Cheap Revolution

Launching an online course or product: Platforms and Process

This summer I set out to launch an course for people seeking to enter the medical marijuana business in PA.   I wanted people to pay for the course online and planeed to deliver much of the content through recorded course modules.    I had never launched an online course before so I had some research to do.  In this post, I'll share what I learned. 

Besides the actual course content and interaction, there are three key components to consider in launching an online course:

1) The Online Course Studio

2) The Online Course Back Office

3) The Online Course Marketing 

The Studio - online platforms for recording the course

The first key decision involved recording the course material.   I planned on having multiple faculty members collaborating from different locations, needed the ability to visually share a presentation and (ideally) the video of the speakers.   Having had too many negative experiences with online technology failing, reliability was important to me.   I looked at a number of platforms including Adobe Connect, WebinarJam and GotoWebinar.    

WebinarJam has an excellent price point and a wide range of sophisticated features.   However, as a frequent user of Google Hangouts, I couldn't get past the fact that WebinarJam is built on top of the Google Hangouts technology.    I've found this technology to be fine for informal meetings and conversations with other team members, but way too unreliable to use with clients or serious business meetings.   Maybe this will change over time, but I wanted my classes to go off without a hitch and couldn't take the risk.  It's also possible that WebinarJam is built on a more reliable version of hangouts then I use casually.   This platform is definitely worth a close look!

AdobeConnect was almost my first choice.  This industrial grade platform has a range of capabilities that go beyond a webinar platform.   I can manage course catalogs, track learner progress, develop tests and more.   At the end of my evaluation, I decided it was overkill and overly expensive for my fledgling training company.   

The final choice came down to GotoWebinar.   I had experience with its little sister, GotoMeeting and found it to be reliable and effective.   It has a simple interface but it has never failed me.   (Once I forgot to push the "record" button and had to re-do a 1 hour course as a result - but I can't blame GotoWebinar for that).   GotoWebinar allows me to easily set up a new event, send out invites to panelists, record and publish the resulting recording.    Publishing your recorded module can be done through a managed interface which captures names and emails for future contact when someone accesses your platform.   I also like that GotoWebinar allows you to optionally record video of the participants in addition to whatever is showing up on your desktop.   For me, that was usually a PowerPoint presentation.   I found that having dual monitors made management a lot easier - although a single monitor can be used to pull this off. 

 

GotoWebinar allows you to capture live video with presentation

 

 

 

Setting up a new webinar is simple

 

 

Managing the polls, questions and live interaction are all manageable.  The user interface for the questions and polls could be improved, but we've used them with success in our online course modules.

 

Once live - you can chat with panelists ahead of time, get the audio/video right - and THEN broadcast

I refer to GotoWebinar as my virtual studio.   Using the cameras built into our laptops and a headset (or even built in microphones), you can record and integrate anyone with a laptop (or smart phone) and internet connection.   As I told many of our faculty, it works better if we are in different rooms, each on our separate "studio" portal.   Once you put multiple people in the same room, you need different kinds of audio and camera equipment.   GotoWebinar keeps it simple and straightforward to produce an online course.  

Of course, these aren't the only games in town.  Webex from Cisco, Google Hangouts and Join.Me  represent other online platforms for collaboration and recording.

The Online Course Backoffice

My next question is how to process the back-end?   I considered using Paypal directly from my Website and I looked at an eCommerce platform called e-Junkie (promotion shown in the button below).

After evaluating the options, I settled on a platform called GumRoad.   This platform makes it easy to add modules to your course... 

 

Adding course components is drag and drop - with different publishing options 

In addition, GumRoad processes credit card payments.   For $10/month, the processing fee is 3.5% plus $0.30 per transaction.   Students are given a platform that they can log into and access their course material.   One feature I'd like to see is a more in-depth review of which modules were viewed by each student.   At this point, I only get which modules were viewed.   

GumRoad makes it easy to create new versions of your product, something I'm experimenting with as I re-purpose many of my modules to an "online only" version of the product.    They also have an affiliate process which allows me to share links with special discounts that can be credited to partners willing to promote my class. 

GumRoad support is currently through email only.  This can be a little frustrating if you want to talk to a person.  At this time, that's all they offer - but my experience is that they do respond in a timely manner.   GumRoad fit the need I had for managing my courses and collecting revenue.

The Online Course Marketing

Your Website should have a strong landing page for your course offering.  A well-designed landing page can mean the difference between converting the sale or losing the sale.  

