Test Your Awesome Idea
Beate Chelette
Lessons
Turn Your Talent into a Business
16:51 2Creating Your Vision Statement
31:49 3Creating Your Mission Statement
28:09 4Types of Businesses
28:33 5From Ideas to Reality
21:42What to Do With Your Idea
17:54 7Test Your Awesome Idea
32:05 8Competitive Research & Testing
32:34 9Creating Revenue Streams
14:37 10Money & Pursuing Your Dream
18:20 11What's Your Number?
37:21 12Funding Your Business
26:38 13Creating Customer Profiles
19:49 14Real-life Customer Profiles
51:25 15Expanding Your Client Base
15:19 16Human Capital
37:46 17Organizational Structure
18:07 18Financial Responsibilities
24:42 19Meeting Your Financial Goals
27:37 20Legal Responsibilities
22:57 21Long-Term Growth Strategies
23:31 22Using Mind Mapping & Automation
32:02 23Using Automation
21:28 24Your Creative Business Plan
06:30 25The Power of Your Story
29:22 26How to Make Money
34:55 27Marketing Strategies
22:38 28The Non-Sleazy Elevator Pitch
19:08 29Marketing Tips You Need to Know
25:33 30Marketing: What to Watch For
14:51 31Biz Skills: What to Avoid
27:05 32Inventor's Pitch, Story & Tips
20:47 33Beate's Secrets to Success
19:12 34Thinking in the Long-Term
28:26 35Banking on Your Name
16:08 36Setting Objectives & Goals
18:58 37Capturing Clients & Where to Start
15:23Lesson Info
Test Your Awesome Idea
This segment is all about now testing your idea because what we've talked about now we talked about what's the the vision you know what we tried to change in the world what what we set out to do we talked about the mission how are we going to do that? And then we heard about howto sort of find tune this idea and we talked to his wonderful guest victoria who shared with us the you know, her process on how she even ended up sort of creating and building this business and now we will talk about how we're going to take the tools that are available to us and a lot of these tools are actually for free uh available to you out there and what I personally doing again everything I talk about this stuff that I do that I have pro proven that works those are my personal strategies and you pick and choose from the strategies that suit you so let's jump into this so intended marketing tools are a requirement now for any business out there so the most important ones are so called landing or squeeze pa...
ges and you all have seen them there's some really good ones and there's some really terrible ones then there is what's called an opt and form we talk about ethical bribes and we talk about testing headlines and content so we start right away with the landing pages and with um you know, the dreaded words conversion and things like that so part ofthe running a business today is changed to such an extent that you must know where to get the data from because if you can't verify how your idea response then it's you talking but nothing's coming back so we talk about imagine it this way when the computers first came out right so somebody put this up it's like a store like you go you look at it and then you leave now is chained than a changed in web two point oh is when you know somebody present something to you go there but now there's an interaction off some sort the web three point oh is now when everything is becoming interactive the challenge is for all businesses right now is thie inner action with a consumer or a potential buyer because there's so much noise out there so if there's so much noise out there how do you differentiate yourself? How do you set yourself apart and how do you know that you are and this is all done through the testing so this example up here are two this is for the photo biz boot camp and you see the address at the bottom so if you want to go and join the boot camp which is going to launch again in a september you're welcome to do that put about a thousand to fifteen other people through every time I do this and you do it twice a year so the reason I do the boot camp I created this video serious is for the purpose ofthe lead generation because you have to create something which is called an ethical bribe something that people want from you that gives them content that gives them information and in exchange it's like a transaction I'm giving you information and in return you giving me your email you give me your email and of course I'm going to mark it to you I mean that's how it works rides like when the people hand out their samples this's like me handing out my sample so I've created this a seven day video boot camp and each day when you sign up and we launch you get a five minute video and they're only available for a limited amount of time and we'll talk about the scar city principal in a minute so with the landing pages and this is the you know this is a very heavily technology driven part but don't despair it's not as difficult as it seems so this is um I get my landing pages and I share which company I use and you welcome to use the land god provided and check them out so I built these two pages and it's for the exact same thing on the under um paige, where you see the three seven step bootcamp reveals all right there there was actually a video. And on the other one, it's, just a photo off me there's. No video. And so we did these, you know, it's the same kind of content which paige, do you think converted better? And conversion means that somebody goes to the page and they do what I want them to do. Which is they give me that they signed up for the boot camps which paid you think, um, converted better video. The video. They said the eyes that your final answer? Yes, it's. Very good. So is the numbers. So the first one of the original was the one on the left with fifty five point twenty seven. Thirty at the conversion rates are insane for the boot camp, but that has to do because my brand is already, you know, to the point of people know that when the sport can comes, they better send out because it's only twice a year. So our conversion rates when somebody goes that paige, I mean, the's conversion rates are very rare and the other one at fifty six percent. So this is a neck to neck race, so it just shows you when you present a powerful information. And people really want what you have and it is proven I mean we have hundreds of testimonials about the boot camp people just you know, people go crazy over it and it's really good information so yeah go ahead ask her come sorry I'm I'm just really likes that step one on this I don't even know what that means okay who created that