This episode is brought to you by Popup Maker

Boost Your Website’s Leads & Sales with Popup Maker

Get started for free or save 15% OFF Popup Maker Premium—the most trusted WordPress popup plugin to grow your email list and increase sales conversions.

Kurt Von Ahnen from MANANA NO MAS, demonstrates in this LMScast episode that even if you are certain of your knowledge, you must validate an online course. Since he thought his ideas would succeed, he acknowledges that as an entrepreneur, he used to detest validation. However, experience has shown him that ignoring validation results in a waste of time, money, and energy.

He highlights the need for creators to think like entrepreneurs and consider long-term viability, profitability, and demand in addition to their passion. One of his best lessons is about pricing: when he first offered his program for $1,500, it didn’t sell because people thought it was too inexpensive rather than because it wasn’t worth it. Significant price increases resulted in higher sales, demonstrating that assessing perceived worth and willingness to pay is part of validation.

Additionally, he emphasizes that various price points necessitate various sales procedures, ranging from straightforward checkout pages to protracted relationship-based sales cycles. Kurt promotes testing concepts on sites like YouTube or in-person meetings, asking viewers directly if they would sign up, and making sure that feedback is provided by actual customers rather than friends or relatives. In the end, he emphasizes that validation is continuous, flexible, and closely related to knowing who drives purchasing decisions, what the market really desires, and whether or not your product-market fit is genuine—not presumed.

Exclusive Download! Stop wasting time and money researching online course and membership site tech.

Get the Course Creator Starter Kit to help you (or your client) create, launch, and scale a high-value online learning website.

Also visit the creators of the LMScast podcast over at LifterLMS, the world’s leading most customizable learning management system software for WordPress. Create courses, coaching programs, online schools, and more with LifterLMS.

Browse more recent episodes of the LMScast podcast here or explore the entire back catalog since 2014.

And be sure to subscribe to get new podcast episodes delivered to your inbox every week.

Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place if you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badget. I’m the co-founder of lifter LMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. State of the end, I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show.

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of LMS Cast. I’m joined by a special guest. He’s back on the show. It’s Kurt Von Ahnen from Manana Nomas. Kurt also works with Lifter LMS. You’ve seen him on some of our live calls, many of them. Actually. Today we’re gonna get into how to validate an online course before you build it.

We’re gonna go a little deeper in this one than the usual advice, which is good advice to pre-sale and put up a landing page and all that. But we’re gonna go into more detail around validation to save you a lot of time, energy, and money. But first, welcome back on the show, Kurt. 

Kurt Von Ahnen: Thanks Chris. It’s always awesome to have a chat.

Chris Badgett: I love validation. Partially because as an entrepreneur, which. You are, and many of the listeners out there are. Opportunity all around you. So I know when I’m hanging out with my entrepreneur friends and we go to a restaurant as an example, you’ll see you’ll start constructing in your mind like, oh, this many plates, the food costs this much.

And you start you just start thinking like a entrepreneur, like a business person. Oh. Or you’re at a conference and you’re like, oh, how much money do they make from this conference? There’s 2000 people here. The tickets were this much. Anyways, but part of that entrepreneur brain is that you have your radar up and you’re just scanning the environment.

Entrepreneurs are, they’re often seen as risky, but they’re actually risk averse, so they’re like looking for risks and opportunity, but part of that scanning brain that you have. Is for finding and validating a good course idea or online business or coaching program, or multi instructor school or whatever it is that you’re building.

So let’s dig into validation. I feel like the radar comes in handy. I can’t turn it off. That’s how you know, if you’re an entrepreneur, if you have that kind of brain and no matter what you do, you just can’t turn it off. It’s always there. You’re an entrepreneur that’s called the entrepreneur personality type.

But validation is, more like harnessing that awareness and that scanning to a really specific target. Should I focus on this project? How do I know it will work? How do I reduce wasted time, energy, and money? So before even you get to the sales page part. Like pre-selling, which lifter, LMS is an example, has all the tools you need to set that up.

Technically, that’s the, in many ways, the easy part. Once you learn the mechanics of that and you’re, you get good at writing a sales page. But one of my biggest tips that I think people don’t talk about a lot is if you’re a subject matter expert in a space following other subject matter experts in the space.

