Harms: We’re talking about how to build your first course which will live as an entry point within your expert business funnel. With the end result being you get clients paying for your premium services whether that’s coaching, mentoring consulting, you have a package to sell, a premium product to sell whatever it is. 

This is a great mechanism specially for an expert funnel in order to allow an entry point for clients and that’s where we are. 

Specifically, we are now on the point where we are taking what we discussed with all our ideas which would be forming our course and we turned it into a syntax via an eight-stage process. 

Let’s assume now that we have that syntax in place which is a snapshot of a permanent document. It highlights sections of your particular course and also what the content is. 

Remember, this is not a script. 

These are just bullet points, prompts, flashcards to just prompt us and sequence the order of the course. We are assuming at this point you have a syntax. 

Now we’re going to be bulking up the course and getting it almost to a final product, a final MVP minimum viable product. 

Not a perfectly polished product.

Kyle: We structured our course, we’ve got everything step-by- step and that became lesson one, lesson two, lesson three guiding people through teaching about our expertise about our knowledge and really providing a massive amount of value to people who want to learn from us and potential customers. 

We have set down the body of this course, we have the steps, what we didn’t do is put an introduction on the front or conclusion on the end.

There’s a good reason for that, we first need to know what the structure of the whole course was. Now we know what that is, now that we have this syntax in place we can loopback add the introduction and we can add the conclusion as well.

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Harms: Because the danger of doing it the other way is if you create an introduction and a conclusion. 

It’s almost like everything you put in between there has to abide by what you introduce and abide by what your conclusion is. 

It’s not quite like writing an article or a piece of work where you say this is the conclusion of my hypothesis, and you discuss around that point. We are doing something similar in the sense that we have a problem statement to solve and the course answers that problem statement. 

But now to actually provide an introduction i.e. what you are going to learn in my course today will be this and the conclusion it can naturally be put at the end. 

The conclusion may be very simply the fact that we are talking about problem solving and hopefully by this point, it’s now solved via the stages. 

So think of it like that , the introduction conclusion comes last not first. 

The introduction and conclusion are important but after the main body of work.

Kyle: We write them after everything is said and done. 

What I did want to point out is that they do not need to be the same length as whole lessons, so let’s say each of your lessons each of your steps within the body of your course takes an hour, for example. 

You do not need your introduction or conclusion to take an hour. 

Regardless of whether these are pre-recorded videos or live session or if you have people in the room, regardless of this, you shouldn’t spend this much time on the introduction or conclusion just because while doing that, yes, you’re framing the course but you are not delivering the actual value, the actual content that people are there for. 

We’re going to keep these relatively short, you do not need to overview absolutely everything. 

You just need to give guidance on where we are going.

Kyle: You should be adding the introduction and the conclusion to your syntax. 

We do want to add them into that document but they don’t need to take as much space as a whole lesson. 

I would recommend putting the introduction section at the beginning of lesson one so you have your introduction, framing the whole course and then you say now we’re going to get into lesson one.

Harms: Add it to your syntax and then you’ve got that document so you don’t have to continue to think about what’s my introduction going to be, it’s already there on paper. 

The next question at this point is how do we deliver this course? 

One is delivery, but also how do we film it? 

That forms part of that delivery.

Kyle: For context we are going to be doing this via Facebook live. I’m going to go through chronologically how we do this. 

We’re going to be doing it through a Facebook group. We could go through the dozens of different methods for delivering your content but we’re going to use one. 

This is your first course. It’s a pilot, remember it’s an MVP minimum viability product. 

It does not need to be perfect; it needs to be done. We’re going to release that product, get feedback and then we will adapt.

Basically, we’re going to be setting up a Facebook group, we will be getting the students in the group go and then we’re going to be delivering to that group using Facebook live. 

We are going to be talking about the technical, how we get people in the group. But that is the basic shape, we set up a Facebook group. 

We get people into the Facebook group and then we deliver using Facebook live into that same group. That’s it. That’s the framework we are going to use.

Harms: When we work with some clients they are working on a television show for example, it has genuinely taken them eight months to get a couple of series filmed. 

Whereas an equivalent production timeline could be somebody just shooting live there and there. Very similar to the BBO Show video show with all of his life. I can’t imagine the amount of work involved.

