Hey friends, Kevon here. Wow, if you're watching this on YouTube right now, you might just freak out. Like, why is the video quality so low? Why is the audio sound different? Well, it's because I'm sitting at home right now. I'm in my bedroom, um, using the MacBook webcam to film this. But if you're listening to this, it shouldn't matter that much.
But the other thing you might notice is, this episode might be quite different from the other episodes that you're familiar with. And the reason is because I want to try this new style. I want to just talk. You know, I don't know how deep you know me, but I'm a very prepared person. I'm very organized. So every time I want to talk about something, I have all the bullet points ready and I'll just, you know, get to the point.
But then I started thinking, That's not. Exactly a good way Every single time like sometimes I just want to talk to you like a friend Sometimes I just want to do some sharing like loom video style. I think it's good to bring this style into the podcast as well because I think you can get a lot more from Just wandering with my thought process a little bit here.
And this is triggered by a recent participation in a public speaking class called ultra speaking. I was invited to the creator cohort and I didn't really have much expectation, but I was pretty excited. Blown away by the six hours session. So two three hour session and I learned so much I learned four key concepts and that was enough for me to Improve my speaking and one of the biggest thing is sometimes we just don't want to be so structured.
We want to just talk so yeah, i'm riding on that to really really just Talk it out to share with you guys This episode I'm recording at home and all that it's because it's at a pretty weird time a quick update about Where I am right now is funny thing Colbert came back into our family. I mean we got it in 2022 wow, that was a long time ago and Then now for first we found out that our one year old Audrey Got it first, but then it started going around so we all have like some sore throat some headache and stuff Well, honestly, we don't really care but it's just kind of funny that covid came back to hit our home So I haven't been working for the last three days I'm feeling a bit better now, but you can tell The throat is still really sore and I might be coughing.
So don't mind me if I do that Um And it really affect the business. I mean, it's a one man business, right? And when I stopped working, nothing is moving. And a lot of people have virtual assistants. We call it VA. And I do have one as well. And the thing is, she gave birth, um, last week. So I was really happy for her.
I was like, hey, take as much time you need as you want. Because having a baby, like, family to me is the most important thing. So, yeah. Please take care of the baby. Rest. Recover. Don't worry about the work that you do for me. We'll reconnect whenever you're ready. So I think it was maybe a week or two weeks ago.
I don't have even have a VA to help me handle different operational things. So it makes it even harder for me to run things because I realize The content creation part that I get her help to do is quite a lot, you know, taking a lot of time. So yeah, be grateful that there are virtual assistants out there that can help us do that.
So that's another update from me. Um, today, yeah, I'm just going to talk about different topics. Don't mind me. I'll definitely include the, the timestamps. So then you know exactly what this episode covers. And this time I'm doing it on script. So it might sound a bit long winded than usual. Not my typical style.
Um, so if you're still listening until this point, thank you. That means a lot to me. Yeah. So having no VA is a big thing for a solo business. Um, I think if you ask me when you should be getting a VA, I think if you are able to to even get your revenue figure to like five figure, I mean, total, I don't mean monthly.
I think that's the time when you really want to start thinking about like having some system, having some workflow. So then you are not the only one doing more things for the longest time. I don't have anyone supporting me. And the hardest part is the context switching between so many different tasks.
Like when we run a creator education business, we need to create product. We need to create content. We need to sell. Oh my God. Like that. I didn't even mention community, you know, um, hang out in community or running a community, all that. It's just a lot. So having someone to take some pieces out, so then you can focus on.
The timeline of things and how to move things forward is very important. And if you don't have experience with this, then it will take some time to, to get to a level where you're comfortable. I cannot comfortably say that I'm at that level yet. Um, I think one part is we creator, we hold our work so close to our heart.
So sometimes it's hard to get someone else to do it. Um, I'm the same. Um, So I get my VA to help me out with, you know, the, the post production part more because for ideation, for the actual content creation, I still want to keep it close to me. So, yeah, that's my two cents about virtual assistants today. I want to spend some time talking about my new product, Momentum Marketing Mastery.
Um, I want to talk about how I'm having very, very slow progress because, you know, so many things are happening in my life, but I still feel quite excited about developing this product. I still feel very motivated. So I often hear people say, Oh, come on. I still have a hard time shipping this. course out. I keep delaying it.
I keep pushing it back. And when I think about that and reflecting on my personal experience, I often see that when you are just putting your heads down and you are just working on the course quietly, it becomes a drag. It becomes very difficult. Difficult to move things because you tend to overthink you don't really get those Tiny achievements by people saying wow, this is great You don't feel like there's progress but more and more you just overthink and you want to keep editing the work becomes a procrastination so I Reflect back to how I'm doing it right now.
I Just finish a round of um, it's not beta reading because I get a group of 10 people to review my table of contents and I say if you review the table of contents, then you can be part of my beta reader group, which get the course at a very, very huge discount. Like, I think like 70 percent discount. I am able to chop the process up into very small bites.
So the first part is I spend a lot of time thinking about what the course should cover. And then I spent a lot of time, um, writing all the chapter titles in descriptive languages. And then I, you know, communicate to my wait list and I get people to sign up to be beta readers. And now I have the feedback on the chapter titles.
I can go in and edit them, and then I'm ready to, you know, outline further and really write out each chapter. So, for your context, this course will be text based. Because I realize, actually, text is still the primary format of the internet. So I want that to be the base of my course. It might sound a little weird that, A course is a text because when you think text, you think of a book, but I think a course is just a program to learn.
So we shouldn't default it to a book. But anyway, this is a very unique thing that I'm trying out as well. what I want to say here is by involving the audience. By putting out the waitlist early and communicating to them and asking, Hey, who wants to review my table of contents? I'm able to work very slowly.
