Hey friends,

I’m sending you a sweet combination of how to guide and pep talk all about small evergreen products. I promise they are super fun and might be a much easier summer project than a full blown course.

Here is what I shared:

  • Why small evergreen classes are awesome
  • How to find the right topic
  • Deciding on a format that works for you and your audience
  • How to market your creation in an enjoyable and easy way

I also invited you to my free virtual summer retreat, you can sign up here: httpss://pinkwellstudio.com/summer-retreat/

More info and the sign up for my free intro to branding workshop is here: httpss://pinkwellstudio.com/intro-to-branding-workshop/

and finally here is my Questioning Social Media class if you want a cute example for a small evergreen class: httpss://pinkwellstudio.com/questioning-social-media-class/

Enjoy!

Listen to the Embodied Business Podcast

on Apple Podcast // Spotify

 

⋒ Hi, my name is Yarrow.

My Embodied Business podcast explores what it means to build a livelihood with integrity, joy and anti capitalist values. I offer practical guidance on tech, strategy, ethical marketing, creativity and money and interview other small business owners who do things their own way.

You can learn more about my work, listen to other episodes or join my community at PinkWellStudio.com

You can also sign up for my newsletter - I offer free monthly Spark Sessions and share resources, ideas & new episodes about once per month over on Substack

Transcript

Hey everyone, this is Yarrow with a little pre intro. So I really enjoyed recording this episode. And I got a lot of feedback from it. And there’s also been a lot of people who have this year taken my questioning social media class, and enjoyed it and had questions about that. So in the joy of all of that, and the sharing, and also the things that we discuss in the embody business community this month, I decided to offer something called create and launch, which is going to be a full week live programme starting on July 5, in which I’m going to lead you through the process of creating your own class, or course. And so yeah, you will get access to all the pre recorded videos, there’s going to be about 16 of them. And I’m going to share my screen and really take you step by step through everything that I’ve done. And I’m doing at the moment. And then we’ll also have weekly live classes on a Monday UK evening. And those are there for questions for getting feedback for meeting other like minded people that we recorded in case you can’t make it, I think that should be really fun. Because at the moment, I’m teaching the web design adventure in the same four week process. And it’s just such a joy to see that like the short bursts of live classes, and people going through an experience together can make it so so much easier to actually do the thing. So if you are listening to this, because you’ve been wanting to create your own class, or evergreen course for a while, then I really invite you to check that out. It is on an early bird pricing for $180 until June 18, which happens to be the date I’m having surgery again. And to be honest, I just kind of like the idea of knowing that I am supported in my work in that way. Maybe that’s a vulnerable and weird thing to say I don’t think so actually. But I’ve just been really enjoying teaching this class this month. And I know this is going to be something that I’m only going to look forward to before I’m diving back into design work with clients later in the month. So yeah, please consider that. I think it’s going to feel really great. At the end of August, early September to have a class ready to go. As the world is kind of shifting into this back to school vibe. That’s often happening around that time of the year. So yeah, and thank you so much for listening, and we’re gonna share the episode with you now. Hey, everyone, my name is Yarrow, and you’re listening to the embodied business podcast. I’m excited for this episode. Creating small evergreen products is something that I’ve really enjoyed. And I’m really excited for more people to get into this as well. And I hope that by the end of this episode, you’ll feel clear and confident about what the next steps are. Before I dive deeper, I want to share two exciting updates. The first one is that I’m offering a free summer retreat on a 24th of trend and 25th of July. That’s a weekend and it will be the afternoon and UK time. So I think from kind of two to seven. UK time. So that should cover a broad range of timezones, hopefully, at least for some of the sessions that are we hosting, and I think it’s really going to be a lot of fun. I want to kind of hold a space for people to come together and really implement something bigger, right? I feel that we are we are, you know, we have a difficult year behind us. And very often people have found that they haven’t had a chance to kind of engage and work with the bigger picture or the bigger vision that they’re holding for the work, which makes total sense. And it’s also the reason why I want us to come together and kind of share notes, feel less alone, and have this kind of gentle accountability of a group to feel that we have a sense of forward movement again. So I’ll be offering some short meditations that I guided some journaling. I’m going to share a workshop on my new root bloom roots and bloom framework, which is a really lovely value based framework of he has developing things in a really in a sustainable and regenerative way. I think I’m waffling but I am excited about
