Ask Joe: How to Launch a Product for Multiple Streams of Income | PoP 664

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Image of Joe Sanok is captured. On this therapist podcast, podcaster, consultant and author, talks how to Launch a Product for Multiple Streams of Income.

Why must you research before starting to conceptualize your product? How does your research work with the pain points of your client? Which follow-up questions do you ask your clients to make sure they are interested in purchasing your product?

In this podcast episode, Joe Sanok discusses how to research and launch a product for additional income.

Podcast Sponsor: Therapy Notes

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In This Podcast

  • Do research
  • Pain
  • Product
  • Price

Do research

Before you create the product, conduct research first to see whether the product is desirable for your audiences, and this is where knowing their pain points becomes necessary.

It will be a misuse of your time, money, and energy in creating a product that no one needs or wants.

Ask your audience how you can best serve them and incorporate their answers into your designs and ideas.

Pain

Follow-up questions you can ask clients about their pain points:

  • How does that make you feel? Do you feel insecure, worried, shame?
  • When you are stuck, what do you do best?
  • What do you wish you would do or feel in this problem?

My reflection on this is that people want encouragement, self-esteem building … Fear, shame overwhelm all stand in the way of taking action and trying. (Joe Sanok)

Product

Some products are best sold in large group teaching systems, such as a Masterclass or a group that clients can join.

In this way, clients can receive feedback and enjoy accountability from being a part of a consistent group.

Other popular product styles are one-on-one consulting with clear milestones to keep track of progress and change.

As the facilitator of these conversations [try to] approach every call as if it were the first call as an open book, because the tendency is to start asking questions around, “would you like this?” after the first three to five people but what you want is to have all the people you interview to be able to tell you [the] things that [they] really want as a part of this program. (Joe Sanok)

You may draw from what other people have said but keep the conversation as open as possible to find out what each person wants or needs.

Then ask yourself, are you making your product big enough to cover most or all of these different pain points?

Price

Reflect their words to them; their pain points, what they want to achieve, and the time frame they want to achieve it in, and ask them how much they would pay for that product.

Clients will give insight into whether they want to pay a once-off fee or per month. This is all valuable information that you can take into consideration when creating their product.

Then, give them some space to consider.

Books mentioned in this episode

Image of the book Thursday Is The New Friday written by Joe Sanok. Author Joe Sanok offers the exercises, tools, and training that have helped thousands of professionals create the schedule they want, resulting in less work, greater income, and more time for what they most desire.

Useful Links mentioned in this episode:

Check out these additional resources:

Meet Joe Sanok

A photo of Joe Sanok is displayed. Joe, private practice consultant, offers helpful advice for group practice owners to grow their private practice. His therapist podcast, Practice of the Practice, offers this advice.

Joe Sanok helps counselors to create thriving practices that are the envy of other counselors. He has helped counselors to grow their businesses by 50-500% and is proud of all the private practice owners that are growing their income, influence, and impact on the world. Click here to explore consulting with Joe.

Thanks For Listening!

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Podcast Transcription

[JOE SANOK]
This is the Practice of the Practice podcast with Joe Sanok, session number 664.

I’m Joe Sanok your host, and welcome to the Practice of the Practice podcast. I am so excited that you are here. Today we’re talking about something really interesting, how to launch a product for multiple streams of income. Over the last couple years, it’s been really interesting to watch how my audience kind of thinks differently than maybe did a few years ago. So as people are starting practices, growing group practices with Group Practice Launch and Group Practice Boss, we’ve got our membership communities Next Level Practice for starting and folks continue to level up and are saying I want to build some additional streams of income. I want to do things beyond just my one on one. Maybe I’m really good at teen and I want to launch an e-course for parents, or I want to start some membership communities and go beyond just maybe my state and not just be stuck with necessarily counseling as my only way of bringing in income.

So it’s really been cool to see how people are starting to say, yes, I want to do more of this. I want to do more of this. Throughout November and December of 2021, I had a mastermind group that met every Thursday for people who had done bulk book buys of Thursday is the New Friday, my book that came out in October of 2021. In that group, there was a number of people that said, “Well, what’s next? We’ve connected so much in this group and we’re thinking differently about our schedules and leveling up, and we want to keep this momentum going.” So I went through my own process that I talk about in the book where I interview people and ask them about the pain of starting a new stream of income, the perfect product, and then how much they would pay for that.