Just basically keeping tabs on your market. So like I know what’s going on at SaaS LMS companies, I’m watching their marketing, I’m on their email list, I’m watching them launch products, and I’m not looking for something to copy. What I’m actually looking for is demand. Oh, when do people get really excited about something?

Not the company, but the customers. And when you’re in a topic. One of my favorite things to do is to look at Amazon. So if I have a course idea as an example, and let’s say I am, I’m really into I’m just using a real example of beekeeping and I have done beekeeping courses before. In that case, I actually did it with one of the top beekeepers in Montana, so I had him be the expert.

But if you know anything about beekeeping when you go to amazon.com. Look at books or other products, you’ll see the number of reviews. And beekeeping is actually like this huge thing that is all over the world. And so there’s like a river of demand there. With you with power sports there, there’s like certain magazines people read.

There’s certain forums they go on, there’s certain podcasts they listen to. So the first layer of validation is, and this comes in the last episode, we talked about the difference between grandiosity and shame. Sometimes in the grandiose mindset, you don’t need anybody. You’re just like, I got it.

I’m gonna crush this. I’ve, got my blinders on. Keeping your finger on the pulse of not just your, not really your competitors. It’s more like the people who have problems that you wanna serve and seeing what they’re up to, seeing what people are trying to sell to them, seeing what their complaints are on social media and reviews, YouTube comments everywhere.

And these aren’t platforms that you own, so it’s free. It just takes time to keep your finger on the pulse. What do you think about keeping your finger on the pulse in your niche? 

Kurt Von Ahnen: I’m sitting here grinning to myself because this is one thing where you and I have a fairly large disconnect, Chris.

Chris Badgett: Okay. 

Kurt Von Ahnen: From an entrepreneur standpoint. I hated validation. You’re like, I love validation. I’m like, I hated validation. I was like, I know what I’m doing. I know it’s the best I’m gonna, I’m gonna forge forward. I’m gonna make this thing happen. And as an agency, I’ve had a lot of clients that have been that way where I already know I’m an expert.

I know what I’m gonna do. This is gonna be awesome. I’m gonna make a million dollars. And it’s no, we gotta slow this down. ’cause now I’m an agency. And now I’m like, we gotta slow this down. You gotta validate this thing. You gotta figure out what is the market, what is, what’s it gonna take to bring it to market?

And then what’s your margin gonna be? And you gotta think it through. For instance, and just like you said, going to restaurants and stuff, I love to cook. Like anyone that knows me on social knows I love to cook. And I always think, wouldn’t it be so cool to have a food truck? Wouldn’t it be cool to have a food truck and then.

I go to Sandhill Brewery and at Sandhills Brewing, someone’s, they do a kitchen takeover and they were selling these like they were awesome, Sam. It was like 15 bucks. Awesome. Like it was a great plate for 15 bucks. But I said to my son, I said, there’s 25 people here, and if all 25 people bought a plate for 15 bucks and there’s four people making the plates, how much did each person make?

And he’s Ooh, that’s not so good. I’m like, yeah, that’s not so good. You gotta figure out what does it actually look like? Because whether you think you’re running your course as a business, or you’re running your course as a hobby at the end of the world, it’s gotta pay for itself somehow some way.

So you gotta validate it, whether you like it or not. You gotta validate it. 

Chris Badgett: And here’s the funny part I’ve had, this is a direct thing that I’ve done, is. At Lifter LMS we have validated that there is a lot of demand for agencies that build websites that to be familiar with LMS and e-commerce and all the, needs of the e-learning website.

It’s a niche that you could build an entire agency on. So I like scream from the mountaintops hello WordPress professionals and website building pros. Of which I come from this, I was one of these and I did it all. I did restaurants, real estate agents, psychics coaches, course crew. I’ve done all of it.

So first you just gotta do what you gotta do to survive as an agency. But we’ve probably been asked the question 2000 times like, Hey, this software looks great. Do you know anybody who can help? Build a site for me. I, have validated there is a river of demand here. 

Kurt Von Ahnen: Yeah. 

Chris Badgett: And but as an entrepreneur, like as an agency you can be scrappy and just be like, I need to take whatever comes in the door, which I totally respect that and understand that.

But there are LMS specific agencies. Magna Nomas is one. And I’m sure you take some projects sometimes maybe that are outside the scope or on the edge a little bit or whatever, maybe not. But there’s validated demand for, in the same way that there’s validated demand. If we’re talking about WordPress, WooCommerce is really complicated.

