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Verbatim text
Lee:
Welcome to the show. And today we are talking with Neil Napier. He is sharing with us how to validate and to sell online courses. This is something I know a lot of you are interested in doing, especially when attracting your target audience to you and your services. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride. Before we kick off the show, here is a A word from our sponsor. Do you need to collect content from your clients before you start their website?
Neil Napier:
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Lee:
Give it a try at contentsnare.com. Use the code trailblazer when you sign up for 20% off. Welcome to the Agency Trailblazer. Blazer podcast. This is Mr. Lee Jackson. And on today’s show, we have Neil Napier from Kyvio. Neil, how are you?
Neil Napier:
I’m doing very well, thanks, Lee.
Lee:
That’s great to hear. We’ve just had a good conversation. We just become Facebook buddies as well. So that means we’re practically BFFs now.
Neil Napier:
We are. I think we’re pretty close. We have been for a while.
Lee:
Awesome. I actually got introduced to you by the guys over at WP Tonic. So big shout out to WP Tonic podcast, folks. If you don’t listen to that, I do make a guest appearance now and again. And Neil was also on that episode recently. So that’s a fantastic episode, which we will link to in the show notes. So be sure to go ahead and check that out. So Neil, we’d love to learn a little bit about you and who you are. So do you just mind sharing with us who you are, what it is you do, and maybe some interesting fact, like a favourite colour, or your favourite drink, or favourite type of food, just something different as well.
Neil Napier:
Sure. I mean, I always like to preface this with a bit about my background, because a A lot of people these days, they want to be course creators. They want to be someone who creates something. I never used to be that person because for me, entrepreneurship or creating things was more of a necessity to be able to make ends meet, to be able to, at that time, stay in England because I needed to make a certain amount of money to renew my visa. So I got into first freelancing and then product creation. But even though I didn’t make that money initially, I knew that I had learned something that I could implement over over again, and I could continue to build a business on top of that. And for the last five years, that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. I’ve been publishing courses. I’ve been co-creating software platforms. I’ve been launching them in various different markets. And my key goal for the last few years also has been to help people take their knowledge, take what’s inside their head, and turn that into something they can create and sell to other people, basically share what they know with the world.
Neil Napier:
And And that’s been the path for the last few years, and I think I’m quite happy continuing on that in the next few years, too.
Lee:
Awesome. Now then, favourite food? Let’s have that.
Neil Napier:
I cook a fair bit. So just very recently, I cooked a really nice chicken Madras coconut curry.
Lee:
That was pretty tasty. Brilliant. Okay. I look forward to my invite because that sounds absolutely amazing.
Neil Napier:
Absolutely.
Lee:
Come to Finland and it’s yours. Yeah. Okay. No problem. That sounds like a good deal. So I love what you’re saying about helping people get what’s inside of them out there to help other people, i. E. To create courses, to create membership sites, and all of that good stuff. So when did you do that for yourself, first of all?
Neil Napier:
For me, the first time I did that was in 2013. And at that time, I was building made for ads and sites, as you do, those niche sites, as we call them. And it was working really well for me. And I realised that when I spoke to a few people about it, they wanted to learn that as well. And I tried to teach them one on one, but it would just too long. So I thought an easy way to scale this up would be I record some videos by myself. I was using Screencast Omatic at that time. So I recorded those videos and gave it to them. And they liked it, they found value in it, and they recommend it. I should just package it and sell it as a course. So again, it was mostly accidental, and it was all about just me taking the processes that work for me and sharing them with others.
Lee:
That’s awesome. And was that a success? Did you have to market that itself or did that just grow naturally on its own?
Neil Napier:
At that time, I I had on affiliates quite a bit. I mean, I gave up 75 % of any sale they bring in because I was completely new in that market. I had been doing things by myself, but I never taught any people. So I gave up a lot of my money upfront, and it was okay because even at that time, I made in the end about $5,000. And while that’s not a lot of money, when you do it for the first time, it’s actually a nice feeling to make that money and validate your course ideas.
