Top 5 Mistakes You’re Making When Creating a Course [Ep # 181]

Just about everyone right now wants to create an online program or create some form of passive revenue. But there are 5 major mistakes that I find a lot of health and wellness practitioners do when they’re starting to create these big projects. And I don’t want you to be one of them. Stay tuned. 

Hey guys! What is up? What is happening with you? So I just went live in the maximized practitioner community. We go live last Thursday of every month, and that’s where the members get to ask their questions and get them answered in real time. And the big thing that I have been seeing coming up across the board; so on social media which podcast are starting to get the most listen to and downloaded. And of course the questions that came up yesterday on the live was ‘I want to create a program, I want to create an in office program or I want to create an online program, I want to create more passive revenue for my business.’ And so there’s this big allure because it is true. Programs are definitely a massive way to boost your revenues, to boost your engagement of your old patients or clients, to on board new patients or clients 100%. That’s exactly why we created the gap protocol. But there are a few major issues that I find a lot of health and wellness practitioners do when they create these programs. 

Number 1, they create them out of necessity. So they just randomly come up with a topic and put it out there and hope that people would just start to buy it. And they may promote it for a day or to a week at most. And when that promotion is done they sort of see ‘yeah, I got better results than expected’ or ‘it didn’t get the results that I thought it would.’ And then they just walk away from the process. So that’s number 1. Number 2, I find practitioners constantly want to throw everything they can into a 2 week program. And often when I’m working with our elite members they will say ‘ok I want to create a wellness program, a weight loss program and day 1, it’s going to be learning this and then day 2 it’s going to be this, and then day 3 is going to be this. And then on the beginning of week 2 it’s going to be this new thing. And then week 4, or whatever day 8 it’s going to be avoiding these foods.’ And they just keep stacking all of these things on top of each other. And of course when people actually go through the program, the most common thing is they don’t ever get through it because they’re too overwhelmed. They say it was too much and they’re too overwhelmed and there’s no transformation at the end. So keeping it a simple as humanly possible as huge. 

The other thing, and something that I love working on with our elite members, with our maximized practitioner members and anybody whose needs are extra support is the messaging around your program. So most health and wellness practitioners will put out a generically titled program and call it ‘Weight Loss 101’ or ‘Weight Loss Gluten Free Eating Basics 2 week long program’. Or something really generic that everyone on the planet has heard before. And so what I like to do is I like to think about what’s a unique delivery system, what’s a unique way that I can give the information out. What’s a cool title that no one has heard before? What is a really cool spin that I can offer to this program that is still all the same information, but on the front end looks unique and novel and really cool? And so one of my favorite examples, and I say this all the time to people because it was such a great success. Is one of our elite members created the 3 by 3 stress relief program. And so what we did together as I said ‘if you could deliver 3 new habits that they create over 3 weeks, and they have to do those habit every single day, that is you’re 3 by 3 program.’ With us we created the GAT protocol, it’s a title that no one has used before. So Gut Adrenal Thyroid ‘GAT’ Protocol. That’s it. And so many practitioners had done very similar things with different letters but is the same type of program, same type of thing. We’ve had other people that will call it the 3M approach and maybe that’s a 3 different layers of your menstrual cycle. Who knows what you want to call it, but I find at the very beginning of creating any sort of program, developing a unique naming, a unique delivery system, a unique way that people can compartmentalize. ‘Ok this is what my changes are, this is what I need to do, and this is how long it’s going to last. That’s how you’re going to get people or wanting to be a part of it, that’s how you’re going to get people seeing it all the way to the end. And that’s how you’re going to get testimonials. And it’s that social proof that is going to help you develop it better. Enroll it out to people and really get that attraction that you need. 

The final thing and the most important reason why health and wellness practitioners do not get these programs rolled out or not successful with programs, is because they don’t actually do the work. They think about it forever, they strategize how all the pieces are going to go all into place, they analyze and over analyze how the pricing structure is going to be. And how you can include direct billing in it or not, or insurance or not and it never gets rolled out. And you never test it and I am a huge proponent in perfect action and just rolling it out dirty and just seeing what happens. And so if you are going to think about creating a program, if you’re going through the work of creating the right messaging around your program. If you are going to do the work of putting it all together in a really cool delivery system and you don’t actually execute it with a very next patient or client, you are massively losing out on revenue. Every single day from that moment onward, you are losing out on revenue. When I learned about the 7-day detox protocol, I learned about it in a week long nutrition program that I did at the very beginning of my license. And that very next Monday, I had somebody come in she had all of qualifiers to start doing the 7-day detox program. And I just literally said ‘hey I just learned about this, this is how the structure is, this is what it looks like, here’s the supplements that you need to do it. This is how long it lasts, would you be interested?’ And so for that very first year, that was how I was rolling it out. Every single new patient I would just say ‘hey this is the program that I’ve been testing with patients, do you want to try it, this is what it looks like, here’s the supplements that are involved.’ 

And it wasn’t until after that first year of rolling it out to a hundred patients or so that we then created automation behind it. So automation emails and videos of me going through the process, and a Facebook group for people to go into and recipes and all of those things. But for that very first year it was just plain, dirty, I created things on the fly. And that was just how it was, because I wanted to roll it out and prove the concept and get it some traction behind it. So often times, who you are is that perfectionist mentality that is going to slow you down and stop you from doing anything. And you’ve probably witnessed this in the way you do other things. And so rolling out this new program is not going to be something new for you. If you are perfectionist in everything that you do the faster you can start breaking out of that, the better. We want to start breaking out of these stories that we’re telling ourselves and these limiting beliefs that we’ve created to actually start leaning into the fear and leaning into this comfort and actually getting things done. 