You can do a whole agency where all you do is WooCommerce work. Yeah. WooCommerce, the product has validated that for you. And not everybody who does, who buys software, wants to set it up, learn how to do everything, and customize it and all that. So there’s just that validation there. In terms of validating before you create the course.

This is why I love YouTubers. If you’re on a, it is so much easier to make one YouTube video than be like, I’m gonna make a course. So even if you’re a subject matter expert and you’re like, I wanna do this course business, this is my topic. I would, if I could wave a magic wand, you’re gonna need to learn how to make video.

In most cases when you do online education, you might as well get some practice and make some videos. 

Kurt Von Ahnen: Yeah, 

Chris Badgett: and the crazy thing about YouTube, and at this point I’ve been on YouTube like 18 years or something like that, and Lifter has, 2000 videos or something on the channel. I am always shocked.

I never know in advance which videos will take off organically. That’s the market that is validation. Like it you, make assumptions, which we talked about in the last episode, but then you find this little spot of validation. 

Kurt Von Ahnen: Boom. 

Chris Badgett: Right? 

Kurt Von Ahnen: So the perfect use case for that is Emily Middleton, one of our team members.

Chris Badgett: Yeah, 

Kurt Von Ahnen: so Emily will, people will ask her questions and then enough people ask enough questions and she goes, you know what? I should probably just make a YouTube video about this. Then she makes a YouTube video about it, like how to, make a custom course catalog with Elementor, right? And it’s that’s one of the one videos that just keeps taking off and keeps taking off and keeps taking off.

And she’s made hundreds of others. But that’s the one that just keeps going, and to me, it’s so amazing that, she’s been able to create like a whole niche outta that. If you look at how she actually runs her agency and you did a podcast with her recently, it’s like she jumps on Zoom and runs people through things and answers those questions like in real time.

And that’s that is a perfect example of this is what validation looks like. You had an idea, you sampled the idea, the sample was positive, so now you optimize the idea. 

Chris Badgett: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, that’s I call it active listening. If you’re listening, a lot of what you’re doing is like research, which requires listening.

Like you have to listen to your market. If you’re just trying to steamroll them with all your assumptions, you’re gonna have a lot less success than if you listen and spend time like exploring your space and reading all those comments and reviews. It’s, so powerful. And also, the other thing is that this is where pivots come from is like you mentioned in the last episode about you were, you realized you were selling to the wrong person.

And so like your validation test with the wrong person failed. But then once you pivoted to the boss of the business or whatever. And then that started to click and validate. And that doesn’t mean that course was a failure or anything like that. It just means you had to validate an assumption about who it was for, which sounds like we all think we know who it’s for or they just want our information.

But there’s a lot of detail in that. Like one way with that specific example that you have to, one of the things you have to validate is who’s gonna make the buying decision? Sometimes you’re gonna do marketing to a, to let’s say to kids, but the parent is actually gonna make the buying decis decision.

Or you’re going to market to the parents, but the kid’s gonna make the buying decision. Or it is a spousal arrangement. And you realize for your your, let’s call it like save your marriage course. You need to get buy-in from both parties for this thing to move forward. And maybe one, the husband is on board, but it’s not really landing with the wives or whatever.

All that has to be validated and tested. 

Kurt Von Ahnen: Yeah, it’s it’s interesting to me how many people. Because we’re talking about validating and, making sure like, checking the boxes. How many people forge forward without those basic tenants in place? 

Chris Badgett: Yeah. 

Kurt Von Ahnen: So like you mentioned YouTube. What do you think are like viable ways to validate an idea?

Because I’m sure I’m thinking about like the listeners and the viewers of this podcast right now, right? So they’re thinking I don’t have a YouTube following. Or I don’t have, I’m not part of a Facebook group, right? So it’s so, then you have to think of things out of the box and go, so how would you validate your idea before you invest in creating a whole course and a website and a, platform to offer that to people?

How would you validate it? 

Chris Badgett: This actually reminds me of the, interview we did with Marcus Carter recently. Some of that is or has assumptions to be challenged. If you don’t have a following, that doesn’t mean you still can’t validate on social media as an example. So when Marcus started and he told this story, he started on TikTok and he, grew really quickly to hundreds of thousands of views and follows or whatever.