I found that using live information sessions through GotoWebinar, promoted in advance through social media and email marketing, were the most effective conversion tools.   Since I recorded the information sessions, I could embed the video into my Website's landing page.   This powerful combination worked well to drive course sales.

 

A strong landing page that gives detail and a flavor of the instructors can help convert customers

For interested parties, I use the Divi Wordpress Theme and it makes editing and manipulation of pages like this easy to do.

Conclusion

The combination of GotoWebinar, GumRoad and a strong Wordpress theme are used to create an online course offering.   The beauty of this platform is that it is easy to use, accessible to all Internet users and can be easily reconfigured and re-purposed to future needs. 

Do you have some online course tips you'd like to share?   Please leave a comment for us!

ROAR for Good: Social Impact Startup

We are fortunate to have serial entrepreneur Yasmine Mustafa as part of the Cheap Revolution team.   Yasmine is currently working hard on her fourth startup called ROAR for Good - a social impact company that seeks to reduce violence against women.  ROAR provides a device to empower women to protect themselves in dangerous situations. 

Check out our 5 minute interview with Yasmine  (transcript below).  (Apologies for the noise near the end of the video... we were in a classroom and someone lowered the projector screen to prepare for class.)

 

VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION FOLLOWS...

Cheap Revolution: Please start off by telling us about what ROAR is.

Yasmine: Sure. ROAR is a social impact company. We are aimed at diminishing violence against women using technology and educational programs. We are building, as a short-term solution, self-defense wearables. So, picture jewelry that you would wear that, when you activate it, will trigger a high-frequency alarm, a bright, flashing strobe light, or you can launch a silent version as well that will message your friends and family your location and call campus security, 911, whatever you designate in the emergency line. And the idea there is, when you're threatened and when you want help, you can distract and disorient someone and instantly get help. And, then, it integrates with a mobile app that kind of acts like Waze, but for safety, so it uses crowd-sourced safety tips so you could text somebody and know if you're about to enter a dangerous area.

So, for example, let's say a mugging just happened. Everybody who’s nearby would get a push notification. The idea is you’d be more vigilant of your surroundings and know what's going on.

And the final piece of it is we are using some of the proceeds from the wearable and partnering up with non-profits that host educational programs for young boys and young girls to teach them empathy, and respect, and consent, so -- to really get to the root of the problem. And, so, then one day, this device is hopefully obsolete.

Cheap Revolution: Terrific. What gave you the idea for this?

Yasmine: A lot of things. I'm from the Middle East and, over there, women are oppressed. They don't have the same opportunities that I have here. And I feel like I cheated the birth lottery a little bit. So, I always think about how my mom had an arranged marriage, and she has to ask permission to do stuff, and her sole purpose was to have a family, and preferably boys, and of course, cover up, and what my life would have been like if I would not have come here during the Persian Gulf War. And I feel very lucky that I am here and I want to do something to shift kind of the gender inequality that exists.

And, then, the real trigger happened when -- I think it was late 2013, I had just come back from a big trip. I did a six-month solo trip through South America. A week after I came back, a woman was raped a block from our apartment, a street that I walk by all the time. She had just moved from Chicago. It was her fourth day here. She was out at a bar meeting some people and she went off to refill her meter, ten o'clock at night, when a guy grabbed her from behind, punched her, dragged her down an alley, and brutally raped her. And, when I read this news story the next day, I had the initial idea, which was taking existing self-defense tools and making them wearable. So, the initial idea was actually called the Macelet, like Mace in a bracelet.…  But, then, I did some market research, talked to a lot of women, and learned they actually don't like some of these self-defense tools because they're either intimidated by them, or they're really afraid that they would be overpowered and it would be used against them. So, then, the idea shifted to what it is now.

Cheap Revolution: Okay. So, that's an interesting insight into some of the early days of the product, the concept. What are some of the things that you came across as you were building the product? What were some of the challenges?

Yasmine: Well, I've never built a hardware company before. This is new territory. It's actually my fourth company, but still…

Cheap Revolution: It's your fourth startup?

Yasmine: Fourth startup.

Cheap Revolution: Wow.

