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Create a course of a subject you’re an expert on.As entrepreneurs, having ideas is the best! I live for that lightning bolt moment.But if you’ve been around the block a few times, you know that not all ideas are created equal.In fact, some of them can really suck! 😂An idea for a new online course or product can be an exciting time for your business, but it can also be a distraction or a time waster, especially if it turns out that people aren’t actually interested in this new idea!Pre-Selling Your Online CourseI have seen so many posts in FB groups and such lately that I just HAD to say something about this. I've seen people posting things like "Okay I just finished all my course content! Now what do I do to sell the course?"It hurts when I see those posts. They didn't know any better, but they did the whole process backwards.You NEVER want to create a course before you know if anyone is actually interested in your idea. You need to validate your new online course idea first.And honestly: actual sales are the only real form of validation.NOT surveys or "interview calls" or whatever else. Actual, real sales.Today I'm going to tell you how to validate and pre-sell your course idea BEFORE you create all the content for it.So many people spend months making course content then after ask "how do I market this?"YIKES.Pre-selling your course is absolutely necessary to decide if your idea will work.How do you do that?With a little process I like to call the Rapid Validation Webinar.(Dun dun dun!)Okay. What the Heck is a “Rapid Validation Webinar?”A Rapid Validation Webinar is a way to quickly test your new online course to make sure it will validate (and makes some SALES!) without diving into a full launch promotion.The idea of a Rapid Validation Webinar isn’t to make all the sales… it’s to quickly test the viability of your concept without wasting three months on an untested product that no one ends up buying.Here’s how it works:You spend 3-4 weeks building out some basic resources (no crazy sales pages or email sequences are needed here! This is all about speed.)You quickly determine if your idea is worth pursuing.You get a quick win if it validates… and potentially bring in some sales and make money $$$!Say goodbye to wasting weeks and weeks of time just wondering if that new course idea is going to be successful.With a Rapid Validation Webinar, you can create basic resources (which will totally be repurposed again later if you decide to do a full launch), test your idea, and if you make those sales - you’ll know this is something you want to pursue further!The whole process of going from idea to pre-sale takes about 3-4 weeks (instead of months).We teach this entire method (with all the templates, scripts, calendars and weekly coaching) in our Accelerator program!Check out and apply to our Accelerator program here.What You Need for a Rapid Validation Webinar✅ Your offer✅ Course content outline✅ Course name✅ Webinar slide deck✅ 9 webinar emails (this is based on our 3 x 3 email sequence - from our Webinar Rockstar® program!)✅ Registration, live and replay pages✅ Promotional assets (graphics, images, mock-ups, etc)✅ Checkout page for accepting payments✅ Plan for delivery and next steps if your course successfully validatesWhat You DON’T Need for a Rapid Validation Webinar(thus saving you tons of time and effort!)❌ Sales Page❌ 12-email Launch sequence❌ Your course to be created❌ Weeks of pre-launch content❌ 5-10 live streams❌ Months of timeHere's what some of our clients have done with their Rapid Validation Webinars in the past few weeks:Cami's goal was 5 pre-sales, she ended up with 19!Justine's goal was 6 pre-sales...she ended her Rapid Validation with 22 new students (and she had never sold a course before!).Cathy was hoping for 5-10 pre-sales...and enrolled 31 students!The Rapid Validation Webinar ProcessHere’s what you need to do for your Rapid Validation Webinar:Step 1: Market Research to Choose a Course IdeaThe very first thing our clients do is market research using our signature Copy Stalking process.We have spreadsheets and templates for this in both our Launch Your Signature Course® and Accelerator programs . By doing this Copy Stalking research, our clients are able to figure out exactly which course idea their audience actually wants to buy.You'll settle on the idea that you will be validating and pick a name. It doesn't have to be perfect! This whole process is an exercise in getting over perfection, hence the "rapid validation".Step 2: Outline Your Course ContentIn order to know what course you are pre-selling, you'll outline your course content using our templates and systems.This is where you map out the big picture outcomes and results your students will get, the transformation they will experience or the skill they will learn and the major milestones you'll be teaching them to get there.When you do this