But then he realized that the TikTok audience wa was not the best to lead into the sale, but he got some validation SIG signal, so he pivoted to Instagram. And let me back up and say, one of the great things about TikTok is it gives everybody a fair shot. It doesn’t matter if you’re a popular influencer with tons of followers or you’re, this is your first TikTok video.

TikTok will give. They, will surface the content. They will test the content on people and then surface it and spread it if it’s if the market likes it. So TikTok is a really interesting place to look. That’s newer in our space. But ultimately what Marcus realized is he got strong validation from TikTok.

He then got strong validation from Instagram, but ultimately he knew that he had to get to YouTube in order to connect his social media marketing efforts to actual sales. But he found his way there through confirmations of validation while testing different platforms as social media platforms as a vehicle for lead generation for him.

Now he puts almost all of his efforts into YouTube and everything’s working great. So there’s a lot of testing there. I think you’re muted, Kurt.

Kurt Von Ahnen: That was ’cause of my dog. It’s so interesting that you mentioned the TikTok thing. I recently just got permission from TikTok to go live and I didn’t have it before, and I think anyone that watches knows, like I’m on five podcasts a week. I’m all over, like I’m all over YouTube, I’m all over the place.

But I wasn’t really big on TikTok. And then I got this chance to go live on TikTok, and it was on a weird Sunday morning and it just came up and I said, okay, let’s try it. And my first try going live on TikTok, I did 28 minutes. I had over 250 people show up and interact on the live. 

Chris Badgett: Yeah. 

Kurt Von Ahnen: And I was like, that has never happened On a live podcast through Streamy Yard, through Facebook, through YouTube, through Instagram, through anything like TikTok is a huge channel to just sample a broad audience.

And see do people even like the crud that’s coming outta my face? And then it turned out that some people did. So now, that put you in this different position where you go, okay, so what do I do with this new data set? Do I create in this channel or do I create in a different channel?

Or do I try to redirect this channel to something else that I’m currently working on? And that’s the challenge for every creator as they come into the space. 

Chris Badgett: Absolutely. Another area that we need to validate, and this is critically important, is price. And this is every market has like a willingness to pay, an ability to pay a perception of value of what you’re offering.

I was at a software entrepreneur conference and there was one of the top software pricing experts on the wall and hi, the way he started his talk on the stage. His name is Patrick Campbell. He walked out and he held a finger up in the air and he said, let me guess. When all of you picked the prices for your software, you just held a finger up in the air and just guessed.

And the the whole audience was like, felt like busted at the moment. And he went into a whole science of pricing and, all that. But price testing and validation is super important. First you have to be like, reasonable are we selling to. CEO executives, are we selling to young parents? Are we selling to a new entrepreneur?

Are we selling mid mar like when we, pricing is not something you should just completely guess on, but you need to test it. And one of the ways to do that’s very common in the course creation and membership site space. A strong validation is when you do your first launch. Remember, we’re just trying to go from zero to one or zero to some is okay.

Based on all my research, competitor analysis, the willingness to pay the perceived value of my product, I really think I can get $500 for this thing. I’m gonna give my founding people like 50 or even 80% off on my first launch. So you’re still validating. You’re trying to, you’re trying to get a large enough sample size in that you can really test your course and your product.

But people have to break out their wallet. This is why one thing that gets people stuck is they will try to validate with friends and family that aren’t even in the niche. And mom, brother, sister, friend says. Oh, honey this is, great. I love this. You’re so good on camera, right? This is gonna be awesome, but they’re not in your target market.

They didn’t pay anything. They love you and are trying to support you. It can’t be helpful to get a second set of eyes on your stuff. But what you really need is your markets set of eyes and your market’s wallet and credit card information. There’s arguments where you can try to just make ’em pay $1.

Will they pull out their credit card at all? That’s a validation test of in and of itself, but I’m more of a fan of do the founding early adopter cohort through your product like we did in lifter LMS in 2013. It also came with special privileges. It also came with more intimate access. It came with the ability to shape the future of the product since it’s so new.

We’re not just gonna invent out of our mind exactly what we know a hundred percent that the market needs. We want to hear from you and hear where else are your pains? Or how can we help you more and really co-create a product. I’m a big fan of that. Of Lifter has been co-created. We very much listen to our market.

Kurt Von Ahnen: You, you are hitting on so many things. It’s, you’re almost, I’m almost having PTSD thinking about how I grew the Powersport Academy. If you remember Chris. You helped me with some copy on the pages and, I wasn’t really hitting the right people and, then when I started to hit the right people, they still weren’t buying.

