna do in a month.
- Yeah, so it's an adjustment
but I feel like we would both agree
that when you do start to really own it, and embrace it,
and say, "Nope, I'm gonna worry about that later,"
or even like I know Beverly,
one of our team members says this,
you could have notepad next to you,
and maybe a thought comes to you,
or a question comes to you about something else,
you could just quickly jot it down
knowing that you've captured that question or thought
but you're gonna deal with it later.
- Yeah, you're not gonna down
that rabbit hole right now. (laughs)
- Yeah, save that for later but I love doing this,
and the focus it brings you,
I think everyone's gonna really benefit from,
so a quick recap of the six,
so sprint number one is validating your course
through setting up a freebie, and building a list.
Sprint two was building your presale page.
Sprint three was creating the first few modules.
Sprint four was doing a webinar blitz.
Sprint five was creating the launch content,
and everything that's gonna go into that,
and then the last sprint was setting up
all of the technology, and testing it,
and then you're ready to launch.
- Yep, that's really good.
Yeah, exactly, and I think just like you said,
breaking something so big and overwhelming
like creating and launching your course
like there's so many things
that are gonna help you get through that
but really breaking it down, and not letting yourself,
we see so many of our students worrying about step 10
when they haven't even done step one yet.
- Yeah, they don't even know their topic,
and they're like, "How do you handle refunds?"
(Mariah laughs)
- It's like, "Slow down." - Okay.
- Don't worry about that quite yet.
You'll get there.
- Yeah, exactly, so I mean even just like you said, Megan,
for your mental sanity,
this is like worrying about the thing
that you need to tackle immediately like right now and today
is gonna change how you work
instead of letting yourself get crazy about things
that you don't have to deal
for like two months down the line,
and it's just gonna help you actually get things done,
so I'm excited to have shared all this stuff with you guys.
I hope it's really helpful.
- Me too, and don't forget to go to thefemshow.com/28
for the show notes to this episode.
I know we mentioned a few things
we were gonna include in the show notes for links,
so definitely check that out,
and don't forget to also sign up to watch the replay
of the free sprint planning workshop.
All of that is in the show notes or below this video
if you're watching on YouTube,
and if you want to discuss this episode with us,
and our amazing community of other amazing,
why am I saying amazing so much? (laughs)
- 'Cause they are amazing. (laughs)
- 'Cause they are.
They are a community of amazing entrepreneurs.
Make sure you join our free Facebook group
at thefewshow.com/community.
I think we just, have we crossed 7,000 members yet?
- Close, we're at like 6,950-something. (laughs)
- Yeah, so come be our 7,000th member.
- Woo hoo!
The special number.
If you guys like this episode,
please subscribe to Femtrepreneur Show on iTunes.
Leave a rating and a review.
I'm not just saying that.
Please really, really do it.
It helps us. (laughs)
Reviews make a really big impact.
They help us get amazing guests for you every single week,
and if you're watching this on YouTube,
don't forget to hit the like button, subscribe,
and leave a comment below
so that we can talk to you guys.
We love chatting with you of course.
If you have a question that you want to ask us,
you want us to give you a shout-out on the show,
and answer your question, go to thefemshow.com,
submit your question,
and we would love to answer it for you.
I don't have my,
I don't have my outline in the right spot on my monitor.
Okay.
- [Megan] Smile.
Don't forget your mug.
- Oh oops.
- Who is that cute? (Mariah laughs)
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét