James: James Schramko here with my friend John Lint from 10XPRO.io.
John: Hey, everybody. Hi.
James: So we’ve been chatting about some of the mistakes people make and given some tips on how they can improve their progress when they’re putting out courses, and memberships. And just building funnels, all the good stuff that 10XPRO solves as a sort of all-in-one tool, other than, of course, the CRM system, which you can just bolt on from any of the great suppliers. One thing that has come up like, firstly, there’s the fear of putting out a course for yourself, there’s that. And then you get over that.
But one thing that happens is you go and do the research steps through the training. And then next thing you know, you’re ready to go, but then you get an email from someone or see someone post on social media or you see an ad for a product, and it might be actually very similar to yours.
This reminds me of an incident that happened to me many years ago, I had this fantastic product. It was a traffic product, and I’d spent many, many hours, in fact, in hindsight too long preparing this product. And I built this incredible thing, it’s called TrafficGrab. And just when I launched the product, a customer of mine, a few days later, sent me an email that another marketer had sent to their entire database. And it was a scathing criticism of my product.
And what had happened was he had been putting together his product at the same time on a very similar topic, but I came to the market first. And the reaction, you know, he was just absolutely shattered, he was intimidated, he was frustrated, annoyed, and he took it out on this poisonous email. And I actually got on Skype and had a chat with him and said, Hey, listen, some of the things in your email aren’t correct. And you actually haven’t even purchased the product. So it’s interesting, you have an opinion of it. And, you know, you’ve said this, but here’s the fact. And then in the end, he apologized and we became great friends. And then as time went on, he actually became a student and a client of mine, and then has had significant success ever since. So that’s how we started our relationship. But what do you think happened to him in that phase, in that moment? Because I think it happens to a lot of product creators.
John: Yeah, I mean, it’s something that happens to online course creators when they want to create a new online course or they want to get into a niche. And it’s this fear of competition, you know? It’s this idea, this wrong idea that, Hey, I have this idea about a great online course. I want to create, and I want to do it. So let’s check online and hopefully nobody else has done it before. That way I can be the first one and the only one, and I can make a lot of money. Well, in reality, that’s a bad sign.
It’s actually bad if you have an idea, especially online these days. I mean, there’s no such thing as a new niche or a new online course, I mean. But if you are in that position, where there’s nobody selling what you want to sell, it’s actually a warning sign. It’s actually something that’s telling you, Hey, hold on, don’t take all the risk. Because, you know, maybe people have tried before, and probably now it’s 2019, someone has probably tried before. And if no one is selling, if you have no competition, it’s basically a sign telling you that, hey, you should be careful, because maybe chances are, you’re not going to make money, too. Because, otherwise, we talk about validating your market, right? I mean, if you see competition, it’s actually a good thing. Because it’s validating your idea, validating the market, it’s telling you that, Hey look, other people are making money. Therefore, logically, you can make money too. It’s all about your marketing, it’s all about you being different, or about your packaging, your offering in a different way, standing out from the crowd, all of that thing. So that’s what really matters.
So the reason it’s a common mistake that online course creators make, especially when they start out thinking that, you know, if there is competition, I should give up. I should not do it. And that’s probably what happened to your friend where, you know, he saw, James is doing that. Okay. Now I can’t make money, No, I’m not going to be successful. Now, I’m going to fail. Well, actually, I would have looked at that and said, Wow! Okay, well, James is doing it. Awesome! Let’s see how James is doing it. How many is he going to sell, how many of you are going to buy? That is going to give me data. Now, maybe sure you’re not going to launch at the same time. But hey, it’s telling you that…
James: And if you do, every single one of my buyers, I can guarantee you has bought more than one traffic product. It’s that kind of product where, you know, people don’t just buy one. Unless, of course, they’re getting a software tool like 10XPRO, they don’t need to have another version of that because it actually solves the problem. But when it comes to information products, whether it’s you know, how to fish or how to get traffic or write sales copy or copywriting for example, or playing guitar.
I bet copywriters have, you know, bought dozens of products. Even on my bookshelf would be at least…
John: I bought plenty of courses from all the top copywriters and you want to find out the difference, you know?
James: So he could have looked at my product as an opportunity to then have an affiliation and to promote his product.
John: Absolutely.
James: I could have promoted his, he could’ve promote mine. But as it turns out, as time proved, we can both sit at the top of our market. He’s a really big player in the traffic market, he’s got a fantastic product, I helped him along the way, so we became great allies. And so the competition concern was actually unwarranted. That paralysis and the rage didn’t have to be there.
You know, in this curated world with social media, it’s not hard to see people doing something similar to what you had in mind. And, you know, when you think about, I remember seeing great a presentation from Alexi Neocleous at my own event, at FastWebFormula, it was called back then. It was an early version of SuperFastBusiness Live. He said, when it comes to copywriting, if you are going into a market that is established, and there’s competition, that’s when you want to make a claim, like you could be the first, the most, or the only, but you’re within a product range that people are actually already buying.
And that’s really the thing that Gary Halbert impressed when he said the thing you want is the starving crowd. If you have that starving crowd, and you can provide the thing they want to eat and already spend money on buying, then that’s good.
John: Yeah.
James: Now, there’s a different discussion we’ll have and I think we’ll have it in a different video. And that will be about when there’s too much competition, and it has a sweet spot. For example, I’ve seen a couple of people try and take on the weight loss market from scratch. And that’s pretty ambitious. So you can get a little bit too interested in the competition, there’s probably a sweet spot. Ryan Levesque talks about the sweet spot somewhere in his book called Choose.
So what we’re really saying here in this video is, don’t be worried if someone’s in the market that you want to be in. You could be worried if there are too many people, you could be worried if there’s absolutely nobody. But if there’s a reasonable amount of people in there, then that’s a positive sign. And it’s encouragement that people are actually buying. And then your job is to step in front of that buyer and show them your product, differentiate somehow and away you go.
But the last thing you have to worry about, of course, will be technology because 10XPRO comes to the party on that front. And it gives you the toolset you need to actually get to market quickly. And also if you want to know how to research and to know what the right level of market to go into is, that’s where OnlineCourseSystem.com comes into play. So John and I have put together a course. And it actually steps you through the research phase, where you’re actually looking for people running ads, rather than being intimidated by competition. You celebrate it, you do a happy dance. But as long as there’s not too much competition, and you’ll find that sweet spot in Online Course System, where we’ve sort of taken the very best practice and ideas from what’s been happening in the businesses we’ve worked with, put them into the most bite-sized, digestible course ever been made on this planet.
What do you think about that, John?
John: Yeah, I mean, if you want to learn how to create, how to launch, how to profit from your next online course, how to build a business from it, well, that’s what the Online Course System is all about, you know, you’re going to get everything you’re going to get not only the training, but also the coaching, private coaching with me, you’re also going to get the tools, six months of 10XPRO. So there’s a ton of things.
I think we really put everything that we know into that package to really try to demystify the whole process and really try to make it easy step by step. That’s why we called it a system. So you know, if you’re curious, you want to find out more you can actually check out a free workshop that we have put together and you can find it at OnlineCourseSystem.com. And yeah, check it out.
James: Thanks, John. It’s great to catch up and I’ll speak to you soon.
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