And I was originally offering my training in a very specific niche that was like 1500 bucks. 1200 bucks, 1500 bucks. That was like what I thought I would sell it for. I thought if I got 200 people to take this at 1500 bucks. That’s gonna gimme a year’s worth of money. That’s what I thought.

That’s, so that’s the finger in the air. I also call that SaaS math. We do that in software companies. It is like the old. Christmas thing. Oh if I could just get a million people to gimme $1, I’d be a millionaire. Yeah. But that’s it’s optimistic thinking. 

No, it didn’t work.

And so then I did a validation process where I put seven dealerships that, that I knew where, I had a personal relationship with the people running those dealerships. I said, I’m gonna put you into this training and I want you to take this training. And then, and the thing is you have to give me the feedback.

What’s missing, what’s good, what’s great, what’s horrible, what sucks. Don’t worry about my personal feelings, just gimme what your feedback is. And what was weird about this particular product was the feedback was this training’s awesome. It’s the best training we’ve ever had. We’re making more money than we’ve ever made and that, that’s awesome feedback.

But the feedback I got after that, Chris was the one that changed the entire way that I ran my project. And that was, my boss would never have bought this. And I said what do you mean? And all seven of the dealerships said, my boss would never have bought this. And I said, why? What do you mean? And they said you’re offering all this really cool training and all this great advancement.

We’ve gotten really great results from it. But for 1500 bucks, they’re just expecting it to be junk. And I thought coming in from, a, corporate training perspective to a course creator perspective, I thought the 1500 bucks was like a, this giant reach, because I was used to course creator selling things for $49, right?

So I thought, oh, I’m gonna go from $49 or 1500 bucks. Nobody, I’m gonna struggle to sell it. For that. I had to raise the price to $12,000 before people started to see the value in it and purchase it. Now we currently offer that training at 4,640 $6,000 a year per dealership. And so people that hear this podcast or that know me from other channels, they’re gonna go, oh my gosh, he’s getting 45 grand a client, blah, blah.

Like it sounds huge. Oh my God, he is got this giant training project. And it’s no, the price has to match the value of what you’re offering because if the price doesn’t match the value, the purchaser. Is gonna assume it’s not gonna meet the standard. So, you really like when you talk about validation isn’t just, is it worth the $49?

Is it worth the 1 49, the 1 79, the 1 99? Sometimes it’s, is it worth the 1500 bucks? Is it worth the $12,000? Is it worth the $40,000 like you really have to sell based on value? And you really don’t know what the value is until you validate it and you get the feedback from other people. 

Chris Badgett: Yeah, and this is a problem we have at Lifter LMS as an example.

’cause we wanna make the software a approachable from a price perspective and we even have a free, the free core. But when it comes to a lot of people who would in businesses that would really benefit from Lifter, they see it as so cheap. Compared to the expensive enterprise LMS they’re using, which has per instructor, per course, per student pricing and all these fees that it seems like impossible.

And I’m not saying everybody out there raise your prices a hundred x I’m just saying you have to find your sweet spot in the, pricing game and, you have, the only way to really find it is to test it. Not just copy competitors. You can look at that for a data point. And then there’s this whole thing where you have to build your product around the price in a way.

I think of Ziv Aviv, who’s been on this podcast who teaches people how to tie animal balloons and built a million dollar business around that kid, entertainers, clowns that sign up for his program because they’re, they wanna. Do better animal balloons and all the stuff they do, which is a really interesting niche, Ziv has to play a volume game.

’cause these folks are not gonna spend thousands of dollars for this. So he has to do a lower price because that’s what that market is willing to pay and he needs to go after more people. But if you go up market like you’re doing and you’re selling to businesses that bring in team members and stuff like that that.

Often requires like a more high touch experience, less self-study, more live delivery feedback on assignments or whatever. 

Kurt Von Ahnen: Well, 

Chris Badgett: so pricing and product is a dance and whatever your first guess is, I can almost guarantee you it’s suboptimal.

Speaker 3: This episode of LMS Cas is brought to you by Popup Maker, the most powerful, trusted popup solution for WordPress. Whether you’re selling online courses or memberships, popup maker helps you grow your email list, boost sales conversions, and engage your visitors with highly customizable popups. Imagine creating custom opt-ins, announcements and promotions that actually convert.