Lee:
I think that’s really important. You’re hitting the nail on the head with regards to the validation. A lot of us have a lot of ideas about courses that we could create or membership systems that we could set up, but there is always this fear, isn’t there? Of, is it going to work? Is nobody going to rock up if I spend weeks or months getting all of this content? So what would your advice be with regards to validating some of the ideas that some of our listeners may have?
Neil Napier:
It’s a very good question because I initially started, as a lot of people do, by validating ideas using surveys. So you’ve probably heard of ask method from Ryan Levesque, and he He recommends doing a discovery call first and then an objective survey to understand exactly what people want. And I fully appreciate what he teaches, and I think it works really well. The challenge I find with that method is that it can take a little bit too long, even during the discovery phase. And even then, if you ever heard of Henry Ford’s famous quote, he said, If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said, Faster horses.
Lee:
I’ve heard that one.
Neil Napier:
Yeah. So a lot of it, when you ask people, sure, they might give you some answer, but six months later, the market’s moved on and they don’t care anymore, or that’s not the bigger pain anymore because someone else sold it. So I mean, surveys are okay, but what works really well for me is either doing a course live, if I’m preparing a course, or building a what I would call a fake funnel. So what I mean by a fake funnel is just a regular funnel. You’ve got your sales page and your thank you page, but you don’t have a buy button in place yet. You don’t have the course ready yet. And you drive some traffic to it, and then you basically calculate how many people click through on the buy button and they go to the next page. And your thank you page basically is an apology saying, oh, sorry, we haven’t opened yet, but when we do, you’re too early. When we do open up, you can hear more about it. Just leave your email address below. So if you do that, You can drive, say, 100 people to your page, and you can see how many of them potentially convert if you are upfront about the price point.
Neil Napier:
So that could really give you a clear idea on how your product will be accepted by the community. The second way that works really well for me is also selling first and then creating later. So my previous mentor taught me this idea. It comes from Bill O’Reilly, actually, who was really upset once at the news station because they were taking too long. So he said, F it, let’s do it live. So that became an idea in that you can sell something first, even if you underprice it, you can sell it and say, Hey, I’m going to deliver it live. And I’ve done that in past where I’ve sold something for a dollar, and I said, that I will charge you $49 after the training is done, only if you like it. If you don’t like the training, let me know, and I won’t charge you again. But if you like it, then $49 and we’re done. And I did that recently, and we had 150 people signing up for just that dollar trial. So if you do that, it takes away the pressure of creating something first and then delivering it. But if you do it this way, what you can do is you can sell the thing.
Neil Napier:
And then on the next page, you can ask people that, hey, I’ve got a lot of things I want to share with you, but tell me What else would you like to learn in this session? And they’ll give you your content that you need to create that course. And once you have that course, you can continue to market at Evergreen.
Lee:
So with regards to that then, you mentioned about doing live. Are you saying as well that you would be pre-selling a series of live streams that you would be doing?
Neil Napier:
That’s correct.
Lee:
Yes. That’s awesome. So you’ve already written most of your plan, but what you can do there for is pre-sell. It’s going to be on a particular date. So everyone knows that they’re going to be able to arrive and watch that be a part of that. They’re also going to get copies of all of the recording and any accompanying notes. So that’s obviously attractive. But are you also saying that within that, you’re also asking what else do people want to know? And that helps you build up either the rest of the content of that or to make that sales page more attractive.
Neil Napier:
Is that what you Yeah, so what I tend to do is I map out my course using a mind map. And once I’ve done that, even though I have put everything I know on paper, it’s still something that I have envisioned. But people might have different problems that I haven’t quite picked up. So when they buy something, I follow up either via email or just on the thank you page, I’ll leave a survey, and I ask them that this is going to be lesson one. Here’s what I’ll discuss. Is there anything specifically that you’d like me to talk about, or something that I haven’t covered here that you’d like to know as well. And they’ll tell you, Facebook ads are good, but how do I actually… Should I do a video or should I do an image ad? And that gives you a little bit of lesson that you can share with them. So this user-generated problems, after they have paid money are really useful because they’ll tell you exactly what they’re struggling with at that time.
