Insightful insights from meditations and a lot of exchange of ideas with several great people. Eventually all this helped me to take a step back on my #3Kin2 journey and start to face some exciting new perspectives.
…Hopefully some which will help me to take action.🤗 They are certainly more focused on going step by step instead of trying to jump on top of the mountain.
Failures First
An illustrative quote of myself from the #3Kin2 Discord today:
It’s super hard for me today! I thought I had crafted the perfect offer over the weekend.
And when I wanted to create the presentation for my meeting tomorrow, I realized that a lot of it doesn’t make any sense.😱 I’ve actually overcomplicated things a lot!
Now I need to come up with new good concept, which doesn’t only provide the perfect value for my clients. But which also works for me (and which has the potential to be scalable).
I didn’t finish a single task from my list for today:
- prepare sales presentation for meeting tomorrow❌
- call 10 potential clients❌
- only a former web design client, who didn’t have time
- follow up with people from Friday❌
Previous Ideas
This was basically my idea during the past days:
Since I started the challenge I’ve crafted a concept, focused on a clear target group. Hence I’ll try to sell template-based websites with privacy by design & (as a result) no annoying cookie banners🙌 (big bonus for these EU-based self-employed people… hopefully).
I love that idea. And I’d love to help many people to get a started with their first website as easily as possible – in a way which isn’t only stress-free for them, but also for me. The problem is just that I overcomlicated things drastically during the past days.
This doesn’t mean that all these days are wasted time now. I rather see them as part of the journey. And I think I also got some super valuable insights and fundamental numbers from many calculations. (Maybe not and I am just a super procrastinator, who’s perfect at finding excuses for ineffective perfectionism)
Insights and Relief – Thanks to Meditation
During the past days I banged my head against a brick wall repeatedly and felt like taking two steps back for every single step forward.
At some point I started to meditate, every time I felt like getting stuck or procrastinating. This and my repeated conversations with Susanna, lead me to two major insights today:
- The main pillars of my original strategy lapsed (partly).
- I tried to put the cart before the horse.
My original strategy lapsed after I realized that cookies don’t actually need to be such a big problem for basic WordPress portfolio websites. You can simply build WordPress portfolio websites which don’t use cookies (hence don’t need cookie banners) and have a quite high privacy level.
At the same time this actually saves me one step compared to my previous idea of building static websites without databases by exporting WordPress websites. And it has the additional benefit (but also the danger) that clients will eventually be able to edit their own websites (and maybe screw up😅).
And then there was one crucial meditation, in which I remembered the way which Anna used to build her own product for her YouTube audience. She adapted the idea from Ali Abdaal. And I observed that Kevon Cheung used a similar strategy to build his online courses.
Do Things That Don’t Scale – Step by Step Online Course
Anna got inspired by the bonus lecture on coaching that was included in the Creatorpreneur class by Ali Abdaal.
The idea is to start by doing things that don’t scale. So you don’t start to build an online course right away. Instead you start with a smaller audience. In the very beginning you may even start with free needs assessments, which help you figure out the basic pain points of your audience.
Afterwards you offer 1:1 consultations or coachings for a comparatively high price. This helps you to learn more about the needs of your target group and solve their problems, while being able to answering further questions and problems live.
The next step is to do the same with a small group of people. And only after you approved that your teaching concept (or whatever you do in your online course) works for a variety of people from the same target group, you eventually standardize the whole thing.
Eventually you just record an online course or write an ebook after you are certain that this actually works for people. The great side effect is that you can build great testimonials on the way (which you can use to promote your final product).
So the strategy is that you go from higher priced, super individual services for a single person or a small group to a reasonably low-priced, standardized product for a larger audience – step by step – while still delivering (almost) the same value.
Steps to build an (initially non-scalable) Online Course:
- free needs assessments
- 1:1 coaching or consultation (comparatively high-priced)
- live courses with group of people (medium priced)
- recorded courses for big audience (low-priced)
Start with One: Website Standardization (Online Course Creation reframed)
Let’s reframe the step by step concept for online course creation – just for web development:
Since I’ve had several web design clients already, I’ll probably try to start with a group of people from the same industry. That’s what I’ll try to offer the person whom I’ve cold called last week in our scheduled meeting tomorrow.
But let’s see how the meeting eventually evolves. That’s just an idea. And if it doesn’t work with her, there may be others who find it interesting.
This will help me to get familiar with their needs and test a first idea of a standardized website template. This enables me to learn what these clients actually need and I can simply answer their unfulfilled questions about any topics right away – or implement solutions.
Step by Step to a standardized Web Design Concept
Everything afterwards is even more blurry for me right now. Lot’s of opportunities and few certainties. So let’s just take things as they come for now.
But let’s conclude potential ways to continue: After I did this coaching with a group of people (maybe even twice), I am likely able to cover a variety of most important parts which people from that target group expect in their websites. which enables me to build one or more standardized templates and sell them more automated (or at least outsourced) to a larger audience, for a competitively low prince – while still providing hugely valuably websites which cover all the important aspects, which my target group needs.
And I’ll eventually even be able to create upsells, which help those who needs additional features or something that goes beyond the basic web development.
So I believe in the possibility to create standardized websites with a super high quality for a clear target group – at scale.🙌
How I got stuck: Standardize before knowing Needs of Target Group
During the past days I’ve created 2 or 3 different approaches for potential template-based websites. And every time I got stuck at some point, because I’ve tried to come up with a standardized solution which works for all potential clients.
But during a meditation the 1:1 coaching approach, which Anna mentioned in Liz‘s Discord some time ago, came to my mind. And this seems to be the perfect opportunity to test a more or less standardized approach.
Before that I wanted to create a standardized website right away and get rid of the customers again quickly. Now my strategy is rather to set up a basic concept which gets them started and then find out what else they actually need (or not).
So I’ll start with a few clients, learn from them and standardize more and more until I eventually crafted the super perfect solution together with my 1:1 coaching clients – just like I learned from Anna’s, Ali’s and Kevon’s strategy.🤗