Yasmine: But, still kind of brand new in the hardware space. So, learning about that was really interesting, but a lot of fun. So, one of the earliest challenges that we had was how to design the prototype, how to make it so that it's functional, it's beautiful, it's something people would want to wear, and it's not accidentally triggered because you can just imagine that, like, someone accidentally brushes against the device and now, 911 is called and it’s not an emergency. So, how do you create it so that it works well, is easy to use, but also not so easy it’s accidentally triggered. That was our biggest design challenge within the company. And, yeah, hiring the right people helped a lot. And, then, we used is the lean startup methodologies. So, we test everything that we do. So, we've had focus groups. We've done some surveys. We held a mock self-defense class. We had people try things on to see how they may react to common moves with the device. And we even used them to help inform the process along the way. 

---------- End of Transcript

Thank you Yasmine!  Please drop us a line letting us know what you think of this interview - or share your own startup building ideas in the comments.

 

An Approach for Bootstrapping: Balancing Results, Incentive and Profit in a Startup

(NOTE: This was originally intended for the blog at www.phillymarketinglabs.com .  It is used here with permission of Philly Marketing Labs management.  As PML has grown, this system has gradually been phased out.  That said, it served us very well in funding a business building capacity at PML with limited resources during the startup phase.  Consider this as a case study on building a flexible compensation system for a startup service company.  - Skip Shuda)

Building a business is hard work. Building a business in a sputtering economy may often require a herculean effort. As a young, digital marketing agency (founded Jan. 2010) without big venture backers, Philly Marketing Labs struggled with the questions of:

• How do we deliver superior results to our clients while growing our team? We quickly learned that only a team full of A-level players can make that happen.
• If we have a team of superstars, then how do provide them with compelling short-term and long-term incentives? As a company, we must reward outstanding performance with clients as well as provide reasons to stick around.
• How do we grow the business, make the investments that are required for a thriving enterprise and actually turn a profit? The trickiest part of the equation is gaining traction with growth while remaining completely self-funded.

Over time, a concentric, three circle model, a vortex of sorts, fell into place to help achieve the following:

• contractors become team members
• team members become business builders
• business builders become owners

... and everyone can become an investor in PML ... and the more skin they put in, the more of a long-term interest in the company they earn.

This diagram outlines the architecture of our compensation system. People are welcomed and encouraged to move towards the center over time. Not everyone does - some leave and others are happy staying put in the outer band for long periods of time.

The outer-most circle and the inner circle are probably most familiar to readers. The outer circle represents team members. Team members get paid by client gigs. Before we start a new job with a client, we create a "Pricing Sheet" that outlines all project work-streams and then assign a role, an estimated number of hours, an hourly rate and a company margin to each work stream. Each team member gets to review the pricing before it goes to the client - so we know there is team-wide buy-in for delivering the project. When the client pays, the team member gets paid based on the pricing sheet. Since this circle contains everyone, everyone is a team member.

The Little Red Hen circle derives its name from a child's  folk tale about work eithic that rewards the hardest workers. Our Little Red Hen (LRH) system is a profit-sharing, dividend that is vested over a six month period. We use it to fund all of our "business building" activities that clients don't pay for including marketing, sales, finance, HR and IT work. Any team member who contributes to these activity is deemed a Little Red Hen. They are invited to our Monday team meetings (for which they get "business building" points). Since its difficult to predict how much operating cash we'll have each month, we need a flexible system that rewards people for their contributions.

But what if I work hard on internal projects in August and we have a crummy operating income month? Then, just as I get pulled into a client project and put zero hours into internal projects, we have a windfall month! Do I get screwed in this scenario?

You do not get screwed! Your points are accumulated into a six month table, with 26 columns (one for each week).  At the end of each month, we tally up everybody's most recent six months of effort. Your total is added into the pie and you find out what percentage of this month's profit-share you will receive. If its a big month, you'll be rewarded handsomely for any heroic, business building efforts you had in the past six months.

Check it out... here is a slice of an actual, recent LRH worksheet. We've discovered that this system has a whole slew of desirable properties:

1. It has a natural vesting structure. When you start with us, you have to put in your dues... since after week 1 you will still have 25 weeks of zero balance. As a result, your monthly percentage will naturally reflect your tenure. After six months, you are on par with everyone. Every Little Red Hen is an investor in PML.
2. The LRH provides a home for consultants who are "on the bench" and lets them earn LRH points for productive business building. Recently, we started using it to fund R&D projects.
3. It provides for transparency on what everyone is spending time on. Every Monday, we all report our "point claims" - during which time any team member can challenge points being reported by another team member. It keeps us all honest - and we've documented a lot of policies and changed a lot of tactics through these discussions.
4. The system scales up and down in accordance with what the business can bear. Its great for entrepreneurial teams building a service business. The Owners (inner circle) set the monthly profit-sharing pool based on current cash flow projections. Since the Owners distribution is a fraction of the LRH pool, the Owners have an incentive to make the LRH as large as the business will bear - which benefits Little Red Hens and Owners alike.
5. The graph of weekly activity gives us a view into our "business building" investment and velocity. This turns out to be a pretty important metric that correlates with new business development, brand visibility and profitability.