So I hosted a webinar that I talked in depth about this. That was just for of the Thursday is the New Friday people. So I wanted to actually give you just part of that webinar. If you want to attend the one that’s totally free, and actually I run it, it’s not just a recording of it. We’re actually launching that on January 27th, tomorrow at 2:00 o’clock Eastern, 1:00 central, 12:00 mountain, 11:00 Pacific. So you’re just going to go over to audiencebuilding.academy, audiencebuilding.academy, and you can register there. Then you can come, hang out, ask questions, follow up.

So if you listen to what I talk about today in this recording, and you say, oh, I want to dig in deeper, I want to ask some more questions about building an audience, building new products, that’s going to be the best spot for you to come hang out with me and ask some questions. If you’re on my email list, you’ve probably got a couple emails about that as well. So that’s going to be on January 27th at 2:00 o’clock Eastern. You can sign up over at audiencebuilding.academy. So without any further ado here is part of that webinar on how to launch a product to build multiple streams of income.

A couple things that I wanted to talk about is that we’ve done this process before with Practice of the Practice. We did an event called next level living room where people flew into Traverse City and hung out with me in my living room for a couple days. We did this process for the big ideas mastermind group that I hosted a number of years ago, Next Level Practice, Group Practice Launch, Group Practice Boss, a bunch of our masterminds and every single one of them sold out in the first round when we went through this process. And we’ve also killed a few ideas going through this exact process I’m going to walk you through.

So for example, Podcast Launch School plus, which was a membership idea, as I talked to people and did some early opt-in things, there just weren’t enough people that said we want a membership community specifically around starting a podcast. So there are ideas that we’ve killed very early on and the whole process I’m going to walk you through, I talk about it in the book Thursday is the New Friday. But more importantly, it helps you launch something without a lot of time capital or financial capital. The idea is that on the front end, we are able to gauge interest and really have reasons to kill a good idea early on before you put in too much time or too much money.

Because what oftentimes people do is they spend months creating the perfect e-course and then they can’t sell it to anyone. They don’t have an audience that wants that. So we’re going to walk through the exact process I went through. I’m going to show you the data, kind of the steps that I took and then what we came up with as a result of this. So first, what was the problem? The main question within the Thursday is the New Friday mastermind group was what’s next? We’ve connected with each other, we have enjoyed this, we feel like we’ve taken some good steps but what’s next for the Thursday is the New Friday mastermind group?

So that happened, I think it was session four or five there. Then I’ll walk you through kind of what I did after that. But that was really the prompt of what’s next for the Thursday is the New Friday mastermind group. So what I went through, and many of you participated in this, I gave a scheduling link to the Thursday is the New Friday mastermind group which had 44 people in it. I interviewed 14 people as well as three pre-con consulting clients, so a total of 17 people and we walked through the pain that they’re going through, the product and the price. We’re going to go straight through everything I covered.

But I want to say from the front end, today, this isn’t a sales pitch today. It’s complete or I’m sorry, it’s not a sales pitch when you’re doing this. So you’re not trying to get them to to say, yes, I want to buy that. You’re genuinely listening. So at the beginning of every one of these calls, I’d say, this isn’t a sales pitch. I’m completely, it’s me completely hearing your opinions to see if there’s a way I can support you at a price point that works for both of us. I just ask that you answer as honestly as possible and I genuinely want to know what you think, how’s that sound.

Every single person said, that sounds awesome. That’s great. Joe, I like your work. I just want to tell you what I wish you would create. The idea is that we want to find this point where it makes sense for me, or if you’re selling a product, it makes sense for you financially and whoever that consumer, customer, client is, that it makes sense for the them; and is there overlap or is there not? There’s been lots of times in my career when I’ve gone through this and I found out that people just aren’t willing to pay what I think they need to pay for something to make it worth it for me. So that idea at that point I had to pause or kill.

I realized from my audience, for example, when I launched the consultant school, my audience didn’t even have group practices. They weren’t ready to start consulting yet. So I only had six people sign up. It worked, but I really had set myself up for failure doing a whole podcast, 80 episodes to lead into that sale and didn’t do any of that front end research.

So start with that. Next, what we’re going to do, we’re talking with the individuals on these calls about the pain. So what’s it been like to dream about passive income, to launch something? How did it feel? What stops you from growing? This is an organic conversation. This is not you pushing ideas into people’s thoughts. This was me just really hearing people out and seeing where that conversation goes. So three major kind of areas came out as I talked to people about the pain.

