Harms: In this guide, we are focusing on events specifically independent people such as yoga, yoga teachers, who would have to physically meet their students or their cohort. Personal trainers, consultants in the health field, osteopaths, physios who operate on a one-to-one basis.

For them it’s slightly trickier, but for the relief side of things certainly this will work.

Kyle: I think any class’s physical health is the easiest one to think of because we tend to go to a lot of health classes, but it can be foreign languages if you’re learning Japanese, for example and you can no longer go to your classroom. Any kind of class and event.

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Harms: If you remember we said there is a very simple shift. We focus on a model which is called BATON and we will reveal that throughout the guide.

The first thing we focus on which is the business part of things and you can think about the business model in two ways. 

When faced with the current situation, which is coronavirus lockdown, having to shift our business.

We spoke to a gentleman, an amazing person that has been in business for 27 years and asked the question, what was different between the 2008 recession versus now?

What he said was 2008 you sort of realise that people are tightening down their spending, there were rumours and whispers, we knew for a couple years or a year before. 

You could see patterns in the financial market which were not right as a business owner, you would have found lending was getting more difficult.

Whereas this is you just run into a hard brick wall without any preparation whatsoever so that was his response after 27 years in business.

Kyle: 2007, 2008 that was easy mode.

What are we marketing?

Harms:  Hopefully, this is going to make it easier on what we can do and you can pull apart what we’re doing and take the bits that you like.

We’ve spoken about two different ways we can implement this within this niche that we’re talking about. 

One is just to go online and we spoke about the really simple thing, just go online, shift online, but that requires a whole bunch of things.

Advertising the transition time etcetera but we said, what if we took a different approach where we were the host of the party?

Where we were adding value to a community, but in the sense of getting directly to them.

Kyle: As many of you probably already encountered there’s a lot of especially in WhatsApp groups, but also on Facebook and other online communities.

There are a lot of lists being compiled, these ultimate source lists.

Harms and I put together a list like this about how to work from home because we’ve been doing it for years and we know that there are certain tools that are useful. 

There are certain apps, software you should be using if you work from home.

For us to put together a list, a resource list was very easy and quick.

We are talking about competitors’ products, we’re talking about things unrelated to us, we’re just talking about creating something of value that we can put out into the world.

We did it for work from home, but you in your niche whether it’s yoga, whether it’s physiotherapy, whether it’s crossfit, whatever your particular niche is whatever you provide classes in, you’ve probably noticed that within your WhatsApp group, or any other groups that there are these kind of resource lists being thrown around and sent around

You’ve probably already received these lists and they’re really useful, they are just giving you a list of either free classes or low-cost classes you might do in yoga, cross fit or whatever it is. It could be anything.

It doesn’t matter what your niche is, what we are suggesting is that you as an expert in your business niche put together your own list and start to distribute it.

Harms: That answers the question, what are we marketing?

So what we’re marketing is essentially an ultimate resource list.

How to create it?

Harms: I think the next question is how we create that because I made the error when we created this list, but what we didn’t do was brand ourselves, i.e. this is our list guys, but we are more than happy to share it for free.

What I did was just give the list away and there was no inkling that has come from us, our company, our brand. My other podcast featured on it but nothing that we do together featured on it.

We put this value list out and I think it’s okay to do that, but we’re talking about business here, revenue, survival, guerrilla marketing. 

We have to include ourselves on that list, so don’t make the mistake I did.

The question then is how do we create it?

Kyle: The first big question here comes back to your audience and who it is you’re trying to get to, how wide do we want this list to be?

If I’m running a yoga studio in south-west London, for example, do I want this to be a useful resource for just people who do yoga in south-west London, or do I want it to be for everybody in London, do I want it to be national?

Do I want it to be the whole of Europe, or do I want it to be global?

There’s no right or wrong answer here.

The more people you help, so if you go global more likely that there is a high likelihood you’re going to turn that into a revenue stream later. 

That said, if you’re mainly focusing on being able to bounce back from Corona once lockdown ends and you want to provide a huge amount of value specifically to your local area, then maybe you want to keep it closer.

Harms: There are pros and cons to both.

Global will have potentially arguably a greater viral reach because the list is the ultimate global resource list, but locally it will probably benefit you more for your physical business.

Kyle: It depends on your business.