Finally, the Inner Circle is the circle of equity owners. This group receives quarterly distributions from an Owner's pool. As mentioned, these amounts are set as a fraction of the LRH pool over the last quarter. Owners receive distributions from the Owner's pool based on their fraction of ownership. The existing Owners invite new Owners from the pool of exceptional Little Red Hens who have expressed an interest and demonstrated their value to the company over time.

This system is not for everyone. It requires participants with an entrepreneurial spirit and flexibility. Early on, a contractor-turned-team member is not likely to earn a full-time income. But the more willing they are to put skin in the game, the better they'll do. It naturally encourages the right kind of player (at least for Philly Marketing Labs). Note: while we do have some exceptions in our system (to accommodate special situations like interns or fixed-rate contractors), the majority of our business is built around this three tiered structure.

I'm sure you have questions, so please drop them in the comments below and I'll do my best to answer them. If you decide to copy this some element of this system, let me know. We'll want to compare notes as you grow your company. Its public now - so have at it!

 

Digital Marketing for Doctors, Lawyers through Startup CompeteLeap

This interview with entrepreneur Ryan Draving, Founder of CompeteLeap, took place in August, 2012. Cheap Revolution founder Skip Shuda and Ryan worked together previously together at Philly Marketing Labs, a digital marketing agency. 

 

Wordpress Academy – Make Your Own Website

Wordpress Academy’s Marc Beneteau is featured in this interview with Cheap Revolution’s Skip Shuda on how to use Wordpress to build a Website for your business or startup.   The interview has a lot of great information that could help you and we recommend you watch the whole thing.  However, if you don’t have the time for all 27+ minutes, this blog post provides timing for Wordpress topics that you might be most interested in as well as some of the key takeaways. 

 

What Is A Value Proposition?

We often make daily business transactions without taking a closer look at what transpired. For instance, think about a past  meeting with a potential client. What did you expect to happen? Did the meeting go by the book? How did the potential client act? What did he or she want from you? If all goes according to your plan, value proposition will be discussed, but you may have never even noticed it.

Posts You May Have Missed Last Week: Crowdsourcing, Pinterest and Guy Kawasaki

Life sometimes prevents us from enjoying our pleasures. And by pleasures, we mean Cheap Revolution. 

Just in case you missed our top posts from last week, we compiled them into a short list for your convenience:

Top Entrepreneurs on Twitter: Guy Kawasaki

Each week, we will seek to provide you with one entrepreneur who can be considered to be a must follow on Twitter. We will base our selections on inspirational entrepreneurs who provide valuable insight, as well as content for our readers. We encourage you to follow our reccommended entrepreneurs on Twitter, so that you absorb various viewpoints and opinions. By using Twitter, you enable yourself to consume an endless database of knowledge.

The 10 Slide Pitch Deck for Entrepreneurs

Starting your own business can be an overwhelming task, especially if it is your first time building a business from the bottom-up. You will quickly realize the only one available to complete all the assignments is you, which means your time is a precious commodity. Writing a full-blown business plan is probably an intimidating task at the top of your list. However, a standard business plan is not necessarily needed for your business to open up shop.

 

12 Cheap Employee Incentives that Will Pay Off for Your Company

 

Every business is looking for ways to create happier and more productive employees. However, with the economic recovery still slower than expected, many companies don’t have the budgets they once did for employee incentives. In fact, many businesses are simply trying to survive.

Still, with some creativity, you can come with several affordable ways to incent your employees and make them more loyal and more productive.

Grass-roots, The Great Disruption and Sandcastle Corporations

 The corporate sandcastles we've built are crumbling fast as the waves wash them away.  Some have called our existing system a "Ponzi Scheme".  Throwing billions of dollars to rebuild them may not be the answer.  Maybe its time for some creative destruction?  But what will replace the sandcastles?  The answer may be right under our feet.  How can we create new competencies for building effective grassroots organizations that can solve many of the emerging problems?

For the impatient reader, I have put together a brief list of some of the competencies that seem to be necessary for the grassroots organizations of tomorrow. Afterwards, I outline some of the root causes and possible solutions in more detail.

