Grow With Soul: Ep. 63 Productivity, Work/Life and Online Course Q&A With Kayte Ferris
Today I am answering your questions that you submitted via Instagram Stories last week, so thank you to everyone that did. In fact, you submitted more questions than I could answer in one episode, so I have split them into a double header. Next month I will answer your strategy and content questions, but this week we’re talking about productivity, motivation, habit setting work/life balance, and I’m throwing in a couple of questions about creating and selling online courses for good measure too.
Here's what we talk about in this episode
How can I get into a writing habit/write faster/write when I am just not in the mood?
How do you get through procrastination?
How do you keep up motivation when you are a start-up?
How do you do self-care when you have pressing deadlines every day?
Have I ever done a coaching course or am I self-taught?
Do you have any specific tips of streamlining marketing when working in two languages?
How do you handle people not understanding what you do or even worse people not seeing it as a proper job?
What trend do you typically expect for selling online courses in terms of pre-order numbers versus last-minute orders?
How do you go about creating an online course?
Any tips for marketing online courses?
What we discussed in this episode
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Read the episode transcript:
Hello and welcome to episode 63 of Grow With Soul. Today I am answering your questions that you submitted via Instagram Stories last week, so thank-you to everyone that did. In fact, you submitted more questions that I could answer in one episode, so I have split them into a double header. Next month I will answer your strategy and content questions, but this week we’re talking about productivity, motivation, habit setting work/life balance, and I’m throwing in a couple of questions about creating and selling online courses for good measure too.
Getting in a writing habit, writing faster, and writing when you’re not in the mood
I recently published a blog post called Getting Into A Focused Mindset For A Productive Day, which was the results of my experiments around this very issue. I think we all have days where we planned to batch some blog posts or write something for a course or whatever, and then we wake up and it’s just the last thing we want to do. Firstly I think we need to be ok with accepting when it’s a lost cause - sometimes it’s just not going to be the day to do writing or creative work, and rather than chain ourselves to our desks, be miserable all day, and ultimately produce something that isn’t our best, we need to get comfortable with saying, ‘ok, change of plan for today’.
Otherwise, preparation is really key. Both physically, in terms of writing out an outline and setting up your desk the day before so that when you sit down the next morning you can just get straight into it without faffing; but also mentally. The night before I know I have a big chunk of writing to do, I get myself excited about it, because it can otherwise feel really daunting. I tell myself how lovely it’s going to be to have a whole day to work on this project, how this is exactly the kind of day I started my business for, what treats I’m going to have when I hit certain word counts, and generally pep myself up. Doing this at night means I generally wake up ready and raring to go.
In terms of writing faster and getting into a writing habit, the two inform each other. The more you write, the faster you get. It takes me about 40 to 60 minutes to write a blog post, but that’s because in one guise or another I’ve been writing a weekly blog post for 6 years. And of course, the faster you do it, the easier it is for it to become a habit because it slots easier into your week.
My advice is to set your expectations low and build them up. Like with exercise, you keep the repetitions low at first, and then, as the muscles get stronger, you build it up. If you want to start a writing habit but set out to complete a blog post every day, you’ll crush yourself. Work to a realistic level that will help the habit form, then up it.
How do you get through procrastination?
I think with this one, it’s really knowing what you need to be motivated by, accepting that, and giving yourself what you need. For example, as much as I would truly love to be the person that gets things done ahead of time in a lovely workflow, I am the person that doesn’t properly start until I feel the heat of the impending deadline. Every attempt I’ve made to be the former has failed because, shock, I am the person that I am and these drivers don’t change.
So, rather than fight against it, I do what I can to give myself what I need to get going. For example, most recently I was completing all the content for The Playbook course, and was obviously putting things off because it didn’t feel urgent yet. I had a designer creating elements for me, so I used her as some accountability to be a deadline before the deadline, so that I could get everything done to send to her a week before the actual deadline.
Other ways I’ve done this have been to set a date where something goes on sale or starts, and talk about it publicly, or even take pre-orders so that the work has to be done by that deadline. Other times, exactly as in my previous answer, I stymie procrastination by drawing a line in the sand and saying, ‘enough now, this is what you wanted to be doing every day so tomorrow you’re going to embrace it’.
Self-bribery I also find works really well, meaning that if I complete a project or get through my weekly to do’s I get myself a little treat - and I will write down in my planner what that treat is going to be so I can keep working towards it.
Sometimes, I can find that I procrastinate because I’m excited about another idea, so I’ll spend a little bit of time working on that other idea, to scratch the itch and get it out of my head, but also to get back into the rhythm of working on something excitedly.