for you did you do it yourself? Excellent. Okay good. So you see the link down here that says linked outcome read pages dot net forward slash s h eight are so the company that I use and there's different companies out there I like these guys and they have templates off proven opt in forms and sales pages and all kinds of forms out there I don't really recommend you to try to build these on your own because one of the reasons I like using a company that's already does that first of all I love the idea of picking up the phone and yelling at somebody when something doesn't work much better than having to find your programmer that's a freelancer that sitting someone some other part of the world so you know having a company that you work with that you can give feedback to is very, very, very powerful and this's a wordpress plug in that means when you build your website on wordpress this is super easy to create so you just go to the template and then you pick a template and all these templates are also responsive and the term responsive means and it's very important and everything you do out on the internet it's responsive because it means that it automatically automates converts into a paige that's readable on smartphones and tablets because back then and that's one of the reasons why some of the old side websites don't work so well anymore because when you look at them on the phone it gets like all screwed up so this is already all built in there's no no no reason to worry about it so find a company that that does thes kinds of sales are often pages a lot of the programs already come with some pre build pages and it will go through some of the other companies that are out there later on and again this is one of the reasons you want the workbook because you don't need to worry about it is in the appropriate place where it should be and you can just look it up easily so please do click the button and get the workbook right now if you haven't already done so all right so the um the analytics that I was able to get from this wass that the it even tells me the probability off one page outperforming yes so I can do a test so again you know you find the company that has sales pages or opt in pages you go and you use their template and you write the copy and it takes you through it's like you know this like step one, step two, step three, step four, step five and it's really intuitive so you can go through it one by one by one by one and ask you all the question. When are you going to do it? How you going to do it? What you're giving in return here's the link so it's easy to follow, then you do the plug in with your with your website and voila your pages up, the ethical bribe is going to talk about in just one second, and in some of these you can do, um several pages, so you do an option, an option b or an option c because sometimes you don't know, does it convert better with a video doesn't convert better with the photo? Does it convert better with me saying this headline? Or does it convert better with saying that headline? So I put two, three pages up and then when I first start sending the traffic to the page, I make sure that I constantly check and then I look at it and where it says the probability off this page outperforming the other page, then of course I'm going to pick the page I'm going to take all pages down that it don't not performing well and I'm going to eventually leave up the page that performs spread ourselves you look puzzled is a question elem had about the boot camp that you mentioned earlier being a sort of the reason why people would sign up was the boot camp free or was that the ethical bribe? Um great question so the boot camp is free and the boot camp is the ethical bribe so unethical bribe is I'm going to give you something that you want so part of the business building is you know and again we keep going through this over and over and over again when you know what your cause who your customer is and you know what they want then you can create the bribe or give away a gift that they want and when you give somebody something that they want they're more inclined to then you know of course they only can get it if they give you the email there's no reason for you to put anything on the web site give anything away for free without collecting the mail address because that is how you build your list that's how you build your customer base and that's how you get the information from your customers so you you know it's called building a funnel you put him in in the top and then you know as the trigger through you extract more and more information from them until you really find tune who your customer is so of course you know my business is a little bit further in the process so that's why I'm outlining sort of thie um the picture for you so to your answer it is both it is free and idiocy ethical bribe thank you that answers that ok, good good. How do you choose which company to use you basically just do a search either you trust my judgment and or you go out and you find you find companies that have a good reputation on the forums out there there's a lot a lot of information where people say, well, this is the best value these guys have the best customer service these guys have the best templates so this happens to be one of the companies that I'm really really happy with thank you again your good uh would you recommend to use in this land in pages when you already have a business or you already have a website? So why would you need the london page for or you know to collect? I love the critical voices very good why would you do that? Because the amount of time it takes you to figure out what should go on a page this and I'm going to go back to the slide this is a science the best internet marketers in the world that our ranking in like hundreds of thousands of dollars on the internet products are testing these on a day to day basis so the numbers and the information that are behind you no proven and tested pages like that is invaluable I can tell if we are doing our own paige sayles pedro open pages and if we using a pre set paige makes a huge difference everything the way it's set up if it's in the upper ride in the lower left where the colors what the colors are if all of this already pre done for you you don't need to be doing any testing you just need to put the information in and find out which of these work for your client but otherwise it's an enormous amount of work you save