Lee:
And there’s so much value in that as well. If they’re struggling with that, lots of other people will be struggling with that. And if they can see something that is in the terminology that they understand you’ve got a solution for that problem, it could be that one thing that gets people over to that buy button as well, which is really powerful. I saw someone recently did a massive blog post on reasons why you potentially would not join their membership platform. And they were highlighting all of the different problems that people might have, et cetera, or worries that people might have, and that really helped convert people as well. I thought it was a phenomenal method. Now, you mentioned drive 100 people to the presale. How would you go around driving 100 people to a presale, bearing in mind that a lot of people listening don’t necessarily have a big audience as yet.
Neil Napier:
Sure. And I think that question comes up-time and time again. People ask me, Neil, you’re successful, but that’s because you have a list. What if I didn’t have a list when I was starting out? In that case, what I would recommend is these days, there are tonnes of Facebook groups out there that are problem-centric. So if you are in the health and fitness industry, you can find Facebook groups where people are trying to gain weight, lose weight, or they’re trying to gain muscle, lose muscle, whatever the case may be. So if you hang out in these groups, if you genuinely provide value, you’ll find that people are willing to, on Facebook, become friends with you. And maybe they’ll pose questions, and those questions are useful because, of course, you can always turn that into content that is evergreen. But once you do that, you will see people actually seek you out as an authority figure. You might even get invited by the group owner saying, Hey, do you want to come share this on a live session with me? And in that case, you can always drive people to an opt-in page, of course, with permission, or a presale page of some sort.
Neil Napier:
So I would say that a lot of marketing these days has become more value-driven, where you do need to give some value upfront, and after that, people will seek you out.
Lee:
Absolutely right. Do you also engage in any Facebook advertisements or anything along those lines to drive some people to the landing pages?
Neil Napier:
We do very actively. We spend a lot of money on ads to drive people to your software, as well as then to our information product funnels, as we call them.
Lee:
Okay, so that’s definitely something that you would recommend as well, because the first one value-driven, obviously, that’s something you can do in conjunction with the Facebook ad because you can give people something of value and then also continue to drive them down a particular funnel. But a lot of people if they’re just going to lead with just the value alone and joining groups, et cetera, I imagine that’s something that’s going to take a lot of time. For example, myself, we’ve got 2,000 members in the Agency Trailblazer Group now, which is phenomenal in the Facebook group, but that took three years for me to build that up. And then for me to then drive people to a validation page, it’s quite easy. There’s 2,000 pairs of eyeballs that may potentially look at that before I’ve even done anything else. But obviously, again, for a lot of people, there’s that time, isn’t there? Do you find that Facebook is quite a successful way for people without an audience at the very beginning to drive eyeballs to those pages?
Neil Napier:
I think Facebook has replaced the traditional forums as you had them. I know forums still exist, but I remember there was a time where if you wanted to research more on any subject, you would go to Google and type the subject name and then forum, and it’ll bring 10 different options, and you can join them, ask all sorts of questions, find all sorts of answers. But Facebook’s actually cornered that market very quietly because no one’s talking about it. But these days, if you have any questions, concerns, you go to Facebook first because you get answers from real people. And I say that real with quotes, but you get answers from real people who are there genuinely facing the same issues and they want to help you. So I think Facebook is a good place to start. Another way that potentially people can look into is reaching out to influencers. And as I did for my first product launch, giving them 75 %, even 100 %, just to prove that the idea works. So let’s say if you had a a really good idea you were happy about and you wanted to push it long term, you go to an affiliate and say, Hey, this is going to be $99, and I’ll give you 100 %.