I personally use pop-up maker on my lifter LMS websites for lead magnet opt-ins, card abandonment, upsells, downsells, and guiding users to helpful content. Popup Maker is an essential tool for growing my email list and making more money online through my website. Ready to take your website to the next level?

Head on over to wp popup maker.com/lmscast and save 15% on your order. Discount automatically applies when you visit through that link. Papa Maker also has an awesome free version, so you can just use that as well. Go to wp popup maker.com/lmscast and save 15% off your order or get started with the free version.

Now. Get more leads and sales on your website with popup Maker today. Now back to the episode. 

Kurt Von Ahnen: Yeah. People don’t like to talk about it. Because I, ’cause I notice a lot of the entrepreneur meetups I go to, people don’t talk about the sales pipeline very much, but the pipeline is very much in tune with what the value is that you’re offering.

And so if my course is $49, that sales pipeline is 15 minutes. If my course is $1,500, that sales pipeline might be 45 days. If my course is $45,000, that sales pipeline is. Nine to 12 months. And so I’ve got to understand that, my potential clients might see the Powersport Academy. They might see it now January, 2026, but they might not sign up until March of 27.

Chris Badgett: Yeah that’s, a very real thing. And just a pro tip on what Kurt’s talking about with pipeline and how it changes based on price point. The way you convert the sales also needs validation. So as a simple rule of thumb a low priced offer can convert off. I call these conversion tools. You can convert off of a landing page, a sales page.

That’s it. So this is from $1 to $500, even a thousand sometimes. And these aren’t hard and fast, there’s exceptions. But then when you start getting into the mid ticket range, which is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 grand, you’re gonna, they’re gonna want to talk to you. A lot of people don’t pull out the credit card for multi-thousand dollar purchases without talking to you and.

If you’re on the lower end of that’s where you see like a webinar sales funnel. So you want to fill your pipeline with prospects that come to that webinar, which allows you, because it’s a group format, it’s not eating your lunch for time. ’cause you’re doing a bunch of one off and then you get into high ticket, like 5,000, 10,000, 20,000 on up.

You need to have some one-on-one calls. Nobody is going to just pull out, go to a landing page. And process that information. It is possible. By the way, I just wanna note that in Stripe, ’cause I’ve looked into this like lifter, LMS is a stripe integration. The most that you’re, that will go through now, this is assuming you have a huge limit on your credit card, is $99,999 and 99 cents.

But good luck doing that from a sales page. And by the way, if you’re up there, you’re probably gonna be looking at things like. Bank transfers and bank checks and different. So all of these are assumptions. 

Kurt Von Ahnen: I I was gonna say that the manual payment gateway and lifter has been a godsend. 

Chris Badgett: Yeah.

Kurt Von Ahnen: Because I don’t wanna pay 2.9% plus 30 cents on $45,000. 

Chris Badgett: So how do you do it? Do you do a check or A transfer or, 

Kurt Von Ahnen: typically it’s an A CH transfer. 

Chris Badgett: Aach H. 

Kurt Von Ahnen: Yeah. Yeah. And it usually comes from a line of credit from the Wells Fargo account, 

Chris Badgett: right? Yeah. And all these, 

Kurt Von Ahnen: that’s business to business, right? Like when you get into the B2B sales, things are completely different than B2C.

Chris Badgett: Yeah. That’s also where you need to validate the, like the information you’re getting. If you’re selling mid-market and up where Kurt’s talking about, but you’re studying what scrappy course creators and coaches are doing, that’s not, and what they’re recommending, that strategy may work better for the individual buyer or the very small business buyer versus like a corporation.

So you might spend way too much time building out, sales page marketing funnel for something that needs a completely different conversion tool. The other thing I just wanna note on validation is growing an audience before selling a product is a great way to validate. The whole idea of getting everything done and you have zero people to sell to is very, it is a very difficult situation to be in.

This is why I recommend starting a YouTube channel, and you can also play to your strengths. So if you’re a writer, start a blog or a newsletter. If you’re a video creator, start a YouTube. If you like to talk, start a podcast and have ways on those sites to have email capture and start building that list way before you need it.

If I could wave a magic wand. Let’s say you’re the type of person who is looking to exit your day job. I would spend two years just giving away value for free while building a, an email list, a social following, and all those things before I even thought about like the exact specifics of the product and pre-selling and all that.

