Ryan McLean : Slightly Unconventional

Today I was working on the suburb research course sales video. I decided to create a parody video as a way to connect with my audience. Here is why.

Hey guys! Ryan here from Instructions Not Included. Basically this is my audio journal where I document my process trying to create a successful online business.

I talked in the last episode about my plans to market my suburb research course which I have now completed. I am very happy to say that the course has been completed. All the training videos are done. They are all uploaded. They are all on the page, everything is a go. All I am working on at the moment is the sales video and that is something that I have trouble with.

I am not a copywriter. A lot of the way to write copy goes against the grain of what I do which is being very upfront and honest and not trying to trick people like exposing bad tactics that the industry does.

So I find it hard to write sales videos and I have an idea from my wife for this sales video was actually to create 2: create one sales video that is like super sleazy, kind of like a parody sort of thing; and then create a second sales video which is the real one which is just me being honest with the audience and saying, “Here is my course. Here is why I created it.”

So that is exactly what I did. I have created 2 videos. One is short. It is less than 2 minutes, just kind of a parody thing. You are going to be super wealthy if you buy this course. I used heaps of stock video as well so it is quite stupid. I talked about being rich and then the printing press appears. I talked about flying first class and you got like the typical plane flying sort of scene, all these sort of dumb stuff. And so I kind of made it like a parody.

I guess my goal is I am going to in some way incorporate that into my sales and marketing. And so I will say there is a salesy video here. I will probably just incorporate it into my emails that I send out. So sales video, working on it today. I was hoping to get it done by today and to get the sales page up. But like I finished the sales videos which is good. they are just processing now. And so tomorrow I will be working on the sales page and hopefully I can send out an email tomorrow afternoon.

The first email in the marketing – the launch of this course and so hopefully I could send that out tomorrow because that allows me to send at least 2 emails this week: one next week or maybe one on the weekend as well. So that is kind of what I am working towards. I am definitely running low on money. I have a couple of weeks of revenue left at the moment.

Definitely do not want to have to approach Ben and ask him, “Hey bro! Like do you mind if I get paid early because I am about to run out of money.” I do have personal savings that I can draw from so I am not going to actually run out of money. But it is getting down to the well.

So I am excited to get this sales video done, to get this course launched and then market this course and create some podcast episodes marketing this course as well. I really need to drive some more sales. I have had a few On Property listings signup recently which had been good.

There have been monthly registrations which is great because monthly because it is the most per month in terms of cost. But then it is not great because I do not get a bunch of revenue upfront. If someone pays for a year upfront, I get almost $500.

If someone pays for 2 years upfront then I get about $750 or $720 or $740 or something like that. And so it is great when people sign up upfront to get that chunk of cash. But monthly is kind of the best long term because it is the largest source of revenue. I guess you would say because people are paying more per month and they are not getting a discount.

So ideally I would love to have 200 members that are all paying $50 per month which would give me 200 times $10 is $2,000 times by 5 that is $10,000 a month. Is that right?! 200 times $50 is $10,000 a month. That is insane! So I guess that is my goal. That is crazy. But I am not getting all monthly people. I am getting annual people. I also have people who are on discounts from back in the day. So I am not aiming for $10,000. But yeah.

So that is what I am working on at the moment. I am also going to sell my old computer so hopefully I am going to get some money on that, $500 to $700 or something for that which will keep me in the black. So I am still working on getting all my old data off that and will need to restore that computer, bring everything back up to scratch. But yeah, I am excited where this is going. I will keep you guys in the loop as to how the marketing goes and how the launch of this course goes and what sales we get and stuff like that. I think that this is a great course.

I hope that my sales message is good enough to get through to people so they will understand what this course is about and why they need it. And I am even thinking like get the draft of the sales video out tomorrow and get the sales page created but then maybe adding video overlays and stuff to the sales video of like inside the course and stuff which I could potentially do at a later date.

So that is something that I will be exploring. That is where I am at. Alright guys, until next time. If you want instructions, go and buy some furniture.

I am trying to create financial freedom and security through my online business. But at the moment I am cash strapped. Can I pull myself out of this hole?

I’m about 3 weeks away to running out of money in my business. But don’t freak out, everything is going to be okay. Hey, I’m Ryan from Instructions Not Included. Documenting my journey creating an online business and trying to achieve some level of financial freedom. Really, just financial stability working online.

I was looking at my finances, recently – within the last 2 days, I bought a second hand computer because my current one is dying up the ass. So, I spent $1,700 on that. I’m about to do my tax return and I’ll get a tax bill for that – tax that I need to pay for the year; which I probably don’t have the money to pay it right now.

Looking at how much my lifestyle is taking from my businesses because it’s my primary source of income. It pays the rent, it pays for food, all of that sort of stuff. I’m looking at about 3 weeks until I run out of money. But I’m not completely stressed about it because I know that I’ve got some referral fees coming from Ben that are $4,500 or something like that, which will really see me through an entire month after that.

I’m just not 100% sure if they’re going to come – because he’s going to pay me at the end of each month. So I’m just not sure if they’re coming at the end of this month or at the end of next month. So, it could be a tight time there.

Something that I really love about my business is that when I’m tight on cash and when things look dire, there’s things that I can do to increase my income.

If I was an employee and I started running out of money for one reason or another, then there wouldn’t be much that I could do to increase my income in order to fill that gap. But something that I love about my business is that there’s things that I can do.

Recently, I just did a 4-part series with Ben, the buyer’s agent, and that’s going to help me create more leads with him to generate more income. That’s more a long term play. In the short term, I am just finishing up my suburb research course. So, I’ve done all of the key videos, all I need to do now, I got 2 videos left – a conclusion video, which talks about what to do now and markets my next course as well as a comparison video comparing suburbs, so people really know how to do it.

So I’m almost done. 2 more videos to do, which I can probably get done tomorrow. And then that course will be complete and then I’m going to re-do the sales video for that. So, 3 videos for that.

So what I’m thinking is when I complete this course, when it’s done, let’s do a proper launch to this course. We did the course on how to find positive cash flow properties. We pre-launched it, we made about $1,000 in sales in pre-launch for this course. However, I didn’t then go ahead and launch it as I had planned. So I didn’t say, “This course is now available. Go ahead and get it, learn how to find positive cash flow properties.

This is awesome! Yada, yada, yada.” For some reason, I didn’t do that. I think it’s because I got caught up in creating the suburb research course that I just forgot to do that.

What I’m going to do, next week, I’ll finish the suburb research course tomorrow. I’ll create the sales video tomorrow/Monday, probably. And then, I’m going to do a launch of it. So, how am I going to do that? I don’t actually know. I haven’t actually had any ideas about that. But let’s think about it now, on the spot. Let’s pretend that you and me are brainstorming on this.

I want to move to daily content, anyway, right? And I haven’t been doing content because I’ve been creating this course. So why don’t I create 7 videos – let’s market this over a week. Let’s aim for $1,000 in sales, which will give me an extra week or 2 in terms of living expenses and just push the timeline until Ben’s money comes in and really sets me up. So, we’re aiming for $1,000.

Let’s start with a podcast because that’s easy. Let’s do 7 videos on how to research a suburb. So we’ll pull out different aspects about researching a suburb. We’ll do videos and then at the end of those videos, we’ll talk about our new course. Now, should I run any specials with the new course? I don’t like doing discounts. I don’t mind doing discounts on pre-sales but I hate doing discounts on full products. It’s just something that I don’t really do.

So the other things I have are how to find positive cash flow properties. I don’t want to throw that in free because that’s worth $100 as well. I’ve got property tools, which is $5 a month, so I could give a month free access to property tools? That’s like $5 but it’s something that I could say you’d get this. A year’s free access is $50, I could give away a year’s free access, but that’s pretty extreme.

I don’t know if I want to go ahead and do that. We could do that. See, but I want to reward the people that signed up early and got a discount, so they got either a 50% or a 20% discount. Alright, we’re not going to give something away, we’re just going to market the course and say that it’s available.

Okay. So we’ll do 7 podcast episodes about suburb research and we’ll release them one day after the other. Market the course in those videos. What about emails? I’ve got a list of about 10,000 people. So, let’s send out a couple of emails. Let’s send out an email announcing the course. So we can do that on Monday. We’ll announce the course. Then, on maybe Wednesday or Thursday and then maybe one on Sunday, so we’ll do 3 emails in total. So, one is announcing the course.