Obviously there is not one answer to this, and if there was I’d be rich! But the key thing is to know how you work so you can work with yourself (Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies quiz is great for this if you haven’t already done it), give yourself what you need, and be more carrot than stick,
How do you keep motivation through being a start up?
This is so tough, because when you’re starting out it’s easy to feel that nothing you do is landing. You’re putting stuff out and getting nothing back, and it can feel like you’re talking to a brick wall - which just immediately saps all your energy and motivation. When I started my business, I had 3 months of no-one even enquiring about working with me,
and in those months I remember that I threw myself into producing content. I was posting and engaging on Instagram every day, I think at one point I was blogging twice a week, I was making email opt-ins, and generally doing my best to be as visible as possible.
Directing my energy in this way did a few things - it kept me distracted from the fact my inbox was empty because I was busy, it kept up momentum because I was giving myself publishing deadlines, it allowed me to develop what I stand for and what I do through working it all out in content, and it kept me out there in public rather than withdrawing. That’s what worked for me.
I’d also say, try to enjoy this time because you’ll never get it back. Once momentum starts to pick up you won’t ever again have days where you’ve got no emails to answer, problems to deal with or appointments to keep, so relish this period where you have permission to create all day long.
How to do self care when you have pressing deadlines everyday?
There are a few things I want to challenge here. First of all, the deadlines. Do you really have pressing deadlines every day, or is it more that you feel the weight of them acutely and worry about them a lot? Or possibly that you haven’t got yourself into a a good workflow, so inefficiencies mean that deadlines pile up suddenly? Make sure that you’re always dealing with the truth in these scenarios, because that’s the only way to really solve the problem. I do it too, I have weeks where I’m like ‘there’s just not enough time, I have too much on my plate’, but then I realise that if I just got up a little earlier and didn’t leave things to last minute, I wouldn’t be feeling like this. So think about whether this is more of a mindset thing you need to focus on, or maybe it’s a workflow issue you can find a solution for.
If you really do have pressing deadlines every day, then I’d look at how you can reduce the jobs or clients you’re taking on so you can ease that pressure. Maybe that’s raising your prices so you can do less work for the same amount of money. Maybe it’s literally just cutting something out. The fact that you’re asking this question though shows that the work is making you unhappy and stopping you from getting your basic needs met - so what’s the point? There will always be another way, you’re just so busy right now you can’t imagine it.
The term ‘self care’ always makes me bristle, because to me the concept has been commodified, and is just another way to make us feel like we’re failing. So here I would make sure you are really clear on what you’re seeking - is it a feeling that you should be doing self care which looks a certain way and needs a certain amount of time per week based on what other people say, or is there something specific you want to be able to do. Focus on the latter, on the actual thing you want to do or yourself rather than the abstract concept, and you may find it easier to bring in than you think. Maybe it’s a little walk in the mornings, perhaps it's spending five minutes writing down a daily intention, tracking your energy every day, having a bath every evening where you can do some reading. I list these, accidentally, because these are the things I do for myself every day, and aside from the bath, they take up probably a combined half an hour in my day. So think about what the activities you want to do are, and you’ll likely find that some of them can slot into five minute windows.
Have you ever done a coaching course, or are you self taught?
I have never done a coaching course. I know that there are some people online who are pretty vocal that anyone who has never done a coaching course is a fraud, but for me that’s simply too reductive. The point of hiring someone to help you with a specific problem is so they can help you with that problem - so you want to hire the person who can best do that. For some people, where their problem is perhaps something more medical or psychological or ingrained, the person best placed to help will be someone with more training (although I’d probably argue that most of these problems are better solved by a counsellor or therapist rather than a coach). If your problem is that you want to find a way to grow your business sustainably, the best person to help you is someone who knows how to do that.
Another important point here is that coaching is a two way street. The client has to bring 50% of the work and energy and input to get the results they desire. They need to be able to talk honestly, ask the questions they’re struggling with and feel comfortable sharing themselves in progress. Therefore, the best coach for them is the one they feel safe with, and they can open up to. Someone might have all the training in the world, but if you’re slightly terrified of them, don’t quite trust that you won’t end up the subject of one of their blog posts or just respect them too much to share your struggles, then they’re not the best coach for you. You need to work with someone who you can feel comfortable talking about your problem with.
I know that a lot of people can feel almost threatened into submission, and that they’re ‘not allowed’ to start a coaching business because they don’t have the pre-requisite piece of paper (which, by the way, will cost several of thousands of pounds which is problematic). If you know you can help people, that’s all that matters. You shouldn’t feel guilty or like a fraud for wanting to help people and improve someone’s life. If it’s your life’s work, go for it.