So that ideas are greater than their ability to implement. So these are direct quotes. I was taking notes as I was talking to people. Anyone that did a call with me, notes, they heard the cluttering of my keyboard while we were chatting. So this is what people said. I have a lot of ideas, but never get to the execution point. It all feels like self-promotion, but desperately I want to have another stream of income outside of counseling. I feel energized. I feel frozen stuck. How do I overcome self sabotage for getting to the finish line for these big ideas I have for myself?

Another person said shame, overwhelm. I don’t take the best care of myself. Then I doubt myself, fear, feeling unworthy, who the f**k do I think I am to talk to people and be out there? Who do I think I am? There’s a lot of imposter syndrome that creeps in. So you can get a sense of, you know when you’ve interviewed 17 people of there’s a lot of, oh, I just need someone to help me out in these areas. Next, some comments around the pain, we’re on unclear milestones where people said, “I don’t have a great blueprint scaling it. It keeps dropping to the bottom of my list, time on my end to do it in accountability.”

“I like to do so many things, which is the best way to go? I need to build a following.” Questions around where are the dollars. Feels like this is a manifest destiny. I have to do this. I’m building my future. It feels overwhelming. This person has these pictures but needs help with the details. I know where I want to get, but I’m unsure how to take the steps. Another person said, step by step, I need to take action. If there’s a program, I’d have more success faster, and I need clear milestones to know what I’m doing correctly. So the last area where people really discussed around the pain was creating time. I have a lot of ideas. I do have some time management issues, those things together, ideas plus dedicated time. It gets in the way. Sometimes it feels overwhelming. Why can’t I do this when others can?

So it’s kind of going back to some that kind of shame and overwhelm. Also, it feels hopeless. I’m working daily. That has to stop. I got to control my time before doing anything else. Can I handle this? So even saying, can I handle working on a project that builds passive or multiple streams of income? Is it just one more thing that’s a stressor and goes on the back burner. Will it make more money to make it worth it? Do I have the time to work on it? Our family schedule is crazy. The family part is a big part of it. Will I take more time away from my kids?

So very quickly we get a sense of what the individuals are dealing with. I would love to in the chat, if there’s things that people set in there that for you feel like that that really resonates with where you feel in regards to building multiple streams of income, drop that in the chat. It’s always nice to see that other people think like you so you don’t feel quite so alone. So these are the types of follow up questions I asked, and this is not an authoritative list. This is just a list of the kind of things that when someone says something like I don’t want to take more time away for my family. I really want to get to that pain. So how does that make you feel?

Do you feel insecure? Do you feel shame? Do you feel worried? Do you feel happy? Do you, like getting them going in that direction. When you’re stuck, what do you do next? What do you wish you would do or feel? Then just continue to dig in. So a lot of people started with kind of the end product, but like what’s going on before that, reframing what they’re saying, making people start earlier than where they start and fast forward beyond that too. So for example, I just want to launch this e-course about ADHD. Okay, back up a little bit. Tell me about your interest in ADHD. Tell me about like, are you reading business books or like who’s inspiring you, how’d you decide on an e-course, so really backing up.

Then if this course were successful, how would that feel compared to where you feel now? So being able to really help people give you that full pain. So kind of the summary of the pain was people saying, I feel I have to do this. Like I have something inside of me that is only happening in counseling sessions and coaching sessions and it feels like the world needs to hear this. That’s one of them. People also say like, what exactly do I need to do? I need very clear steps to know what to do. That question of is it even worth it? Like, I don’t want to waste my time away from my counseling practice, my coaching practice, regular business on a guess.

Then probably the biggest thing I heard over and over was some level of shame, why can’t I do this? Everyone else seems to be so successful online and they’re just killing it but I’m not. What’s wrong with me. Who do I think I am? A big fear of failing. I would say most of the people had some level of that. So this would be kind of our overall summary of the pain.

So my reflection on this is that people want encouragement, that kind of self-esteem building. There’s a big fear of failure. There’s shame, confusion, and overwhelm that all stand in the way of taking action and trying. If you would say that you felt any of that, will you just say yes in the chat? So encouragement, you need some self-esteem building around this particular topic. Maybe you’re successful in other areas but in the idea of building multiple streams, there’s a fear of failure, shame, confusion, overwhelm. You look at all those yeses. I feel that too. You may think that I’ve done all these things. I feel that all the time. It takes a lot to do these things and especially if something doesn’t go how we expect it to or wanted to.