Kyle: The key here is for you to get the work done so we need to remove as many barriers as possible and if we’re removing things like editing and uploading and creating a website, we are removing the barriers between you and an audience. 

The people you need to deliver value to. 

We’re going to start teaching ASAP. 

Once you’ve delivered the content live that content can be repackaged, that content can be downloaded. We can package them, edit them, tidy it up and make an ebook. We can do so much with it. 

Once we have finished the first draft and the first draft is what we’re doing now to you, talking to you via Facebook live or YouTube live and we are asking you to do exactly the same thing you do in your first draft of the course using live video. 

Then based on feedback based on what works, based on what doesn’t work then you create a longer-term product we are doing exactly what we are preaching here.

Scheduling: Delivery weekly

Harms: The first question off the back of this is when do I deliver?

One method is you’ve got the whole syntax and you say I’m going to deliver this in one day. That’s one method, what’s a better solution for the person creating the course and the people consuming?

Kyle: I would say if you feel really excited and want to deliver it one-day, do it, go ahead that’s like your first run, your first practice.

Fantastic you’re going to have a really good asset at the end of that. However, for most people that is not going to be sustainable nor is it the best way because we’re not getting feedback as we go along. 

What we suggest will be up to you and your situation but we suggest you deliver one step, one lesson of the course per week. 

That tends to be the best, a month is too long, daily is too short, and a week is about right. 

So why a week? 

There are two different things. 

We’re talking about you and the audience, so the audience gives your students time to actually assimilate the information you’re teaching and to go through the. 

Remember when we did the syntax before we talked about at the end of each step of the end of each lesson we should be giving them something to do. 

Getting people to take action is really the point of this course, we want them not just to sit and listen to us but to do something about it. 

By spreading out over the week we can give people a week to complete the actions, they’re more likely to get them done and that means buy in with you more interest in what you’re doing. 

On the flipside, you as the teacher gives you time to make adjustments, so let’s say you’re delivering a five part course and the first two weeks you find time you’re running out of time, you are not able to deliver this in an hour each week. 

That means for that the next three lessons you can start to edit things out. 

You can actually go through and say, okay, now I know this week I’m going to do three as that will take me to hours to deliver. It allows you to adapt on the fly. 

Whereas if you just blasted through in one go you can’t make those adjustments or tweaks. This is just-in-time production, you can adapt during the process.

We’ve got practice looking at the camera now, but the tendency is because Harminder is on the screen down here, I might just be looking at Harminder rather than at the camera. 

For the audience watching that creates a really weird disconnect as I am no longer really engaged with the camera up here. 

These are the kinds of things if you make that mistake in week one and you watch the video or somebody tells you, week two you won’t make that mistake. Your course will get better and better and better. 

If you were like the excited person at the beginning of this section and blast it out in a day. 

Great, you have the course. 

But imagine if you are just looking down here all the time while you are doing the course and it’s just your reading off your notes. 

Yes, you’ve learnt you don’t look down here you look at the camera but you’ve put in a lot of work before you learn that, whereas we can adapt on a week by week basis by delivering a staggered schedule.

Harms: Exactly and that’s one example of not something that can go wrong but you may want to improve on. It could be a sound issue. It could be the way you’re delivering the content it’s not understandable, it could be you’re speaking too quickly. 

So that doesn’t allow time to adapt, adjust, evaluate and that’s the key here. 

Another thing that people sometimes wonder of is what time do I actually deliver this? 

It is going to depend on your personal situation and when is the best time for you. That’s typically the caveat then the second thing would be when is the highest chance of my audience listening? 

The closest you can get both of those together, the better.

There’s got to be a balance, if you keep on disrupting your personal life the likelihood of you not continuing to complete the process becomes high.

Kyle: It needs to work for you otherwise you’ll stop doing it. 

Consistency is always going to win. Whatever fits in your life yes, you need to make it fit the audience as well, there might be a compromise, but ultimately if it does not fit with your schedule and you get tired of it. You will stop producing content, it doesn’t matter when the audience is online because you’re not doing it.

You become number one and the audience becomes second in this particular topic, which is what time do you deliver this, because the detrimental effect is it will annoy you, the people around you and will stop you from doing it. 

