The Method We Introduced Our Program In Just 4 Weeks (Using Principles of Productivity Principles)
Just the thought of launching an entirely new program made us nervous. We already had a full schedule, we were traveling abroad in Spain It just seemed like too much to manage.
There's the fear that your course will not be well received. Then, you get further behind with your schedule (because of the fear, as well as because you underestimated the much you have to do). In the end, perfectionists kick in when you reach the 90-yard line, you stop making any progress, and you begin to question what you could do to stop the project all together.
However, when we made the decision to start our brand new Systems Mastery course, we determined that we had enough! The years of productivity training to good use to figure out the best way to introduce a fabulous new product without delaying our timeline (and without creating additional stress marks to our forehead.)
We proved to ourselves that we were able to accomplish this within a short time frame even under the worst conditions. The launch was a huge popularity with our customers, and it's now an integral part of our suite of offerings.
Below are three key productive principles we've implemented which can be attributed to our successes.
1. Exercise "Extreme preparedness" Prior to Taking Your Course
The more time you spend creating your program, the easier the execution will be. The course was planned out in detail, asking ourselves "what would our clients require to know?" and "what materials will we need to provide to teach this idea?" We planned for the best case, worst scenario, and the expected cases for pre-selling and throughout the week's customers' experiences.
"In preparing for war, I've discovered that planning is not useful, however, planning is indispensable."
- Dwight D Eisenhower
The time we put into creating a plan in advance was a saving of two to four hours later due to the fact that we could utilize the following two concepts of standardization and elimination. If we had created the course by the seat of our pants, we would have opened the door to huge inefficiencies, which our schedule simply wouldn't have accommodated.
2. Develop a Standardized system for designing, Filming, And Publishing Content...And Finally, you can actually run your System
When we had planned our course and sales process to the hilt and streamlined the process, we came up with a procedure for executing. There are a myriad of steps involved in transferring knowledge from your brain to beautiful course content that we often be caught up in the details of the process. Without a system that informs precisely what you need to do what to do, how and when and what time to be able to devote, timelines get drawn out more and more.
Your system will allow you to make use of CONSOLIDATION in which you are able to put similar activities together in order to maximize effectiveness. For example, our system required that all of our scripts needed to be done and then we had to film all of it. We could stay at "script mode" for a whole week. This was followed by a few short days of filming and editing (which was not a lot of time at all thanks to our scripts).
Once you write down your ideal process (this will appear like a flow chart) then it's time to get started with implementing. When you begin work keep in mind that PROGRESS provides instant determination. There doesn't have to be massive progress - it just must be some progress, each and every day.
"A common belief within Silicon Valley is, "Done is more valuable than the perfect."
-- Greg McKeown, author of Essentialism
In order to create this change, certain aspects of your beautiful course will require to be removed. It's true that it can sting you a bit! For example, we forewent filming front-to-camera segments due to our travels as well as we were unable to build a professional lighting setup. (In actuality this was all we could think of to make a makeshift sound booth in our bedroom!)
3. Reduce The Unnecessary, Continually
The creation of courses can quickly turn into a "Matryoshka Doll" task where every time you think you're close to being done an additional issue or component is revealed. This is to be expected This makes the final principle critical to your success.
Instead of trying to download every stitch of knowledge that we have in our minds instead, we made sure to create information that our clients need to understand. It's for our own benefit as much as our customers. They benefit because they aren't receiving a lot of unnecessary information. The benefit is that we are able to cut out a small portion of information and thus save time creating the course.
To do this you should frequently ask yourself the Leveraging Question, which is a classic Time Management book The One Thing.
"What's the one that I could do so that everything else is more simple or less important?"
- Jay Papasan and Gary Keller, Gary Keller, ONE Thing
In a more straightforward way "Is my current activity truly the most valuable and essential thing I'm doing?"
We've learned the fun that it is for a course to be launched off the ground and then developed into prolific course creators. We're hoping these ideas will help you get your course up and running and running!
Carey Gjokaj is the CEO of Lifehack Bootcamp and is known for her abilities to develop streamlined team workflows and process for groups of any size. The goal of Lifehack Bootcamp is to help students achieve their most efficient work in order to create space for the life of their dreams.