Then on Wednesday or Thursday, we’ll do one about one of the videos we created about this cool technique. And then, we’ll also do a video on Sunday and talk about another free video that we did and within those emails, talk about we’ve got the full course here.

I’m thinking one of those emails can be an awesome tool for analysing properties, because I just found that brand new tool so I can share that with people. Because, really, it’s the analysis of the data that people need to learn – that’s what I teach, it’s not necessarily the tools. So I could share that and then talk about my course. That’ll be one of the free videos and I’ll have to think about the other ones some time. Alright, so that sounds pretty good. That sounds pretty cool.

It’s Thursday today I’ll create the other videos tomorrow and try and get that sales video done tomorrow or Monday and we’ll go ahead and market that. Our goal, $1,000, which is just 10 sales from 10,000 people. So, that’s 0.1% conversion, which I think is definitely possible. Given the fact that I’ve already made $600 on this course and I haven’t done much direct marketing for it. I think with the right marketing, we could definitely do this.

I’m just trying to think if there’s any other way that I could really push it. I guess the other way, let’s also – alright, for the week, let’s say do suburb research week. Starting on Monday or maybe Tuesday, whenever I get my sales video up. Let’s put one of those banners across the top of my website. Just like an announcement banner saying, “Brand new course available. Click here.” Let’s try that as well. That way, website visitors can see that and if they’re interested in suburb research, then they can go ahead and check out that course.

We’ll only do that for a week. I’m not super stoked with those header banners, but I’ll find something and we’ll do that.

So, there we go. We’ve got a few different ways to market it. And you’ve literally seen inside the thought process of how I run my business. Running out of money, I need to make some money. I’ve created this course that I think is really valuable for people. How am I going to achieve my income goal for this and get people to sign up for it? And really, the goal for me is to reach those people who are interested in suburb research. So, by doing those lessons, I’ll reach those people and I’ll reach them over the long term as well.

My list is people who are interested in investing people generally by themselves anyway. So, I can definitely market to them and I think there’ll be a bunch of people who will be interested. So I’m very excited about this. I hope you are too.

I’m going out tonight to play some Super Smash Brothers Melee with a couple of mates on the Gold Coast here. I’m a Peach player. The two guys that I’m meeting up with, they both play as Marth, which is this guy with a sword and he’s the hardest character for me to play against. Because his sword is so long, he can just hit me from far away and it’s just really hard for me. So it’d be really good for me to practice my Peach against Marth. I’ve been kind of studying that match up and try and get better at that. That’ll be good fun tonight.

That’s it for me today, guys. Until next time, if you want instructions, go and buy some furniture.

Don’t you hate getting to the end of something online to realise you need to start all over again? Well that happened with my today with my course sigh

Don’t you hate it when you do something and yet all the way to the end and then you’ve realized you’ve made a mistake and you need to start all over again? Maybe you built some sort of furniture using the instructions and you go on all the way through and then you’ve got a bolt left over and you need to undo the entire thing and start again to work out where that bolt goes.

Hey, I’m Ryan from Instructions Not Included and that’s exactly what’s happened to me with the course that I’m creating at the moment on suburb research. It actually happened to me 12 months ago, almost to the day, where I was creating the complete self-leasing kit. I spent a whole month of my life on it and then, ended up finding out that the end of that that the market didn’t actually want this product and that I couldn’t even sell it and it wasn’t even worth marketing it.

But this one, the suburb research course, what happened was, I was creating the product, creating all these videos about how to research a suburb if you’re looking at investing in property. There’s a lot of data that you need to look at and you need to be able to interpret that data correctly.

So, I’m just teaching people how to do this. What happened was, I got 80%-90% of the way through it, was just about to create one of the last videos and realized one of the free tools that I’ve been using had changed their data. Like change the data they display and so they stopped displaying certain portions of the data and I was like, “Oh my goodness! This sucks!” So, I need to work out, well, how can I get access to this data in some other way?

And so, I started googling and when I was googling, I came across a couple of articles on suburb research and how to analyze statistics by this guy who is super awesome, really clever and it just blew my mind, some of this stuff that I was learning. And things that I thought you needed to look at for certain suburb ended up to be incorrect. And so, some of the things that I was teaching in my course weren’t actually correct. And also, in the midst of that, I discovered a tool that gave me access to better data than I’ve had access to – more up to date, shows you the trends and everything.

So the entire lid was blown off my course because I could now teach people more advanced techniques. I could now provide them access to better data for free and I’d learnt some new things and learnt that part of what I was teaching was actually incorrect. Basically, I’m 80-90% of the way through this course, about to launch it. It was meant to be on the 15th of October and it was like the 13th and this is when all of this was happening.

So, I was like, “Yup, final tweaks on this. Ready for launch on the 15th.” And then I realize on the 13th, oh my goodness! I am going to have to re-do this course completely. And so, that was extremely frustrating for me to have almost completed this course and then to have to go ahead and re-do it.

Now, this course, once it’s completed, is going to be absolutely awesome. It’s going to be something I’m going to be so proud to recommend. It’s going to be better than anything out there in the market. More straightforward for people, really give people a basic understanding of suburbs and how to research it.

I know that this is actually a gap in the market because compared to the self-leasing kit that I released last year that hardly sold, this one has sold $600 worth of product before I’ve even launched it. And I haven’t done any big marketing campaigns for that or anything and it’s already sold $600 worth. So, I know that there are people out there that want this.

I know that this is going to be a popular course over its lifetime and make me thousands of dollars. But, yeah, it was just very frustrating to have realized that I’ve got this far into it and now need to reset it. So, very annoyed at that, but I’m going through, I’m creating it.

I’m more than halfway through creating all the new videos now and I’m hoping to get it done by the end of this week. But I’m guessing it’ll probably be sometime next week that I actually get this finished and get this course completed. At the same time, my computer decided to basically die. I always get the “rainbow wheel of death” is what I call it. On the Mac when it’s loading, it just brings up this rainbow wheel and I think my computer’s on the fritz. So I bought a new second hand computer yesterday. So I spent about $1,700 on a new 27-inch iMac. It’s not new, it’s second hand. I got it off Gumtree, which is kind of like eBay here in Australia. I’m just setting that up and I’ll be using that moving forward.

My old computer, another 27-inch iMac did me 2 solid years. So, I think this new computer will probably do me I think 18 months is how long this computer will last me before I need to upgrade to another computer again. I just use and abuse my computer because I do so many videos, so many podcast, lots of editing. I use it all the time, so it just gets used and abused. I think 18 months, give this new baby 18 months and I think it’ll be going solid.

A good news is that Snappy Checkout, who’s the payment processor that I use to collect all my payments. I’ve been talking with Mike, the guy who runs Snappy Checkout, absolutely awesome guy and he’s decided to allow me to become an affiliate of Snappy Checkout. I’ve been asking him, can I become an affiliate? I want to recommend Snappy Checkout to people on my podcast because I think it is absolutely the best payment processor out there. Paypal, you know, it’s so old.

I think Paypal is still a good option for convenience. People like using Paypal and Snappy Checkout integrates with that. But this is just a beautiful overlay so you got your sales page; you click “Buy Now” and then, the pop-up overlays over your webpage. Or, if you don’t have an overlay, it opens a new page with a black background and so it looks like it’s overlaying, even though it’s not, which is really clever. I went through so many different tools that I was looking at and this one was just the most beautiful one, so that’s why I chose it.

After I was using it for 6 months or something, I realized, it’s actually the cheapest one as well. It has super cheap fees. I think the maximum you ever pay for a transaction fee is $2. So, I was previously using Gumroad. If I do $1,000 transaction through Gumroad and I do sell some things that are that expensive. Then, I do pay 5% to Gumroad, so $1,000, I paid $50 in transaction fees.

With Snappy Checkout, you integrate with Stripe so you pay 2.9% through Stripe, so of $1,000, that’s $29. And then Snappy Checkout takes a maximum of $2 off the purchase price for their transaction fee. So, rather than paying $50 per $1,000, I’m now paying $29 plus $2 from Snappy Checkout. So, it actually ended up being super cheap and I really, absolutely love it and so, I’m very proud to recommend it.