So audience building, when somebody gives you their email address, it’s a very important step in validation. 

Kurt Von Ahnen: Can I, is it okay? We’ve got a lot of time. I wanna I wanna take you back to something you did to me. I wanna say three years ago. Okay. You told me about Ziv and the balloon animals thing and I lost my mind.

Chris Badgett: Everybody loves that story. I like to tell it because it is, it makes you think if that guy can do it, what’s wrong with me? And I don’t mean that in a bad way. Ziv is a wonderful guy. Yeah. I love talking to him. He’s been on here. But when people hear that. I’m not trying to hurt their feelings, but they feel a little dejected just from how we compare ourselves to others.

Right? 

Kurt Von Ahnen: So I lost my mind. So let’s go back to, I lost my mind. I thought to myself, I’m smart, I’m intelligent. I’ve got the best training product. I’m, I can’t sell nothing. And this guy’s making bank off of balloon animals. Are you freaking kidding me? 

Chris Badgett: Right? 

Kurt Von Ahnen: And then you said, this is when, as a private conversation with you and I can’t remember if it was Zoom or a phone call, but you said Kurt, it’s all product market fit.

It’s he’s answering what people really want. Maybe what and it made me think maybe I’m in the wrong market. And you said what do you really love to do? And it was right when I was doing the Great Cycle Challenge where we, every September I ride to raise money for kids’ cancer.

I’m a bicyclist and every year. They have this Facebook page, and every year, 14 or 15,000 people go into this Facebook page and ask the dumbest questions about bicycling. But because I’m a bicycling person, I answer a ton of them, right? What kind of pedals? What kind of saddle? What kind of shorts? What kind of top, what kind of water bottle?

What kind of protein to take before you go on a ride? How do you get, how do you ride longer? How do you ride faster? How do you ride? Like all these things, answer all these questions. And you told me on that phone call, you said you should just ask that Facebook group if they would want to take a course on how to be a better bicyclist.

And I said, that is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. And then I went into the group and I said, Hey. My name’s Kurt. I answer a lot of questions on this page, and I just want to know if I gave you free access to a course, how many people on this list right now would want to take a course on bicycling from the basics?

And do you remember what that was three years ago? 

Chris Badgett: I don’t. 

Kurt Von Ahnen: Within two days, 600 people responded to that post and said, I’m in. Yeah, I’m in. And I’m like, okay. So for the Great Cycle Challenge, we’re all raising money for kids’ cancer. I guess I would give them free access. I could give ’em a voucher or a hundred percent off coupon and they could take it for free.

But then I would have an evergreen course that I could sell to every other bicyclist in the country for $29 or $49 or whatever. The product market fit would be there because I would already have 600 active users in my bicycle training course. 

Chris Badgett: Yeah. This is the power of the free course lead magnet. Like it’s, that’s another thing to do to validate is don’t make the main premium product, do a free mini course that adds value and that’s gonna help you build your list.

There’s a lot less friction ’cause there’s no money involved. You get the feedback loop open and you start talking to people, which takes me to where I want to land it. This is the craziest part of validation. The crazy irony of it all is that what you think your superpower is, your market likely sees something completely different, and so I may wanna.

Make a course about you and I, Kurt, are both into leadership and stuff like that. I like leadership and management. So if I decide to like, make a course for f first time managers and give them some, a basic toolkit to like how to manage an organization and lead teams and things like that, I would enjoy that.

I would love that. But I know what would happen. If I go around and talk to people and like basically the question is based on everything you know about me what’s my superpower? Another way people say it is or is just to ask yourself, what do people keep asking you for advice on? Because the weird thing is that the thing we’re often the best at in our superpower for us as a subject matter expert or whatever that angle is, I.

What were our greatest strengths or come on autopilot to us that we don’t recognize the value and how far we’ve come, or maybe so much time has passed that we forgot about everything that went into developing that skill or that expertise. So that’s something else that has to be validated.

If you’re somebody who’s interested in a lot of different topics. That’s an area where validation is really key, because like Kurt is like this, he’s really into bikes. He’s really into mechanics. He’s really into leadership. He’s written books. And thank you for the comment there, but the you don’t know you, you really don’t know.

You’re making a giant assumption and. This is why and oftentimes people won’t tell you like you have to ask or really dig. This is like the effort and the work of validation is, you know what’s, I’ll just do it right here with you, Kurt. Like when I look at Kurt he’s great at so many things and I’m not picking one or saying, oh, you should do a course about this.