it. And I think it will be really useful to that with that. So if you feel called please join us. I’ll link to that in the show notes. It’s free. You’ll get to know really beautiful, amazing people some of which I might embody business community and I’ll share a lot of tools And we’ll also have some co working time, so that you can really implement what we’re talking about. And it’s not just another workshop that you come to feel overwhelmed by, and then kind of forget about. So yeah, it’s gonna be great. The second update is that I’m offering a free intro to branding workshop on June 7, as promised, a free monthly workshops are a thing again, teaching about web design as an intro last month was really, really fun. And so yeah, there’ll be lots more topics coming up. And you can get on my newsletter list to hear about all of them. But for now, June 7 is the next one coming up. All right, let’s get into it. So how to create and launch a small evergreen product,
I want to begin by talking about why I love them so much, and why you might want to have them in your business as well.
So firstly, they are relatively small or low commitment, both in you making it but also in people buying it. So if you haven’t created a bigger course, yet, they’re just such a beautiful thing to kind of play with and experiment with and invite people to support your way, do your work in that way. And even if you have a bigger course, I had bigger courses before I had a small class. And they’re just really fun to add. And it’s really nice, I think, to be able that was my dog, to be able to meet people at different stages in that openness to working with you. That was a long word sentence. But what I’m trying to say is, you know, maybe you have a bigger quiz already. And it’s not quite right for everyone in your audience. And maybe having a smaller evergreen product, like a class or workbook could be a nice way of offering something different. And if you haven’t got a bigger quercia add them, you know, even better than that will be a stepping stone for you, me maybe developing one in the future. Another thing I love about them is that they give us a chance to teach something in a kind of bite sized, but more in depth in social media kind of way, right. So I think, I think we’ve come become used to kind of receiving information have through scrolling through a feed. And I think there’s something beautiful and taking kind of one step forward. And committing to something like an hour long class, where we’re going a little bit deeper. And we’re really getting to pay attention and to learn something that will will integrate into our lives. And so a small class where you’re teaching something that you’re really passionate about, it’s such a great way of doing that. I also think that this is a nice way for you to practice teaching. And again, if you haven’t gone gotten a bigger quiz yet, then teaching just one small class might be a great way for you to get a feeling for how people receive the information that you’re sharing. And how you can maybe tailored to what would be easiest or most accessible for people to receive. And that’s obviously so unique for each of us. And finally, it can also be a really nice gift. So if you are have a if you have a podcast, for example, and you want to invite someone that you don’t know yet, you could say, Hey, you know, I’ve been following your work I really enjoyed, I would love to talk to you on my podcast. But for you to have a chance to also get to know my work and decide if this is right for you. Here’s a free code to my class. It’s just a nice gesture, you know, they might or might not might need it or would have paid for it. But that’s not the point. You’re just being kind and having like a smaller class that you can easily give away for like that, I think is a really beautiful thing to have on the internet, basically. All right, so so these are the reasons why I think this is a great idea. The next thing I want to talk about is finding a topic. So here are a few questions that I would invite you to ask yourself, if you’re not sure about what your topic would be. The first one is what do you get questions about all the time? So thinking about how people engage with you on social media, what kind of questions you get a real live, what people maybe ask you at a dinner party about your work. What do you really love talking about? or What do you wish you had known five years ago? So maybe this is something people don’t even know to ask about. That could be a thing. But then that might be worth thinking about your younger self and how you came to this work, and what you just really wish you had known sooner and that could be the class that you make. I also think it’s a great idea to ask what is one thing that someone could maybe make in a weekend with your guidance. So an example is my smaller cause, on branding with Canva which teaches people how to Put colour palettes together how to work with design elements and fonts and how to get started creating graphics in Canva. And so that’s something that you can do in a weekend. So it’s a smaller class. And it’s really practical. And so, yeah, think of along those lines, like what could you share with people that they could implement in a weekend that would make a tangible difference to them? And then finally, of course, what are you most passionate about? Right? So I’m sure there’s a story of how you came to do the work that you are doing today that’s really close to your heart and really sit with that question, the story and the tools that kind of has helped you get there along the way, and how could you share them.