I’ll talk more about it, how to use it. Maybe I’ll try and integrate some lessons to talk about how you can collect payment, how to do a pre-sales. Maybe I can teach you guys some of that sort of stuff that I’ve been doing and we can then talk about Snappy Checkout for those of you who want to try it. And then, that can be my revenue source for this podcast. So, we’ll see how that goes. My affiliate link for Snappy Checkout, you can check it out. Just go to pelt.co, so P-E-L-T, which is my overarching business name. pelt.co/checkout and you can go ahead and check out Snappy Checkout over there. You can see what it’s like and go ahead and create products. I’m probably going to create some tutorials and stuff for it and some comparisons between it and Gumroad in the future.

This is the first product outside of my own products that I’ve been excited to market to people. So, I’m not just going to do it through this podcast. I probably won’t do, “This podcast is sponsored by Snappy Checkout.” But I will just mention it whenever it makes sense and mention my affiliate link as well. You guys obviously won’t pay more through that, but I just get a commission for recommending it to you.

Also, something that I’ve been doing is a video course. I did a video course with Ben Everingham, who’s my buyer’s agent. This was even before the video course, the last month, had about 3 people go through him and ended up signing up. And so, I get a 25% commission on that. I think it was $1,700 or $1,800 in revenue. So, for me, it comes out to a bit under $4,500, which is great because this month hasn’t been that good for me in terms of product sales.

Because I’ve been focused so heavily on creating my products, I haven’t been actively marketing them. So, it’s really good to have that partnership with Ben and to get those sales through him to get that income through so I don’t have to stress about money. Especially because I just had to buy a new computer and spend $1,700 on my new computer. So, yeah, it’s great to have that coming through.

I’ve got a new build video series with him as well. In the 4th video, we do a call to action where people can book a free strategy session with him. So far, I’ve sent that out to just probably about 1,000 people have received that course all the way through and I’ve got probably 10 people who signed up for that free strategy session through that. So, it’ll be interesting to see how many of those people convert.

It’s just another source of revenue for me. The problem that I have with this is I’m scared of being reliant on someone else for my income. So, it’s a great kicker. A piece of advise I got from a very successful young businessman who I used to actually rep to, he was saying that when the money is there and when the money is flowing – like when there’s a profit opportunity, milk it for all it’s worth because it won’t stay around forever. So, I think with Ben, I’ll work with him and we’ll do this partnership for as long as it lasts and as long as it makes sense and in an essence, milk it for all it’s worth for both of us and to just make the most of it.

But I also want to prepare for the rainy day if that partnership ever does dissolve, then I’ve still got my products and my own source of income and stuff like that. So, even though I might be making more income because I’m recommending people to him and such a high dollar-value, I guess I don’t want to build my business on expecting that revenue just in case something happens. Our partnership is awesome at the moment, but obviously you got to be prepared for things like this. So, it’s a great source of revenue, but something that I don’t want to build my business.

I’ll just use it to use the income that comes from it to grow my business even more. I don’t know. I’m excited about it. I love working with Ben and I love partnering with him. I love having someone that I can chat to about the stuff that we do. But, yeah, I still want to make sure that my business is going to be rock solid moving forward into the future years because it’s absolutely my livelihood.

Alright guys, that’s it for me for today. That is my update. I’m working on my course hoping to get it done by the end of this week, but I think probably early next week is when it’s going to get completely finished. Released the video course I did with Ben. That’s going out to quite a few people this week. So we’ll see if any of those people end up converting into customers. And I got a new computer that I need to migrate everything over to. So that’s where I’m at. I hope you guys are having a great week.

I’ll try and talk more in the future about Snappy Checkout and how to collect payments and teach some lessons and stuff like that. Until then, you can check out Snappy Checkout yourself through my affiliate link. Just go to pelt.co/checkout and you can have a look at Snappy Checkout over there. I absolutely recommend it. I love it. I love Mike. Customer service is awesome. They’re a great tool.

Until next time, guys. If you want instructions, go and buy some furniture.

The whole goal of marketing to date has been to build an email list. However I think social media has changed the landscape and it has changed my strategy moving forward.

The money is in the list – or so they say. But will the money always be in the list? That’s something that I’ve been thinking about quite a lot lately. I touched on it briefly in a previous episode, but I’ve actually changed my strategy in terms of how I’m marketing OnProperty and how I’m marketing… Yeah, I guess, more OnProperty because that’s my biggest source of income.

A lot of marketers talk about the “money is in the list.” And so the whole goal of marketing is basically, you create content, you drive people to a website, you convert those people into some sort of free content in exchange for their email address in order to be able to market to them over and over and over again – and that’s super effective.

I think that will still be effective in the future. However, I think there’s something that is more important that’s at play and I think it’s kind of being caused by this whole social media revolution and the changes in social media.

So, social media started, we had MySpace. We did MySpace, yeah, it’s all well and good. But then, we changed to Facebook. Okay, so, we move across to Facebook. Facebook – biggest social platform in the world. Over a billion people use Facebook, it’s absolutely massive. But then what happens? Then, Instagram comes along. So, then, we shift from Facebook to Instagram and we start consuming content on Instagram.

Then Snapchat comes along, so we start using Snapchat. Then there’s something called “Jot”, which a lot of high school people are using because it uses their phones to create a network, so the schools can’t lock it down. So, they move from Facebook to Instagram to Snapchat to Jot and all the while, we’ve got Pinterest happening in the background, we’ve got LinkedIn, we’ve got all of these sorts of things.

So, what used to happen is that people used to consume content on the internet. You’d go to Google. Google is your homepage. You’d search Google to find content and you will then go from there. And so, it was very linear in terms of the way we use the internet was we go to Google and then we’d go through to our website and then we use their email as well. And so, email really was key to get people back to your website.

But now, there’s even more valuable, I think, than someone’s email address. And that’s someone’s – not just their trust, but their “admiration” is probably the best word I can think of at the moment or their gratitude. Yeah, probably their gratitude. That is that you provide so much value to someone that they recognize you as a person, they are grateful to you as a person. They want to follow you and consume the things that you have.

The reason that this is so important is that we’re always going to be jumping from one social network to another. Things are going to be changing. I still use Facebook, but nearly as much as I used to. I’m on Instagram a lot more. I’m not that much on Snapchat just because not many of my friends are on Snapchat and I don’t need to Snapchat teenagers – that would just be super creepy.

Things will constantly change, but if you can get the trust, the admiration, the gratitude of someone, they’re going to follow you across different platforms. So, if they’re on Facebook, they might look for you on Facebook. If they’re on Instagram, they might follow you on Instagram. If they’re on Snapchat, they might follow you on Snapchat.

What’s going to happen over time is that you’ll build trust, you’ll build gratitude with these people and when you market a product or when you finally comes time to ask for something from them, it’s probably going to be pretty easy to convert a whole bunch of people. Because we’ve got a whole generation growing up that don’t really use email. Email is something now that is corporate. Something that old people use in the workplace. Young people, if I want to get in contact with someone, let’s say I want to play Super Smash Brothers with someone on the Gold Coast. I don’t call them. I don’t even text them.

I put a thing on the Facebook groups or I will instant message someone through Facebook Messenger and that’s how we get in contact with people now. I don’t email anyone. I don’t even know any of their email addresses. I don’t need to know any of their email addresses. So, things are changing.

So, the money is in the list – yes, at the moment, but I think as this generation grows up, as the millennials grow up or whoever is below the millennials grows up, things are changing. The way we use the internet is changing. What I’m finding is that my content is going to stay there. There’s still always that process of people going to Google and they search something. Or, maybe they might go to Youtube now and search something. Or, they might go to Pinterest to search something.

So, there’s still always that sort of avenue, but people are subscribing to you in different ways. And less and less are people to subscribing to you via email.

I follow a guy called Pat Flynn and I subscribe to his podcast. He’s got 2 podcast, I like one of them. The other one was a bit too basic for me. So, I subscribe to one of his podcast. I subscribe to his emails as well, but I don’t really give a damn about them. I also know he has a Youtube channel and I visit it from time to time. So, my relationship with Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income isn’t through my email list. And if he sends me an email, yeah, I’ll probably read it, but if he mentions something in a podcast and does a call to action in a podcast, he’s actually more likely to reach me that way than he is through email.

So for me and my strategy, rather than focusing on the email marketing – I’m not ignoring email, I’ll still be using email. I have Funnel setup to email people. It’s still an element of marketing, but it is not “the money is in the list”. Its email is the be all and end all because email is changing. I think content is the be all and end all because you can reach someone over and over and over again.