Announce the course!

Harms: Now we’re starting to build layers to it, now we’ve got an introduction, outro to our syntax. 

We know when we’re delivering it, you know how to determine what time you deliver it. Again it is going to be personally dependent.

Now we’re going to announce it. 

Why are we doing this so fast?

Kyle:  We want to keep the momentum and excitement. 

We’ve just created this amazing course we want to maintain that level of excitement and through to our potential audience. 

What a lot of people do now is they have this nice nicely formatted Word document they say, I’m going to edit this and make it perfect. 

A lot of people out there have this perfectional streak and you need to suppress it.

Harms: By announcing it and giving it a deadline that’s probably the best way to remove this perfectionist. 

Take it at this stage, in terms of look we all want the perfect product and the first product, the reality is it’s never going to be perfect, because we haven’t had any feedback from it. It may be perfect in our mind but we can present that perfection and somebody says can you do this instead? 

A way to streamline that is to have a start date which is publicly announced and that’s the best way to do it. 

It also comes with another advantage which is we now start to set the expectation and make the course known to people out there in the online world.

Kyle: You could have in your head this perfect course but as soon as you go out and you meet the customer, the audience. 

What they start telling you, the feedback you start getting means that you are going to make changes. 

It doesn’t matter if you’ve been planning your course for six months or the last week as soon as you come into contact with the market with actual people, things are going to change. 

So you might as well get in contact with the audience as soon as possible rather than waste all that time creating the perfect syntax, perfect course. 

Harms: It doesn’t matter because what you think is important might not align with what your audience thinks.

Then how do we announce it? 

We understand that we’re going to announce it, but how do we actually announce this?

Two main announcement methods:

Kyle: One thing I’d advise regardless of who you announce it to announce it with a time delay. 

Do that four weeks out or six weeks out, because it’s going to give you more time to get people excited about the course, get them into your group and also if you have any lingering thought about finishing up the syntax, this is the time to do it so you have plenty of time. 

You don’t need to have six months and then you announce, instead you announce and you give yourself a little window to polish things.

If you’ve watched any of our videos or courses you build up an audience and we build a tribe of people. 

If you have done this already this is where you announce it to, specifically into your tribe. 

Hopefully if you followed all the way through we started building a course we asked the questions on what the tribe wanted to know. 

Very simply go back to those people saying, I’ve created a course on what it is you wanted to know. Because they’ve been part of that creation, because you’ve listened, you built their questions into the course, they should be very easy to get on board immediately. 

Generally, you are announcing to your tribe and you can announce to your audience as well and doing a course in four weeks’ time it’s going to be about this. 

You can give an outline of what it is about, you have the syntax, you can talk to them about problems, solutions as you’ll have this sketched out already.

Harms: Now is a great time to talk about do I charge or not?

I would say, because this is your tribe this is a caveat here because they are your tribe there is already trust and the fact that they know you’re an expert. 

The suggestion is your first pilot course, your MVP so don’t charge a crazy amount, it could just be a nominal fee that allows somebody to transact with you to make that first piece of income that first transaction online and also practice a mechanism asking for a sale online for your valuable expert knowledge. 

It is a great feeling once it is done and then you open the door to more expensive products in the future, but at this stage it can start quite low. 

The advantage of charging once they’ve committed funds they’re going to value the course more. They’re likely to turn up, likely to watch the videos. 

This is the challenge with all of the content out there in the world, yes it is free, but only the person who really desires and a tiny percentage will see that information. 

If they don’t skim it if they don’t just fast forward the content. 

Charging adds a layer of value in and it means that they’re going to sit and watch it and actually attend.

Kyle:  They’ll carry out the actions as well as they’re valuing the information you give them more as they have to pay for it. 

They’re more likely to carry out what you suggested they do, then you’re more likely to see more success stories. If what you’re teaching is genuinely valuable by charging for it you can help people, which seems psychological. 

When we’re talking about charging it’s not just for you. It’s not just your income. It will help them to achieve their goals as well because they’re going to take it more seriously. 

If you do have any hang ups about charging for it think about it that way about. 

Even if it is a nominal fee charging your tribe access to this course is going to help them.

Harms: Now how should somebody take payment for their course?