But still feel like i'm achieving something because at every given point I can get feedback I can get people to tell me that they're excited about my product like when I read their Reaction on my table of contents. I ask them. Hey, tell me which part is Exciting to you. Tell me which part is boring.
Tell me which part is unclear. So just three questions and I can see, wow, people are really excited about designing waitlist incentives. I thought that would be the case, but it was a thought, right? It was a hypothesis. But now even with 10 beta readers, I'm able to confirm that that part is exciting. And that's a small win, even though I haven't really gone into writing out that chapter.
So that's the amazing part. So this is why I would encourage you like to divide up your product development process into a very small steps and don't be afraid to. You know grab a few people next to you who need what you have and just treat them as partners like Remember, I don't know if you're still having a full time job Or if you don't then remember when we work in a company we work in teams so like you can imagine The few people next to you are your teammates for the current state.
And then for the next step, you have a few new teammates as well. If you have this mindset, then yeah, even though you're working like very slowly across a few months for a new product, you will get the motivation. You, you get the encouragement to keep going and yeah, you might delay it a little bit, but you delay it for a specific reason.
Yeah. You don't delay it just because you're not able to finish producing it. I think that's a really key thing to know. Now let's talk about, um, the last thing of this episode. It's about active money plan. I could come up with a new naming on this, but I don't know. This sounds okay. Active money plan. I think everyone should have an active money plan when you run a creative education business.
So. Let me explain what that is for the longest time or still we're creating this business Because we are drawn to that passive income dream like you can Create some content and they live on the internet forever And then when the visitor come visit your content somehow they would click around and they would land on your product And then they would buy your product and then when you sleep you can make money, right?
That's the big dream everyone has But how many people can actually get to that point? It's definitely possible. Like I was sick the last few days and I saw people getting my courses. I was super excited. I think I'm, I'm getting there, but not at a point that I can just like relax and do nothing. So a big lesson learned from my three and a half years of running a creator education business is that You cannot just sit back and rely on your content to do the work for you.
Because oftentimes, especially in the early days, it doesn't work that way. So when you have an active money plan, which is when you have mapped out Your sales and marketing activity for the next few months, at least you will have more success reaching your goals. So let me describe how I do that. Right. I basically started to, um, map out how much money I want to make each month.
And I'll break down what does that mean with what product do I need to sell? What service do I need to sell to combine to a total revenue for that month? When I list that all down, then I start to have a better picture of like, okay, so I'm not going to sell this course every single month. I'm going to sell it every quarter.
But then, you know, I have a few courses now since I've a few years in. So now I can alternate them, right? Then I would have a better sense of, okay, in order to do that, then I need to, you know, include some warmup message in my newsletter. I don't like to hard sell people. I like to just soft mention. I mean, if people need that, they, they would just get it.
If they don't need it, it's fine as well. So. When I mapped out from the sales target, I can work backwards to know my marketing activities. And that really helps me because I can tell you in the past, I would, um, basically just. Sit there every week think about the content that I want to create Think about the things that I want to say and then I will just do that week in week out without Knowing how that contribute to the angle and the result is still okay.
I mean i'm able to sell products i'm able to um get people on my wait list but it's sometimes delaying because, you know, when I get sick, then I don't really have a plan to, to do some marketing or do some sales that week. And I would just push everything back. So I'm basically living week to week instead of following a plan.
So this is what I mean by you need an active money plan when you run a creator education business. I think one of the fear that people have when it comes to sales planning, it's that you, you're afraid to be annoying. Oh, you're bombarding your audience. Like, let's say you have an email list of like 500 people.
You're afraid that you annoy them by, you know, presenting your offers that often. I was the same until I learned that it's very important to segment your lists. So you can, you know, use different filters. Like I would, um, filter people by their goals, because when they opt in, they actually tell me their goals, or I would filter people by which product they bought from me already.
And then I would get a tiny list from that, let's say 500 people. And then I would just like send the emails to these people. So if you think about it that way, then, well, first of all, you're not really annoying everyone, just spamming everyone to get your products. But you're just picking a small group to to do so and second of all It's possible that if you want to drive up your sales, right you can Even segment a gets an offer to email course engine segment.
B gets an offer to my book, find joy in chaos. You can even do that. So you can sell two different products to two different groups at the same time. So that's a very powerful learning, on my side in the last few years. Segmentation. Yeah. So I feel like. I've covered a few topics here and there today. Um, I, I only have a few bullet points written down about what I want to address today.
The rest is basically impromptu speaking, sharing from my experience, but more and more and more. Um, I want to do this style because it's more natural, uh, it's more personal. And I feel like I really want to connect better with you guys, like what you guys are doing. So if you're listening to this episode.
And you're like, come on, I'm building my creator education business. I would love to talk to you. Please send me a message. Please leave me a message somewhere and just introduce yourself. Like oftentimes I get people writing emails to me and. I'm super excited because my goal is to really help the people around me to move towards success together So I like to meet people and I like to bounce ideas so Yeah, if you're listening to this point, which is incredible where we we're like 20 minutes in then Say hi It is fascinating that I am able to hold my cough for 20 minutes, but it's getting really dry now hopefully I'll recover soon in another day or two but my last note to you is like take care of your health Take care of your family spend more quality time with them and i'll see you later.
All right. See you. Bye. Bye In this episode, Kevon discusses his new, more conversational style of content creation inspired by a public speaking class. Despite dealing with a COVID-19 resurgence in his family, he shares insights on the importance of having a virtual assistant, the challenges of solo business operations, and updates about his new product, Momentum Marketing Mastery. Kevon emphasizes the necessity of an active money plan for creator education businesses and provides tips on segmenting audiences for more effective sales and marketing strategies. He concludes by encouraging listeners to take care of their health and family.