You can reach them at a precise time. And that’s why I’m trying to do content with a call to action that is related to that content and a call to action to one of my products. And so, rather than it being like a hardcore call to action, trying to get someone to sell. It’s kind of like a side note at the end of each video. I’m doing, “Oh, by the way, there’s this that you can do. Just go to propertytools.com.au to sign up.”

So, they’re getting this good content. They then get a call to action at the end and they probably act, but what’s going to happen is they’ll then do another search. They’ll find me again. They’ll do another search; they’ll find me again. They won’t go on to social media, but they might go on to Youtube and they’ll find me.

They might subscribe to my podcast and listen to 10 episodes, or something like that. And then, eventually, they’re going to come to a point and say, “I need some help in finding positive cash flow properties.” They Google it, I come up. They’re like, “Ryan. Sweet. I know him.” They watch it. They see your call to action go to my course or to go to my site and they’re like, “You know what, I’m in a situation in my life right now where I need help with this. And so, I trust Ryan and I’m willing to purchase his products.”

So, I just think the whole buying process, the way that we use the internet is changing. And the way that you interact with your customers is changing as well. And if you’re so focused on email, I think you’re going to miss out on the way that the internet is changing and the way that people relate to internet celebrities, would you call them, or internet personalities. The way that people relate to them is changing. I think the leader in this is Gary Vaynerchuck. I follow him on Youtube. I used to subscribe to his podcast, but not anymore.

I just subscribed on Youtube because it’s the same content. I’ve been following him for a long time. I’ve got his books, I’m his friend on Instagram. If he launches a new book, he doesn’t need to send me an email for me to buy that book. I’m going to find out about it. If he launches a new book, he’s got the #AskGaryVee book coming out.

I know he has the #AskGaryVee book coming out. I’ve already decided to purchase this book ahead of time because I will just purchase anything that he makes. I know that this is coming. Because I’ve been following him, I know that’s coming. He hasn’t even sent out an email. He hasn’t even done a call to action, but I know that there’s a book coming in the future that I’m going to purchase.

So, all that needs to happen – he launches that book, I’ll find out some way. I’ll find out through his Youtube channel or through his podcast or through some other podcast that I listen to that he gets interviewed on or maybe I’ll just see it in Instagram – it’s probably what’s going to happen. As soon as it comes out, what do you think I’m going to do? I’m going to buy it. Did he email me? Did he do a sales Funnel with 4 videos in order to sell me something? No, he didn’t.

He’s just out there putting out content. I trust him. I admire him. I’m very grateful to the advice that he has given. And so, therefore, I’m following him and I’m going to take action based on that. And I’m not the only person who’s doing that. He’s not the only personality that’s doing that. So if you’re thinking long term about selling something.

If you’re thinking about long term about marketing something – yes, email is powerful. Yes, if you collect someone’s email now, put them through a sales funnel, you will convert a certain percentage. But, I think, long term, there’s going to be so much power in being – not being everywhere, but just being where people need you to be and helping them in the way they need you to help them.

Like for OnProperty, for example. If we said, yeah, there’s a “Be Everywhere” strategy. So if people are on Facebook, I need to be on Facebook. Are people on Instagram? I need to be on Instagram. Not really – not in the property space. Facebook, there’s definitely opportunity for videos and content on there, which I haven’t explored – which I probably should. But for me, to do Instagram and to run an Instagram channel – yes, I will reach some people.

But most people, when they’re thinking about property and looking at property, they’re still just googling stuff. Or they’re going into Youtube and they’re searching for stuff in Youtube. Or, they listen to a daily podcast or a weekly podcast or whatever.

In terms of my market, I don’t need to be everywhere. I just need to be in the most important places that matter the most to my potential customers. So, for me, that’s Google, that’s Youtube and that’s podcast. Because people want to consume content, learn about property investing so I need to be there. Could I get more sales by being in Facebook? Yes. But it would take away from the most important areas that I need to be.

If Facebook was the most important area, then I would be on Facebook and not be in other places, maybe not be in a podcast or not be on Youtube or something. But because the most important places for me to be are Google, Youtube and podcasting, I need to put my focus on that. And if I look at Facebook, then I’m taking away from that.

So, yes, there’s going to be avenues that are good. But then, there’s avenues that are the most important and I guess you need to work out can you impact people more? Can you build more trust, admiration and gratitude by re-investing and investing heavily in the places that are most important or can you get it by going into some social media avenue like Pinterest or something like that? I used to do Pinterest and Pinterest I don’t do anymore because people aren’t searching in Pinterest for property tips. For me, it was just a little tactic to try and get back links so it’s not the most important place that I need to be.

So that is my rant on the changing landscape of the internet. I think it’s going to be years before we really see a lot of people doing this. And before we actually click in our minds and day, “Oh, yeah, this is what’s happening.” And this is the way the internet is changing. And so the reason I think I’ll be successful with OnProperty compared to the other property blogs out there that I’m competing with, compared to the people that have affiliate programs that I’m competing with, compared to the property magazines that are still in print, the reason I think I’ll be more successful than all of them is because I understand how the internet is changing – how the internet is progressing.

And I’m building a relationship with my potential customers that’s based on trust, that’s based on admiration, that’s based on gratitude that will permeate multiple different platforms. And as the internet changes, as people’s behavior changes, then I will change my focus based on that and invest more heavily in where people actually are. And so, when I look at like the podcast space for example, I’m the only daily property podcast.

I made a video on the 10 top property podcast, there wasn’t even 10. There was like 8 and then I had to put through some finance ones in there. A lot of the once that were in there were just really bad or they released a couple of episodes and they were done.

If you want property information in Australia, there’s probably about 5 or 6 podcast, maximum, that you could listen to. And if you want content on a regular basis, I’m the only podcast that offers that. Everyone else is weekly, monthly or every 2 weeks. And so, I am in that space where people are looking, people want this sort of content and I’m over-delivering compared to everyone else.

I guess I encourage any of you guys who are trying to market, find out what is the most important to your customers. How can you build trust, admiration and gratitude – in what areas? How can you over-deliver and just make them so grateful for what you have done that they end up buying all of your products and become your best customer ever. What can you do in order to do that?

I am going to explore some sponsorships for this podcast in the near future, guys. So, if you see me talking about any sort of stuff, I may have secured some sponsorships or I may just be marketing affiliate programs. It’s just something that I want to try to let you guys know some cool tools that I used. Or, I just might recommend products that I like and enjoy that I think you guys will benefit from, even though there’s nothing in it for me – no payment in it for me or anything like that.

Alright guys, that’s it for me. As you can see, I have opinions about the way the internet will change. They could be right; they could be wrong. But I’m pretty certain that this is the way it’s going to progress and I’m pretty certain that everyone is going to be focusing on what worked years ago, instead of focusing on doing the things that are going to pay them dividends 2 or 3 or 5 years down the line.

I think if you start this stuff now, you get a massive head start on people because there’s only so many people in my life that I will trust and that I will put in that sort of “mentor” status. And so, if you get in there first, you kind of lock that down for the future compared to everyone else who might try and do it 5 or 10 years from now.

So, best of luck, guys. If you want instructions, you know what to do, go and buy some furniture.

Of all the customers you have in your business what is the absolutely most a customer can make you. For me it was previously $400-$500, but that just got increased.

What is your best customer worth? Of all the customers that you have in your business, what is the absolute most a customer can make you or has made you? For me, with OnProperty, my best customer – up until a couple of days ago, made me probably somewhere around maybe $400, maybe $500 or something like that.

They might have purchased an annual subscription to OnProperty Plus for $300, maybe some eBooks or courses up to the value of maybe $500. Or, I could have had some that was a subscriber for $300 subscribed to 2 years. Okay, maybe $600 is my best customer ever.

Well, there was actually a customer the other day, on Sunday – a day when I wasn’t even working, that beat that record and spent somewhere around $800-$900. Almost $1,000 and this was absolutely awesome to see. I through phases where I get a bit worried about money.

Last month was really good in terms of I closed down OnProperty Plus, changed it to OnProperty Listings and as a result, increased the prices. So, I got a big influx of income – about $4,000 or something like that from that promotion and people signing up as a result of that promotion.