All right, next question was around the product. So if I was talking to James, I’d say James design, the exact product that you need to overcome, what you just described. So say James told me I feel like I need step by step. I want to make sure that I have time outside of my work to work on this. I want to really build this new product. And I would say to James, okay, I want you to design James’ product, the thing that you exactly need. Don’t think about anyone else. Don’t think about if it’ll sell. Don’t think about the price. Just design the exact product that you want. What would help James succeed? So you’re not going to have them worry about the price. And you’ll say, yo, at the end when we talk price, we’ll just see.

So this is what came up. Of the people I interviewed, 12 of them said they want some sort of large group teaching component. They said that it would be more efficient. They could probably have more teachings instead of having something individual. Almost everyone said they wanted some sort of small group accountability or feedback or work group, not just a networking group like what we had with Thursday is the New Friday, but one where they’re genuinely getting feedback and accountability from a consistent group. About half the people said they want one-on-one consulting to be part of whatever product is designed.

Almost everyone said they want very clear milestones to know if they’re on track, to be able to say, here is exactly where you are right now. Most people wanted it to be to be, the length to be longer than three months. I think I did that bet wrong. Yes, it’s greater than three months. Yes, my brain stopped working for a second there. Somewhere, but between three and nine months. Most people said around six months. So trying to really get them to say here’s how long I want or think that I would need if I were to guess. But half the people said they’d really want some support services, so things like video editing, podcast editing, visual design, things like that. A handful of people said that they’d like to do some sort of group project together as well.

All right, so comments on the product, the groups, the idea of breakout sessions are planned small groups of three to six people in each group. Four to five would be perfect, accountability, processing, giving some structure for the group. For the large group, 25 to 30 in it for teaching, then maybe breakout sessions for small groups, three to four people. Maybe to practice something or do something, talk through the next steps. Maybe have similar groups for deeper connection, clear milestones, but it could be individualized.

Some tangibles, one person said we’re determining a niche email course and connections, balancing ideas off one another. That gives me motivation. I could pay a coach, but it’s having the people and connections, but not necessarily in the random way we’ve been doing it. So groups was a part of kind of what people were saying with the products, clear direction, a lit near program, maybe three months, one person said. Each week, knowing what to do, maybe longer.

All the steps are there. Ideally I could actually accomplish them. Who’s my audience that content, make the content most effective? So video, workbook, how do I market, how do I hire? Building our own brand on podcasts, niche building, actual exercises on my uniqueness, my consulting style, figuring out how I stand out, accountability and action steps. Building people who can follow me. And this can become its own animal. How do I do it? Stay passionate, move forward, but not consume me.

So groups, clear direction and then additional support. This would be awesome if there was someone who could help with the e-course. If you want to do an e-course or podcast, here are the steps. Sam R or Sam C could be support, a manual of things at Practice of the Practice could support or an add-on with a discount. I care more about video editing. I don’t know what, I don’t know. Maybe anything I’m missing? Maybe some credits to use when I need it. Not everyone will need the same things. So people are saying I want support, but I don’t want just this package that’s standard for everyone, because I might care about something more than other folks.

So as I noticed themes, really the idea, I had to not guide the conversation to stay open. So probably the first three to five people were saying very similar things. I, as a facilitator of these conversations, I had to really try to approach every call as if it were the first call as an open book. Because the tendency is to start kind of asking questions around oh, would you like this? Would you like this after the first three to five people? But what you really want is you want to have all the people you interview to be able to tell you, here are the things that I really want as a part of this program.

So where are their themes? So I’m hearing this, but what about this? It sounds like you’re wanting something like this. Someone else said this, what do you think? So you may draw from what other people have said. So if someone says if there’s some sort of way to get video editing and help in a different way and they said I’d like some credits and someone else said, hey I would love to have a menu that I could just pick certain things that’s just included in the price to say, hey, someone else said this. Is that what you’re talking about? Or is it different? What are they really saying? Is there something they’re not saying, a fear, worry or something they don’t don’t even know?