time and time is money you should be spending the time instead of trying to fiddle with this I want you out there and selling your business I mean not selling your business but selling your you know your products and services much, much better use of your time okay so far everybody's clear in this yes there is one more question about how do you get the traffic to the page in the first place that is the million dollar question this's what something we will address the platform building ok because this is about you know the generating the traffic and I'm just going to give a quick give away on that when we just did our our contest do you think we just create a traffic for that? Paige? Yes, of course. Yes. So this is like one this is an ethical pride pride give him all my secrets away already. So but that's how it works, I create something that others want and then they go and now we got the traffic so it's about going where the people are that one what you have and then creating some sort of a buzz and we will talk about this a swell exciting. Thank you. So this is another one this's on the women's side. So this is what another ethical bribe I created called the balance test, and the balance test is a three minute quiz where you can go and you can take it takes you through three tiles, three pages where you can find out if you're in balance in your personal life way or in balance in your, uh, you know, business life and, you know, sort of in your overall emotional well being, you know how happy you are, and then we follow up with a serious of emails that then speak to, you know, your test results and to what you tell us what you want to put in balance, so depending so we get you in you you you find out what needs improvement or what you want to improve, and then based upon what you tell us, you want to improve that's when we sent you here or there or there. So if you say you want a bed but a work life balance, you goingto work life balance. If you say you want a better career, you go straight to the career, and if you say you want, adjust the work life balance, you don't want the whole thing, then you go to to get another one, so there's the whole thing or two elements of its it depends upon what you want, and sometimes when you give people a choice, the obvious choice is what they're going for, which is like, why would it choose between the two if I can't have everything? So when we didn't do that, people wouldn't be signing up, but now that we have these other two options and they can actually go make a choice by elimination, it's just somehow magically works, you know? But these are the things, and I'm trying to not overwhelm you too much, but these are the things that are so important in in testing you want this information if what it takes for people to come to you is because she helped him to figure out connie that actually losing wade isn't the most important part, but living healthy and improving the quality oflife and becoming pain free and losing that acid reflux and thie, you know, other things that happened with the body now it's so much easier for you to speak to what we call their pain points, because now you can offering solutions for them, and this is, and they may come to you because you want to lose weight, but then they find out it's really about living healthy, and that helps you too, you know, to adjust your approach to that because you really want to go to what lies underneath that, and we again, we'll talk about this, okay, we do have ah, we have crafters, photographers, musicians, obviously, nutritionist, hopefully you can give us a little more of an example of how that could come across in those categories. Caldwell that would be great, of course. So we talked about what the vision iss the vision is we're going to save the world with our amazing product idea jewelry, whatever. So when we create an unethical bribe, we talk about something that's a valuable for people that want what we have so we have done for some off the photographers we have done the guide to how to dress your children, so they're comfortable for a photo shoot if I'm a parent and I have kids and I want to do my photo sessions that so value for me because I now know how I should dress my kids so they don't look, you know, totally stiff and, you know, in these really uncomfortable outfits, if I am a jewelry designer, I probably would you know what I'm thinking on my feet now, I probably would do something along the lines off, um, trends, I would do some research on some of the designers that are out there that are doing, you know, like, how us, the statement pieces, if that's what I do statement pieces or understatement pieces or the power of diamonds or the secret power off jewelry or the secret power off, off, off medals and then really tells it off a story things that people do don't know yet who has not gone into a diamond store and looked a diamond rings and then really wanted to know, what do I need to know about diamonds? How do even evaluate the value of a diamond? What do I look for that stuff just never gets old it's like an evergreen kind of thing? If I'm a musician, maybe I would give away a piece of music that other people are allowed to use for, you know, for their websites, uh, or ah you know, depending on what kind of music you're doing, if it's music for for an end user that they can put on their presentations, if it's like role to free music, give him something away for free so that they can they can test that out. So it really depends what's off interest for your particular audience, and I would have to you know, I would have spent some one on one time to really learn about your client and find out what it is that they want. But make a note of that in your workbook to revisit that when we've done the customer profiles, it'll be so much easier for you when we've done a customer profiles to go back to this and say, okay, now I know who they are now I know what their pain points are, because we'll go through that as well. And now I know I can resolve that and that's why I have to give them give them this one together. I know. And I really in't and I love how you know how the questions always come in, just like, you know, it's, just like, sort of the step before we get into into the next into the next question, okay, good, so again, so the ethical bribe and then they called to action the call to action is have you all heard about a call to action yet so called to action is you've got to