Neil Napier:
I just want to validate the idea, but you can keep all the money. I’m almost doing it for free. Plus, of course, I get new customers and new leads that I can work with further down the line. And that way, affiliate makes money because even though they’re taking all the risk, their upside is big as well. And you get a course done as well as a new community that you can continue working with moving forward.
Lee:
That’s powerful. I’ve never even considered doing and things like that. So reaching out, partnering with influencers or people who already have audiences in your niche, and then providing them something that is super attractive, i. E. 75 % or 100 %. One of the things I’ve struggled with often with my community is actually I validated the idea we already have quite a lot of members in the paid area. But what we’ve struggled with, and I’ll be honest and transparent with people who are listening to the podcast, is we’re struggling with getting more people on board. So we had a massive flurry at the beginning of the year, and then over the first three to four months, we’ve had many people landing on the page, watching the video, and then joining the community. But I would say it’s definitely taper out over the last few months. I mean, I personally have not been pushing it due to my own personal family circumstances. We had to take a few months off, et cetera. But now I’m back in the game. I guess I would love some advice from yourself with regards to how can I encourage people to at least try?
Lee:
What are some ways of encouraging people to go ahead and hit that button and get them in. It’s agencytrailblazer. Com if you want to take a look. But do you have any tips? I remember you mentioned there was a one dollar trial tip in our earlier conversation, etc. What methods might there be?
Neil Napier:
So what’s worked really well for me in past is finding a way to position one different product in, say, approximately eight different ways. So I’m just looking at the Agency Trailblazer website right now. And you talk about helping build websites or helping… I think you’ve got Agency Reset, Workshops, Community, and Masterminds. You’ve already got four things in there. So having even a separate landing page just for the masterminds, where you sell people on the idea of a mastermind. So let’s say if I was in your shoes, here’s what I would do. I would keep the entire course as is, entire programme as is, but I would create a separate funnel just for the mastermind. And I would invite people to join the next mastermind only for a dollar, which is like a 14-day trial, and they can join that mastermind for a 14-day trial. And if they find value, they can stick around. And if they get in right now, they can also unlock the agency reset, the workshops, and the community. So you could choose to sell just that mastermind programme if you want to. Let’s say your price… Let me just see what price point you’re selling at.
Neil Napier:
You’re selling it at 69 a month. Let’s say your mastermind could be priced at 49 a month. But you would then say that just for $20 a month, you get all these additional additional things as well that unlock basically our entire programme. So you could just get the masterminds for that, or you could get the entire programme just for a $20 a month upgrade. So that’s one way to position is that you take the key elements of your programme which are really valued, and people definitely find a lot of content in them. And then you take them and turn them into their own funnel and try and bring people in through that and see which one works the best for you.
Lee:
I love that idea already. So it’s just finding different ways to sell the same thing because if you’re trying to… I think what you’re saying is if I’m trying to tell you about everything that you get, that could actually just be overwhelming and people may only be interested in one particular thing. So for example, I know for a fact in our community, that there are some people who literally just come and join the calls religiously every single month, and they have a great time in those calls, but they don’t necessarily consume some of the content that’s in there. But also those calls do drive the content content that we then go ahead and build up. So for example, we were asked for our questions that we asked to pre-qualify a lead. So we’re putting that together and that’s then going to become some content inside of the community. I guess you’re saying some people will then choose, Oh, well, we’re just going to go on that package because we just want to be a part of those calls. But like you said, just for $20 extra a month or whatever, it comes out, you could also unlock the entire knowledge base of the community, etc.
Lee:
But it’s something that we’re not leading with that. We’re actually leading the thing that might be of most interest, which is the calls.
Neil Napier:
Yeah. And I mean, we’ve had that struggle with Kyvia, our software platform as well, because we’ve built something really big. But the challenge is no one wants everything in there, and they feel maybe paying 69 a month is not justified for that. So we are going to demodularize, which means we’re going to offer one module by itself for, again, around 39 to $49 a month. But we’ll say, hey, if you want to, it just makes sense to get the whole thing for 69 a month. So Yeah.
