You probably consider yourself an expert in something. What you might not realize is that many others might be interested in what you know - interested enough to pay good money. That is where information products come into play.
Real estate developer Justin Gehde turned his passion for property into a profitable online training program. Now he has a 24/7 source of income that he runs alongside his real estate development projects. Hear how he did it and how you might turn your own expertise into something that pays.
Podcast: Download (Duration: 31:18 — 28.8MB)
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Interview topics:
05:02 – It all started with a decision. Justin made up his mind to control his financial destiny, and the rest followed.
08:14 – Since discovering 10XPRO.io… This tool was a game-changer.
09:37 – How big is the tech team? The answer will surprise you.
10:37 – The challenge of simplifying what you know. When it’s easy to provide too much info…
13:20 – Deciding what goes in the course. What features do you want? Do you go simple or complex?
14:59 – Bitten by the property bug. Often one real estate development project isn’t enough.
16:18 – How do you know people like it? This tells you you’ve done something right.
17:41 – Other directions it could go. There’s plenty of opportunities.
19:03 – Good surprises from the platform. Cool functionalities and room to grow.
22:14 – Getting the word out, and selling while you sleep. How people find out, and the perks of selling information.
25:47 – Why you don’t have to be a big name. Sometimes your very flaws can be a selling point.
Put together highly valuable information products with James’s help
If you’re like a lot of people, you likely think of yourself as having some area of expertise. What if you could turn that knowledge into a product that people could buy, any time, round the clock? Would that be worth exploring?
Our guest Justin Gehde is a real estate developer, something you might not at first consider fodder for an information product. He has, however, produced very profitable training on the topic, housed on a website that delivers his product 24/7.
The site is propertydevelopertraining.com, and it’s a 10XPRO.io installation, one of the things which brought Justin to James’s attention.
It all started with a decision
Justin made up his mind to control his financial destiny over a decade ago. One of the podcasts he was then consuming was FreedomOcean, with James and Timbo Reid. It was then he thought of leveraging online marketing to help with his property development projects.
He attended a couple of James’s live seminars and got the idea of building an online presence. James talked a lot about memberships. How could he convert what he was doing into a membership?
Justin’s first development was a 20-townhouse project, something he would not suggest first-timers attempt. It was surprisingly successful, and he went on to other projects, followed by his own podcast on property development. It was a passion.
“Find a niche that’s an inch wide and a mile deep.”
James speaks of finding a niche that’s an inch wide and a mile deep. Justin thinks property development fits into that quite well. He grew an audience through the podcast, and got emails from people saying they wanted to get into property development. These he referred to someone who could mentor them, a high-ticket item in itself.
But then Justin recognized the opportunity to create an online training program that provided people with good information and a step-by-step explanation of what they need to understand to go through a property development, so the whole development cycle. He put together the program, and it was very well-received.
Key to the success, Justin thinks, is the time he spent building up trust with hiis audience. Long before he started selling, he was telling his story, sharing the challenges and the successes he’d had. This gave his program some legitimacy when it did come out.
Justin’s podcast is a fantastic conversion device, says James. It provides great education for his audience, and now there’s the follow-up solution that people can take if they feel they can trust Justin and want to enjoy the same success.
Since discovering 10XPRO.io…
There are a number of ways Justin could have brought his vision to life, but he went with 10XPRO. Has it been a good decision?
It’s been a really fantastic solution, says Justin, because it solves a lot of the problems you can have in delivering an online training. You have all these disparate components – video, audio, payment, and so forth. All those bits come together quite nicely on the platform.
And even if you’re not a tech person, it’s easy enough to navigate your way through. Justin himself can get his way around, but he’s no IT geek. 10XPRO is working out really well for him.
How big is your tech team, asks James?
There’s no team. It’s just Justin.
So did he just record a course outline, hook up payment and email, and start telling people about it?
Justin does have the benefit of a background in corporate and business communication. So as far as making videos and writing scripts, he had a good deal of control. Outsourcing and other help, however, are always an option for people less equipped.
The challenge of simplifying what you know
It’s really a matter of simplifying content from mind to paper, says Justin. One of the people he showed his first iteration to was Charley Valher. His feedback was the modules were too long. This was very helpful to Justin, who went back in, broke things down and simplified.
James recalls one of his early courses, Traffic Grab. It was six hours’ worth of content. Video analytics showed viewing trickled off after the first few videos. It was too much for most people to take in.
“Complexity can drive people to a simple done-for-you solution.”
Complexity, however, can drive people into a simpler, done-for-you solution. And that’s what Traffic Grab did for James.
Now James shares one-hour trainings, chunked into five- or six-minute segments. They can be found on SuperFastResults, a 10XPRO installation. Users have tick boxes to mark their progress, and it’s a lot easier to handle.
People nowadays, says James, want short, snack-sized content. That’s why reels, shorts, TikToks and the like have taken off. James himself will probably never do TikTok, but he’s interviewed his friend Rachel Pedersen on the topic.
Deciding what goes in the course
10XPRO offers any number of features you can implement in your course or membership – quizzes, certificates, a timeline, and so forth. How did Justin decide what to include? What features? And whether to go simple or complex?