Because a lot of times people will tell you only as much as they know. Then are they making a big enough product to help them? You’re redesigning the exact product for you. No one else. Right now make your ideal product. So sometimes people would say I only want to spend 500 bucks a month so I’m only going to design in my head a product that is 500 a dollars a month, but it’s not actually going to solve the pain that I was just talking about or even some of the goals. So my reflection from this part is it’s hard to make a selfish decision of a product and not think how much is going to cost me, but encouraging participants to dream big gives a clear and more useful product.

Because if people deep down really want a very robust product and they hold themself back because of the price point they think you’re going to set, they don’t know what price point you’re going to have. So I think it’s really important to really push people to design their perfect product. This is what happened with Next Level Practice. Next Level Practice, in my mind, we are trip wire. So the one year practice plan is $17, one time fee. So the next step up from that to me, it seemed like 29 bucks a month would really make sense. But when I went through this process over and over, people designed this completely robust start to finish “How do you start a practice” program, this membership community that I was like, there’s no way I could do this for $29 a month.

We would just need thousands of people to provide the level of support people are talking about. But then when we get to the payment side and I reflected back, here’s the program that you just told me, how much would you pay, people said between $99 and $199 a month. So I would’ve left so much money on the table. I also would’ve designed a subpar product.

Third, we talked about price. So you’re now reflecting back the pain. So at the beginning you told me here’s how you felt about starting multiple streams of income. You had mentioned you might want to start an e-course. You might want to start a membership community or you want to do public speaking. Next you designed the product, which included all these different things. So imagine that perfect product exists, it has all the features you just explained, it helps you overcome the feelings that you noted, and you’ll get these particular outcomes that you said you wanted to get. How much would you pay for that if it were a no brainer?

So really you want people to say all day long, I would pay this amount of money if you could help me with these particular things. So reflecting back their own words and just saying, here’s exactly what you said, here’s exactly how you said you felt, here’s the exact outcomes that you want to overcome in this period of time so in six months we cover all these things. Like what would you pay for that? So then you get them to then say, here’s the range. Here’s the exact number. They may say, I’d pay this one time fee or I’d break it down per month. So you want to just make sure that you’re getting that.

So I would wait and allow silent and time at this point because people need to think and process and understand what you’re asking. I mean, they’re considering all sorts of things in giving an accurate price. They might be running numbers on, okay, if I could start selling some e-courses, if I could build an audience, my spouse just lost their job, my kid’s in private school, like you have no idea; to even just say to them this is a big question and I’m going to just let the silence sit so that you can process it. Because you don’t want people to just jump in and give a price. Maybe they will, but you want to be able to really make sure that you give that silence and time for them to really think through it.

So here’s what people said. I broke it down. Some people said a total price and then say it was a six or nine month program. Other people, it was maybe a shorter program. So I broke it down by month to give kind of an idea of how much people were saying in monthly or in total. So here what we’re looking at is the number of people. When we look at total price people wanted to have something that was between $2,000 and $4,000 when we initially talked. Then when I asked if we doubled your price, if it were twice, what you said, what would have to be included to make that a no brainer? This is where you really find out what people care about. Because in doing that, you get a more robust program.
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[JOE SANOK]
So summary, pain, overwhelm, unsure will it work, what’s the best use of time? The product, they wanted audience building milestones, group Q&A and teaching and price, $650 to $1,500 per month for six months. There were people that were on the lower end of that, that said 300 bucks or so a month over six months. There were people on the higher end. I think the highest we had was $3,000 a month somebody said, over six months. So then you may say to that person that says three grand a month, “Hey, I have to work with you one on one at that price and add in this whole program that we’re designing.” So at that point you can do all sorts of different things.

We’ll have time for you to ask questions about all of this today but I’m going to talk about kind of all the other things that we figured out from this as well. So before launching to a group, you want to look at the basic framework of what you’re creating. Can the team do it? Can your team manage it? What timeline do we need for hiring? So for example, we sold our first six spots for the Done For You Podcasting. So that was a $18,000 program. So six spots that we sold in about two weeks using this process and I had not hired sound engineers yet. So we could not start actually editing until we had those sound engineers. So I didn’t want to hire a bunch of sound engineers only to give them no work. So once we had cash in hand, then it’s clear we’re going to do this work.

It’s going to take a couple months for me to work through the initial stages anyway, but then I could say month one, we’re going to be brainstorming your episodes and your specialty and doing some investigation. Month, two, we’re going to outline those episodes and start connecting with guests. Then by month three, we’re going to start recording so that by month four you can be launching and have those first five episodes out there. So it gives me time to hire those sound engineers in that situation for a new product. What time will I need to put in to this outside of just the time of building the product, launching the product, all of those sorts of things?