process, you figure out exactly WHAT you are actually pre-selling. Again, it does not have to be perfect and it's okay if you rearrange modules or add more content to the course outline later when you are creating the course.Step 3: Know Your Plan for When Your Course ValidatesAt this point, you will just wrap your head around what you'll be doing if/when your course idea validates and you make the pre-sales you were looking for.In our Launch Your Signature Course® program we give you a week by week calendar of exactly what to do after your Rapid Validation Webinar so you can just transition seamlessly into the next stage: creating content and then moving into a more public launch.Step 4: Create Rapid Validation Webinar AssetsNow you start actually creating the webinar registration page, live webinar page, slides, a couple of emails - all the fun stuff!Inside Launch Your Signature Course®, we of course give you the full templates and word for word scripts for everything, including a pre-made webinar slide deck you just fill in the blanks.The webinar topic is designed to attract your ideal students and the webinar itself pitches the pre-sale offer of the course.Here’s an example from one of our clients who surpassed her Rapid Validation goal:Step 5: Promote Your Rapid Validation WebinarJust like a normal webinar, you'll promote your webinar registration page to your audience (email list, social media, etc) for 7 days.In Launch Your Signature Course®, we give you a promotional calendar, email scripts, and strategies for getting people to register and show up! You'll set a goal for how many people you'd like to register for your webinar, to test interest in your topic.Here’s an example of how one of our clients promoted their Rapid Validation Webinar using Instagram Stories. You’ll use whatever platform you have an audience on to promote.tep 6: Deliver The Webinar, Pitch the Pre-Sale, & Send the ReplayThis is the fun part! You'll deliver your live webinar with confidence (knowing you have all the tools and our support) and pitch your special pre-sale offer of your new course!After the live webinar ends, you’ll send the webinar replay emails to those who registered (and yes, we give you fill-in-the-blank email scripts for this!).The Rapid Validation pre-sale offer for your course is available for about 3 days.

I want to take a step-back from asking “how to beat procrastination” and ask instead “why do you procrastinate?” Let’s look at treating the cause instead of the symptoms.A common thought is: I’m procrastinating because I’m lazy.That’s probably not true.When talking about writing your thesis, chances are you are a PhD student, you have performed most of your research already, you may have published your work in peer-reviewed journals, or written a book, or attended conferences. Surely, you’ve been in school for 20+ years, getting up early, taking notes, working on assignments, and studying for tests. It’s HIGHLY LIKELY you are some sort of high achiever, deeply self-motivated person, and NOT LAZY.Procrastination is often rooted in two causes: 1) anxiety, and 2) lack of knowledge.AnxietyAre you stressed or afraid about the task you are trying to accomplish? Is avoiding it (procrastinating) a way to avoid the source of your anxiety?When you spend your time on Quora instead of writing your thesis, you don’t have to think about all sorts of stressful things. You don’t have to think: will my writing suck? Will I disappoint my advisor? Will I fail my defense? Will I be forced to quit my PhD program without graduating?It’s much easier to put these thoughts aside and spend time watching cat videos instead of writing. Writing means you are putting things down on paper. Writing means someone can judge what you wrote. Writing means inviting criticism.So instead, you procrastinate. That doesn’t make you feel good. So on top of your existing anxiety, you berate yourself. “Why am I so lazy? Why can’t I just write my thesis? Why am I always distracted? Other people seemed to have an easier time writing their thesis. I’m so lazy compared to them. I’m such a failure.” And you’re making everything worse.Lack of knowledgeDo you procrastinate writing your thesis because you honestly don’t know where to start? Do you know in detail what to write in your thesis, following what sort of structure? Are you comfortable with the act of writing technical texts? Is English not your first language?Have you ever attended a lecture or workshop on how to write a thesis? Was it adapted to your field? Do you know what structure your department expects you to follow and what information to put under each sub-section? Have you seen example theses from other students that have already graduated? Have you discussed your outline with your advisor? Do you even have an outline?It’s very possible that many students reach the stage of writing their thesis without really knowing how to write one. When faced with a blank