New competencies for new organizations

So we need to build new competencies.  I don't profess to know all of what these competencies are, but I'm getting busy studying the grassroots organizations that have worked to see what we can replicate.  Here are my early learnings from this journey...

1) Effective Grassroots organizations must be grounded in people gathering around a specific, common interest.  The more specific, the better. Its all about getting traction. A tight definition helps.

2) You need a BHAG (Big-Hairy-Audacious-Goal).   As Jim Collins tells us in Good to Great, big goals set our souls on fire.

3) People need to be passionate in the topic.  Passion drives personal investment and volunteerism.  These organizations thrive on self-fulfilling human energy (which is a renewable resource!)

4) Specific governance practices are key.  I'm sure there are many ways to do it.  My favorite is Holacracy. 

5) Specific processes help.  Some may find prescribed processes to be too rigid, but the most effective grass-roots organizations I've seen have specific protocols, that are kept simple and understandable.

6) Provide multiple communication channels... and allow easy participation.  Whether it's by email, a forum, a blogging platform or Twitter, you need to enable full contribution from the members.

What have you found to be effective in building grassroots organizations that can make real change?

The Great Disruption

The New York Times columnist and "World is Flat" author Thomas Friedman posted a recent column called "The Inflection is Near".  He highlighted the convergence of our economic crisis and environmental crisis and suggested that we may have hit a wall.  Joe Romm of climateprogress.org calls our current system for creating wealth 'a Ponzi scheme".  

Our institutions were created to convert exploited resources into wealth.  For hundreds of years, most of our marketplaces, exchanges, financial institutions, corporations and governments have been built on the backs of slavery, deforestation, burning fossil fuels and vast ghettos of human poverty.  If you need to see how we got here in more detail, check out the apocalyptic Internet movie Zeitgeist Addendum.

The Sandcastles are crumbling...

 

My good friend Valeria Maltoni of Conversation Agent and I were talking about this.  We observed that the institutions (banks, corporations, etc.) we've built over the past 50 years or so are like so many sandcastles laid out along a coastline.  And the waves are coming in higher and higher and washing them away.  And our government... actually most governments, are throwing money into rebuilding the sandcastles!

Grassroots to the rescue?

Could the answer be growing right under our feet?  I believe that Grassroots organizations are emerging to supplant the role of these depleted institutions with vibrant clusters of activity.  Passionate individuals are self-organizing into collectives which plugin into the economic grid. 

There is no greater example of a successful grassroots effort than the work of President Obama's Presidential campaign.  The folks at Blue State Digital, the team that built the popular My.BarackObama.com platform, report that the Obama campaign mobilized over 3 million individual donors to contribute over $500 million online, sent 2 billion email messages, motivated over 2 million social networking participants who wrote 400,000 blog posts and created and promoted more than 200,000 offline events across the country.  If this isn't a testament to the potential of grassroots organizations, then I don't know what is!  (BTW - I have the honor of introducing Blue State Digital CTO Jascha Franklin-Hodge in this week's Emerging Technology Enterprise conference.  Come if you can!)

To further illustrate the point, I was recently at an advisory board meeting for The Founders Factory, a grassroots-based event put together to support the Philadelphia Entrepreneurial Ecosystem. This eco-system, it turns out, was recently re-invigorated by another grassroots organization called PSL (Philly Startup Leaders).  During the meeting, the board members rattled off several new organic organizations supporting the Philly entrepreneurial and creative community without batting an eye.    (Philly Startup Leaders, Founders Factory, PANMA, Mobile Mondays, IgnitePhilly, ...)

Across business-people, spiritual seekers, hobbyists/enthusiasts and any other group that has a center of gravity around a common passion, new groups are springing up.  How many new, organic groups are you involved with?

Can the government help?

One last thought.  You may wonder if the government is going to be able to get with the program.  I was pointed to an article co-authored by incoming SBA (Small Business Association) Administrator Karen Mills.  Ms. Mills recognizes that 70% of business is generated by small businesses.  In a paper authored in 2008 on Industry Clusters, Ms. Mills and colleagues advocate fostering a system of regionally grown clusters that share in a common industry focus.  Sounds like a great opportunity for some grassroots development to help rebuild our failing economy.

Where do you stand on this?  Will it be business as usual as we rebuild or are we ready for some Creative Destruction... with new, grassroots organizations that grow to dynamically meet the needs of tomorrow?