Do you have any specific tips for streamlining marketing when working in 2 languages?
Clearly I don’t have any personal insight into this because I am not worldly or sophisticated enough to have this problem! But clearly dealing with two languages will add significantly to your work load because you’re doubling up on everything. My advice would be to think critically about where the two languages are actually required, and where just one will do. For example, perhaps in your native country they don’t use Instagram very much so you can afford to only post in English there, whereas perhaps your native language users are more on Facebook, so you post only in that language there. Similarly, perhaps if you are writing blog posts you have some which you direct just to your native audience (perhaps referencing things only they would understand anyway), and do some more general ones in English.
Another thing to think about is opportunities for non-verbal marketing, where you can show something rather than have to talk about it. This might be illustrations or diagrams, or videos of you demonstrating a process. Ultimately, you may want to think about getting to a point where you can outsource some translation if you feel you are spending more time sorting out your languages than doing the work you’re best at.
How do you handle people not understanding what it is you do, or, even worse, people not seeing it as a proper job?
There are two types of people we could be referring to here. If the people are your ideal clients or customers, then you have a marketing challenge to use your sales pages and content to simplify what you do and explain it. However, from he tone of this question I assume we’re talking about the other type of people who are not your target customer - and probably are people in your real life.
When I first handed in my notice at my old job and told my family what I was doing, there was a lot of confusion. No-one in my family had ever done anything like this, we just weren’t people who took these kind of risks; we were all employees. And the idea that it was all online and to do with social media didn’t help, because they just couldn’t understand how it would work because it was so far removed from my sphere of experience. I remember at the time, my cousin had looked up my Instagram and said “it’s very nice but how do you make money out of it?”
When someone doesn’t understand what you do, it is because of their lack of vision, not the legitimacy of what you do. They don’t know how they’d be able to do it, so they assume that you won’t either, or it’s not a proper job because they’ve never seen anything like it.
It is unlikely you’ll be able to change their mind, not until at least you have some traditional markers of ‘success’ to go by (for me, it’s been three years, so my family kinda get that I must be somehow making money after all). So please, don’t waste your energy on trying to change their minds, because that energy is so much better spent on the people who will get it, who will buy from you, and growing your own confidence that way. You also need to protect your business from these people. If you worry about what they think, your business will suffer. Throw a blanket over yourself and focus on building up the strength of your business without influence from the outside world.
Personally, I had to do this by refusing to talk about my business with my family. Even now I still don’t really, other than the basics. At the beginning I would just say that everything was going fine and then close down the conversation. I knew that there was nothing I could say to make them understand, and that no good would come of allowing them in. I had to be selfish, because right at the beginning I wasn’t even really sure if it would work, but I had to believe it would. The place we have to get to is where it doesn’t matter if someone does it see it as a proper job because you’re making money, feeding your kids, paying for a holiday and you see it as a proper job.
What trend do you typically expect for selling online course in terms of pre-order numbers vs last minute orders?
This is interesting because I’ve only recently started experimenting with pre-order sign ups for my courses. So let me explain a little bit about how I usually launch courses and then I’ll add in the pre-order conundrum.
So, generally when I launch a course, I’ll do a couple of weeks of pre-launch where I set the scene for the topic through my content (so, if it’s my Campfire content course, I’ll start publishing more about content marketing), as well as let people know the course is coming so if it’s something they’re interested in they can start the consideration process. Because of that pre-launch period, I tend to get an early rush of sign ups of people who’d already been thinking about it and definitely wanted to buy it. Then for the remainder of the launch period the sales really just trickle in, and then the majority come right at the end when the cart is closing, because people have been thinking about it and think they’ve got plenty of time and then realise they don’t have plenty of time anymore - we’ve all been there. I actually usually let a couple of people in during the first week who left it too late too. Percentage wise, I’d say this probably works out that 25-30% sales happen at the start of the launch, 5% come through the middle and then 65-70% come at the end. I actually did an online workshop last year, and 3 days before I had 5 people signed up and ended up with 65 in total, so that was more like 90% at the end.
I think it’s important to note this because we’ve all heard the stories of runaway successes where people put something up for sale then go have lunch and come back and they’ve made 40k, and when that doesn’t happen to us we think we’ve failed and we take our course or product off sale. The majority of the time people need longer to think about these things. They’re weighing up options, they’re waiting for pay day, they’re trying to convince themselves they deserve it. You’ve got to stay the course of your launch because those customers are depending on you to do so. Also side note, I’ve also never “sold out” a course - it’s no biggie.