So, I’m going into this month, into October, thinking, “Okay, a bit more stressed about this month.” I don’t have $4,000 automatically coming in. I’ve got about $1,000 revenue from Property Tools as well as OnProperty Plus/OnProperty Listings monthly subscription. So I’ve got about $1,000 coming in. I’ve also been working closely with Ben Everingham, recommended a few people to him. So, it might be $2,000 coming from him, but it’s never certain with buyer’s agents.

They’re working with a couple of clients and if they can’t find the property, then, Ben is so honorable, he gives the money back. So, that could potentially result in no money coming in. So, I’ve got about $1,000 guaranteed and I’ve got about $2,000-$3,000 a month in expenses now. Things just go up as you become a more profitable company.

So, going into the month, just a little bit more stressed about how much money I’m going to make. What am I going to sell? How am I going to do this, blah, blah, blah, blah… And then, I get this customer on Sunday who spends $900 – almost $1,000 with me. And I go, “What am I stressing about? I’ve got people who want to spend this amount of money with me. I must be doing something right.” And anyway, there was one offer – I had 2 conflicting offers, one for $50, one for $80. So, I emailed this customer, I said, “Thanks for being the best customer ever. I just want to let you know there was an offer on this for $50 for people who bought this other course.

I’m going to honor that and refund you $30.” emailed them, blah, blah, blah… I got an email back from best customer ever yesterday and they said something really interesting to me over the course of this email, which was quite long. But they said, “Ryan, don’t underestimate yourself.” He said, “I wanted to buy everything that you had and it was a lot of work for me to go through and to find all your products and to purchase all of your products individually. So, don’t underestimate yourself and why not have a ‘buy the lot’ option as a way to convert every customer into your best customer ever?”

I was like, “Oh my goodness! You are a genius! Thank you so much. You’ve just gone from best customer ever to absolutely best customer ever because you’ve given me an awesome idea.” This customer has shown me that the buying process that I have isn’t ideal for my customer. I create videos, audios and blog posts so customers can consume my content in whatever way they want. But when it comes to my products, I haven’t exactly made it easy for customers to purchase everything.

I guess part of that was I wanted to break things down for customers and service their needs. So, kind of like a supermarket where you go to the supermarket and they’ve got thousands of items and they never intend you to buy everything in one shop, but what you need is there for when you need it and when you need something else, then you come back.

I guess my product strategy was the supermarket sort of strategy where I’ve got a whole bunch of different things there that service different needs. Come and purchase this product when you have that need. And when you’ve got a different need that I can serve, come back. But I never thought that maybe there’s customers that are passionate enough they just want to purchase everything all at once and I need to make their experience better. So, definitely going to add a “buy the lot” option to my products page.

At first, I was like, “Well, how am I going to do this?” Because OnProperty Listings has monthly, annual and 2-year options. Property Tools only has monthly and yearly. How am I going to do this? But I think the way I’m going to do it is I’ll scrap the monthly because if someone wants to buy everything, then they’re pretty keen on spending money and I’ll just offer a yearly and 2-yearly options. Yearly for OnProperty Listings is $480.

Yearly for Property Tools is $50. So, that’s $530 plus everything else. And then, the 2-year option for OnProperty Listings is $720 and then I’m just going to leave 2 years for Property Tools at $100, so no discount for getting property Tools for $100. So it goes $720 to $820 plus then I’ll have 3 courses at $300 each so that’s $1,120. Plus I’ve got the eBooks that’s $7 so it’ll be like $1,127. So, I could, eventually, once all my products are out, I could have a “buy the lot” where someone could spend $1,127 with me in one go.

All of a sudden, I only need 4 customers a month in total in order to achieve my income goals that I set for the year. Obviously, not everyone’s going to do that, but maybe get 1, 2 or maybe 3 of those customers a year and that’s a nice little kicker. Definitely, big thank you to my best customer ever who has now spent the most money ever with me and has also given me a great idea in order to improve how much my customers are potentially worth. That was a really cool breakthrough for the week.

Bit of an update from last week, when I worked 25 hours a week, took me a little bit to get used to it. The first 2 days I think I finished the day and I was a cranky shit. I was like, went down and I was just cranky for some reason.

I was quite rude to my family. I don’t know why exactly, but I think it was just the stress of it. And the mindset of working less and feeling like my family is taking away from my work time, which is not the intention at all, you know. I value family over work, so I don’t know why I was thinking that. But I kind of felt like that and I was like, “Oh, well, this is crap. I don’t get to work” So, the first couple of days were hard.

Third day, I had about half an of being cranky after I finished work. And then, by the fourth and fifth day, I was quite happy with the work schedule that I had and what I was doing and I was less stressed. So, I had a great day on Friday with the family. I had a great weekend. And then, Monday was a public holiday up here, it was super hot. So, we ended up going to my mother-in-law’s place to swim in her pool.

Even though technically, I’m not doing 25 hours a week anymore, my stress levels – oh my goodness, have they gone down so significantly! Because I was like, “Yup, absolutely. Let’s go for a swim in the morning.” We went for a swim. I started work at 11:00 and then I finished work at 3:30 of 4:00 or something. I actually wasn’t feeling very good that day. I had a super sore back and ended up passing out asleep at 5:00.

My stress levels have gone down significantly. So, Tuesday, I did 8:00-4:00, that was yesterday. Today, I’m doing kind of 7:30 until 3:00-ish because as soon as the kids come home from school, we’re going to go for a swim because it’s hot again. Then, tomorrow, I’m going to see The Martian, which is an absolutely awesome book that I read and apparently, it’s a good movie, too, so I’m going to see that. And then, hopefully, got Smash Brothers tomorrow night. We’ll only work a few hours on Thursday, which I’m fine with. And then Friday I’ll probably do a full day there.

I think the 25 hours a week, definitely something that I want to move towards. It was great to that example and to do that week. As well, to work with my wife and to be able to help her out more with the 3 kids. Because having 3 kids and taking care of 3 kids is really hard. Not just for her, but just in general. And so, being able to help her more reduced her stress levels, leads to a better family balance, better emotional health; which leads to a better relationship that we have together. Definitely something that I want to pursue more is work less and be more focused.

Another thing that I realised about working 25 hours a week is I’ve got more important shit done! Often I’ll spend a day and I’ll just fat ass around. I’ll get some emails done. I’ll do some admin stuff. I’ll get stuff done, but it’s not stuff that’s super important. When I got 5 hours a day, I lean on my virtual assistant more. I’m like, “Okay, I’ve got 5 hours. What am I going to get done? Alright, I’ve got to get some videos done.

Let’s get these videos created, let’s get these videos edited and uploaded.” Bam, they’re done. Off to Dipti in order to manage them and publish them. So a lot of work that I was doing was more valuable work. I can actually potentially achieve more working 25 hours than I could working full time. Because I just do less stupid tasks that I probably shouldn’t be doing anyway. So I’m going to have to think about this.

We’ve got school holidays again in about 8 weeks. The kids have 9 weeks off or something like that. So, I think, over that Christmas break, I’m probably going to do 25 hours a week for maybe 8 weeks or 9 weeks or something like that. In Sydney for a week, so that’ll be a holiday. Probably have another week of holidays, but I was thinking and talking to my wife and we’re saying, “Yeah, well, let’s just do this.” At least we know if I run out of money or we start running out of money or I’m not making enough, I can just increase my work hours again and find out ways to make more money.

So, yeah. That’s where we’re at. That’s where we’re at. Enjoying my Smash Brothers, practicing that pretty heavily and getting into that. So wanting to become good and, eventually, would love to be able win some competitions, win some tournaments in Smash Brothers as my Peach player. But that’s another topic for another day.

That’s it for me today, guys. Until next time, stay positive.

Sometimes you just get lucky first go…and sometimes you don’t. This is an example of me not getting lucky.

Sometimes you just get lucky first go, and other times, you don’t. I remember, it would have been 3 or 4 years ago, I was still working as a pharmaceutical rep and I had a property blog and I had a little over 1,000 email subscribers, over 100 articles, less than 120.

Were getting a decent amount of traffic and I thought, you know, I need to make some money from this – I want to make some money from this. And so, I decided to create and launch a membership site where I would teach people how to find positive cash flow properties. So, what I did was I created a single page.

Literally, a single webpage that was password-protected. That was it. It’s a functionality within every single WordPress page or WordPress post – you can set a password on it.