Lee:
So, yeah, so breaking it out. But again, you can just for a small bit extra, you can get everything all combined in one package. That’s awesome. Now, can you tell us about Kyvio? Because I was checking this out earlier when we were having a conversation. What led to you building this and what does it do?
Neil Napier:
It’s a good question. So we’ve always been in the market where we have built some automation solutions or systemization solutions for people. So our principle really is this, that we first test ideas that work, and then we find ways to automate them, systemize them, or scale them up. So typically, software allows us to automate, systemize, and scale things up very efficiently. And initially, we had software that would help people create landing pages. We had another one that would help people create their membership sites. So we decided to bring it all under one roof because we knew the pain was there. Our previous software had sold really well. So we knew that if you could provide people everything under one roof, that could cover potentially 80% of the business. So if they had any support issues or any payment issues, they didn’t have to go to four or six different places. They could handle it all from one place. So bringing it all together was quite challenging because we wanted to build a smart platform, not something where different all of their elements just sit in there for the sake of it. But the way we are positioned right now, our funnel builder and membership builder talk to each other very actively.
Neil Napier:
Our membership builder and email marketing solution talks to each other actively so that way we can chase up customers customers who, for example, have bought, but they’re not going through the course, for example, so we can also email them automatically. So all of this allows us to control the process to make sure we can give the optimum result to people. And that’s how we came up with the idea. And execution has been fun. I mean, it’s difficult, but there’s so many different ways of approaching the same outcome, which is better consumer content consumption. So we’ve been trying to find better ways to do over time with Caio.
Lee:
So essentially this will allow me to create my membership site as well as market it. So like click funnels, but very much focused on membership site, production, etc. Exactly that. Well, membership sites and courses, I presume. So could I actually build that sectional courses with Next Next and you can then mark things as complete, do quizzes and all of that stuff as well?
Neil Napier:
Exactly. You can do just that.
Lee:
That’s awesome. Instead of me necessarily trying to work out something in WordPress that’s going to take me hours. I mean, full disclosure, folks, I spent nearly the entire of December of 2017 building the Agency Trailblazer Community website with WordPress, with plugins, and with custom code. It took me an awful long time. So I think what I’m getting from this is that I could have just come along to Kyvio and just press start trial and actually start building my membership site that way.
Neil Napier:
Exactly. I mean, I will tell you this. I’m looking at your site now and I like it, but we have a very similar template as well. And Truth be told, if it was simply putting in the content, tailoring the buy buttons and all, you could have finished this in a day and a half or maybe two days max.
Lee:
Yeah, that’s depressing. Sorry.
Neil Napier:
Well, that was last year.
Lee:
It was last year. I did have great fun doing it. Don’t get me wrong. But yeah, no. One of the things that I’ve often talked about, and we actually had a guest years and years ago, and he was talking about, even though we know how to do things, et cetera, or we could go the code route, It actually just makes sense to use the tools that are available because if the output is going to be the same, it doesn’t matter what we used as long as we’re able to provide whatever it is we want to provide. So I guess, folks, if you’re listening, be sure to check out kyvio. Com. That’s K-Y-Y-V-I-O. Com. I know most of us could probably build this in WordPress ourselves, but remember, it took me a month. It could take you just as long. So be sure if you’re thinking you want to validate an idea, then the folks over at Kivio are doing a $1 trial as well, which is ridiculously cheap. For 14 days, you can just go ahead and check out what’s in there. So I’d highly recommend that. And I know Neil, he’s a good solid guy.
Lee:
So I’m sure whatever he’s producing is top-notch. Although I can’t move now. I’ve already built my system. I’d cry if I had to to disable that. Now, you also have something that I got quite excited about when you launched it called My First 1,000. So again, I know there are a lot of people who have been asking me, how can we sell courses, how can we sell memberships, etc. And you launched this new movement, My First 1,000. Can you tell us all about that, please?