Like the other day I received a list which was from a local coffee shop who is really big in the community and they had put together a list of all of the local businesses who are still serving customers.

They were still doing deliveries so this included fitness, but it also included food delivery and coffee. 

They’d done a hyper-local one that made it easier for them to spread it in the local area. If they try to spread that list in India it is irrelevant. That doesn’t make any sense there so obviously it has no global ramifications.

It depends on who you want to be spreading this list for and who it’s for.

We do need to keep this in mind early on, it’s who do we want to be reading this?

Is it local, is it regional, national, global?

Collecting what?

Harms: What else do we need to consider when creating this list?

Kyle: We need to decide what it is we’re collecting?

If you’ve already received any of these resource lists go and have a look at them and you’ll know exactly what we’re talking about here.

Generally what you’re going to see is a chart if it’s a Google sheet or an Excel document, you’re going to have the name of the company, website, or their social media platform if they’re providing the service through social media.

You’ll have what the offer is so 10 yoga classes for £30 or whatever it is. You’ll have a column that has the price, whether it’s free or if it’s paid, then you might have one again, depending on whether the resource list is a schedule.

For the one I received the other day with cultural events, theatre, opera and ballet, etcetera. Obviously the schedule is important because the show is on Thursday at 7 PM so you need to have that on the list.

One additional thing you might want to add into your resource list and this is how we start to brand it is have an additional column which is your thoughts so as the curator of this list what you think about this.

Maybe it’s a few notes. Maybe it’s giving some extra details. Maybe it’s your current review of whatever the service is.

It’s up to you how in-depth you want to get on this particular column, but that’s a way of adding some personality and adding yourself into the resource list, one way.

Harms: We haven’t done a tabulated format because like you said the purpose of this was a bit different. 

Especially when Kyle was talking about your personal thoughts that final column your brand, your personal thoughts, your personality which comes through. Kyle has done that with these resources but at the top. 

This is a work from home resource list which is trending at the moment.

Kyle: This is slightly different.

I’d ideally have this in a Google sheet format like Excel, that would be a bit easier to see and to work through the list, but this is fine as well. 

We have general resources, including a few long-form guides. We have some podcasts; we suggest some books and as you can see each one just has a couple of suggestions.

Through each one, I’ve actually given my thoughts as it’s very easy just to go Google and look up project management for example, but I’ve given my experience and my thoughts based on having used many of these tools.

Most of these tools over the years and we’ve changed them.

We used to use base camp. It’s great, but it didn’t do what we needed to do so we moved to teamwork.

Trello is a stripped-down tool for example, which is free and something I recommend people use. This list just goes on in the same vein, giving very specific suggestions like a decent headset is a Logitech H340.

Where to get your assets

Harms: The cheat way and probably the way we would not recommend doing this is copying and pasting our list or going on to another website or, where Kyle will show you how he researched this.

Copy and pasting it and just completely plagiarising that’s not what we’re recommending here what we’re saying is, spend some time to research this yourself and share your own personal experience for whatever this list is for you.

Kyle: As you should be an expert in your particular niche.

That’s what people are looking for, let’s say they’re looking for online yoga classes. 

They can go on Google and type online yoga classes that are not difficult but what they’re looking for from somebody like you is your curation. 

They’re looking for advice because they’ll find a hundred different websites offering online yoga classes.

They need somebody who knows what they’re talking about to say, actually ignore this these are the guys you need to be looking at.

Harms: Someone like you, someone who is in the same mindset as you, the same social circles, community, somebody you may even go to a yoga class with.

That’s the person you want to be positioning yourself here, almost like a community leader. 

Somebody who is the host of the party who’s saying I put this list together because I think it will be useful for everybody and then actually have put that list together.

Or is your industry or business if you have a sharp clean image, does that present you in a better way and does that mean your message is stronger?

That’s how you want to feel like you’re giving your opinion about every piece of item on this list and that will set your list apart.

Kyle: Again if somebody wants advice on which Webcam to buy, they can just google best web cams 2020, or go on Amazon and see which one has the best reviews. 

Even then, though it’s hard to tell what to trust because you don’t know if the sites are legit. They want somebody to make it easy for them and say this is a good Webcam, that’s all people are looking for.

Harms: How did you curate this list?

Kyle: It took me about an hour to make that

Harms: document. But expect an hour to two or three especially if this is the first time you’re doing it.

