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Create a Profit Playbook

Lesson 4 from: Session: Live a Richer Life

Ramit Sethi

Create a Profit Playbook

Lesson 4 from: Session: Live a Richer Life

Ramit Sethi

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Lesson Info

4. Create a Profit Playbook

Next Lesson: Key Takeaways

Lesson Info

Create a Profit Playbook

I don't play a lot of sports. Actually, I hate sports, but I believe I'm told that in football they have, like playbook. You know, if this happens, you do that. Whatever. Ironically, in business, we took a lot of the principles of sports and apply them here. When we create a course, we have a playbook and a playbook tells us who's our market, What are their hopes, fears and dreams. And we used the actual words that they used. We paste them into our document like they filled out a survey monkey. So they're like, Oh my God, like I create this business so I could be free. But now I have 20 clients who are dragging, pulling me in all directions pasted. Okay, so that's their hopes, fears and dreams We talk about why now. What is their pain point? What kind of products have they already bought? What kind of product you looking for? So, for example, if they're just looking to lose £10 maybe a simple e book of workouts and some healthy food would be great. But if they're looking for something ...

much different, like, for example, if they're looking to lose 100 plus pounds. They're gonna need an ongoing program. They're going to need words like accountability. And so that suggests a different type of product. A subscription product, perhaps. And then we can start to brainstorm Price. But we're not really even at that stage. What does this do? It's basically a 2 to 50. In our case, we do very extensive playbooks. Ours are often over 50 pages, but you don't need a 50 page document you need like a 1 to 2 page document. When you start. That reminds you What is this product? Who's the market? What do they want? Because you're gonna be in the weeds. Pretty soon you're gonna be creating your email list. You're going to sending emails, doing all this stuff and somebody earlier mention that they kind of get lost in the details. This helps you stop that. It's the equivalent of having an outline for your paper in college. If you get stuck, you go back and look at your Allen. Okay? Okay. Okay. Is what we're talking about. Back to work. Makes sense. You should have this before you ever start building your product before you ever start writing the first page of your E book recording video. Whatever. You have a profit playbook. Okay. All right. So let's move on. Now. We're gonna get into some of the tactics and lots of time for questions here, so I'm gonna go through this fairly quickly. At this point, you don't have a product yet, but you're building a website. It's very simple. You can build a These are some of the tools that we use basically a blawg with an email. Opt in an email. Opt in is one of those things. You go to a website and it says, Enter your name and email for blah, blah, blah. That's it. It's really simple. A lot of people spend tons of time. My first website was horribly ugly. You can look it up on the Internet archive. Look it up from 2000 for it is, it's just atrocious. I didn't even know how to set up Blawg archives, so they were like 200 posts on one page. But the content was pretty good on DSO. People came, they read, and eventually I put an email often and the email list grew to several 100,000 people. So it just takes time, but it takes writing the right material, which I'm gonna show you how to do. All right, so now we've got a website, and your website can be a simple as you put your idea up there. Hey, I'm gonna help, uh, women between the ages of 35 45 get their body back. You've had kids. I know how that is. I've been through it to Here's a picture of me. I struggled with eating this and that. We're gonna talk about how to do this. If you're interested in to your name and email here and we'll go on this journey together, I mean something as simple. Is that Okay? So why are we doing an email list? Does anyone here have an email list? Okay, a couple people. Good. So an email list is probably the single best asset you can create for yourself, and nobody can ever take it away When you have an email list. These are people who have volunteered. They raise their hand and said, I want you send me material. Is anyone here on my email list? And you read my stuff. Okay. Awesome. So when you get an email for me. Let's pass that around Someone who's on my emails. What do you feel when you see an email from me in your inbox? I'm taking a big risk right now. I hate this guy. What do you feel? Uh, curiosity. What did you write next? He's written some good stuff before. OK, good. What else? Who else? What do you feel when you see Ra meets 80? Some subject line in your inbox. I'm ready for a story. I'm like, What's the story today? Good Today Today's story that's going out to a few people on my list is the subject line is I'm so good with Asian moms and I am amazing. And, uh, I talk about why, and I talked about how to talk to parents and, like, you know, whenever people come to my house. So I have to coach them on the things they are allowed to say and are not allowed to say and that story, and so people come to look forward to it now. It doesn't mean you have to have these crazy stories. That's my like, That's my personality. That's what I like to talk about. But The point is, after you read a few of these emails, if you make your way in their in box, that's when that was treasured parts of someone's life, their inbox. How many of us subscribe to newsletters where we see it more just like, uh, right. But if you could become something they look forward to, then it's not about selling. It's about a relationship, and that's why I say own the relationship, not the first sale fact. I'm willing to forgo millions of dollars every year. For example, I forbid people with credit card debt from joining my flagship programs. I don't want to try to sell them on something that's not