Kyle: Right now before we have a website, e-commerce infrastructure we’re going to use something called gum road to charge for digital products or we can use PayPal. 

Right now building a whole ecommerce site and taking payments is not worth it. 

We need speed in your tribe, so they know you are if you send them a PayPal link it’s going to be a lot simpler. There is enough trust for them to pay you via PayPal or Gum road if you want to set it up.

No tribe

Harms: One of the challenges is what if my tribe isn’t quite there yet, what if I don’t have a tribe what do I  do then?

Kyle: If you don’t have a tribe yet this is a really good time to build one because you have something of value, something to announce to people that you could take out to the world and bring people into your tribe based around the launch of this course.

You might already have professional people in your circle, people you already mentor, coach or just people peripherally around you in the professional world depending on what your business is. 

If they’re interested then reach out to them and tell them that you are doing this online. That’s going to be the simplest way.

Use the fact that you’re doing a course in four weeks and the course is going to solve this problem, use that as a hook to move your audience into your tribe. 

This would mean you typically may not be charging at this stage because that jump might be too steep for them, even if it’s one pound, £5, £10. It will be too steep so it can be done for free. 

And that could be the hook, which takes them from the audience into tribe. 

Think about what professional networks you are in, who you can email, what relationships can you leverage to launch your first course?

Kyle: Any newsletters you might be able to send to again because it’s something new you’re launching.

Harms: If it’s free then it is a no-brainer for them.

Any groups you are in are great, any existing groups that you add value to that works as well. 

Another method is you can do a cold reach out to anybody who is an influencer, or you think has a large following within the industry and temporarily align yourself with them providing their audience value and also helps you launch your first MVP. 

If you are charging, they may say actually I’d like you to charge for this product and I would like to take a fee. 

The purpose of this remember is not to make lots of cash up front, it is to allow your customers to go through your value ladder, entry-level product to purchase something more premium from you later. 

Think about the approach but it is different for everybody.

Kyle: As long as your course is valuable and you are sharing in places where the people will actually find it valuable and you’re not trying to sell something immediately. 

If you just go and spam random Facebook groups that you have never interacted with then you’re going to get kicked out and you’re not going to make any conversions.

Going Live – Technical

Harms:  Now onto the actual delivery of the course. 

Again we’re adding layers we understand about the announcement, who we’re going to announce it to, how we’re going to announce, how we are going to take payment?

Now we’ve got all of those things figured out. 

It’s time to get technical with the technical details, and how we can deliver. Technically if you remember we said go live. 

But that’s the technical principle, but what do you mean by Facebook live? 

It is essentially taking the camera. 

The simplest method is you log into Facebook and when you post something it also gives you an option to post live. It takes whatever we see on this camera and shares it live on their device, that is the mechanism. 

Whereas typically somebody would have to shoot video, then upload it as a post two different things.

One has a time involved. One is instantly live broadcast.

Kyle: We can go live to the world. It’s incredible, we have the technology now.

Lots of people may not view the video in the first instance, that’s fine, but look how much time you save by avoiding the challenge of recording, uploading etc.

There is no paid software, no subscriptions. 

There is nothing involved and if you don’t have the budget for a webcam as an example you can use your laptop standard webcam.

There is also the option to share your screen and do slides. 

I would recommend not doing slides. 

Using PowerPoint is something that people default to and I don’t think it necessarily helps their teaching. 

It’s going to slow your production massively because instead of just having a syntax and starting to teach, getting the value out there now you’re suddenly spending weeks building up a slide deck slide. 

They also reduce engagement. It’s you looking at slides and in the wrong hands it can be very boring. They can be useful but they need to be done well plus even then it’s going to take you time and slow you down. 

We’re falling back into that specialist trap of trying to have everything ready, instead just talk to the camera. 

It’s just a lot of hassle and remember this is your minimum viable product. 

This is the first draft, the first full course you’re putting out the door, don’t overcomplicate it.

Harms: A cool mechanism is if you have got an iPad that can be plugged in and you can share that to your live screen.

Kyle: That’s great but I would say you’re adding additional layers of complexity, though again, unless it is entirely necessary. 

Keep it simple.

Harms: That’s the live stream technique of how to do that and we suggest keeping it simple. 

What about video and audio? 