So if creating an in office or online program is something that you are considering doing, there is no cookie cutter recipe for you. There is no course that you can buy that will show you exactly the kind of program you need to be creating. That is something that you have to brainstorm and take full responsibility for. There are templates, there are steps that you need to be taking, there are different ways to launch it, and there are different ways to package it to help with that. That is something I love doing, but I will never take full ownership or just offer someone’s a cookie cutter template of what their course should look like. Because you know your client better than I will, than any other influence or will than any other course create or will. You know what your people like and the other most important thing is you need to also consider how much time, your time you want to be included in that program. And again there’s going to be people saying ‘ok you need to make this 12 week program and you need to be showing up live every single day, and creating a Facebook group. And use the most expensive software to host this and etc.’ I’m not all about that, I am actually against most of what I just said. Because it doesn’t need to be a certain way. Yes, people have had success doing it their way but you get to do it your way. We have done and created courses that are completely passive, that the practitioner doesn’t need to show up at all. We have done them where they show up all the time, we have done them where they show up weekly. So it really just depends on how much time you want in this, once it actually goes live. 

And then that’s another great point is do you want to be an evergreen program, or do you want to launch it live. Live will always get you more people in because there’s the intuitive deadline and that’s when you’ll get the most revenue. Evergreen just means that you constantly have to be putting it out there, every time you go on social media. Remind people that this program exists. You have to be doing all of these things in order for your program to work. But again, there is no template cookie cutter downloadable anything that will help you create your program. We are just now with the gap protocol really establishing it as a completely functional program with a set price, with set labs, with things that are optional. And it literally took me an evening to throw it up in Excel, say this is what it’s going to look like. Rework our pdf download sheet for our practitioners and for the patients and say ‘this is what’s included.’ It took me 24-48 hours to do that, and we are now ready to roll it out. I don’t know how it’s going to go. We haven’t sold our first one as a complete protocol. We’ve done bits and pieces of it, we’ve watched through the protocol. And that’s what allowed us to develop it into a much more cohesive program. And we have all of our bonuses and our extra value added pieces. But again, it was literally 24-48 hours to make it now that we’re going to roll out with every single new patient moving forward. It doesn’t take a lot of time. 

So to recap, what you need to do is you need to number 1; create how you want it to be delivered. Do you want it to be just emails, is it through videos, or is it going to be on a Facebook group. All of them or only one of them, does not matter. How long is it going to be, what is your unique angle to delivering this? Is there a unique way that you can name this protocol? I love it when doctors and other health and wellness practitioners use their own name. Like the GAT protocol, the maximized health method, you name it. And less is always more, can you clearly see what the transformation is going to be at the end. If you can, then most likely your clients that are going to take it, can. 

And then the final thing is you need to actually roll it out, and you roll that out dirty. You need to roll it out imperfect, you need to roll it out messy just be transparent about that so that people know it’s only going to get better from here. And then the final thing of course that trips everybody up is pricing. There is no one that can tell you how you can value yourself, and what your efforts and work is. Because there’s a lot of behind the scene work that goes into creating a program. So there’s no one that you can talk to, to say is this a good price or not. It’s something that you inherently believe in. Where I get our students to start is what the value that you believe it’s worth, and then start at a value that is significantly lower to start getting people through it. Start getting some of that testimonials, get people to test how it’s all running, make sure that the concept is getting more proven and then you can slowly start to increase it. You can certainly throw it out there at the highest value and see how goes. If your audience loves you and everything you do they will buy, amazing. I was to offer some beta launch, or beta offer in the beginning. Again, just to get us as many people as we can to test it to try it, prove that the concept is working or give us insight into what needs to be improved. But there should always be a target value that you are aiming for. Sometimes it’s $500, sometimes it’s a hundred dollars, sometimes its twenty-five hundred dollars, who know what it is for you. But you have to have a place to you are aiming for get into that comfort level of what you want to charge for it now. And then the next time we roll it out, and then the next time we roll it out. 

Which brings me to my final piece is a program that you are now creating as part of your business is not a one and done. It is not a launch once and hope it just gains attraction via magic. It is something that you will constantly need to be talking about, constantly need to be posting about. Constantly need to be referring back to every time you go on social media. Talking to your patients or clients as you walk them through your welcome emails referring to it. As you have marketing material that you are creating, referring to it. It has to be now, an integral piece of how you’re running your business. Otherwise don’t even bother getting started. If you don’t have the conviction and the commitment to stick with it long term, don’t even go there. Until you are ready to make it that this is the way you are now treating patients or clients. So for us any time there’s someone with digestion or hormones automatically, it’s the GAT protocol. We will treat other people, but when it’s digestion or hormones automatically were putting on the GAT protocol. For you maybe it’s a menstrual cycle, so the next time a patient comes in with menstrual cycle issues, they are doing your period protocol or whatever the case may be. You have to be so convicted to this that you are constantly offering it to people. And if they say no, you need to understand where those objections are and fix that. It they say yes and they love it, you are going to start and gain more confidence to roll it out to more and more people. But it takes all of those other steps that I talked about for you to get it there. So if there’s any way that me and my team can help you figure out what the steps are, put all the pieces together. Get all the tech and automation and everything done for you do not hesitate to message me, and we can talk about what the elite level membership could do for you. But in the meantime, I want you to download our maximized practitioner handbook so you can learn more about how to step into that maximized practitioner role, get rid of those limiting beliefs, get rid of those success blockers. And really start showing up to your business in a massive way. I’m Andrea Maxim, and I’m out.