Kyle: So make a sheet with name, website, what the offer is, any price, any schedule and then any notes you want to add to it.

There are a few ways that you can find the resources to put into your list. 

The first thing you can do is look at any lists you’ve been sent. Some people have already started to compile these lists. I’m not saying steal their list, I’m saying start with it and pick out the things you actually genuinely think are useful within that list.

A lot of these lists have been sent out including everything so again, that’s not very helpful for somebody who is an amateur and doesn’t know this niche as well as you.

If they’re given a list of 20 different options for Webcam, for example, or 20 different options for yoga lessons that’s too much. Whenever human beings are given that many choices their brains shut down.

We do not make a decision.

We need to have max two or three, and that’s it. 

Look at the lists that have already been sent around and pull out whatever is useful, put them into your Google sheet. That’s one thing we are going to be using so we’re not stealing we are curating.

Harms: If you’re confused between somebody who steals versus somebody who curates there is a great book called ‘Steal like an artist’, that will give you a strong definition if you’re ever confused am I stealing or not?

Kyle: Because all of this information is out there.

The problem with the internet nowadays is not that there is hidden information or that the information cannot be found, there’s just too much. So what we’re doing is curating it. 

We are making it easier to access quality information and getting rid of the crap.

Harms: It is no different to say somebody curating their own blog post and having this information on there as a blog post, it’s very similar. But what we’re saying is we want to get this directly into the hands of people just remember that as a comparison, if you’re thinking can I use it as a blog post?

Yes you can.

Can I use it on my social media?

100%, but make sure you’ve curated it but how we distribute it, that would be the final point.

Reddit

Kyle: A really useful resource is Reddit, all we are going to do is put in a search term on Google like free yoga resources, Reddit, or you can even put in things like yoga quarantine Reddit or yoga Covid Reddit, or yoga Corona Reddit.

That’s going to come up with specific lists and resources that people put together to combat the quarantine.

Harms: The key there is to include Reddit in the search term.

Kyle: That’s going to show us what Reddit has shown us.

This person is asking what are some good sources for online and we have 59 people that have given suggestions. We have yoga with Adriene of course.

Reddit is it’s own beast, but it’s basically a messaging board where you can go on ask questions or post links and then other people jump in and give answers or discuss whatever you’ve posted.

The main difference with Reddit is that it has a very active community and they do things like curate this list. 

I want to highlight this at the top. Basically the yoga part of Reddit has been going for so long that over time, people on the yoga messaging board have put together this guide.

For example if you want to give a suggestion on a yoga mat. 

These are all of the discussions people have had on Reddit about mats and these are going to be very in-depth, so there’s a mega thread here, which I imagine is going to a huge amount of depth about what is the best mat. You can jump in here and find suggestions.

Again, you need to curate it so you need to base it on what you know about the subject. 

You should not just be copying stuff from Reddit but this is a great place to start and get inspiration for what you should be talking about.

Reddit has a lot of different sub-niches so you will be able to find whatever your niche is. You will be able to find a community around your interest inside Reddit, so this is a great place to find resources.

So again, we are just putting in something like Reddit yoga list or Reddit yoga free list and then we just go through until we find useful resources we want to borrow from.

Harms: I think a nice way to start is to think about the categories that you may want to find resources in that might be able to speed up the process as well. 

For example, in our list, we said what is work from home?

What are all the things we have to consider from hardware, office set up, streaming, online learning, podcast, YouTube people. All of those things are different categories then we can very quickly find resources within that.

I like Reddit as well, because it’s an actual human being, giving their opinion, whereas a blog post is a human being, given their opinion via an incentive.

It’s a bit different one is in the top 10 reviews but we don’t know if they’ve been incentivised behind the scenes again, it is up to them.

That’s their business model and if you click through the link do they get an affiliate payment again, totally fine, but it’s why have they put that on there?

Have they generally tested it?

Kyle: On that point, if I type into Google top 10 yoga mats if you click any of the links here it will go to Amazon and when you purchase that yoga mat the website will make a small amount of money for each of those sales. Everything there is only available on Amazon.

So whether or not the best yoga mat can be bought on Amazon is irrelevant because they’re trying to send you to Amazon to make money, and obviously they are incentivised to suggest certain items on Amazon.

They get paid a percentage, so if they recommend a higher cost item they’re going to make a bit more.