right for them. I'd rather own the relationship because who here has been on my list for over one year, two years, three years or more? At a certain point, you're gonna buy. And so it's all worth it right from a business perspective. But now they know this guy's not here to just try toe like scam me into something that I don't need. I'll only sell something that's right. So I want you to get an email list up. I want you to send emails to your list. My recommendation is once a week. If you can't do that at least three times a month. Okay. One of the biggest mistakes I ever made was not emailing my list when I first started for about six or seven months. And when I sent that first email, they were like, Who are you? I don't remember you. This is spam. And it wasn't good. Now what do you send? A lot of times, it could be a story. It could be a challenge you went through. You know, if you're writing about nutrition, it could be like, this is something that I struggled with. Or here's what I do to have a healthy breakfast every morning. That's interesting. We're bringing it into chunks. And that brings us to how to write irresistible material. Um, somebody share your business idea. We'll talk about how to break it into how to show them. Don't tell them and break it into chunks. Who's got it? Share your business idea right now. Yes, right over here. We got the wedding industry. Yes. So, helping people navigate the wedding Blawg world when they're planning their wedding. Perfect. So what is one piece of irresistible content that you could write to your subscribers. Um, we're to start okay? Or how to How to figure out what kind of wedding you wanna have in the first place. Okay. Now, I want you to go one step deeper and break it into chunks. Where to start is, like, vast get really narrow. What is it? Um, Whether you want to plan your wedding or you want to hire someone to planet for you. Good. Let's go. Even narrower. How to know if your florist is ripping you off? Super super niche. By the way, do you think that the wife ice or the fiancee I assume that your audience is mostly women? Most likely. Do you think that they would open that email and be interested in what you have to say? Yes. You would get 80% plus open, right? Absolutely. Do. So you break it into chunks. If you're doing a dating Ah, email, subscription and website. You wouldn't say Like how to find the love of your life. It's like, way too broad. We might say where to go on the first date. Icebreakers for someone You don't know how to handle yourself. If you get nervous, there's a famous piece of content online called the Kiss Test. How to know If you should kiss her? Look how narrow that ISS and that's showing not telling, right? We're getting really specific versus oh, like really broad. Like here's where to start. That is the death of your business. If you're because on Li, an expert would know the kiss test. Only an expert would know that when a guy goes on a date and it's like at the end of the night and you're like, Oh, I really like her. What should I do on Li? An expert would know that in his head he's like, I kiss her. What do we do? My God, that is a true son of expertise that they can get that narrow. Okay. And, of course, provide immediate results in one of our courses be launched. Earn one K. We showed people how to find started online. Excuse me? Start a freelance business. We put them through multiple emails and I didn't sell anything. We put him through like over 20 emails. You have to do 20. You could do four. It doesn't matter but we showed them how to find an idea how to earn more money, how to charge etcetera. Before we even opened up our course for them to buy, a lot of them had already earned 500 or 1000 bucks. So guess what they said when they realized there was a course where they could learn even more about this. It was a no brainer. They're, like, already learned how to do this for free. I wonder what is behind this premium product? And at that point, price was a mere triviality. You see how price is one of the last things that your customers consider. If you've done all the things we've talked about, it's actually amazing. Most people, they jump right to the product and then they're sitting there. Oh my God, am I charging too much? $50. But that guy's charging 10. My products, we don't price is a triviality because we've done all this work up front so we can charge often tend to 100 times what other people are charging and remember talked about the money mind sets. It's not bad to charge 100 times what other people are charging for the right market. It's actually the perfect thing. Any questions now? Yes. Um, grab. Like we got one over here. So, for instance, um, nutrition. How could I show immediate results? That's not really like people want to lose weight or, um, just feel better. Oh, I show immediate results. Okay, so they want to lose weight. You're not gonna help him lose £50 in a week. But what could you do? What happened? Like, walk through their day, they wake up. What do they do? Eat breakfast? Oh, they do well know. What were you gonna say? Hopefully you live in a world of what we hope is live in the world of what is Okay. What do they do? Sometimes they just have coffee. Uh huh. Or juice or completely skipped breakfast. Okay. And then what happens? Their blood sugar goes way out of whack. There. They might feel tired. Or what time do they start snacking? Probably about maybe. Or one. And then they go back on What junk? Perfect. So now we know what they're doing, and it's the enviable position you're in because I mean, they're doing everything wrong. So with just one subtle change. You could dramatically change their energy. What might that be? That you can suggest. Have some protein for breakfast. Make sure that you have time to make a breakfast. Even you have to prepare it the night before. Okay, so first of all, remember, a lot of people don't know what protein means. Okay, So we need to get We need to get down to their level, Okay? Like, I could talk all day about asset allocation and stuff like that, but nobody knows what that is. I