So, I created that and I put a video on it or a couple of videos or something like that. It wasn’t even complete, the product. I sent out an email to my list saying, “Launching this product.

Here’s a 50% discount.” or something like that and I sold it for $50 and I had $2,000 in sales in the space of 1-2 days. Before then, the most I’d ever seen in terms of a month was maybe $300-$500 in AdSense revenue. So, for me, this membership site was a big kicker for me.

This membership site, eventually, over the course of a couple of years evolved into OnProperty Plus, which is now OnProperty Listings, which makes me a good 4-figures per month and means that I can work from home and I don’t need to have a job.

That was striking it lucky. I was very lucky to launch that and to get so much success off the bat with that. Just really struck a cord with the market and what they wanted. One that’s not so lucky is my public speaking course. Yup, no sales. We are not drinking beer today. We are not celebrating and getting drunk together because there are no sales for my public speaking course.

I sent out an email to my list of about 700-800 email subscribers talking about the course. Had a bit of traffic to the page, but absolutely zero sales, nada.

I was thinking that maybe today I create some free videos for outspoken.co, but at this point, I just don’t see the point because I’m not making any money from the site. I haven’t “nailed the coffin” so to speak. I haven’t given up on outspoken.co or given up on this product.

I will still give it probably a month to see do people go to it? Are people interested in it? Do I get any sales? All I need is one sale to really encourage me to push this site forward. But I know this is my first product that I’ve ever created and it may not be aligned with the market, it may not be what they want. It has a good learning experience for me, but I definitely did not strike it lucky with this course.

It’s not something that I just launched and I sold a whole bunch of copies to this course. So, I don’t know if that means it’s a dud course, I don’t know if that means that public speaking is a harder niche to monetise. I’m not 100% sure what it means, but definitely didn’t strike it lucky. So, I’ll wait a little bit longer and see what happens and then, maybe go again and create another course or try and market it in some other way.

So, yeah, I was hoping to strike it lucky. Hoping to get a little bit of traction with this course so I could then justify working more on oustpoken.co, but unfortunately, that’s not the case. So, I’m back to just focusing on OnProperty, focusing on creating more marketing materials for that. So, more free content and driving people to my products.

I am thinking about the long term and longevity of OnProperty and me and this business and what it’s going to look like moving forward. And something that I’m doing is at the end of each of my videos, I’m doing a call to action to one of my products. So, rather than just trying to get more and more email subscribers now – which I actually think is becoming less and less relevant, less and less valuable over time. But the content is going to hold it’s value and so I really have this sense that the value is in the content. The value is not in the email list, as people say.

Obviously, collecting people’s emails are very important. But when you’ve got people who are so segmented online now, so many people surfing the web through apps. So many people go into a lot of different websites using Facebook and stuff like that. But you still develop a relationship with the person.

So, whether you’re watching someone on Youtube or you’re watching their video on Facebook or you’re interacting with them on their website or they send you an email, it’s all the same person. And I think that as I grow this brand, as I build up this brand, I think email will become less and less important over time.

I can’t remember the last time I actually bought something from an email that was sent to me; which is really interesting. But I do know that I follow people like Gary Veynerchuk, I love all the stuff that he does. I follow his podcast or his Youtube channel. And he’s the same person there. He’s the same person on iTunes as he is on Youtube and when he has a book out or a call to action, I find it through the videos he does and I then go ahead and take action.

So, I’m thinking that emails aren’t as important as they used to be. Still important, but they’re not the be all and end all. And so, what I’m doing, because I believe the content will hold value for longer into the future than collecting email subscribers, I’m actually marketing my products at the end or within each of my videos. So, I’ll do a subject like I just did one about the biggest mistakes that people make when doing suburb research, when investing in property.

So, at the end of that and throughout that video, I was talking about I’m launching a course on suburb, which you can get at onproperty.com.au/suburb. So, I’m integrating it into the videos. I did other videos and marketed other products, like my course on how to find positive cash flow properties or my membership site, OnProperty Listings.I’ve been doing more of this free content with a call to action.

So, we’ll just see how that goes and see whether that’s going to work. But I think in terms of long term strategy, I think that’s going to be the most successful way to do it, is to just have in-content discussions about my own products. I think that’s going to be pretty cool.

I am considering moving back to daily videos. I did this back in 2014, so last year. What I did was I release a new video, podcast, article every single day. So, the video gets transcribed into a blog post. It also gets converted into an MP3, into a podcast. And I saw huge growth over my site in that period of time and I’m still seeing upwards of 1,500 people visit my site every single day from the content that I produced partially during that period. Some of the content was before that.

I have noticed that as I release articles talking about the courses that I’m creating, like I’ve released some of my videos are sales videos, I’ve noticed that I’ve had sales that I feel are related to that – not to the emails that I sent out. And I know this because some of the people who purchased my product weren’t even email subscribers of mine. So the only way they could have found out about it was through the actual episodes themselves or through the menu tab on my website.

I think that it’s powerful. I think that getting people in the routine of listening to me, I think the idea of getting more and more content out there and just smashing my competitors in terms of how much content I have, how much I can be found in Google and have people find me is going to be super valuable. And I think the long term strategy of absolutely owning this space in terms of the market and getting people to come to me really allows me to have a more positive impact on people’s lives than if I was to do affiliate deals to try and sell my products and stuff like that.

I want to be like Apple and basically be fully integrated. Everything from my marketing to my products. I don’t want to make money selling other people’s products. I don’t want other people acting as affiliates for me. I want to do everything myself, which is, I guess, less like Apple, more like James Shramko and what he does over at SuperFast Business where he doesn’t have any affiliates marketing his stuff, but he just does it all himself. And I think that’s going to be the best long term strategy for me and for my business. And if I’m creating all these free content now and I’ve got the backend, like my virtual assistant Dipti, she’s absolutely awesome.

She can get all this stuff up. So I can create 3 videos in the space of a couple of hours. I then upload them, let her know about it and then, bam! She’s away, gets everything scheduled, gets everything ready and published on time. So I don’t have to worry about all that backend stuff anymore. It’s not sucking my time. So, I think it’s more achievable for me to do daily videos now than it used to be.

So I’m excited about that. That’s going to be good. I think we’ll move towards that I was doing 2 videos a day for a while and I’ve just started moving to 3 videos a day. I’m going to get my way up to 5 videos, so Monday to Friday there’s going to be a video every single day. And then, as soon as I have enough content and I feel like I can keep it up, then I’ll go ahead and I’ll do fully a video every single day.

I think that’s going to be exciting because then once I’ve created this course on suburb research and then I’ve created the course on how to evaluate an individual property, then I can just focus on marketing those courses.

The free videos could be all I do. That could just be the only stuff that I have to do on my business. It’s just, I do free videos and I do customer service, like emails and stuff like that. And then I could definitely work 5 hours per day. Working 5 hours a day has been pretty rough.

It’s been getting difficult to get into the habit. But I think now that I’m starting to do it, starting to get used to it. I think there’s massive value in it for me, for my family, for my wife – to help her out. But then, also for me, in terms of socially, I will then have more time. My wife will be less stressed, so she’s okay if I go for a surf or if I go to someone’s house and play Smash Brothers or something like that. I think it’s going to be good, I think it’s going to be long term.

I think I can definitely make enough money – if not more money doing just 5 hours a day than doing 8 or 9 hours a day. So, it’s definitely something that I’m going to be working towards and it’ll probably happen faster than I expected.

Anyway, I have rambled on enough. I’m excited to get on with the day to go ahead and make some videos. I’ve got 4 hours until I finish work. So, let’s see how many videos I can get done. If I get 3 done, I’d be happy. But why not push for 4 and then I’ve done 7 this week, hey? Well, we’ll see how we’d go. Hope you guys are having an awesome day. I hope that you are working on your business. I hope that sometimes you get lucky and you get a quick win like I did when I first launched my membership site for OnProperty.

Sometimes you just don’t get lucky and you need to re-evaluate and think, “What did I do wrong? What can I do better?” And also, I want to encourage you, it’s not about doing the grind and working 12-16 hour days. It’s about achieving what you want to achieve, having the biggest influence that you can – positive influence on people’s lives. And then living the life that you want. Living the life that you want is super hard to work out. So hard to work out what kind of life do I actually want. What I want to do for work? What I want to do with the rest of my time when I’m not working? But it’s totally worth it if you can work it out.

