classes, courses, communities, and content creation

Welcome to building better developers, the developer podcast, where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. Hello there and welcome back. We are continuing our interview, continuing our season and continuing our interview now with Kyler Nixon. We are talking about classes, courses, communities, and all of these things that are out there on the internet to help us access content to on the other side, push content and basically connect solutions with people that need solutions, people that have problems with solutions for them, typically in a content oriented way or in a here is a skill or thing that it's useful for you to learn. This episode we're going to get deeper into what Kyler's organization does, how they help people, as he's going to mention, typically step from maybe six figures to seven figures. This is a nice jump up, but he's going to talk a lot about the things that you want to have in place, the things that you do that will allow you to take it to the next level. Honestly, most of these are going to be valuable to you even if you're starting out. It's not like you have to wait until you get that far. This may get you from zero digits to seven digits a lot faster. Again, Kyler's the expert, so let's get back to our conversation with Kyler Nixon. First question is, what state are people typically in when you meet them? Are they just getting started? Have they been working on this for a little bit and they've been frustrated? Are they well into it and they want to take a big leap from small site to a big site? Where's your customer base typically at? Where do you meet them? Yeah, our ideal one-to-one service base where we're working with them as an agency over an eight to 12 month period, typically they have between 50 and 100,000 followers on some platform. Then typically they are maybe low to mid six figures and are wanting to get over that seven figure mark. That's just how we are set up best to serve them one-to-one. At that size, typically they've seen success, they've proven that their course works, they have a good size audience, but they're sitting there saying, I'm spending a lot of time doing things that I don't feel like are moving my business forward. I need to be making more money. I don't know why I'm not monetizing my audience. The Instagram algorithm updated and I'm not getting the reach that I am. Like oh shoot, what do I do about that? That's how our process is coming alongside of them and doing a more like do it with you, for you approach. On the other side of that, where some of our clients or customers or whatever you want to call them interact with us is sort of in our free content, which is our blogs, our downloads, our membership, those types of things. For them, they're typically one step past an idea. They've tried to put it out there. They've maybe created a social platform. They're not seeing a lot of traction. Then our free or low ticket resources are going to help them kind of do some of the things that we talked about earlier, build up their traffic, build up their social following. But for most of them, they are, like I said, one step past just an idea. I probably should spend a little more time in the idea phase. But for us, I like to work with people who are a little bit more like skewed toward action and they're ready to at least do something and not just is this a good idea? Does this make sense or not? So it's typically kind of the two buckets that our our clients find themselves in. So they typically at a point where they're the content side, they more or less have a handle on and they're really looking for it's where they need to market that. Is it really the marketing side that they're they're trying to take that push or is it is it some of it that you're going back and having to maybe refine a little bit how they they handle their content, how they how they push that out? Yeah, the audience that's just starting, it's way more help with content. They're they like don't know how to do blogs. They don't know how to do social media. Like that's way, way more focused on that. Whereas with our one to one clients, it's a little less of that and more marketing, more systems and more processes. We still do a little bit with the content. So, for instance, like, let's say a client has 100000 Instagram followers and you might say, oh, my goodness, they got this on lock. Well, they're spending 50 hours a week on Instagram. Like, that's insane. And so how do we scale that back? How do we create systems and processes that will allow them to spend more time in areas that are going to drive the business forward? So it's like 80%, 90% focused on things like the website, things like the email funnel, the course set up, SEO, you know, kind of all of the like heavy hitter marketing stuff and maybe 10, 20, 30% on more content creation, content systems, content structures. We're working with a client right now who actually has a full time job as a teacher and meets with us on her lunch period or after school, which I love. And she doesn't have time. She doesn't have the ability to put out 10 blogs a week or whatever, something crazy like that. And so part of our work was saying, OK, what can we stick to one blog a week? OK, how do you write that as efficiently as possible? So that's where we would dip into the content with our one to one clients versus spending a little more time on the marketing strategy. So how much of the discussion because we it's there's the the content that you're putting out in your blog, but then there's also the the way you're writing it. And so you touched earlier on the idea of like, you know, SEO and some of that kind of stuff. Is there a is there a difference? Is it and how when you're approaching that with people, is it basically like, hey, you put your content together and then we'll go, you know, wordsmith it a little bit to get the right things or should they keep those things in mind as they're creating the blog? How does that that process? How do you particularly from a consulting point of view, how do you consult people in that process? Yeah, we love for our clients to own their content. So like we don't typically do much blog writing. We might do some revisions or like give them comments up front or something like that. But my ultimate goal is to be able to