page they think “where do I even start? This is too hard. I’ll come back to this later when I have more inspiration.” But really, they won’t make any progress until this lack of knowledge is properly addressed with additional instructions, support, training, examples, templates, etc.So sure, if writing your thesis fills you with excitement instead of anxiety, and if you perfectly know what to do because you’re in the final rounds of revisions, maybe you are simply a bit lazy and a bit distracted, and that’s why you are procrastinating. Follow Barbara Robson’s excellent advice, set yourself a timer and get to work.But if the more you think about writing, the more you feel butterflies in your stomach, maybe there’s more work to be done before you can reasonably sit yourself down and write.Do you have a very detailed outline to get you started? Do you know precisely what data, figures, references you will put in your thesis, under what sections and sub-sections? Has your advisor approved this outline?Have you looked up seminars/online courses/student meet-ups on the topic of “how to write a thesis?”Do you need remedial courses to improve your written English? Check out if there’s a writing center at your institution.Think about how stressed you are about this process. What’s the worse that can happen, realistically, if you write a page of text and it absolutely sucks? I’ll tell you: the worse that can happen is that you’ll have to edit it heavily or re-write it. You won’t fail your defense because your first draft sucked. You won’t get kicked out of your program because the first draft sucked. First draft always suck, and that’s why they are your first draft, not your final copy.Do you think you are ready to write your thesis, or do you think you still lack major results and that’s why you’re anxious? Talk with your advisor about this.Do you think your research is worthwhile and impactful? Think about this long and hard, talk to your peers, talk to your family, talk to your Uber driver, and come up with a list of reasons why your research is the MOST AMAZING thing ever. It doesn’t have to be the next Nobel prize, but it has to get you motivated and inspired.Try to write without thinking about style, grammar, vocabulary choice, synonyms, passive voice, or anything like that. Many people get stuck in their first draft because they focus on style instead of content.Think about how good it’s going to feel once you’ve written this page or this section. Think about how less anxious you’ll feel once it’s done. Reward yourself once you’ve achieved your daily goals.But most importantly: think about why you are procrastinating.

Uber = On-Demand Services And Logistics BusinessThe short answer is Google did not pick or switch from two of the same type of companies, SideCar vs. Uber, they invested into a company that really is in an entirely different industry.Ultimately Uber is in the on-demand services and logistics business.Proof Of ConceptThe first iteration of the proof of concept for this business premise was manifested in the Luxury black car sedan service that began in 2009. This formed the template for solving the huge problems and challenges that on-demand services create and the solutions to economically form the software and people management of logistical infrastructure needed to be successful. However, it was clear to me in the first few months that Uber was planning for this to be something far more grand, far more ambitious.As each iteration was crafted around the improvements in the Sedan service, data on the entire process informed the potential extension into other on-demand markets. This really was priceless data that will allow Uber to expand rather rapidly into other on-demand and logistical based services.This to me was the ultimate business “head fake”. Clearly Uber has creditable competitors in the Sedan business. However few of these competitors seem to be seeing the huge on-demand and logistics service opportunities.Now, clearly Uber’s CEO Travis Kalanick has not really hid the fact of what the company’s premise may well be, however most of the tech world saw the experiments with on-demand Roses, Ice Cream, Boats and Helicopters as just some Silicon Valley wackiness. Crazy? Like a fox.Travis spilled the beans so to speak in this interview [1]:I think we're the Uber of stuff. But I think those in the investment community probably get -- I mean, some of it gets forwarded to me. Those in the investment community see a lot of "Uber of blanks."If it's in our wheelhouse, right, we'll ultimately do it. And I sort of outlined the sort of lifestyle and logistics cross. But there are a lot of things that don’t work for it.Like we did, just for fun, we tried on-demand Texas barbecue in Austin, right? Just for fun. So you get cornbread and Texas barbecue sandwich inside of five minutes delivered to you via a pedicab. But guess what? A Texas barbecue sandwich doesn't taste