The next thing you probably want to think about is the right format. And I really want to say here that it doesn’t have to be video, it especially doesn’t have to be video where you’re facing the camera. So I think that is a big barrier for a lot of people because it is, you know, it can be fun, maybe it is fun for you. But what many people feel some hesitation around getting in front of the camera. And it can be a little bit more work of editing and scripting and getting it right, that kind of stuff. So if you feel nervous about this, just think about a different format. And that could be audio, I think there’s a lot of topics where audio is a perfectly beautiful choice. In fact, I love learning through audio, and sometimes even prefer to video, when there isn’t something that I need to see, so that I can understand it visually, then I would much prefer listening in to it in my garden, with my headphones on looking at the sky and maybe pottering around a bit because I’m someone who learns much better and movement and kind of like being outside and doing something physically physically than really sitting still and staring at the screen. So I think you know, that might not be everyone. But this is something interesting to think about how would you want to present your material and doesn’t really have to be video. Another way of doing it is to have a video but to screenshare slide. So this is something that I do for my web design course where I’m either sharing kind of behind the scenes of how I’m doing things in WordPress, or I have slides that I’m reading off of, and people can kind of follow along with them. But they could also just listen if they wanted to. And that makes it much easier for me at least to stay on track. And in terms of what I want to talk about. But also to not worry too much about what I’m looking like in that moment. And if I have the right flattering camera angle, and that kind of stuff. So the slides kind of really helped me to talk about what I want to go through. But I don’t read often word by word, because I know my shed. And so just need these pointers as kind of like a framework to make sure I’m not not waffling into a different into the distance, which I sometimes do. And yeah, they’re really fun and easy to make for me. And then finally, you could also of course, make a workbook you know or create something otherwise visual, like maybe you want to present like a photo series that teaching people something or a guided meditation or a visualisation or some other kind of how to guide. So don’t limit yourself by the examples that I’m giving you here, right. So thinking about accessibility, as I’ve already kind of touched on can of course being important. And I think it’s really important to me to look at SS accessibility from from like a holistic, multi dimensional viewpoint. Because we we want to make sure that people who want to work with us can access our work. But we also want to make sure that we can sustainably work in our businesses. And it looks like different things, you know, at different points, of course. So yeah, think about this, both from your audience and from your own perspective. And there’s, of course, also practical things that you can do. So for example, I use a software called weed to caption my videos, if you create audio, you can transcribe it. There’s automated services for that now they’re pretty affordable. So yeah, there we think about what your audience need and how it would be easier for them to access what you have to share. Here’s the technology that I use. So I use the QuickTime Player to record video audio. And then like I said, I use read to add captions, and that’s written or spelled v Ed, and I had like a month long subscription and got all my videos done for the new courses in March.
And that was great. It was a really good experience. And then I sometimes use iMovie to tweak and cut my videos and then I have my courses on pod Yeah, to actually deliver the thing, another work around or not work around, it’s just another solution, I guess that’s free. Because podio isn’t free. podio is great in lots of ways, I really recommend it. But if you have WordPress site and you don’t have a budget for software, you could set up a WooCommerce digital product. And then you could integrate that for free with mailer, light and accept payments through PayPal. So the process would then be you have a sales page on your WordPress site, this links to your WooCommerce product, people check out through the connection between WooCommerce and melee, they get an automated welcome email from mailer light. And that gives them access to your thing. And that could be, for example, an embedded video on a password protected site. So any welcome email would say something like, Hey, thank you so much for taking my class. Here’s how you access it, this is the password, this is how you can work through it, he is maybe an additional PDF. Good luck, basically, you know, I would probably also talk about how excited you feel that people you know, get to experience a transformation, what they can expect as an outcome, maybe just to get them a little bit more hyped up even. So yeah, it’s actually really much simpler than you probably think. So there’s lots of different free ways of doing this as again, just one example. And obviously, launching is a big topic. So I just want to kind of cover my most important tips here to again, hopefully make you feel that you can totally do this. I think what’s important to think about is your content. And I would recommend that you batch that. So you could maybe say okay, I’m creating this class. And I’m going to, I’m going to prepare five different Instagram posts and maybe going to go live twice. And I’m going to send three newsletters just as an example, right, this could look totally different doesn’t matter. But really plan this out, create a super simple excel sheet and name where you’re going to mention this new thing and where and how often and with that, really remember that people have to see something many, many times until they decide, I think a really tricky beginner’s mistake is to mention it once and then be like waves that I taught, I told them about it, and they didn’t buy it. So maybe they just don’t want it. That is not how it works. Okay, I’m so sorry. This is super annoying for introverts, I know. But it’s really not how the internet works, you have to tell people several times