What other tasks will I personally have to pause? What’s the minimum purchase to make a new product worth it for you or for me? So these are all things before you ever say, “Hey, I’m doing this webinar. Hey, let me chat with you about this new product we’re launching.” All those things you want to be able to sort through because at every level what we want to do is we want to kill the idea before we’ve put in too much time or too much money. So we’re really looking at validating it at every single step.

All right, drum roll, I want to see, I’m going to look at your screen. I want to see the drum roll. I don’t see you all drum rolling. All right, all right. We are launching Audience Building Academy. Audience Building Academy is going to be a program that’s a six month milestone based support community. I’m going to walk through what this looks like. But almost everyone that I talk to recognize that they’re going to need a substantial audience before they launch a new product and do those multiple streams of income. So Audience Building Academy, we are launching it today to you, and I’m going to walk through exactly what this all looks like and then we’ll talk through it and we’ll talk through this process.

So let’s talk about the launch. So at every stage I want to validate this Audience Building Academy. So first the calls that I did, did people actually sign up to talk to me? Yes, they did. I did all those phone calls. Next webinar. Did people actually show up for the webinar? Did people register for the webinar? It’s typical to have half the people that register for a webinar show up. So we had 43% of the Thursday is the New Friday mastermind group sign up for the webinar, 19 out of 44. Today we’ve had, I think we had 12 at our max, so a little bit above 50% in regards to attending the webinar.

So next after this is do Thursday is the New Friday people actually sign up for Audience Building Academy or Audience Building Academy Elite, which I’ll talk about what those mean in just a second? So do people actually sign up for it? Next, assuming that goes well, then if there’s extra spots, we’ll open that up to Killin’It Camp, Next Level Practice, Group Practice Boss. So people that are already customers of ours. Do people sign up for that? That’s around 500 people. So we should expect 50 to a hundred people to sign up with 25 to 50 people showing up for that webinar, which based on sales would probably fill up most of Audience Building Academy, depending on how many people purchase. So again, trying to kill the idea before you put too much time and energy into it.

Then after that, assuming there’s a spot or two left, we’d then launch it to the general email list. How many sign up for that and do they purchase the product and do we have the minimum to launch? So I’ve run the numbers and we need to have three of the Audience Building Academy Elite, and six Audience Building Academy, people for it to make sense for our team financially. And when you’re doing a new product, you want to get testimonials, you want to be able to do a really good job, you want to over deliver. So there’s ideas that we’re going to be giving that we aren’t even listing in what we’re offering in this product, because we want to over deliver. We want to make sure that people get great results with it.

So your first round, you want to make sure you really put in that time and energy to say, I want this to be so successful that next time there’s so much buzz around it, that it just fills up right away. All right, so what’s the high level goal of Audience Building Academy? To position yourself to have an audience that leads to multiple streams of income. This comes through connections, feedback, teachings, and support so you’re not starting from scratch. People have done this before. Why not learn from them?

So how are we going to do that? There’s specific outcomes for Audience Building Academy. First, your niche building. So define who you want to attract, what you love talking about and testing around that and creating a clear, not cleat, call to action. Also image building. So build and implement a plan to get top quality media placement for authority building. And lastly, audience assessment, expand your reach and evaluate specific audience acquisition that is working and replicate that.

So here’s high level, the difference between Audience Building Academy and Audience Building Academy Elite. I’m going to walk through all of these elements as well. So we’re going to have two 75 minute meetings per month. They’re going to be on Thursdays at noon, Eastern, same time that we had with the Thursday is the New Friday group. I have to look at my calendar to see if the first and third or the second and fourth works best with when the girl’s mom is in town. She comes into town once a month. So want to make sure that I line up with that.

Both sides will get access to all the recordings and the PDFs of Audience Building Academy, lifetime access to digital content, so you get lifetime access to those recordings and PDFs, three 30 minute one-on-one consulting sessions with me. So that’s where Elite gets that. 30 support credits. I’ll talk about what those are in a minute. Audience Building Academy Elite gets the 30 support credits, and they also get one free retake when we offer Audience Building Academy again. So those are the really high level things. We’ll talk through what those things mean.