Harms: That is called affiliate marketing.

And that’s okay if that’s your business model

Kyle: But it is not what we are going to use for researching right now. 

We want to find unbiased sources. People actually giving each other real human suggestions because that’s what we want to be doing and see it.

The third suggestion I just gave you can just google best yoga mat or best yoga block or best free yoga classes and you will be able to find lists. 

You just need to be careful to really curate these and again, if you just fill your list with these eight best yoga mats of 2020 it’s not very trustworthy or helpful if you’re just spamming people with all the yoga mats.

Again tell people about the yoga mat that you use and why you use it, it’s going to be a much more valuable resource because of that.

Harms: If you’re thinking what do you mean by that, well, let’s say, for example, you do yoga at home, but when you started doing yoga you used the cheapest mat which you bought on Amazon as an example. 

When you’re starting out, you don’t know how long you’re going to be doing yoga for. Is this a short-term thing?

What’s something that ticks the box but also cheap as possible before you step up to a higher-level yoga mat, whatever that is.

That’s you giving your personal opinion.

When I started I used this it was £15 but now I use this one but I’ve been doing yoga for five years and I would certainly recommend starting with that. That’s you giving your personal opinion on the yoga mat as an example, in case you’re wondering how do I explain that.

Kyle: it is little sprinklings of your actual personal opinion and your expertise.

Quora search/Ask

Harms: Where else can we look?

You said Google for our competitors.

Kyle: The final one is ask, because you are in this niche you’re probably part of various groups, whether that is WhatsApp or Facebook groups, wherever your groups happen to be. Maybe you have specific apps and specific communities around your niche.

Ask people to set up a question thread where you are asking what are the best free yoga resources for people who are quarantined right now?

Just go ahead and say this is what you’re looking for.

If I were you I would also say I am putting together a list, an ultimate resource list of all the best things and I am looking for suggestions. I would say just be open and honest about this that you want to build this list and you’re looking for people to throw as many suggestions at you as possible.

The reason for this is one it’s honest, that is what you are doing so tell people about it, why not, but it also means when you have completed the list these are the places where you’re going to go back to first.

Anywhere you’ve asked a community of let’s say a thousand people in a Facebook group you’ve said to them, I’m putting together an ultimate resource list. I’m looking for suggestions, please throw any suggestions and I’ll include them.

Then after you’ve put together the list, you can go back to the group and say it’s done. Thank you guys, you’ve been so helpful you’ve helped me to create this here is the list.

They’re going to become the first people as they’re part of the creation, so they’re going to be the first people you want to send to.

Harms: A nice question to ask them to initiate this is give me your recommendations for X, yoga mats, could be applications you use at home.

That way you can even include if you haven’t used it you could include their recommendation, my dear friend says this about that. I asked my community and they said this about this yoga mat, so it also helps make the curation a bit more personal.

If you think psychologically it includes their input onto this report so when you give it back to them they have a greater natural incentive to share this. It’s making them a part of this whole process.

Kyle: For example, let’s say I need a recommendation for a mat for a very tall person, so there are specific mats made for extremely tall people but let’s say you’re not tall. 

You need to go to a group and say I’m looking specifically for recommendations for taller people, and then you can include that and say Dave says this is a great mat. And then at the end of the process you send the list back to Dave and say thanks for your recommendation.

Three different things, there are existing lists that you have been sent whether it is through WhatsApp, whether it’s in these kinds of groups, so look for existing lists.

We are going to pull together as many as we can and then curate them. 

Second is going to Reddit, it is really good for this kind of collective discussion. 

Then third go into communities that you’re part of around this niche and ask. Say this is what I’m doing and I am looking for suggestions.

Nice and simple these are three ways.

Initially we are going to do it in a Google sheet because it’s easy to get lots of information in there, this is going to be a working document. 

People are going to keep giving you suggestions.

Initially you’re going to want to share it as a google sheet. Later though we can take all the information, let’s say we are almost at the final draft. 

Later we can take this information and turn it into a nice PDF and then we can add our branding, we can add our website, we can add our social media, etcetera. So later format -wise, we might go to PDF.

We don’t want to do that too quickly because this should be a living document that is going to change, at least for the first month or so.

Harms: Once it’s done, once you’ve seen the changes slowing down or the frequency of the change reducing, then we can turn into something a bit nicer.