teach them how to write it effectively and then sort of let them find their own flavor to keep moving forward. And so what we might do is say, OK, here are some of the checklist items you should hit. Right. Like you should make sure that you have proper headings. You should make sure that you have bullet points. You should make sure that you have internal and external links. You should mention your product. Right. Beyond that, however, they want to structure that in a way that their audience needs is what we would really love, what we'd really love to see, because ultimately they're speaking to their audience and they should be able to feel comfortable doing that. So that that's sort of how we would approach like from a consulting angle. It's not hardly any writing at all. And more so just teaching them how to make sure that they're writing effective blogs. You also mentioned I want to swing back around this earlier, as you mentioned, the idea of like a broader, broader market versus a smaller one. And if you're in content at all, there's always that the riches are in the niches kind of of concept. So what where how do you see that as far as like having something that's very much a general purpose, kind of a course or membership that you can get a lot of people that a lot of people are going to be involved in where you've got maybe five billion people or potential customers versus getting something that's very niche and trying to really win at that? Yeah, if you're just starting out, I definitely recommend going pretty niche. I mean, even most of our clients like the client who I mentioned has two million followers and solves a major problem. Well, that's still a pretty niche problem, even though it has a lot of people. Right. And so the way that I would sort of think about that is less about like general versus specific, which I know were the terms that I used earlier. But how I like to think about it are more like painkiller versus vitamin. So is your product a painkiller product? Does this solve a problem? Even if it's a very small number of people, let's say that you have like the most niche audience you can think of. And there's only like five hundred people in the entire world that could have that problem. Well, if you have the solution to it, you can make however much money you want off of those five hundred people. You know what I mean? Whereas if you have a vitamin product, something that's sort of a nice to have, it might solve a problem, but maybe not a huge problem. Well, that's going to be a little bit more of an uphill battle. You have to maybe have a little bit more a little bit more of a broad audience there. So when you're just starting out, I would say what's the one thing that you can absolutely crush and that you can absolutely own? And then you can start to branch out from from there. Well, that reminds me earlier, you mentioned talking about pricing. Is it is it typically that people overvalue what they and maybe it is just because they say, hey, it took me a hundred hours to do this, so I'm going to charge, you know, a hundred dollars or whatever it is. Or do they is there typically they're more like the overvalue or undervalue what they've they've put out there? Yeah, great question. It's typically overvalue because because of two things. One, they think, well, I've put so much money and time and energy into this, and so it must be worth a lot. They also will typically sort of in that same note, go show their friends and be like, what would you pay for this? Well, your buddy is going to give you five hundred bucks when it's actually worth fifty. You know what I mean? So then they sort of have a skewed idea of what the course is actually worth and the value of it. The second thing is that they generally have kind of a poor understanding of pricing psychology, right? Like pricing psychology as I'm not an expert in it, but it's been widely studied. And so things like, you know, a seven or a nine at the end of the number instead of, you know, a zero or five or whatever those types of things are, there's kind of a dozen, you know, plus different ways that you can go about pricing your course and kind of pressing into some of the psychology there. So yeah, I think they both, you know, overvalue their course. And I think they have a poor understanding of why people buy and sort of how to price aligning with how people buy. So how do they is that something that you've run into a lot where you sort of help or you is it more like, hey, you need to spend some time and work on pricing psychology? Yeah. I mean, when we're working with clients, like, obviously they have the luxury of like our time and consulting energy. And so we're able to do a lot of that for them. So we might say, Hey, based on what we've seen, here's what this might be worth. We have a pricing quiz too, that we'll kind of run through just with, we entered in a bunch of variables. So that way we're like using hard facts instead of just like, this is what I feel. And so yeah, we typically do that. But if we're like talking to someone, like maybe who's in our membership or who's on our newsletter, who doesn't have like one-to-one access to us. Those are the things that I recommend. Or honestly, like the best way to do it, aside from pricing psychology is just go look at the biggest player in your space and see what they price their course at and price it a little bit below at, or a little bit above that number. Right. Cause if it's worked for them, like, you know, not to reinvent the wheel, like it probably could work in some variation for you. And I noticed that I said, go a little bit over to, I'm not a fan of just like going in undercutting and price cutting. Someone has to be the most expensive course in your niche on the market. So it might as well be you, you know what I mean? So the difference there is if your competitor has a $99 course, you might price it at 129 instead of 499. Right? Like that's way too big of a, of a jump. So that's sort of how I would approach it. If I was just having a 10 minute conversation with someone who said, I don't know how to price my course. I would just dig into a little bit of some of the basics of pricing psychology. And I would go look at what your competitors are doing. One of the easiest things to do in terms of pricing psychology, aside from all the like kind of gimmicky