So twice a month meetings, the first five minutes are going to be looking back at the previous conversation and what we’re going to cover today. We’ll have 20 minutes of teaching, and I’m going to show you in just a second, exactly what milestones we’re going to have for those 12 sessions. We’re going to go over your homework that you’re going to be working on that week or those two weeks. You’re going to then go into small groups. So the small groups, the first small group of the month is going to be one that you’re with every single month, in the first meeting and the second small group of the month is going to be a networking small group to get to know people within the group more.

So really that first one of the month, you’re working on the homework, the second one, you’re networking, growing connections. Then we’re going to have 15 minutes of Q&A around that particular topic. Then we’re going to talk about next steps, what you need to work on over the next two weeks, where you’re stuck and make sure that we’re very clear on the homework that you need to complete before the next session. So here’s the timeline. So in February the first meeting is going to cover your niche. What do you love? Some specific homework around that, and some beta testing and getting clarity from other people in your world.

Then the second session in February, we’re going to cover, what do they love? What does your audience love? How do they talk about it, some specific exercises around that. In March we’ll cover the email course, writing that, refining it, getting feedback on it so that you have somewhere to point people as you continue to grow your influence. Then the fourth session, we’re going to look at your opt-in creation. So how do you use Canva? What’s a good opt in? How do you make it look nice? Those that are in-audience builder, but building elite are going to be able to use some of their support credits to have our team help with some of that.

Then we’re going to be talking about media attention from your network, speaking, interviews, stories, and research, how to best do that. Next we’ll be going into getting more media attention on a larger scale. So Help A Reporter Out, larger media attention, larger podcasts. How do you get on those? Your social media sprint, we’ll then, for that two weeks, be focusing on a social media sprint and I’ll be doing all of this with you. I’m going to be refining my email course. I’m going to be refining my networking. I’m going to be doing a social media sprint with you as well.

Then we’re going to talk about your social media plan so that you have a plan even after Audience Building Academy. Then we’re going to talk about podcast interviews, how to get podcast interviews, how to connect, how to pitch yourself and then podcast refinement. So we’ll be making those connections as much as we can with podcasters we’re connected with. And then session 11 we’re going to cover audience connection, planning your first webinar or summit and then actually launching that and getting feedback from that and getting your first 25 to 50 people to come to a webinar or to host a summit with other people from your group. So those that want to do a group project we’ll help support that. We’ll help promote that through our list. We’ll be emailing all of those events that people are putting on out to our list in an email.

Then lastly, your next audience building plan. So where are you at? Where do you want to be? What’s the plan moving forward? So that’s the timeline of the 12 sessions, very clear milestones. So there’s six clear miles. The first month’s milestones is to identify and test your niche. So by the end of the first month, you should have your specialty down. It doesn’t mean you’re going to stay there forever. It means that you’re going to start there. By the end of month two, you’ll have created an email course with a high quality opt-in. Maybe you already have an email course, you’re going to get feedback on. You’re going to refine it. You’re going to build it. It’s going to be bigger. Or maybe you don’t have one, but by the end of that month, you’ll have that completed.

Then three, by the end of the third month, we want to have five quality as seen on media appearances. So the goal is that you have placements in different articles like Help A Reporter Out, it’s gone live, that you’ve been on podcasts, that you have at least five quality media appearances by the end of month three, which then builds your authority to make it easier, to create a strong online presence and grow your following by 25%. So wherever you’re at, we want to make sure that we amp it up by 25% in that month. So if you have a hundred followers on Instagram, great. We want to be at 125 by the end of the month.

Most of you are going to double or triple, but we want to set some reasonable goals to say, here’s the milestone. If you exceed it, awesome pants. If not we’re going to keep working with you and push you to really get to that level. By the end of month five, we want to have had you on two podcasts, YouTube, or blogging appearances at minimum. So the end of month five we’re doing that. So we’re again, building that authority, building that skill, ideally much more than this, but we want to say here’s the minimum milestone for you. Then by the end of month six, to host your first online event, to be able to do that audience building through a webinar through a summit, and we’ll talk through exactly what makes a good webinar or summit, how do you plan it step by step? What’s the checklist you need to do? How do you get people to register? How do you build awesome slides or have someone build awesome slides? What’s the flow that works really well for teaching that will help people say, oh my gosh, I want more from this person.