tell them what you want them to do? I am amazed on how many times I go to a website or get a promo piece or somebody hands me something and it tells me nothing what do you want me to do with us? Do you want to look at it? Do you want to call you to comb any book you want me to go to your store? Do you want me to check out your website? You want to give you money and you want me to go and get a massage like what is it that you want me to do? It's probably the number one thing that people forget to ask for, you know new entrepreneurs especially and photographers, huh? Don't just send him a picture and then hope that they figure this magically out together or don't just send him a piece of jewelry on on on a piece of paper and give it to them that means nothing to anybody tell them that you know if they want to feel beautiful if they want to feel special for the next special event, if they want to reward themselves, they want to give themselves if they want to, whatever it is that ties in with your product tell them what you want them to do come to my store book your massage to day right now pick up the telephone don't miss this important moment in your children's life you wait a year guess what it's gone it'll never come back there's no reason to wait why postpone feeling good y postponed losing weight why postpone? You know, getting yourself on a positive track in life so that's the call to action it has it has to have a certain type of urgency and you know again it has to be something obvious that they want and you know we will be finding out more about what they want when we go for the down so this is another often form and again there is the link to lead pages you want to check that check that out. So this is another example so a lot of thes white we call them white papers or e books a very, very, very popular. So if you have you, you talk about the solution to the problem that they're having and download this manual this e book this white paper the seven secrets too feeling better about yourself? You know, on why why losing weight really isn't what you want you know why losing weight is a myth? You know why losing weight is a pleasant side effect once you follow my seven secrets that I'm giving to you that's, why you always see the seven secrets that three steps? Why do you think this is called in twelve steps? Secrets revealed. So when you put a number to it, it makes things, makes things oversee a bull? Yes, nobody would buy the two hundred ninety five steps to building a business work, right? Too many steps. I'm just for a point of clarification, karen and wants to know is the landing page or the squeeze pages that separate from your website? Or is it a page on your website? Um, that really depends again, excellent question. So if you a lot of times especially people there in in the internet marketing space, they have just landing page because they keep turning out these products, but it quickly, ah, lot of times what people do, and for most of you, that probably will be the case you have. The op in page is an opt, informed somewhere on your page. So if you look in this particular example here, so you know your website could be could be around that, and then there's just this thing. And it says if you want to get my seven steps to better health, if you want to find out how how a statement piece of jewelry can build your self esteem or how professionally taken photograph can boost your career or the seven tips to have an awesome career and feel good about yourself then off you know you would just put it as an open form on the page so you see kind of both so those little bubbles air also things that can be purchased from someplace like lead pages yes exactly and a lot of times now you see these pop up over layers which were really great when they first came out and now I hate them rule of thumb is if it annoys you don't do it to anybody else so because you know, I think they use experience is becoming really bad if I've already been to that side I've already opted in and I'm reading an article and I'm going back to the site and I was I asking me too often again and again and again and again so think about you know the user experience and we'll talk about the user experience and actually an interesting comment came in from andhra peace who says as a european I don't know maybe it's just me but I really hate landing pages usually I immediately closed the website but with this kind of content and most people I look at I think it's just all the same maybe that's the european pm thing but I definitely know the pop up that that's everybody thing that is so annoy yeah yes but is that something you want to take into consideration is who is your audience and what do they absolutely appreciate yes absolutely again you know this is where the testing part comes in you if people right you hate mail after they come to your landing page or to your home page then you need to change it so I'm just giving you all these options so that you know when you're building your websites and when you were putting this all together you know what to choose from and you at least know where each element goes please promise me do not build a website without an opt in form I don't care how pretty it is I don't care how much everybody loves it I don't want you to be loved I want you to be appreciated in hard cash in your bank account best appreciation ever so award winning websites are great but but but relaxing vacations are better that I'm quoting a situation where somebody wouldn't have an often form like is there any type of business that a person would do that they wouldn't have that I think alina has the answer for you no yes okay yeah ethical bribe right just for somebody tio reach out to you to contact you to talk about your services and how often do you think that happens less often for sure no question so here's here's here's the scenario hey come to my website and I think you're gonna like me, and you're probably gonna like what I say. I'm not gonna tell you what it is, though, but you can look around on this website, and if all of this sounds good, you know what, you can't just up, then I'm going to send you randomly things that I'm not gonna tell you what they are. So how do you feel about that? That's, of course not gonna happen, so you got give them a reason, you know? So when I still go with reese, website said, sign up for our newsletter. When was the last time you sign up for newsletter? The word newsletter