Neil Napier:
Absolutely. So we have this vision where we, as I said previously, wanted to help people take the knowledge, turn that into a course or a membership site they can monetize. And we thought that a lot of people, a lot of, let’s say, newbies who come into online marketing, they have this vision, they have this desire to create something, but they don’t know where to start. They don’t know how to go about creating the content or putting it into the right structure or then marketing it after. So what we decided to do is we decided to set up this group where we teach people every week for absolutely free different ways in which they can create, build, and sell their membership sites. And initially, when we launched this, we had a five-day live run. So we actually, for an hour and a half every day, we covered one specific topic around membership site creation. And on And day four, I think it was we also had Ryan Dice coming in and doing one of the sessions with us, because as you know, Ryan Dice runs a very successful membership site and business, Digital Marketing Lab. And he came in to talk about how he’s been able to grow that to over a million dollars a month.
Neil Napier:
And that was really interesting as well. I mean, he shared some of the things that just completely blew us away. But that’s the things we do in the group is that we bring in influencers who are doing at least six figures a month in membership sites, and we have them share what’s working for them. So again, it’s all free training. I do Facebook lives every week there, focusing on one specific thing. We tend to get an influencers as well. And we also have these mini challenges once in a while where we push people to do certain things within a given time frame.
Lee:
So folks, if you go to Facebook, you can find that on #myfirst1000. That’s #myfirst1000. We’ll also make sure that we put a link in the show notes as well to go check that out. I’m in the community as well, and I’m looking forward to seeing where you’re going with that. I think the value of having somebody who’s gone ahead of us is really, really important. You’ve done a lot of this already. You guys have also got scripts, things that you’ve used as well in the past that have worked for you that we can all benefit from, etc. I know I’m going to be following your advice, I think, to the letter because I would really love for 2019 to start to grow the Agency Trailblazer community itself and get more people involved. Obviously, we have the great free place, but it’s really so enjoyable having our own membership community because we can create some really good specific courses that we know people want. But equally, it’s great having those calls and just getting to know people on a deeper level. I really, really do enjoy it. If I could just do that and not build websites in the future, that would be pretty cool.
Neil Napier:
Yeah, absolutely.
Lee:
No worries. So is it just the group that you have or do you have any other plans for my first 1,000?
Neil Napier:
So what we tend to do in the group is, I mean, as I said, there’s a lot of free training. And once in a while where I feel that what I’m doing, just It certifies people paying a little bit because they also get some access to me, we do some paid courses as well. And it’s completely optional, of course, because you can just stay in the group to learn free stuff. But otherwise, paid stuff just gets you a little bit more action plans and more pain by numbers plan that could work for a lot of people.
Lee:
That’s awesome. Mate, I really, really value your advice. I’m excited to check out Kyvio as well. Remember, that’s Kyvio.com. And also check out #myfirst1000 or #myfirst1000.com. You are a legend, mate. Where else can people connect with you? And then we shall say goodbye.
Neil Napier:
I think just reach out to us via My First Thousand or go to Kyvio or get in touch with us while there. Try that out. But if you get stuck with anything, I’m always happy to answer questions via Facebook as well. Just find me, reach out to me, and I can hopefully help you out there.
Lee:
That’s awesome. Mate, thank you so much. We fit in a lot into a very short amount of time, but lots of really good actionable tips, so we’ll make sure to make some good show notes. Remember, guys, #myfirst1,000 Free Membership Group to help you start to validate your membership or your course ideas. Phenomenal. Thanks, buddy.
Neil Napier:
Thanks, Lee.
Lee:
That wraps up today’s show. Don’t forget, if you are not part of our free Facebook community, head on over to agencytrailblazer. Com/group, and you will be redirected to nearly 2,000 agency owners, web developers, web designers, WordPress enthusiasts, and freaking all-around awesome people. We share everything from what’s going on in our lives, in our businesses, ask questions, ask for help, receive help, as well as share cool gifts and all of the other stuff that should be done on the internet. So that’s agencytrailblazer.com/group. Let’s get connected, and we’ll see you in the next episode..