So support credits. So for Audience Building Academy Elite people you’ll get 30 support credits for that six months. So if you need website help, that’s three credits per hour. So you get support with those little things you just don’t want to do. If you need copywriting, that’s two credits per hour; so writing emails, blog posts, other services. And they’ll quote out exactly how many hours the project is most likely going to take, how many credits it’ll cost. Video editing, that’s two credits per hour and social media, two credits per hour. Anything that we offer at Practice of the Practice is going to be somewhere between two and three credits per hour in regards to support services.

We aren’t going to have you cash them in for consulting. It’s just going to be for those kind of behind the scenes things that help you get to the next level. Also everyone that purchases from the Thursday is the New Friday mastermind group actually gets to come to Slow Down School here in Traverse City, Michigan. So usually that’s $3,900 but we’re actually giving that to you for free because we want to launch this thing. We want to do it well. We want to have a great capstone at the end of this. So Slow Down School, I’m going to show you real quick just the, if you go slowdownschool.com, you can see all of this. But this is where we hang out in Northern Michigan.

It’s in Traverse City, Michigan, right on the water on lake Michigan. It’s all inclusive, meaning all of your food, all of the travel from the airport, assuming you make the bus and it’s not delayed. Otherwise the Ubers aren’t that expensive from there. The first two days we slow down, we go for hikes, we have a massage therapist come in, you have your own room. We’re going to have everyone be tested before they come. Anything indoors, we’re going to be requiring masks. This is going to be in July so we’ll be trying to stay up to date on best safety protocol.

Then Wednesday and Thursday, all day and Friday morning, we sprint full tilt towards your big goals. So you can either do the track with me, which is going to be around your big ideas, your audience building, that next steps at that point, your audience is going to be pumping most likely. So how do you launch that product? Or Alison and Whitney are going to be there to also help with group practice types of things. So you may say I really want to focus on group practice. You can do either one of those tracks at Slow Down School. Then on Friday afternoon we have an awesome excursion planned for you. You can listen to the testimonials about Slow Down School here, watch the video if you want that as well. But let’s bounce back over here. So you get Slow Down School, as well as part of this Audience Building Academy.

Couple pictures. We have some executive chefs there that partner with local farms. So every single thing on the salad bar, they say, these carrots are from here, this kale we grew ourselves. We had one lady who was a keto diet and stayed in ketosis all week long, which I thought was awesome. We also had a lady who is vegan and she loved the vegan food. So both ends of the spectrum all sorts of awesomeness. This is where we hang out and are inspired the whole time.

So what’s your jam? So Audience Building Academy, there’s only 20 spots for that. It’s self-paced. You put in more of the execution, similar outcomes, but you move forward with the implementation because you’re not getting that consulting. You’re not getting those support credits. We only are doing 20 spots of that in this first round of Audience Building Academy. That’s $650 per month over that six months, and then Audience Building Academy Elite, you get more support. You get the consulting. You have a team behind you, as well as a cohort of elites that are ready to go full tilt. So you have more support from me and the team. We only having 10 spots there. Actually one of my pre-con consulting clients just bought one of those, so we only have nine left. So you want to grab that as soon as possible.

Now I know that ended kind of abruptly because then I went into some Q&A and people knew it was being recorded, but also we talked about a lot of different ideas and thoughts and such. And I want you to have your own experience. Come hang out with me tomorrow. If you want to just learn more, if you want to talk about audience building, if you want to about building streams of income, my exact process, I’m going to be going through parts of that webinar that you just heard. But we’re going to go even deeper tomorrow. So you can register for that over audiencebuilding.academy.

That’s one of our newest sites with Practice of the Practice. We’ve got that new Audience Building Academy that’s starting in February. So if you want to sign up for that, or if you want to to come to that webinar head on over to audiencebuilding.academy. And if you come to that webinar and you still have questions, we can jump on a phone call to see if that might be a fit for you to be a part of that community. It’s going to be a really great community with only 10 of those elites and 20 people that are in the regular Audience Building Academy. So that’s coming up. Want to hang out with you there if possible.

Also we couldn’t do this podcast. If it wasn’t for Therapy Notes. Therapy Notes is the best electronic health records out there. You can sign up over at therapynotes.com. Use promo code [JOE] to get those free months, and they’ll help you also transition from your current EHR as well. They’re totally amazing. Go check them out.

Thank you so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have an amazing day. Talk to you soon.

Special thanks to the band Silence is Sexy for your intro music. We really like it. This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. This is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.