300 Hours, Zero Sales: Hard Lessons from My First Online Course

My very first online course was an ABSOLUTE failure. 💥

A few years ago I created a Thinkific online course called 7-Day Manager. It was a course targeting first-time managers to teach them the basics of leadership and management.

The thinking behind it was: 

“🤔 Hey, I’ve got two decades of leadership experience. I’ve got knowledge that people can benefit from. I know! 💡 I’ll create an online course and I’ll make thousands on my first launch!”

So I proceeded to:

• Create a course outline

• Script out each module

• Recorded videos for most of the modules

• Created visual aids and graphics

• Yada, yada, yada…

It was a ton of work. I probably poured over 300 hours into the project.

All of this, while I had a full-time job + some client work to top it all off.

And when it came time to launch the course, crickets.

A big fat donut. Zero sales on Day 1, Day 5, Day 10.

I scraped two sales in total. After hustling by sending out cold outreach emails to people in my network.

Now after my wounds and ego has healed. I can objectively reflect on why it failed.

#1 - I Didn’t Validate the Product Idea

I never reached out to my target audience to ask them if my course was even something they’d potentially buy. 

Well actually, I thought I did, but clearly not enough. I spoke to maybe 2 or 3 people. And to be honest, they probably said it was a great idea just to be polite.

In hindsight, I should have spoken to 50 or 75 people in my target audience. 

I should have spent weeks validating the course idea before even attempting to build it out.

And more importantly, I should have tried to pre-sell it as I validated the course.If people are willing to actually pay you money, even at the idea stage, you’ve clearly found a problem that they want to solve ASAP.

#2 - I Wasn’t the Right Guy to Be Teaching This Course

This isn’t to say I wasn’t capable of teaching this course.

What I mean is, my personal brand wasn’t all about management or people leadership.

My personal brand was growth marketing!

People reach out to me for growth marketing advice, not leadership advice.

You know you’re the right person to be teaching a course if you’ve got clear signals telling you how people perceive you. How they perceive your personal brand.

How, you might ask?

• Are people DM’ing you asking for advice on XYZ? Then XYZ is your personal brand.

• Do you have paying clients, asking you to improve XYZ? Then you’re perceived as an expert in XYZ..

• Are conferences asking you to share your insights on XYZ? Then at least one person thinks you’re a thought leader in XYZ.

#3 - I Didn’t Have a Built-In Distribution Channel of Buyers

I have over 4,000 followers on LinkedIn. 

If I were to guess, they’re a mix of past colleagues, team members, managers, recruiters, etc.

I didn’t have an audience of buyers. At least for the course I was selling.

The number of followers you have really doesn’t matter. The quality of your followers is what matters.

In this particular scenario, I would rather have had 500 followers who were in my target audience than 4,000 followers who were a mixed bag of folks.

#4 - I Hadn’t Established Thought Leadership

Even if I WAS the right guy to be selling this course.

Even if I HAD 500 followers who were the actual folks I’d be selling my course to.

I probably still would have not had a fantastic outcome. Why?

I hadn’t been consistently publishing posts on my thoughts and opinions on the topic. 

It doesn’t necessarily take years to establish your thought leadership on a particular topic, but it does take a consistency to establish your thought leadership on a topic.

And I simply hadn’t been posting about leadership consistently to be perceived as THE guy to talk to about leadership advice.

#5 - I Didn’t Test Drive the Course Before Creating It

When I created the course, I just dove right in.

Created the curriculum, the format, the content with ZERO feedback from potential buyers.

If I had to do it all over again, I’d test-drive the course idea first.

I should have taught the course to a live (or over Zoom) cohort of students.

This way, I could get feedback on what worked, what didn’t, what to tweak, what to cut.

Oh…and by test driving it with real live students, I could also gather testimonials to build credibility for the eventual online course.

And Finally - My Course Launch Campaign Was Meh…

It pains me to admit this because I’m a career growth marketer.

I mean, I do this for a living!

I’ve made hundreds of millions for a number of brands across my 25 year career as a marketer.

I should have had the Mona Lisa of product launch campaigns!

But sadly I didn’t. Why?

Ever heard of the cobbler who’s kids didn’t have shoes?

Same kind of situation.

Except I was the cobbler who didn’t think his shoes were good enough.

Imposter Syndrome is real.

My ego, or in this case, my lack-thereof, got in the way of creating the perfect product launch campaign.

I won’t go into how I would have done it, because its different for every product or scenario.

What I really wanted to convey to you is, when YOU are creating a product or course, it’s tough to be objective about it and your insecurities can get in the way of promoting your product.

My simple advice to you would be to kill that tiny voice in the back of your head saying telling you that what you created isn’t good enough.

There you go. 

Consider me your crash-test-dummy of digital entrepreneurship. Sharing what didn’t work so you don’t have to make the same mistakes.

Stay thirsty my friend!