nine versus seven versus whatever, there's some natural jumps that people make when they're buying. So think about how you buy things. Right. So for us, for my wife and I, in our marriage art, we have a rule that we don't spend more than a hundred dollars without consulting each other. Right. And I think a lot of couples have a rule similar to that. It might be at different monetary thresholds, but for me, I could go buy a $99 course and pay for it and no problem. Whereas if it was 149, now I gotta go, you know, I gotta go ask my wife and I gotta make, I'm bringing in another person into that decision-making process. And so you'll start to see those a little bit, things like $9, $29, $49, $79, 99. And then it gets a little bit bigger, like 149, 199, 299. Those are, those are kind of pricing checkpoints that most people can go up to, but they won't, they might not exceed without, you know, needing to make a little bit more of a, an invested decision there. That makes sense. Now getting a little more personal on this. So you've done, you've got some, from some freebie courses, you've got some, you know, paid premium courses, you've got one-on-one stuff you've done. It sounds like some of what you've done is the, is more of the evergreen. And then you've also done the stuff where it's very much, you have the flip side where it's a lot of handholing. What is it, what have you found? And you've been doing this for a few years. What have you found have been the best, particularly for your, your business? What are the best things that have been there to grow your business and the things that you've gotten the, maybe enjoyed the most doing? Yeah. I mean, without a doubt, the easiest way to make a lot of money in a short period of time and to get really good at your skill is to sell your services one-to-one. Like for us, I mean, that's made up a bulk of our, of our revenue. And so I, you know, I totally get that that's typically the case. So what do I know? What's a process that I can take others through? And then someone pays me more money to do that with them. And so at its core, like that's still our business model is like working with clients one-on-one. But what we've seen is sort of this progression of a really natural, like a sales ladder or an offer stack. There's kind of a number of ways that you could, you know, Google it and find the same type of information, but ultimately it just follows this pattern. You have something free, right? And then you upsell into something low ticket. So for us, that might be a blog on how to build your email list upselling into a $37 workshop or a course or whatever you want to call it on, you know, how to do that more in depth, right? From there, we might sell them our membership, which is 49 or $99 a month. Right? So we're just kind of increasing the value that we're getting out of that customer. And we're not presenting them with something that's five grand right out of the gate. We're presenting them with a really natural, easy progression into what might end up as our one-to-one service, or it might end up as like a high ticket cohort or, you know, something along those lines. So for us, that's what's been most successful is really having a lot of great free content and then funneling them into, you know, some of the lower ticket paid content, which gradually increases over time. I know it just, that sparked another thought with yourself and then also with some of your customers. How have you seen people tackle growing to the point where it's like, and can they where it's not just, you know, particularly it's a one person that's building, creating all those blogs, but actually expanding that out so they can keep getting, you know, new content, additional content, but now can actually scale that up a little bit more. So they're not having to just write blogs all the time. Yeah. That's typically one of the first hires that we see our clients make. That's not an area we spend a ton of time in, but we sort of have a pulse on it. And so most of the time, the founder of the clients that we're working with, like of their brand, it's, it's them. They're the ones creating that Instagram content. They're responding to, you know, comments and questions and emails and all that type of stuff. And so typically the second, third, fourth hire that they make is a content specialist, someone who can get the content 90% of the way there. And then the client just has to come in and kind of polish it. So I'm a big fan of that. I think there are some things that you have to be careful of. I've seen people make mistakes with hiring content specialists where they give them too much too quickly, and then their content ends up just sounding more like the content specialist than it does, like the founder of the brand who is supposed to sound like. And so I would really ease into that, like make sure that they have a really great grasp on what you sound like. You should probably get clear on what you sound like first. What are some phrases you say? What are some things you don't say? Who would you sound like if you were a celebrity? You know, what are people used to hearing from you? All of those things will help a content specialist do their job better. And you need to make sure you have a really tight grip on that content that's being put out. Don't just allow them to put that out for you. But if done correctly, a great content specialist can really transform a business. And we have some clients who have whole teams now who have four or five, six people on the team, and that's their whole job is creating content for them. So yeah, you definitely sort of hit that snowball effect where it really just starts to take off and grow and grow and grow. But I think that's a great idea if it's done correctly. Yeah, because that's definitely one of those I think a lot of, especially solopreneurs, will struggle with because it's really them. And then they grow to a point where they say, hey, I want to grow this, but I can only go so far. Like you said, you know, the one person is working 50 hours a week. It's like, okay, at some point I can't, I'm stuck. I can't wear myself out with it. Yeah. Well, they also make the mistake of like, not getting rid of things. Like, so if you're going to delegate, right? So if I have 50 hours a week, I'm just handing that to somebody else, right? I'm just