The Course Creator Formula

Week 3! You guys LOVED the coaches formula and the service provider formula and so now I’m back with another one.

For reference, I’m working on a new idea. It’s this thought of easy-to-explain formulas for different online business models. Now, just because it’s easy to explain doesn’t mean it’s easy to do – but at least it creates a roadmap.

So today I wanted to introduce The Course* Creator Formula.

If you’re starting from scratch in the online space with no audience, it will take longer than if you have a following. But I want to start from ZERO.

*By the way, over at Funnel Gorgeous – Course Chemist – is launching February 22nd. It’s the final course in the Offer Cure, Funnel Rx trilogy! Offer Cure teaches offer, Funnel Rx teaches funnels, and Course Chemist teaches the art of instructional design. Making great courses people finish!

Here’s your checklist.

✅ Step #1 – Setup your online presence on social media. Do it under your name.

✅ Step #2 – Get a domain and professional email address. Use Google Workspace.

✅ Step #3 – Go through Offer Cure Workshop #1 to identify what problem you solve and for who. If you need MORE help than just that workshop, honestly get your butt in FG Society Phase 1. It helps people understand where and how to start with any kind of online info based offer. In step 3, you need to know WHAT problem you’re going to solve and for who. Course Chemist will also address this. If I were starting all over again, I’d try to sell something between $50-$150 on my first shot.

✅ Step #4 – Now we’re going to build a lead magnet that gives incredible value and attracts that WHO that we identified in Step 3. Once that lead magnet and funnel are built, you’re going to put that link EVERYWHERE and as a CTA for whenever you’re creating content. This is the foundation of building your audience. Use the FG Funnels free lead magnet funnel and you can buy a lead magnet template from our store.

✅ Step #5 – Time to publish. This is the most grueling step. It can be fast tracked with ads. You need to start showing the F up. Pick your platform, deliver content. The longer and better you are at this step, the bigger your audience will be. You need a minimum of 500 people on your email list. More is better. Here’s where people mess up. They have no idea how to publish content that is valuable and shareable. They just either talk TOO much about themselves, or some sliver of the niche their in, or they don’t publish enough. Both paid and organic efforts work well here. You can do this in 1 week or 1 year depending on how much time, effort, money. If you want to be a course creator, this is the step you have to dial in.*

**This is the HARDEST and MOST IMPORTANT step of them all. It’s the one people resist most. Do not skip this step.

✅ Step #6 – Next, it’s time to actually build the SALES assets for the course. It all starts with the copy. Write the copy using either Offer Cure workshop #2 and/or FG Society Phase 2. Get a logo done for your offer as well so by the end of this step you have copy/logo and the assets you need. Turn your intangible idea into a tangible one through copy + logo/graphics.

✅ Step #7 – Set a date for your launch and plan out your main ideas, hooks, angles that you will share with your audience leading up to the launch. We call it a pressure launch because it’s important to build buzz and anticipation prior to showing it to the world!

✅ Step #8 – Build the funnel. Take your copy/design and get it all set up with your members area. Yes, use FG Funnels :). In the members area, set up a welcome letter/video with information on the calendar dates of when the course material will be available. Yes, you will presell so we fill the members area with something for them since the content won’t all be there.

✅ Step #9 – Do the launch. Keep the cart open for 5 days and then close it. Use bonuses, early bird, and plot twist. Don’t lose your lunch. Make sure your expectations are set from the beginning. Don’t underestimate how hard it is to sell. Congratulate all the wins, even that you accomplished it! Once the launch is over, you will teach and build your content, aiming to get as much success for your students as possible since it will be the bedrock for your testimonials. Lots of help in Launch Gorgeous (when we run it) as well as FG Society Phase 1 for all this.

✅ Step #10 – Plan to either re-launch it, or turn it into an evergreen offer (one that’s open all the time). If it’s higher priced, a webinar funnel. If it’s lower priced, turn it into an SLO that can be driven with ads or sold cold without a launch or any pressure.

