[6:39] – [It’s a challenge to use] my professional skills on my own content. (Context: I’m good at seeing the strong points and gaps and hidden potential in the swirling mass of other people’s new ideas. But when I try to do that for the swirling mass of ideas I have for my own content or projects or tasks, it is much harder.) —Mitchell Wade
[12:45] – I’m trying to create an online course for students preparing to take a major standardized test. Because students would only be interested in the product during a window of a couple months, is an email list still the best way to market to them? I.e., having never used an email list to market before, I’m not sure if email lists work well for such short term clients. —Gabe L.
[18:15] – I just started writing a book (a step-by-step guide to discovering purpose for small teams). For the past weeks I have been focused on getting into a habit of creating the contents for the book. I’d like to hear your thoughts on when and how I should start trying to building the audience. —Justin
Get the domain and set up a landing page — Squarespace is an easy place to start.
Tease out what the book is about.
Put together some sort of small-teams cheatsheet or the first chapter or something else and give it away.
Tell folks that when they sign up to get on the book wait list they’ll get your worksheet and they’ll also be the first to know when the book comes out.
Email to that list at a bare minimum of once a month, but once a a week is best.
In your email: Share your work; Share snippets and sections from the book; Take photos of your writing space; Share stories about your writing experience; give value and build anticipation.
Keep all of it relevant around the theme and topic of the book, but also build anticipation and be personal. People like to buy from folks they know and trust.
As people signed up to be notified, we sent an email asking what their greatest challenge related to time management was. We received a 40% response rate!
Used the responses to finalize the class contents. We built it to answer the biggest challenges that our specific audience was facing.
Also used the responses in our marketing material. So it would speak their language and resonate.
March – 2-week Launch Sequence to those interested in the class. (A segmented list of 500 people)