need to make it relevant to them. But you're exactly right. So you're gonna basically tell them to eat breakfast? That's the simple thing. And guess what happens when they eat breakfast for five days. How are they gonna feel? Better? Good, great. And by you were hesitant, cause you're like, I don't really know. Guess what you could do. You could find five volunteers or friends. Look, I'm trying to start this thing. I'm going to share some nutritional advice. It will make you have better energy, etcetera. No charge. I'm not trying to make a cent. As long as you agree to fall through for just five days. Now you get the testing results, you start to say like, Oh, wow, I know this. By the way, if you were to tell me a guy who doesn't eat breakfast and then I snack on all these unhealthy things, you would tell me, Like, just make breakfast every day. What do you think would go through my head like? Yeah, kind of thing. Like, I don't know if it works. Why? Why would I push back and say I can't do that? I can't because you're not motivated. Interested? You don't feel like it's gonna change anything. I don't have time. Are you OK? That's the number one reason. So you want to make them a promise of something simple they can do? The simplest thing would be to say, Here's I want you to have breakfast. I don't want you to go crazy. I'm just gonna recommend that you tell him exactly what to eat. Super simple like maybe even making eggs is too complicated. Okay, it's just super simple. Do this for five days and report back on how you feel. That's super simple. Also, a lot of us don't have time, so I've carefully created the simplest breakfast that gives you all your nutritional ingredients, and all you have to do is create sticks less than 90 seconds for five days, right? That is what will get people results in advance. It's a very simple example of how to break it down. Other questions. We have some that are coming in from online right now. Let's do one here now. One thing I do want to mention for people who are watching out there that we do have a feature where you can vote for the questions that you want to see answered. All you have to do is click the Blue Arrow to boat up the questions that you want. So these questions here have been voted on, and I want to touch on these. A few people have suggested these, So this question comes from Richard Lowland. And they say, Can you talk about Kickstarter for launching your idea or product? A similar question from Drew. He wants to know if a platform like Kickstarter or Indiegogo could be a useful approach to test for new customers. No, I don't like it. I mean, it's great. Kickstarter and Indiegogo are amazing, and they've enabled millions of businesses, but we're not trying to create just one launch. We're trying to create a business, and a business means you own the assets yourself. Ah, lot of people like you know why they like Indiegogo and Kickstarter. Two reasons. One, they don't have to do much work. They go and write something and push paste. And then they pray that traffic is gonna find it right, and to its building on an existing platform. So lets them save a little bit of time. And they see all these other successes and they're like, I can do that. I just have to It's not about the platform you're using, OK, it doesn't matter if you use those WordPress things I recommended or whatever the point is, you want to build a business where you can own it just to give an example. Let's say you created something on Indiegogo or whatever, and it didn't it didn't sell out. It didn't work. So now do you know what happened? Was it that you didn't get enough traffic? Was it that your copy wasn't good? Was it that the product was you don't know? And the point is, you can't test it again. You've put it all into one thing, and you can't disentangle those. So stop looking for the fads and tactics. And we want to build something that is enduring to stand the test of time. That means you own it. And over time, you can control it. Good question. Other questions here in the room. Yeah. Great. Yeah. So in your experience, working with people, they come to you with an idea, and they say, you know, I'm ready to go. I want to do some sort of testing with it. You take them through the emergence strategy and the playbook. You know, my first reaction is Okay, How long until I actually get to do something? Like before? You know, how much research do we need to do before I actually get to do something? Good question. So a lot of people are very eager to jump to building a product and putting on a website because that feels like riel like now, Aiken, traffic and something. And in general, uh, I would rather see every hour you spend in research will save you 10 to 20 hours down the road. So for some, your first time. It should take a while for some of my students. Like if you're really lucky and you're really good, you might be able to launch an online business in 8 to 12 weeks, 2 to 3 months. Many of my students take many more months to do it. Some of them actually take a really long time. And as they start going through this process, they discover something very subtle like, Oh, this market actually won't pay for this reason. And they go back and start again with a different idea for some of them. It takes 6 to 9 months, even more. But check this out. Let's say you spend nine months and you're like, uh, like you're making progress, but you don't have a like a e book or something. And then one day you crack the code and you're like I got it. I know every word they say. I know every pain point. They I know them better than they know themselves at that point. It's so easy to create the product because you truly understand the product creation and pricing process for us is like 15% of our time. Okay, At that point we launch it, be charged a premium price, and we already know that it's going to sell. So all that work, you're never gonna remember all the work you did. Time is gonna go on anyway. But you're gonna know that you were successful. That's the difference. It feels good to throw something up, just like it feels good to send