I’ll keep you guys up to date on that. Until next time, if you want instructions, go and buy some furniture.

I finished my public speaking course but it took me 4 attempts to create a sales page for the product. I also added a sales email to my autoresponder.

Hey guys! Ryan here from Instructions Not Included. I just want to give you an update on my week. I had Monday off which was great. Working today, doing a shorter week this week and today I was just focusing on my course on Outspoken.co on How To Become A Better Public Speaker In Private. You want to check that out, just go to Outspoken.co/private, if you want to see the course and the sales page over there.

So basically I spent the day finalizing that course. So once they purchase it, there is a page that they go to that has all the videos; I had to set that up. And I have also gone ahead and created the sales page for the course which actually took me 4 attempts to create the sales page.

First I did a text-based sales page which was pretty average. And then I started writing an email to send out and realized how bad it was. I then created a second sales page and while I was creating that I realized it is probably better if I create a video or an audio for this. And so I recorded an audio for it. And then I created a page on that. And then I realized that this is just overkill, the audio went for 7 or 8 minutes for a $30 course.

It was not even an awesome audio either. And then the last thing that I did was just create a products page at Outspoken.co/products and just have a little description of the course, a little square image like a title cover for the course and then a buy-it-now button down the bottom.

And so I decided to sell the course for US$30. I just thought US$20 was not enough and made it sound like a cheap and crappy course so I upped it to US$30. I would like to go for $50 or $100 but I just do not have a good enough relationship with my readers and stuff. I do not think to charge $100 for a course. So I thought $30, happy medium.

I also went ahead and added like a salesy sort of email to my order responder for Outspoken.co and so that will go out to everyone who signs up for my course which is probably about a person-a-day or something or maybe even less than that. I do not actually know. I have never tracked it.

And then I have just sent out a broadcast email as well to my subscribers and I have 750 email subscribers for people that are interested in learning more about public speaking and who have signed up for my public speaking crash course. So I am hoping and praying that one of those people actually buys the course. And the next time that I am recording, the next time that I am talking to you guys, I will have a beer in hand.

I will be drinking the beer and we will be celebrating the first sale of this course and also my first US dollars in a long time. And if this course sells and i this course is something that people are interested in, then that all of a sudden makes Outspoken.co a profitable side project and will make me more inclined to invest more heavily in that site because at the moment the site is in shambles. It is a bit buggy.

It is missing a lot of things that need to go on there but I just have not done anything with it because it does not make me any money. So if I fix it I might get more traffic. People might stay engaged longer on the site but it is not going to result in any profit for me and so it has not been worth it.

But if this course proves profitable, if this is something that people are interested in then I will go ahead and invest more in the site. And I will also try and think of some other courses that I can create that I could sell to people and try and make this site profitable.

I would definitely like to diversify away from On Property because at the moment 99% pf my income is coming from On Property and if the Australian property market was to crash then that would severely affect my income. Or if something was to happen to this site, I am too exposed and I would rather spread my risks across the 2 sites. And as well, if I can make money from Outspoken.co then I feel like I could then teach how to make money from a podcast through PodcastFast.com.

So we will see how it will go. That was what I was up to today, not as many hours to work today which I am finding a little bit difficult, a little bit stressful. But I will get whatever I need to get done this week.

There is nothing urgent that I need to get done so it is no big deal. But I am working less this week. Spending more time with the kids and doing my test for working 25 hours a week. So we will see how we will go. We will see how I can handle it, not working as much. Can I do it? We will see how it works with the family and stuff as well. So I will keep you guys updated on that.

I am bout to finish. I am about to go pick up the kids from kindergarten in about 20 minutes. They just have vacation care today. I will pick them up soon and hopefully we will sell a copy of this course. Come on! Let us sell a copy! Hopefully tomorrow you will be hearing from me that I sold a copy. Or you will be hearing that I have not. But hopefully I will have.

Alright guys, that is it for me today. Until next time, if you want instructions go and buy some furniture.

I recorded the entire public speaking course in just 1 day…well I filmed all the videos but I still have some editing to do and a sales page to create.

Hey guys! Ryan here from Instructions Not Included.

Just a really quick recording to talk about how I went with creating my public speaking course and I have good news for you. I finished all 7 videos – actually 8 videos yesterday. So I recorded the entire course in one day but that has taken me more time than I would have liked to get that course up and available.

My goal for today was to get it all edited, all up and actually create a sales page and even send out an email about it to try and sell my first copy. But it did not get that far. I have edited and I have uploaded all of the videos. I have some design work to do to create the thumbnails for each of the videos and so I have to create a sales page in order to sell this product so I am still a couple of days away from that.

I am going to have Monday off. I have a Smash Brothers tournament tomorrow so I will let you guys know how I go with that. And then my weekend is going to be Sunday, Monday and then next week I will only be working 25 hours during the week so this is my trial week and so because I am taking Monday off. And I will probably do like 4 6-hour days or 3 6-hour days or one 7-hour day or something like that. Work less. Spend some time with the family and yes, see how we would go.

I do not know when I am going to get this out. Hopefully early, some time this week. It is not early next week but some time next week and how much do I want to sell it for? That is the question that I am asking myself. Do I go – I think the highest that I would charge would be $50 and the lowest I would charge would be $20 so I am really umm-ing and aah-ing about how much to sell this for. So the course is called How To Become A Great Public Speaker In Private so how can you train to become a better public speaker in the privacy of your own home.

If you want to check out the course, if that is something you are interested in, go to Outspoken.co/private and you can check out the course there. By the time this goes live the course will be up there and be available for sale. I am still working at how much I am going to charge for it and something that I am absolutely stoked about is that I am going to charge US dollars for the course.

I have said in a previous episode that one of my frustrations is that I earn Australian dollars and I spend US dollars. And so what that means at the moment is it is about 1.5 so that every US dollar that I spend, it is almost a dollar and fifty Australian that I need to earn in order to cover that cost.

So I am excited to have this course out, just start selling this course and hopefully I can earn some US dollars for the expenses that I have in US dollars and so yeah, I am pumped to do that so it will be somewhere in between $20 to $50 US dollars. I think if I did a better production of it so because obviously I recorded it in 1 day, recorded it in my bedroom.

It is a pretty cruisy production. If I have done a good production of it I think I will feel more confident charging either $50 or $100 for it. But because the production is not awesome I am not feeling super confident to do that so $20 to $50 will probably be where it lands. But yeah, I was excited to be able to smash out 8 videos in one day, an entire course. And I have them edited and all I have to do is create a sales page then I can put it up on my site to sell it.

So pretty pumped to be in that situation and to finally, finally, finally have a course for Outspoken.co which previously Public Speaking Power which is a site that I have massively struggled to monetize even though I get great traffic to it. So I will keep you guys updated with how it will go, what I decide in terms of the price, and whether or not I can sell any unit. And as I promised yesterday, if we sell just one copy we are going to have a big celebration and crack some champagne or drink a beer or something like that.

If we sell a copy I will call an episode While I’m Drinking Beer and we can celebrate that together. Alright guys, that is it for me for today. It is 4:35 on Friday and I have the weekend coming up. I have the tournament tomorrow. I have to hang out with the kids and the family and have some dinner. I hope you guys have an awesome weekend. So until next time, if you want instructions go and buy some furniture!

If you have nothing and try to make it twice as good you will still end up with nothing. This is the problem I have been having with my public speaking site.

What is a 20% improvement on nothing? It is nothing right? What is 100% improvement on nothing? it is nothing right? So if you have absolutely nothing and you try and make it twice as good you are still going to end up with nothing because you have not done anything.

And I think that is the problem that I have been having with my public speaking site which is now called Outspoken.co. I cannot improve it because it is not really making any money. I do not have any products so I cannot create a product and see what the feedback is and kind of improve upon it. I do not have anything on there.

I think a big part for me about getting On Property to the place where it is at was simply constant improvement. I launched my first membership site, my first product, in April of 2014 so it is about 18 months ago. So I launched it, it was a membership site where I taught people how to find positive cash flow properties and I was going to list some positive cash flow properties in there but it was pretty infrequent that I was listing those properties.

What I found out as I started selling this site I then adjusted the sign-up forms to say which part of the site did you sign up for? Was it the courses? Was it the tools? Was it the properties? And 90 plus percent of people said they signed up for the properties.