Simplifying is a good point, says Justin. It’s important to remember you’re not doing a training for people who are potentially your peers, you’re doing a training for someone who’s interested in getting into the field.
When Justin started, he had it in his mind to impress other property developers. He eventually realized, No, that’s not who I need to impress, and that’s not who I’m trying to help. His audience was people wanting to know how to become a real estate developer. So you need to simplify it down so that newcomers can understand it, appreciate it, and then implement it.
Then, what Justin was looking for was membership and training combined. He wanted to bring people in with the promise of training, and then keep them in as members. That’s his next step, is finding ways of keeping people engaged and involved in the property developer training.
How do you know people like it?
Justin said he was pleasantly surprised when he put out his training. Often, when people launch a new product or service, not much happens. What sort of feedback did Justin get that made him feel it was well-received?
Like anything you create, says Justin, there’s a certain level of uncertainty when you launch. You put it out there and hold your breath, wondering if people will buy it. So it was nice for him to get the validation of people actually spending money on it.
He’s also been getting great feedback from users of the training. He hasn’t had any requests for refunds. So that indicates to him he’s delivering on the promise and getting great interaction with people inside the training.
It’s a really nice feeling, he says, getting messages like, Thanks very much, really love the content. It’s really transformative. I can see a pathway now for property development being something that I can do, and help bring in money and grow wealth over the rest of my life. So thanks very much.
Other directions it could go
James imagines there are lots of other opportunities in this for Justin. He might find students he wants to do projects with. He might be able to form some kind of syndication. He might want to step up the property developer training to the point where it’s his prime occupation and the developments are a sub thing.
Justin has definitely thought strategically about where things could go. He thinks it will just be a case of, let’s just see how it unfolds, to a certain degree. Let’s see what people want and then deliver up what it is that they ask for.
Good surprises from the platform
Was there anything Justin hadn’t expected from 10XPRO that he thought was pretty cool?
Says Justin, it has a tremendous amount of functionality that lets you evolve over time as you become more comfortable with providing a training or a platform.
He had been looking for something, not basic, but that ticked the boxes in terms of delivering up training and making it easy to access. And as you become more comfortable, he says, and start playing around, you find things that you can see yourself using in the future, whether it’s quizzes, or drip-feeding content, or other aspects that let you grow with the platform, instead of you outgrowing it.
It moves with you, says James. He and his team started by putting a little course in it. Then they added a membership using the social wall feature, and then a drip course. They have a free challenge that every day, for 30 days, drips a training and sends an email, because 10XPRO integrates with Ontraport or Active Campaign or whatever CRM you want to use. Then they do SMS pushes or notifying.
They now also have a book campaign, which gives away James’s book, then sells the print and the audio versions. It all integrates with back-end email campaigns, and moves people into SuperFastBusiness over time.
There’s a viral feature that unlocks things when people share, and an Evergreen webinar and deadline funnels. One-click campaigns make it easy for James’s team to add a new course and make it live.
Getting the word out, and selling while you sleep
How is Justin promoting his site, besides via his podcast?
At the moment he’s working on a book to drive people to the training. And he does updates on various social channels, just making mention of the training.
So far it seems to be working. People are signing up regularly, which is amazing. Getting that email saying someone new’s signed up is a pretty special feeling.
James can relate. Back when he was selling his first products, his computer was set to ding with every sale. Eventually, it became annoying and he turned it off.
But that’s the incredible possibility with information products. Just think: what if you could sell things to the whole world 24/7? What if you weren’t just having to sell one product to your local geographic area? What would you sell?
Back when James launched his first cheat sheet for $79, he made a thousand dollars a day for a week, while he moved house.
He and Justin can verify, if you have good knowledge of something that you can put in a training or course, and if you can put the effort in to promote it, you can make money while you sleep. And if you combine the power of memberships and information products, it’s a magical business.
Why you don’t have to be a big name
Justin’s development career hasn’t all been successes. His second project was supposed to 19 townhouses, but it resulted in a tip to the planning tribunal, where Justin lost, and had a reduction in the number of townhouses he wanted.
That shows his audience, he says, that he’s normal. He doesn’t paint himself as a guru who aces everything.
“Trust and open communication are important.”
That reminds James of someone from affiliate marketing who’s now doing trading. He’s not a pro, he says; he makes lots of mistakes and loses money all the time. And then he offers his membership, for around two grand monthly. People join. It baffles James. It just shows how important trust and open communication can be.
The small guy or girl, starting out with a good intention and a little bit of knowledge, who can help someone with less knowledge, can at least put something out there and get a great result, which is why James loves these 10XPRO case studies, because they’re dealing with real people with real products.
Interested in learning from Justin?
Just out of curiosity, asks James, how much would someone have to pay to learn about property development from Justin?
If they head over to propertydevelopertraining.com, they’ll see what the training rate is. And Justin’s got a special offer for James’s audience, if they might be interested. If they use the promo code “James”, that will knock a significant amount off the course fees for them.
It’s only fair Justin take advantage of this podcast, says James, after sharing his insights. He’s also a great supporter of 10XPRO, and it’s nice to hear from a user instead of just James or John Lint, though they’ve been getting great feedback on their membership series.
And if you’re keen to know more about real estate development, you can head over to the propertydeveloperpodcast.com and catch all the episodes there.
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