out a 1,000,000 resumes. But what really matters is doing the research to find out what company you love, etcetera. And then when you submit that one resume, you know you're gonna get the job. Okay? Other questions here in the room chat room. This one comes from Re Haas. And they say, Thank you for sharing all this advice. But my question is, I'm so bad at writing content. I can't even fill out a Twitter with valuable content. My doomed for creating a business. I am a photographer by trade. You might be doomed if you keep talking like that s so I first want to challenge is this person I want to challenge them on, saying I'm so bad at creating content. You're not bad. You just haven't had a lot of experience doing it. The right way. Look for someone who hasn't taken photos. Are they? Are they bad at photography? Maybe, but they haven't learned the rules of taking photos. So it's very It's very important for us to be mindful of our self talk. A lot of us say things like, I'm not good at selling, Okay, I'm not that kind of person that likes to work out. I could never give up Rice. I'm Asian, like these air. These are things we actually say to ourselves. And it seems like a joke. Like I used to be like, Oh, almost skinny Indian guy. Ha. And it would get, like, a little laugh, huh? But it actually prevented me from investing in my health for many years. So I want to be really careful of the way we describe ourselves. That's negative self talk in terms of learning how to write amazing material. I bet you if you ask this person, what have you done? In order to improve your skills, they're gonna be like nothing. I just suck. Yeah, you saw because you haven't tried anything. Have you bought a course on copyrighting or a book? I mean, there's great, but there's a great book by Bob Blind on writing Copy. It's amazing. Have you just talked to your market? It's hard to write about something when you don't actually know what you're market wants. So if you're sitting there saying like, I want to create a business helping people to start, uh, knitting. And you don't really know that much about Nikki. Were you trying to help people with nutrition? But you haven't actually spoken to people to find out what their barriers are. And of course, it's hard. You're sitting there with a blank page. But as you do this research, you're getting tons of ideas of what people's problems are. Remember their hopes, fears and dreams. They're like they'll say something like this. They'll say, You know, I really want to lose weight. It's really important to me and my wife even mentions it and I'm motivated like I'll do it. I have to gym memberships. But what always happens is I go to the gym. I try it for six months, and then we go on vacation or something, and I just yo yo right off. And I stopped doing. And so boom, irresistible content, how to stop the yo yoing of going to the gym. That's a great piece of content right there. So it starts with the research which enables you to know what to write about, what kind of product you create and how to price it. Other questions, the more here in the room. Oh, yeah? Well, Mike, over here. Perfect. So let's talk about distribution. Um, besides, how did you reach your target audience in the early stages? Besides, through your newsletter or your block? Okay, so, great question. What do you do? Once you have this website up, you have some irresistible content. The biggest and easiest way to get other people to know about it is to piggyback on other sites where there's more traffic. So what I like to do and this is exactly what I did. In fact, you can go look at the 2004 posted. I did. I would write a few great posts from my sight, and then I would go find other high traffic sites and I would build a relationship with them. We just email them Be cool, be nice. And I would say I think your readers would like something like this would you be interested in it? Guest posting is a very simple strategy. People comes in and out of fashion, but it actually works. It's worked for 10 years. It will work for a long time. If you are reading a website about whatever your hobby is and you see this great piece of content and at the end it says, you know Hey, Mike Jones writes, uh, how to do X. How did you needing how toe, Whatever. If you're interested, sign up for his newsletter. You're gonna sign up. And that's how you get newsletter subscribers really to do up to do your first launch. I recommend you don't need a huge amount of subscribers you need roughly, I like to say 500 to 1000 subscribers. In general, that sounds like a lot. But once you get that moving, once you get one or two, you can get 20. Once you get 20 and get 100. Once you get you know you can get 1,000,000 or 500,000 means if you launch a course, you're going to sell at least one or two. And has anyone here had the magical experience of selling something online, and you saw the first check come in. Has anyone felt that experience? Tell us about how that felt. Let's get them. I What was the product? What was the price? Um, the product was accustomed tapestry and the price was $75 on sale from 90. Very excited. Love it. The first time I sold on e book, I told you, like I have such low self esteem about it, that I didn't even set up a distribution. I was just gonna email to people when the papal money came in because I thought, like, literally lasted, 50 people would buy it. And, ah, the first person bought it. And I was like, Oh, my God, because I had stepped away from my computer and I came back and the sale had come in, and it was almost like one of those moments in a movie worth like, because I realized if I could step away for like, 10 minutes to go the bathroom or something, then when I went to sleep, it would still work. In other words, there are a lot of people that their computers, when I'm not and I could now scale what I knew up here to the rest of the world. You don't need a ton of sales up front. All you need is a couple to show you that you're on the right track. It's a marker that you're doing the right thing.

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