These are important, but one has to be more perfect than the other.

Kyle: Audio is the most important people need to hear you. If you are using the telephone microphones on these are rubbish. 

You want to have a headset or you can get a podcast microphone.

Harms: The purpose of the microphone is essential as it allows you to capture a direction from your voice. 

The challenge is if you don’t have a microphone focused on direction it will pick up all the environmental noise and that sounds terrible just sounds very low budget. 

I think people are accustomed to not having to deal with that when it comes to audio. 

Go with audio first always, video comes second video.

Kyle: Most laptops will have a good camera and on a smartphone so there is no need to go crazy about this. 

It’s very easy for people to hide behind the technical stuff. 

We just want you to move through that so instead of giving you basically the space to make excuses. 

Just move on this stuff, don’t let it stop you.

Harms:  Do not go for the most expensive item, until you do these courses regularly, comfortably, and consistently. 

Then it is worth investing in some awesome tech. if there are two of you or you have a guest to guest live presentations. We use a software called Be live, there are similar things like that. 

My suggestion would be to Google guest streaming software. 

It is not essential, but you may want to do it and it may be worthwhile if there are two of you. It adds a whole different level of dynamic if you’re by yourself just go straight to Facebook.

Going live – Teaching Confidence

Harms: That’s the technical side, what about actually going live during the teaching part and what if there is a challenge with confidence.

Kyle: This is the other big objection. 

People come to us with technical objections but really the big objection is confidence, you can hide behind the PowerPoint etc but the real block is the person. 

They don’t want to go on camera, they don’t want to speak to people and I get that. 

It’s a skill like any other skill you’ve got to practice and when you start it’s going to be rubbish and you’re going to hate it. 

But you will get better. 

If you want a safe way to do that you can do Facebook and YouTube live videos outside of the course environment that’s the best way to build up confidence levels.

Harms: A good tip is to buddy up with somebody who you trust and you can go live in front of. 

This doesn’t mean a one-to-one FaceTime. 

What you do is you create a private Facebook group, completely separate and give it a name. Harms practising going live to a group, that’s the name and it’s known as a secret group, which means only somebody who’s searched that specific name, or gets invited can join that group.

The practice of going live on a Facebook group using the technical stuff we spoke about and potentially somebody watching it was enough for them to practice and get really good at it.

Kyle: It is also not that different from FaceTime. 

So yes, you might say thousands of people are going to see me. Initially they won’t. 

They’re not all going to see you but if you’re doing it to the course as well remember, the people are in your course because they trust your expertise, they’re there for your value and your knowledge and they’re going to respect you for that.

Harms: If you are really struggling with the fact that there is no way I can do this because look at the amazing people out there. 

But one tip I’ll give you is to scroll back 10 years ago, five years ago to when they started YouTube or Facebook lives, you will see that they were rubbish it’s not an opinion. 

Compared to where they are now they appear rubbish but back then they were great, they were great at doing what they did back then. 

They just got better and better and better through practice so use the fact that they started on the first step as a piece of encouragement that somebody who I look up to and say they’ve done amazing in video actually started like this. 

Same thing with celebrities, actors, actresses in their film versus what they are now. I am looking at two different actors and actresses here. 

Don’t compare yourself to somebody who is at their perceived end destination. 

Compare yourself to where they were at the start, it will motivate you to get started. If you’re recording yourself you can let yourself off the hook because you can now look back and say how that wasn’t good enough, I’ll do another take. 

Live video does not let you off the look so if you stumble, repeat yourself, doesn’t matter if you continue onto your next sentence.

The live video will take five minutes. The recorded one I would say count how many times you stop recording and start again. 

Kyle: It will take a long time whereas with live video you might stumble, but at the end of the day you’re a person. 

That’s why these people are attracted to you and your tribe because you’re a person. 

The fact you might stumble over a word does not mean you don’t have a massive amount of valuable expert information and knowledge. 

You are important to them in this course.

Harms: They’re not buying your course because they want it perfect they’re buying into your course as they want to know what’s in your head. 

They want access to you, your knowledge, and the service you provide.

Kyle: Interestingly enough the ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’ gives a higher level of intimacy and authenticity than a fully polished, beautiful, corporate video, where somebody is delivering a message. 