This can be done in 12 weeks. It’s hard. In fact that’s why we do Launch Gorgeous for our students since it’s really difficult. Most people will take longer than 12 weeks because of step 5. You could be stuck at step 5 for quite some time if you’re trying to build a big audience. Like Larry for example. He’s in DI and he was at Step 5 for a few years. By the time he got to me, we did steps 3, 6-10 and when he launched he made $1M dollars 🤣. That’s the power of Step 5. Your launch success is determined by how well you step 5. He spent so much time on Step 5, the money was there and waiting for when he launched.

What to Expect: With 500 qualified followers from an excellent lead magnet and a really solid $150 offer, assuming you show up and publish well, you can expect between 20 – 50 students in your first launch. $3000 – $7500. If I were your mentor, I’d be high-fiving you on this!

I struggled a bit with this formula because this is ONE type of course creator formula, and unlike the previous two I did which were more straightforward, I actually have SEVERAL course creator formulas that I could have written.

One modification would be if you want to do a low ticket offer with ads and no list. You could conveniently skip step 5 and just build an SLO (which is actually 9 products in one funnel). The downside is that you HAVE to build everything ahead of time (Course Chemist a must!) and so you’re risking that it’ll work and doing all that front end work.

A second modification would be if you wanted to do a live set-in-time deep dive paid workshop. You could technically skip step 5 and just do ads as well to a workshop page and then teach it live. You’re going to get very very small numbers to start, but some people like this.

A third modification would be to do a FREE live weekly webinar where you run ads each week and micro sell to a tiny audience and see how many people you get each week to say yes to your program. The program has to be built in this case. So while you can skip step 5, you have to prepare a webinar, build the content, and do a live event once a week.

As you can see, there are a lot of nuances here that trip people up, which is why support on this formula is so critical.

This formula gets you through ONE offer and one launch. The reality is that in order to build an infoproduct company you need more than just one offer. You need a minimum of three (in my opinion). Again, building out a value ladder is incredibly important but it does start with these first steps.

Also? Step 5 never stops. It’s the never ending step you keep doing until you decide to retire. You’re welcome.

The Addiction of Indecision

“More is lost by indecision than wrong decision. Indecision is the thief of opportunity. It will steal you blind.” – Marcus Julius Cicero

Hard truth incoming… the habit of indecision is addictive.

I know this because as a pretty decisive person normally, I’ve found my brain stuck in several high stakes indecision loops during points of crisis and struggle in my life. And once out of it, the next time it happens, the well worn path in my brain says, “Oh good. Let’s do the indecision cycle forever!” and it’s even harder to break the next time.

The hope is that by writing this all out, it will help you do a few things:

1. See the indecision cycle
2. Understand why your brain is addicted to it
3. Break it so it doesn’t become a habit

Let’s use a relatively benign example to illustrate the indecision cycle. Please understand that the more emotional attachment there is to a decision, the worse it’ll be.

Pretend you’ve been given $100,000 that has to be spent in one shot. You’re faced with the following choice:

• Put it into your friend’s real estate fund and receive $1000 a month until they sell 7 years later at a profit
• Take the money and start a restaurant on the busiest corner of your hometown

Here’s how the indecision cycle works.

First, you probably lay out the pros and cons. Maybe you talk to friends, family, some trusted money advisors. You do some research. Interview people who’ve done both.

This is the acquiring information phase of the indecision cycle.

It might take a few hours to a few weeks, and some decisions might even take a month or two. But in 95% of cases, the acquiring information phase moves to… tentative conclusion.

The tentative conclusion is your brains way of moving out from the middle and starting to “imagine” one choice over the other. For our example, let’s say after all that research, you’ve tentatively concluded that you’d rather invest the money than open a restaurant.

The next phase is activated imagination.

Typically someone will imagine themselves moving towards action before they actually do it. So in this case, you start to imagine filling out the paperwork for the investment. You maybe imagine going to the bank to wire the money.