and you can tell them about different angles and perspectives, you can begin by telling them why you made it and then you could tell them about a testimonial. And then you tell them the kind of outcome that you seeing people have after the class. And then he could tell them, I did something else, right? Like you, you can be creative. Just make sure that you’re in the right headspace when you’re batching your launch content and make sure that you’re committing to a schedule, and that you either schedule those things in so that it can go wrong, or that you block time in your calendar to share about them as you have committed to. I would also recommend that you make space for imposter syndrome that might come up. My my experience was when I first recorded my fire, my first language is almost five years ago, now I put so much energy into the production. When it came to launching, I was just exhausted, and I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. And I just felt super shy. And I wish I had anticipated that and put things in place for me to kind of, you know, catch that feeling a little bit, I guess. So one thing I really love having now is a feedback folder where I save all the emails with positive feedback that I got. And when I feel a bit nervous about sharing something new, I go through the folder and I remind myself that my work matters. And that has helped people and also that people have agency if they don’t want to do it, they won’t do it. And that’s fine, you know, so there’s really nothing to worry about. And finally, another thing that you can do if you know that this is something that might come up for you is just to get an accountability buddy. So someone who really loves your work, and who can exchange positive feedback with you. That doesn’t mean you can’t also share constructive criticism, of course, but find someone that you feel really comfortable and safe with who will cheer you on to actually say your thing when you’re ready to share it. Alright, so one last thing I want to talk about is pricing. And since we’re talking about small evergreen products here, my main takeaway is do not overthink this. Okay? Because I think the main thing if you’re just trying this out and you haven’t run a course before, is just that it feels fun and you are feeling that you’re being
respected and seen and that people acknowledge the work that you’ve put into this and that Again, could look like totally different things for you, right? So I don’t want ever want to put a number on this year, it just really depends on how long you spend learning this thing. You know, how much have you invested in getting to the point where you can teach this? How much have you put into the production of the class? How many spots Do you expect to sell? And what do you need in order to feel safe and appreciated. So, I have recorded a class called questioning social media. And it’s currently $13. And it feels like a really fun and playful number. It’s not a big commitment. On either side, I’ve sold quite a few spots where it and people really liked it, and made me happy. It took just like half a day to make. Everyone has having fun. So that’s great. And I really, really enjoyed that. So yeah, of course, if you are feeling worried about pricing, I totally understand I think there isn’t like a right or wrong way of doing it. Well, maybe there’s I don’t know. Sorry. So anyway, what I’m trying to say is, remember, there’s always options, right, you could have a base price and say, once a quarter, I’m giving two spots away when offering a scholarship. And I would recommend that you think about boundaries around that. Scholarships are free sports are amazing. And I think economic justice is really, really important. But I think it’s also important that you’re not becoming resentful and that you’re not feeling pressured into just giving your class away randomly to absolutely everyone, right. You might have a freebie for your newsletter, which is a different thing. But you deserve to be compensated, and it’s okay to maybe say, you know, I’m giving two spots away a quarter or I have this little form here that you can fill in if you need a scholarship. And I’ll get back to you. I think those are totally, totally valid things to do. And finally, I want to say I think what’s really going to motivate you to follow through with this whole process is to make it a part of your business plan. And to see it as part of your bigger picture. So I created the questioning social media class, for example, because I really, it has been a beautiful experience for me to leave social media, I want to talk about this with more people. So I want to be part of this dialogue. And I want all of us to feel that we have options that may be sometimes social media is right for us. And sometimes maybe isn’t. But really, that our mental health is really important as small business owners and that we get to express ourselves and share about our work in a way that really works for us. So that’s something I’m super passionate about. And also, I had an accident in December last year, I’m gonna have surgery again next month, I really need to kind of take it easy this year and make sure that I have enough time and space to heal. And so recording these kinds of classes at a time where I have enough energy and it suits me is a really nice way of making a bit of extra income. And so this is a part of my bigger picture business plan. Yeah. And it might be a part of yours as well. So thank you so much for listening. I really hope this has been helpful. I would love to see your cars out in the world. And also again, a reminder about the summer retreat, and the free branding workshop that comes up on June 7. So check the show notes for that and please join us if you like and you can of course also invite your friends by

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