makes the hair on my back stand so I recommend using its something else call it a white paper, a special report, a e book, you know, or something that just sounds a little bit or, you know, your secret, you know, tips, tricks call it something else other than a newsletter, because most newsletter people just don't want big news, like I mean, yes, yeah, I'm mostly subscribing to newsletters right now, but so far it's, like, so say someone like me, like I have three areas that I'm trying to concentrate on the fine are the portrait's and the, um, events what you are someone else give me an example of how this often um how I like it just a top off the top of your head example of how the often form might work for me just you can do here that I don't know it's like a form that for event the checklist of things that you need to have I don't know if it was like a wedding how insurance dress guest list just something off use for them to get you an e mail address I see okay yeah like a full perfects eh? I fail you no fail safe uh list I like the idea ofthe list especially when it comes to some of the photography so even for the musicians amongst you you know that would be a great idea before hiring a musician or a band for your next event. Here are the five things that you should never do before that should always do before hiring you know your banjo here are the seven things that no clients ever asked before hiring a band s so so there's certain things in there that like what would I want to know like I've never really hired a band so why would I want to know about if I'd hired a band? What if I hire a photographer in a particular area like if I want to get my wedding images taken what would I want to know from the wedding photographer but tell me something that I want is like, you know, hear our the three the three things every bride should know to look beautiful yeah and like a tiny little tweaks, you know, just do this and then of course you have to tell them sort of what it is so that's what this what this is all about and you know, again we will think about this some more but it's good that you start thinking about it, but no there's, no web site out there that does not have an often form you're in business for one and one in one and one and one reason on lee, which is to provide a service or a product and to have people pay you money for it and you spend money and you designed the website to have an online presence or brick and mortar store so people can come to you and they buy if they don't buy you want to capture so that you then can sell to them somewhere down the road okay, so we got that capture people's e mails why do you need that information for years for a visit before potential customers? Yes, it's the same reason for I mean, how can I market to somebody if I don't know who they are? How do I know if my product or my service is important if nobody talks to me so just to have an online presence and then be in the google alexa ranking the eight million eight hundred thousand three hundred twenty fifth search result guess how big your business going to be it's going to be terrible so it's about creating the traffic it's about capturing people and then you put him in your final and then you market to them on a way to test must must must must have been often form thank you so what do you think of this if it hasn't been done before everyone else the stupid or you are pretty self explanatory so I always get them when someone says I have this incredible amazing brilliant idea and I am not sure an and and it's so you it's so new it's so unique that everybody wants it and I'm like how do you know? Well because hasn't been done before have you thought about on wide hasn't been done before remember ninety nine percent of all ideas already have been done before they're just better so if you are in that one percent do you think you need to think about that for a moment not to say that there aren't ideas that are going to come because you are in that whatever one percent most of the time there's a really good reason why there isn't so you know just just be just be aware of that
Class Materials
Ratings and Reviews
SIMPLICITY
HI BEATE! I love your German straight forwardness being German myself. ....watching your creativelive course i had to almost laugh when u talked about the job test when u where still in school. i had exactly the same experience. i wanted to become an artist, goldsmith, or photographer. same reaction of the woman of the "arbeitsamt" with the same great idea to offer me apprenticeship to become a secretary in a dusty office. %) not really ME! i would love to see you to accept my invitation on linked in because I love your kind of teaching ... very direct - down to the point, without loosing time! i respect your work and i am very glad that creativelive found you to share your knowledge with creative people who are very good in their creative area but maybe not so much on the business side. YOUR COURSE IS AMAZING! congratulations and a big "THANK YOU!" KRIS P.S. BOUGHT THE COURSE !)
a Creativelive Student
They must have not had the review feature up yet when this course originally broadcast, because no other way I could be the first person inspired to leave a review. This is simply the best actual business building course I've come across in a long time. It teaches you how to build a business, not just market one. Every other course I come across that presents itself as "business" or "entrepreneur" this or that is really just a marketing course for small businesses. Now don't get me wrong, marketing is certainly key if you want to be successful, but there is a lot more to successfully running a business than marketing. Lipstick on a pig, comes to mind. This is a course that will teach you how to become a successful entrepreneur, with part of the final day focused on marketing, which is the right balance given the responsibilities and requirements of a true business venture. So much out there is really just teaching people how to market themselves as if they were an employee without any company around them.
Chad Robertson
As an analytical person with creative spirit this was the perfect class for me. Beate has the passion of an artist coupled with a sharp, almost engineering intellect. I sometimes find with courses, online or not, that topics discussed do not apply to my journey. Not the case here. Everything was useful and the course materials provided invaluable. Highly recommended.