It makes the personality of the person more attractive and you find yourself wanting to do business with them or learn more from them, whereas if it is fully professional, I think less and less that polish professional look works.

Harms: There are pros and cons of both but for you at a starting point this is the quickest way, we’re talking about five minutes versus multiple takes versus production workflow.

Kyle: Personally from my point of view I record lots of courses and audio courses. I used to hate the sound of my own voice, I’m still not particularly comfortable with it. 

Editing my audio and video used to be an absolute nightmare. 

The first course I produced took 10 hours teaching Chinese, reading, writing, and having to record all of that, edit it, it took months and months and months. 

It was utter anguish and eventually I got over myself, but it took a very long time. 

Whereas if I’d done live it would have been a lot quicker. 

I would have been able to move through to get to the comfort level faster. 

That’s why we recommend it to everybody. 

Once you get through, once you take the plunge and start doing live video as you get used to it, the quantity, and the quality of the content you can produce skyrockets.

Harms: We’ve also taken the pressure off because we’re not talking to a script, there is no preparation. 

All we’re doing is using that syntax we prepared and allowing that to allow us to recall expert knowledge in our mind. 

It is already there we’re not coming up with new things that we were never aware of. 

You could probably talk about if for days. 

Your challenge is going to be keeping it concise. 

The purpose of the syntax is just to remind you of what you need to talk about at this moment in time when you deliver the live session. 

The first session our suggestion is that you print the syntax rather than having it on a computer because you may end up just being fixated on syntax and forget that someone’s watching you on the camera. 

Have it printed off and let the audience know I’ve got some amazing notes to share with you. Don’t hide it.

 Allow that to be your point of reference then bring yourself back to the camera to deliver that point. 

At no point do we hide it, allow it to prompt you, never ever a script.

Again I occasionally glance at my notes, my syntax and say okay that is what I want to share here.

Kyle: With syntax we have got one side where you memorise the whole speech, whole and then the other side we have reading a script. 

We are in the middle but we have our notes so we can look there and then we have our point and it’s so natural. 

Reading off a script has zero engagement so syntax should allow you to be a lot more comfortable in a live environment in the format.

Harms: The big one to start with is keep looking at the camera, don’t look at yourself, that could be a prompt. 

If you do it now and then it’s not the end of the world. But try bringing yourself back to that and it will become natural. 

You won’t be able to speak to anybody but the camera.

Kyle: The big tip is just to do it. All these tips will help you iron out kinks.

Harms:  We spoke about schedules. When should I deliver this? 

We specifically said weekly is a good suggestion and at a time that suits you first, that’s important otherwise you’ll end up not doing it. 

Then we spoke about announcing the course, let’s go ahead and announce a course we can do this to our tribe directly, or we can do it as a hook to get people into our tribe. 

Another thing within announcing is how we take payment and how do we set the expectation for the start date. We recommended doing about four weeks out to give you some preparation time and then when the four weeks comes we can take payment leading up to that. 

We mentioned very simply to use something simple as PayPal, people are familiar. 

We then spoke about going live as the main mechanism for delivery. 

We spoke about the tech audio and video and some budgeting starting points. 

Finally teaching techniques. 

The most important thing that you need to be aware of for your first course, things will evolve and we also spoke about overcoming some of the barriers actually going live in front of the camera. 

Confidence, objections, and hopefully scenarios, situations we’ve been in that can help. 

Don’t compare yourself to somebody who seems to be at the end of the game compare yourself to what they were like at the starting point. 

That’s a good starting point to motivate you to actually climb the mountain, otherwise it is pretty tough.

Actions from today are if you have not done it yet to finish the syntax of what we spoke about, adding an introduction and conclusion that will give you a nice finish syntax. 

Start to populate your times. 

Then the second thing is to set yourself a deadline, go ahead and announce the course for four weeks’ time, five weeks’ time whatever suits you.

 But give yourself time for you to take payments, to announce it, for you to get people to sign up to the course and in this instance, that means joining a Facebook group for where you will publish the course and present it live. 

That is it, finish the syntax and announce the course that will get you going, some public accountability as well.

What you have learned so far:

• Best way to film your first course
• What to do if you are not confident in front of camera
• Time to make the announcement and get some excitement built

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