And so I started learning as I ran this site, as I created this site that this is what people want. This is what people are willing to pay for. And then also I was getting feedback from people saying “you are only charging $200?” like there is something wrong with this like I am undercharging. And so I began to understand what is this actually worth to people.

I was only charging $20 a month or $300 per year and so people are thinking, “it is worth more than this, what are you doing?” and it was kind of like people were hesitant to buy because it was cheap and so I was learning about that.

I was then learning more about how to teach people about finding positive cash flow properties as I got more customers and different things that I could sell. If you have been listening for any point in time you would have known that I talked about creating and selling eBooks which sold pretty well but they were so cheap that it is not worth it.

And then I kind of graduated onto creating and selling these courses that are going for $100 each and I have sold probably $1,200 worth of courses at the moment which would take me hundreds of eBooks to sell and I only have to sell to 20 or so customers. So, pretty awesome there.

What has happened with On Property is over time I have been invested more into it because it is making me money. And I have also adjusted my courses, adjusted my products, adjusted the things that I sell and slowly improved upon them.

So what started out as pretty crappy, as a membership site that was not super awesome slowly became better and better over time as I made progress to that and as I improved it. And so one of the things that I think is holding me back from expanding into other niches like into public speaking, into podcasting, is I do not have any customers. I do not have any products to improve and I have not actually gone ahead and done it.

So why am I talking about this? Why am I saying all these? Well, I have decided that I am going to create a course for Outspoken.co. It is going to be a course on how to become a great public speaker from the privacy of your own home. So one of the things that has really helped me in my speaking ability over the years was just simply talking and creating videos and doing a lot from the privacy of my own home.

So I have done a lot of videos and if I go back to the first videos I did on public speaking, well the first videos I did here on On Property, I definitely cringe at them. They are very cringe-worthy for me because I see what I used to be like and how I used to present. How stiff I was. How unnatural that was for me and how poor the quality was and I have come a long way. My quality is still, in terms of the video image is not awesome but in terms of my speaking ability, my ability to talk impromptu, my ability to come up with stuff on the spot, be confident enough to do that, has really grown.

It used to be really emotionally straining for me to create videos and the more and more that I do it, the less straining it is; the less emotionally straining because it is kind of like a subconscious thing that I do now like riding a bike. And so I am creating this course on How To Become A Better Public Speaker Without Leaving Your Own Home. So you can actively do it in the privacy of your own home to become a better public speaker.

And so the goal of this course is not to be the most awesome course that I have ever created. I think something that has held me back from creating a course for Outspoken is I see the quality of stuff that is out there and I just think I cannot match that. I cannot be as good as Patricia Fripp who is a famous chick who teaches public speaking, probably makes millions of dollars. I am not as good as her. My quality is definitely not as good as hers.

I am not as well-dressed as her. I do not have makeup that is as nice as hers. Of course I do not wear makeup. But I could wear makeup. I could have cats.

Anyway, something that has held me back a lot is that too scared to sell something, too scared to even create something because I feel like it is not going to be good enough. But if I create something and I try and sell it and I see how it goes and then I can improve upon that. If this course is going well; it is resonating with people, I can improve this course and make it better. I could re-record it down the road so it is more professional if I wanted to. Or I could go ahead and create another course. What I want to do is I want to get out there and I want to get this course created.

So that is what I am doing today, I am recording this course. So I have done 4 videos. It is a 7-part course but it has an introduction video which I have done and I will probably have a conclusion video as well.

So let us say I have 8 videos that I need to create all up. I have done 4. Ideally, I would love to get them finished by the end of today, by the time I finished working. But what is the time now? It is probably like 4:30. It is 3 o’clock and I finish work at 4:30 so can I get another 4 videos done in an hour and a half? Probably not.

But I can get some of them done and what I  am trying to do is just get all these recordings done because I feel like if I do not get them done quickly then I am not going to get them done. It is a scary thought for me so I am motivated now. I want to just go ahead and do them. And then it is easy for me to just have a cruisy day and to edit the course and then to put it up for sale.

So I want to get a course out. I want to get it created. I am halfway through. Give me some encouragement. Hopefully I can do it by the end of today or at least some time tomorrow to get this completed.

That is where I am at, creating a course for Outspoken.co. I am really excited to get my first course out for this. We might sell one copy and I am going to be over the moon and I will definitely, definitely share that with all of you and let you know. We can celebrate together. We can crack some champagne or a bottle of water, whatever it is that you want to drink. So wish me luck and we will see how it goes.

So until next time guys, if you want instructions go and buy some furniture.

A quick update about my nervousness from yesterday. I went ahead and made 4 free videos yesterday…so much for my fear about creating free videos.

Hey guys! Ryan here from Instructions Not Included. I just want to give you a quick update over what happened yesterday.

Basically after I have recorded that episode saying I do not think I can make any new videos, I went ahead and I made 4 videos yesterday. 4 free videos to go out and at the end of each video I did a call to action to one of my products. They will go out over the next couple of weeks and once I have gone into the swing of things it was definitely a lot easier to do these free videos.

I think I have just been out of it so long and the only free videos I have done have really been interviews where I have done a few videos where I am not in front of the camera so to have myself in front of the camera, to be doing these videos was just difficult to get started. But once I got started it has been good and yes, I think those 4 videos will do pretty well.

I have a couple of other videos that I want to get recorded. Today, I just worked on my product and editing the video out for my product which is on suburb research.

So I have a few of those videos edited so that is almost done. I think I have 3 more videos to create for that but I will definitely, definitely get it done by the 15th of October. It should be absolutely simple in order to do that and yeah, things are going pretty well.

I have hit my income goal for the month which is over $6,000; $6,200 so I am happy with that and so really, it is just about continually working towards getting a more sustainable income for me.

So next week is the week when I am working only 25 hours. That will be interesting to see what I can get done in 25 hours. Can I get the same amount of work in that time and if I can maybe I should drop to 25 hours earlier. And also, does my family even want me to be home during those hours or would they rather have me away and be working and not annoying them. So it will be a good experiment.

This Saturday I have another Smash Brothers Tournament coming up so for those of you interested in that, I am getting better and so I hope to win at least one game at that tournament. That is my goal for the tournament, to win one game and so we will see how that goes. And really, no master plans, no massive changes in terms of business at the moment. Just continuing to plug along with OnProperty.com.au and really do not have any breakthrough ideas for other niches that I want to go into. But after creating the videos just yesterday, I am thinking about maybe doing daily videos again for On Property.

It was such a good way to grow my business and to grow it quickly back when I started 2 years ago. And so I am thinking especially now when I have products that I can market, I can do a call-to-action in every video for these products. Then I am going to get a return in investment for that and it is just going to be worthwhile. So I am definitely, definitely considering moving back to daily videos for On Property.

However, I am just a bit worried that I will not have enough content to create. But maybe I just need to create shorter videos and not go as in-depth with particular topics. One of the videos that I created yesterday was really sharing my thought process on things so rather than it being really mathematical about the property market or data-driven, all that sort of stuff, it was just me encouraging people to question why they are doing what they are doing; why they have the goals set the way that they have them set; and who knows, maybe more of my videos will move towards that.

So I do not really know the next steps for me. I do not know if I am going to go ahead and do daily videos, that is a big commitment. I do not know if I like On Property enough to make that commitment to On Property. But definitely something that I am considering especially now that I have all my training videos out for my virtual assistant to get my videos up – like I created 4 videos and in 2 hours she has done all the work that I would have needed to do to get those videos uploaded, to get them to SoundCloud, to get them on my site, to get the transcriptions ordered, all that sort of stuff.

It should take me like a week. I would record like 7 videos in a day. It will take me 4 days to get them all up. I can record 7 videos in a day and then my virtual assistant does everything else. That takes her a quarter of the time it took me maybe she is just technically inclined or she is better at that than me.

So yeah, daily videos is definitely a viable option and would not lead to me working in excess of 25 hours a week. But it could definitely generate the extra income that I need; drive more people to my products which is what I need in order to get that sustainable income.

So definitely something to think about, ponder, and consider this week and next week. We will see how we will go. We will keep you guys updated on what I am doing and how my business is progressing throughout the week and next week, how I go with the 25 hours. But until then I do not really have much more to add. So until next time, stay positive.