Because now people have seen this and they’ve added the changes, or I’ve tweaked it based on feedback.

Now we have a great document that’s going to be very useful. Let me brand it up and make it look nice.

Kyle: Now let’s take the time or maybe even pay a designer to make this look really great and that will be the final draft.

Harms: Because what we never recommend, and this is the trap most people fall into is they would spend maybe a guide creating this list getting it designed, making it look awesome then distributing it to find out nobody cares.

It looks fancy but it is not really that useful to me.

Whereas doing it the other way is getting a useful list first which is more of a raw list, then going out with a finished polished product. 

Another example is the BBO show. 

We don’t have a website yet, we don’t have a logo yet although it is being created and it’s freaking awesome, but we could have delayed the launch of this until all of the logo, the domain name, email collection tool, everything was all set up whatever, but we didn’t.

We said let’s go live because this is providing instant value and you can speak to us directly and say this.

Format

Harms: Going back to formats, initially we said we’ve got a sheet and then think about a fancy PDF once it is done. Once you’ve compiled that list and you’ve seen the frequency of changes reduce.

What are some tips there, what do you recommend without going over the top.

Kyle: The first thing if you are adding your voice if there is an authorial voice with your comments and your suggestions.

That is already personalising it so that you’re already putting yourself in a position of an expert.

We just need to make sure people know who you are so it could be as simple as making sure the header in the Google doc has your website. 

You could change the title of the list so it is the name of your company or your name’s ultimate guide to yoga at home.

We make sure that when you are listing out the top online yoga classes or the top spinning classes, we make sure that yours is one of those obviously.

You don’t hide that so you’re very open about that.

This is a slightly technical one but when you do export it and we’re going to be talking about this in distribution when it is exported, make sure that your company name or your name is in the file name.

Because that’s what people are sending to each other on WhatsApp and that’s a good way to make sure your name is going to appear every time it is shared.

Don’t be shy to include your social media because although they may not transact with you now they will follow you and see you’re the person behind the list, which is always nice.

Have your URLs, so have your links embedded so one way you could do it is if it’s a live document is in the title, say Harms and Kyle’s ultimate guide to working at home, Harms and Kyle could be a URL which takes them to the BBO show as an example.

Have strategic links placed in there as well, which are obvious it’s not to hide it, you created this list so don’t be shy to link it up as much as possible.

Kyle: The main thing is it’s not 100% just your products because you’re going to begin with so many suggestions, it’s fine that you sprinkle in yours. 

It’s fine if you even highlight yours above other people’s. If you’ve got 100 different suggestions and two of them are yours in pride of place, that’s fine.

People know the value of the rest of the document.

It’s just if you give people a one pager which just has your prices and your times on it that is valuable for you as a business owner but not for them.

Think about what’s useful for them and then add in your branding, your voice, your service offerings just don’t take the piss basically. answered that.

We are going to be getting it into so many hands the fact that you are one of hundred different suggestions on there won’t really matter, because we’re going to be getting it to thousands of people.

How to distribute? 

Harms: Final part then how do we distribute this list?

Let’s assume that we’ve researched it, we’ve curated it into this working document, not a final piece of artwork but a working document.

Now how do we get it out to people’s hands?

I guess the first thing we need to focus on is what channels do we need to get it out from?

I mentioned a blog post, but there are more direct channels that we can use.

Kyle: Right now what is working really well is WhatsApp because everybody is stuck in the same situation, we are all stuck at home. Nobody has any way to socialise, so WhatsApp works in particular, people are chatting on WhatsApp.

People are using WhatsApp groups whether it’s family, whether it’s a peer group, their friends, it’s how we socialise right now. 

People were using WhatsApp a lot before, but now it’s become even more important.

This is where the current resource lists the ultimate resource lists are being shared.

Ultimately, that’s where we want ours to gain some traction and to start being shared around by people within our niche or people interested in our niche.

We want to share it into these groups of people who will find it useful.

If you are in a big yoga group or yoga instructor group, or maybe you have a group with your current students make sure you share it there. 

That’s the first place we want but we need to go a bit wider than that, we want to get other people sharing it so it’s not just us sharing it to our groups.

We need other people to find it useful and share it into their groups and that’s where it is really going to start to grow.

I don’t want to use the term going viral, one, because of coronavirus I don’t think we can use going viral anymore.

Harms: Going viral now will become a PC term I think.