But he’s really great at managing a room of people. Which is a unique skill. You probably feel like it’s just natural. It comes to you. Last night you organized a meetup in your local town. You or you hold space for group meetings in the lifter LMS audience. You’re just a I’ve watched you operate a conference and like at an event or a party or whatever, you know how to work a room and just hold space.

You’re obviously really good at the tech stuff. You have your whole power sports stuff and motorcycles and bicycles, stuff like you have so much, but the more people you survey that know you in this life and previous lives, or people that have been with you for a long time and like have seen your trajectory.

You’d be shocked to find out we’re so close to our top strengths, that they’re often invisible to us, and that’s like a tragedy of it all. And it doesn’t necessarily mean you should make a completely different course about x. It just means maybe your angle or your approach to the topic, you need to integrate more of the superpower into that.

And it’s just interesting. 

Kurt Von Ahnen: Yeah. Yeah. There’s a book called Strength Finders that a lot of corporations will send to their directors and developers. And and that’s the whole idea of focus on your strengths and not try to fix yourself through fixing your weaknesses. And that, that’s like this topic of validation, right?

So what are the strong points? What do you really knock it outta the park with? How can you put yourself forward in the best positive light forward and newsflash. If you identify that there’s something that you lack that’s not an obstacle, that’s not a dead end, that’s an opportunity for you to go, okay, who can I bring in to bring up this thing I’m lacking.

So if you lack on the tech side, we have the experts page. If you’re lacking on a concept side, bring in a coach. If you’re lacking on sales, bring in someone that can help you with the marketing. It’s there’s all kinds of ways to find success in your project. 

Chris Badgett: Yeah. And I just, I wanna share one more thing that I noticed this morning, which makes me smile.

I was on Twitter and this is what somebody who’s operating in a space has really done a lot of validation and really figured it out. This guy’s name is Danko, spelled KOE, and he I was listening to his podcast, this is five years ago or something. He’s creator economy, solo person, solopreneur business creating he is big on digital writing and stuff like that.

And I was listening to his podcast and every time I’d ever talk to anybody I’d be like, Hey, have you guys ever heard of Danko? And everybody said, no. And then I’m listening to one of his like long hour and a half things and on the podcast, and he was like. He’s I really understand my market. If you’re here listening to me, you’re probably an INFJ, which is the Myers-Briggs personality type.

There’s 16 of them. I am an INFJ. I’m like, I got it. That’s why none of my people are, have heard of this guy. And INFJ by the way, is one of the, in the Myers-Briggs framework has a very small percentage compared to the other types. And to be a male, INFJ is also more rare just in terms of the mix.

So he was an INFJ, and he realized that his market was people like him that were this like strange personality type. So sometimes when you go to. Your market the biggest mistake you could make is try to sell to everybody. But then you find like these niches of who are the people that listen to me and vibe with me?

Your vibe attracts your tribe thing, and it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to sell to people exactly like you, but you will over time realize and validate like the particular type of person. That is gonna be a good fit for you and your training. So that’s just, it’s just more clarification on the who, that kind of work is never done, like still as a mature business.

I’m still obsessed with figuring out with who, who are these education entrepreneurs? Who are these forward folk facing WordPress, LMS agencies that move with complex technology who are keep leveling up ’cause the internet and tools are changing so fast. Who are these people? I’m constantly asking that and challenging my own assumptions of who our customer is.

Sweet. That’s a wrap. Go validate. Don’t give up. And build an audience first if you can. And just know that the work of validation actually never ends, but it’s the most important in the beginning. And you have to get past the imposter syndrome and the, and everything else to make sure that you’re open to challenging your assumptions, and that’s just part of the process. It’s not a problem. It’s just part of the process. 

Kurt Von Ahnen: It’s fluid. 

Chris Badgett: It’s totally fluid. That’s it for this episode of LMScast, and we will catch you on the next one.

Speaker 2: And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMS Cast. Did you enjoy that episode? Tell your friends and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode. And I’ve got a gift for you [email protected] slash gift. Go to lifter lms.com/gift. Keep learning. Keep taking action, and I’ll see you. In the next episode.

Exclusive Download! Stop wasting time and money researching online course and membership site tech.

The post How To Validate An Online Course To Maximize Your Success appeared first on LMScast.