Back to pre-orders then. At the end of last year I experimented with pre-orders for my Playbook course. The reason for this was that I knew I was going to need a long time to create this course and make it what I wanted it to be, but I also needed to plug a financial hole before it would be ready. So I offered a pre-order package which included a discount and some bonuses for anyone who bought the course before December. I would say that in this instance, 80-90% of the sales happened in the pre-order period. Personally I think this was because people wanted the discount and the goodies, but also because it was a pretty specific course that was pretty easy to say ‘yes that’s what I need’ - but if you’re doing the Playbook and it wasn’t these reasons, let me know!
In terms of trends, I don’t think the buying trends are going to change hugely - people are always going to be motivated by added extras and discounts, just as they’re always going to leave things to the last minute. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if we started to see more pre-order launches going on. There are more and more courses and memberships launching and therefore there’s more for people to commit there time and finances too. I think a pre-order enables you to say ‘hey, this thing is coming in a few months’ so people can think ‘oh I want to commit to that’ and hold out for it. I think this is partly what happened with the Playbook too, it started in January which is a busy time for business launches, but most people had committed back in the autumn so there was less competition for me - and also for them.
How do you go about creating an online course?
I actually have a blog post which I’ll link to in the show notes which is literally called My Course Creation Process, where I walk through how I do it. There is, of course, no one way to create a course, despite what some people would have you believe, but this is what I think.
You’ve got to have a way to help people with a specific problem. Specific is the keyword here. It’s hard to create an effective course that’s pretty general because there’s too much room for questions, and there’s no way you could cover every single possibility within your content. For example, I couldn’t create a ‘how to market your business’ course because what a beginner needs to know is completely different to someone who’s been doing it for five years, a coaching business has different questions to a product business, some people may not understand the content element so much while for others it’s what they’re best at. That’s why my courses are broken down my topic, like Campfire, or person, like the Playbook.
You also, I think, need to have a way that is uniquely yours that you can help them with that problem - I don’t mean that it has to be earth shatteringly inventive, just a reason that people would want you to help them with this, as opposed to anyone else. This might be in the way you communicate, in your different approach, in your format.
Speaking of format, that’s the next thing to consider. I know that probably most people do video lessons, but I don’t. This is because I don’t have the tech know-how to do a good video lesson, nor is it the way I feel I best express myself and explain what I mean. Also, as a consumer, I hate video lessons and they tend to put me off buying a course, so it just feels out of alignment that I would do them. So, my courses are written lessons with some images and workbooks or exercises. That’s how I best get the knowledge across and make sure people can apply it.
So when you’re thinking about creating your own course, think about how you can best deliver that content. Don’t think you have to do it this way or that way, do it the way that gets your brilliance out there.
Lastly, make a plan of what you need to cover. Think about where that student is now, where they need to get to, and the steps they need to get there, and use that as a red thread to build your content around. Map out how it will split into weeks or modules, but stay focused on what they need to know - it can be tempting to add in more, but actually too much superfluous information can cause overwhelm and confusion. With a course, people don’t have the same opportunity to chat everything through with you like they would if you were working 121, so your course content needs to be really clear and lead them through the journey, not cause them more questions.
And then you go about making it! Write it, record it, draw it. Just start!
Any tips for marketing online courses?
Marketing a course is generally no different from marketing any other product because, obviously, it is a product. The same principles remain of demonstrating that you understand your customer and what they’re struggling with, showing how you can help them get to where they want to be, helping them to see themselves reflected in your copy and using your marketing to answer any doubts or questions they may have about this being the right product for them. That’s all true whether you’re marketing a course, a 121 offering, something you’ve made, furniture, whatever.
To take it a layer deeper, think about what worries or doubts someone might have about a course, generally. So they might be worried it’s not as good as it sounds because most of us have been burnt by a duff course once or twice. Therefore, maybe in your marketing you preview some of the content, talk through a part of it, demonstrate how you use the learnings in your own life, share some case studies.
Ok, so another thing people worry about with courses is the time commitment - will they be able to keep up with it? Well, you put on the sales page about how much time per week you think people need, when you talk about the community element you say how good it is for accountability, if you’ve not got a community then build in some triggered emails to help keep them on track. Think about, or even ask some trusted people what puts people off buying a course, then look at ways you can overcome those through your content, sales copy, and social media.
If you submitted a question last week and I’ve not answered it, fear not; I will be answering it in the content and strategy Q&A episode which will come out next month.