really good an hour and a half after it's made. And so you have to have a very tight supply chain. Very difficult to manage unless the truck itself is making the Texas barbecue. But if you have a supply chain where it's made somewhere else -- anyway, you get the idea.Uber Really Has Two Customers:The Uber customerThe Uber partnerThe Uber PartnerThe backend software for Uber partners is really quite robust and profoundly useful. Uber also built a very reliable payments platform that is one of the best in the industry at this point. This platform is of the most profound importance as it treats Uber partners rightly equal as users of the Uber service. Uber clearly sees the partner as a customer and this is rather important for scalability and expansion to other on-demand markets.Über also for the most part solved the massive problem of working with thousands of independent business owners and has built a scalable system that has knows where to deploy real people in support where Algorithms do not work. This is really part of the gravity center of Uber’s success. Real people interacting with Uber partners. As competing services began to mount, it was the people to people relationships with the small business that held the loyalty far more then just the profit shares.The Uber CustomerThe customer facing systems Uber produced have been highly optimized. They have been distilled to the basic elements and are incredibly easy to use. Of course there are a number of iterational improvements that will take place, but the platform is rather solid.Foundational Algorithms That Solve On-Demand And Logistical ProblemsUber has internal systems that can, with basic seed data, be highly predictive of supply and demand, and if need be, dynamically adjust prices accordingly. This functionality can be adjusted to just about any on-demand service and speck out the logistics involved to perfectly optimize available assets. The big data they have already compiled can speak volumes on valuable insights of how these systems work and how they fail. There is a huge amount data that informs the efficiency of scale that can be reached in just about any market. This dataset is one of the top 10 most important aspects of Uber.Where can all this take Uber? Sure booking Google self driving cars, perhaps taxi like services in 2023 is in the cards at some point. However there are a few things that may come much sooner:Food Delivery- Not just restaurants but many of the catering kitchens hidden from the view of the general public. In most cites for every restaurant there are three authorized and licensed catering kitchens that produce perhaps some of the best food in some areas. There are just no easy ways to get the food to the potential customers, it is a logistical problem. This is a multi-billion dollar industry ready to happen.Local Package Delivery- This is a multi-billion dollars industry and is fragmented. FedEx, UPS and the Post Office can not really compete. An obvious problem solved by high order logistics.Local Product Delivery- Local merchants can compete with Amazon Now and even Google’s services by bringing the local product to the customer. No one has entered this market in a meaningful way because of the logistical challenges. This is a multi-billion dollar market ready to happen.Local Grocery Delivery- Not just the chain Grocery stores, but smaller stores, farms, producers and CSAs. Most people want local fresh food, they just lack the logistics to make it happen.Local Moving Services- This is a very fragmented industry and does not real have any clear solutions other then cross town U-haul rentals. There are no current logistical solutions.Non Emergency Medical Transport- There are millions of non medical emergency transports in the US. No EMT are involved. Specialty vehicles may or may not be needed. It is a multi-billion dollar industry that has clear fragmentation and huge logistical issues that have never been solved.Google: Choosing One Over The Other?Of course some of Uber’s competitors have parts of these issues solved, however it seems that Uber is much further down the road. I can not speak to anything private about Google’s intentions, but clearly Uber is aiming at a much wider premise for the finely tuned infrastructure they have created. The possibilities for Google and Uber together are rather astounding. Google knows the challenges that Uber overcame and certainly sees the future of on-demand services and the logistical solutions that they present. In comparison to all the other companies in this space, Uber’s technology is an order of magnitude more advanced.In the end I do not think this was really Google choosing one Sedan service over another it is Google invested in one sedan service and one on-demand service and logistics company that just so happens to have started with, and is optimized in, Sedan services._____[1] Video and transcript: Uber CEO Travis Kalanick - Fortune Tech