Kyle: Things go viral when they’re valuable and people want to share them so we are trying to manufacture virality, but we cannot rely on it.

Harms: Because there are companies out there which have people working to create viral content, there are groups of individuals who create video content with the sole purpose for this video to go viral and that is their day job.

Kyle: Plus there is a lot of money behind it as well, the idea of organic virality doesn’t work anymore.

Harms: So don’t allow that to be your focus or your goal.

That’s the intention that we would like to happen but we can’t rely on it. 

Kyle: We are going to spread it to WhatsApp to our current groups absolutely fine, if it takes off and people start sending it to other people fantastic that’s virality. You’ve got what you needed.

We are going to look at a few other different routes.

First up is going to be your current clients and your current customers, so this is a really useful thing you can immediately provide them. 

You know they come to you for spinning, you know, they come to you for yoga. They are now stuck at home as everyone else’s, so these are immediately people you should be sharing this value with.

Sharing these resources with and it’s a good way for you to keep in touch with them and a good way for you to maintain a relationship.

Let’s focus on value and giving value and getting as much value out into the world instead of virality.

We want something to be valuable enough that people share it with each other and that’s all we are aiming for. If they start to share it with people on WhatsApp, great.

Harms: And do ask them, just say share this with anybody you think will find this useful and specifically send it to them via WhatsApp.

If you email it to them you’re adding an additional step there, where they need to get it out of their email into WhatsApp and then forward it to people.

Harms: We call it friction.

We want to reduce the friction for them to act and do something.

Kyle: We want it to be one button away to share it with their other friends who are into yoga. 

That’s why we want to try and use WhatsApp as much as possible to get the initial file to people or the initial link to people and beyond that, they’ll be able to share it more easily.

One other additional useful suggestion and this depends on whether you go local or regional, if you are focusing locally there are the physical noticeboards, Sainsbury’s, and Tesco etc have them.

They are less useful nowadays because of the lockdown, but there are also apps and social media networks like next door. The people who use it are really into it. Next door is invite only.

Harms:  You can request it but you have to be invited by a neighbour who knows you. So only people in the local world will be on this app. It’s amazing.

Kyle: If you are doing local marketing it’s great you can download the app; I think you can request someone to send you a postcard and each member of next door can send either 10 or 20 postcards to their other neighbours. 

That will have a little code on it and that’s how they spread and it means that only people within your postcode and the surrounding postcodes have access to your particular part of next door.

It is hyper-local right now during corona it’s just kicking off, everybody is helping each other and everybody is setting up corona support groups within next door. 

A lot of them, then go to WhatsApp but next door is where they first congregate.

If you were to go there and say, I’ve put together a list of resources to help you keep fit during these times, please share with anyone you know who needs a bit of support physically and mental health, next door is going to be a really good place to start spreading that out to people.

Because you’re coming from a place of value giving not because you are trying to sell.

If you just went on next door saying I’m doing yoga lessons at £20 an hour online, you’ll just get shot down.

Harms: The good thing about WhatsApp and apps like next door is that the hardest thing for a market to do is to gain trust with your audience.

Here the trust is built up, you’re already on WhatsApp with somebody and next door is very similar. Because of this whole postcard and recommendation process there’s a layer of security for you to be in the local group.

Kyle: You need to maintain that trust, so do not go in there and just try to sell people your classes.

Harms: Do ask the question.

This is the part that most people do miss, which is what you would like them to do with this list. 

Hopefully, it’s a useful resource for yourself, but also, please share it with anybody outside of our community which you think may benefit or maybe in a similar situation.

That’s the ask otherwise sometimes people see the list and they’re like that’s an amazing list. Just that extra bit of direction will mean, I know people who may really find this useful I’m going to share it with them.

Sometimes we need that prompt.

Kyle: That’s something you cannot do if you’re just selling to people. 

If you say, buy my stuff and share this with three of your friends people will say no. But if it’s something that’s generally valuable that ask is going to be well received.

So the local community, using next door great, maybe print out some flyers and stick them in Sainsbury’s and Tesco. Right now fewer people are going out so that’s going to be less useful but there are community boards depending on where you live, which might be useful.

Competitors are an interesting one.

Not going to call them competitors but other people who are probably struggling because they do something similar to what you’re doing.