As your imagination starts to activate the idea of this conclusion, emotions are going to come to the surface. This is the survival response phase.

In an indecision cycle, the emotions that rise up are usually fear based. Feelings like:

1. Worry
2. Fear
3. Panic
4. Freeze response
5. Exhaustion

This is a hallmark of an indecision cycle because if you started imagining your conclusion and felt a confirmation of emotion (excitement for example), you’d not get stuck in indecision. You’d keep moving. So these emotions are your cue that you’re entering this cycle.

For most people, these negative emotions signal “STOP! You’re making the wrong decision!” It is survival brain in action. So then you go to the phase pressure reduction.

Your brain wants to reduce the pressure of feeling that emotion. So you stop imagining the choice. You head back to neutral. You’re rewarded with feelings like relief. This is received as pleasure in the brain. Safety. Phew. You didn’t jump off that cliff.

The next thing that happens? You return to acquiring information. Here you’re convinced that there is something you missed during the first acquiring information phase and it’s time to go back through it again. Because you wrongly assume that as long as you have the right information, you’ll not feel those emotions next time.

This time you may try to go through the cycle with the other choice – you open a restaurant. But the same thing happens. Around and around the circle you go, each time, your brain is rewarding you for returning to neutral. To safety.

That’s because our brain’s job is to keep us alive, and anything that threatens our sense of safety will be seen as enemy #1.

It explains how people appear to stay in the acquiring information phase forever, when in fact they are looping around.

And the worst is when you actually do find a little bit of new information. This confirms that yes, it was a good idea you kept going round and round or you would have missed that tidbit.

You are being rewarded for going in circles. 

Your brain likes neutral because you get the dopamine high of the possibility of BOTH options without any of the risk or pain or sacrifice associated with making choice. There is some grief to saying goodbye to one choice and we avoid grief.

In the example I used of the $100k, there’s not a lot of high stakes happening.

• It isn’t a fully irreversible decision (like the decision to have a baby).
• It probably isn’t an emotionally charged decision (like the decision to get a divorce).
• It doesn’t necessarily tap into childhood beliefs (religious beliefs for example).

If you add irreversibility, emotional charge, and childhood beliefs, those are three things that are going to compound the survival response and keep you stuck longer. It’ll make the survival response more intense.

So how do you break out of the indecision loop?

1. Observe the cycle
2. Trust your acquiring information phase
3. Remind yourself of the thief of indecision
4. Steel yourself for your survival response and don’t listen to it

The first step is to observe yourself doing it. Once you see the behavior in action, you can actually move it from a subconscious pattern to a conscious choice you can push against.

The second step is to trust your acquiring information phase. For most decisions, whatever you learn within a few weeks or a month of hard core research, conversations, journaling, therapy, counsel, interviews, etc. is enough. Tiny little bits of new info aren’t going to change your outcome.

It’s also important to recognize that when you’re taking steps into an unknown territory, a place that requires you to start building new beliefs, there’s a level of risk that’s needed. Acquiring information may include examining your belief systems and making way for something new. Pick good mentors and critical thinkers to help you here because growth is messy.

The third step is to tell yourself that indecision is a thief, and carries far worse consequences over time than even a bad decision. Because even in a bad decision, there’s so much to learn and grow from.

The last step? Is to steel yourself for the survival response when it comes, and push through. Expect it. Don’t let it tell you you’re going to die if you choose. You will not.

I speak on this topic with deep experience in making irreversible, emotionally charged, difficult decisions that go against what is ingrained in me beliefs wise as a child.

It’s tough for us to do this work. To acknowledge the truth of what’s really going on inside of us.

I’ve done it multiple times, and each time… my biggest fear was that I would regret my decision and not be able to undo it. I feared the feeling of regret so much, I stayed stuck in the indecision cycle for a long time…and at the cost of my mental and physical  health.

On the other side of these decisions, I can tell you…

• I didn’t regret it.
• I trusted myself.

And it made way for me to understand and learn in ways that weren’t possible otherwise.