You’re just going to contact them and say, I do yoga classes, I do spin classes in the area, times are rough. I’m putting together this ultimate list of resources to help people in the area I’ve put my classes in here, do you want to add your classes?

Harms: That’s the key, ask them to say, what would you like me to include in this list and give them a template so that initial template from the name, website, testimonial. 

Ask them for that information specifically and say I’d love to put you in this list because during this time we’ve got to stick together and it’d be great to feature you on this list.

Kyle: You’re going to them not as a competitor, but you’re going to them as an information publisher at this point. 

You’re saying I want to include you on my list and we can get this out to lots of people so that they can continue to stay fit at home, and I want you to be on this list.

You’re coming at it from a very different angle and they’re never competitors, they’re colleagues.

Harms: They share the market space with you.

The next step from there once it is created you send it back to them and say you’re on this list, share with your customer base, share with your community

Kyle: Share on WhatsApp, go on next door and show people.

That’s how you spread it, you get other people invested in getting it out to the wider world.

Harms: Give them that list and give them that direction from a place of just helping them out in terms of let’s assume that nobody knows about WhatsApp, next door, another competitor and say these are three or four different places you can share this just to help you or your team.

Allow them as little thinking as needed because at the end of the day we’re all going to be thinking about lots of other things right now, never mind sharing a list.

Kyle: I had a couple more options; these are smaller ones as we’ve covered the main ones.

But if there are any big blocks in your niche or podcasts or podcasts that have blogs or it could be YouTubers. 

Any big influencers within your niche share the list with them. Make sure they’re on the lift first even if they aren’t a competitor in your area, it could be someone larger like yoga with Adriene.

If you do yoga share the list with them, either via Twitter or email or however they normally talk with their fans and say, I’ve put you on this list. 

I think this ultimate resource list would be really useful for people around the world or in the country who are trying to find free resources but they don’t really know where to turn.

If you can get someone big, some big influencer to share your list, then you’re good.

Harms: That’s one way to do it.

Find somebody who’s got a very large, powerful, influential position with their audience and then go like that.

Kyle: I’ve separated them from competitors because you probably don’t think of them as competitors as they’re so much bigger. 

So we can go to them and say this is the list you’re on and I think it’d be really useful for everybody in the community if you could help share it that will be great.

Harms: These are lots of free methods, say somebody wanted to put their money behind this, what would they do?

Kyle: You could use a paid Facebook and Instagram posting.

There are a few more steps involved but the way I’d do it is I would get on video like this and I would say, hey, I’ve put together a list of the top resources in yoga, if you’re stuck at home right now and you want to keep healthy and you want to keep your mind sane. This is a free list. 

You don’t need an email or anything to access it, if you follow the link down below you’ll be able to access a Google document and I hope it’s useful for you.

Something like that just fast quick, making sure people don’t think there’s a sale because they’re going to assume there is.

Harms: So let them know it is free.

Kyle: The more you plan it the more it’s going to seem like a sales script, so it really does need to be off the cuff like that yet.

That could work and you’d be able to reach thousands of people for five, £10 a day.

I think for now, if you focus on creating something that is genuinely valuable to the community we shouldn’t have to focus on paid too much.

Action you can take now

Harms: We’ve covered what we’re making the ultimate resource list, number two is how to make it and we discussed how to distribute it.

Number one is deciding the scope of your list, what is your focus going to be, e.g. an ultimate list of free yoga resources something like that which is specific and will be opened by somebody who has got an interest in the area.

Number two is pull together everything you can into a Google sheet,

It’s very easy to use and share that link and for people to access it very quickly and easily.

Curate the list and go for the research process that we discussed today and remove the things you think are not relevant. 

Things that you’ve used yourself are a bonus as you can give a personal opinion on that as well.

Then publish to the people you asked, get it into all those places, WhatsApp’s, Facebook groups, all the places that we discussed and ask them to please share this with other people.

Keep pushing it, keep getting it out there and then later, the next step in the future could be to brand it up, turn it into a PDF and send it to a designer.

But right now a Google sheet is 100% okay, that’s it.

What can a business do in shifting their model going online, what’s a way they can do that?

An ultimate resource list is a technique that we wanted to share with you.

What you have learned so far:

• Understand what we are creating and why – Your very own ultimate resource list
• How to easily make this list authentically using top tips
• Learn how to distribute (market) this resource list as quickly as possible (for free)

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