handing my problem to somebody else. I'm not actually solving the root of that issue. And so if you're considering that you're like, okay, I'm pretty tapped out. I'm creating a lot of content. We'll first start to like, take a look at your systems. Like what are the things that you're doing that are taking a lot of your time is are you spending 20 hours on research and you could cut that down into two or three, or are you struggling with editing and you could cut that back a little bit. If you first start to tighten up your own systems, you might find that you have more time and you don't need to hire right away. But two, it'll set you up for success when you delegate. Maybe there's a part of your process that can just be cut. You're like, oh, this is like kind of a waste of time, but I've always done it or a mentor told me to do it or whatever. So I think first, before you do that, you need to make sure that all of your systems and processes are really tight. That's good. And that's, yeah, that's something we always preach from a development point of view as always, that you've got to have that process well defined before you can automate it. You can't improve it if you don't really know, if you don't understand it, it's not going to work. And you can't scale it. Particularly if it's got bugs, if you scale it, you're just going to have more bugs. You're going to have more bugs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now, I appreciate your time and coming in. I do want to ask, because we've talked a lot about what you do. What are some of the best ways maybe to get ahold of you? If somebody says, hey, I'd love to see some of the free content or better yet, like, hey, I think Kyle's got some great stuff. I want to talk to him about throwing some money his way. What are the best ways to get ahold of you? Yeah, the easiest way to get any of this content would be to go to kylercreative.com forward slash newsletter. And Kyler is K-Y-L-E-R creative.com forward slash newsletter there. That kind of funnels everything else out. So we'll share blogs there. We'll share weekly tips. We'll kind of do all of that fun stuff and housed inside of our newsletter at kylercreative.com. We also have standalone blogs. So if you don't want to jump on our newsletter, that's totally fine. You can still read blogs. You can still get some of that free content. We have several free downloads, like our course pricing guide. We actually have one called 10 Mistakes Course Creators Make that you can download. All those things are available again for free at kylercreative.com. And if you wanted to, and you're like, hey, I'm ready to hit the gas on this business and you've got a good size audience and you're ready to go, you can click schedule a call on our site as well. But typically, if you're listening, the easiest way to connect with us is join the Creator Club newsletter at kylercreative.com forward slash newsletter. Excellent. Excellent. So I'll give you one more shot. Do you have any parting thoughts? So you've got some people out there now that have been spent the last bit of time sort of thinking through, hey, what would a course be like? What would I do? Maybe they've got some ideas. What do you have? Maybe what would be your advice for somebody that's saying, especially somebody that hasn't created one, but now has got that itch a little bit that says, maybe I want to jump into this. Yeah, one, anyone can make money off what they know. So if you're sitting here and you're like finding excuses about, oh, this won't work for me or I can't do this or my topic is too niche or my whatever excuse you're coming up with right now, one, stop it. You can, you can make money off what you know, I've seen it hundreds of times for the most obscure topics you can possibly think of. So if you're sitting here and you're saying, I think I think I have something here, you absolutely do. So that's the first thing is I just want to affirm that second is start by putting some of that content out into the world. Maybe a course isn't the right fit for you. Right? We see a lot of clients who do free down or a paid downloads or premium newsletters or different things like that. You don't have to do a course. Okay. So maybe you have a series of code that you can give out and sell, or maybe you have a development guide to some software that, you know, a lot of people really struggle with or whatever those things are. It doesn't have to be a course. So if you start out by putting content online, put it on YouTube, on Twitter, whatever those things are, you'll start to have some of those ideas unearthed to you. And then you'll have a really clear path for creating your course. So that's my encouragement. If you're sitting here, I think developers and folks in the development space, like, you know, probably more than just about anybody. And you probably have assets that you can package up and sell more than just about anybody. And so I'd love to see more people entering the world of monetizing what you know. Excellent. Well, thanks a lot. I appreciate your time. Thanks for coming on and sharing. This has been a great conversation. There's a lot of stuff I learned about, you know, course creations and getting that whole, getting your content in front of people and monetizing it. So this has been very enjoyable. I hope you have a great time, great day. And actually now as we're talking, we're into a new year. So I hope you have a great year ahead of you as well. Thank you, sir. Appreciate your time. Thank you. And that will wrap it up. There's all of the things we've talked about. The links and that will be in the show notes. So if you haven't been able to take good notes along the way, they will be in there and we'll have ways for you to get a hold of Kyler. If you have some need or use of having that conversation with him, you can see where he can maybe help you out. As always, we're not, it feels like anyways, we're not done yet. We have more interviews coming. We've, we get to put Kyler in the books, but we get to go on to the next one in the next episode. Once again, I hope this was very helpful to you. Feel free to reach out to Kyler. Feel free to send me an email, send us something at info at developer.com or go out on our developer.com site, send us something to the contact form, let us know your thoughts about any of our guests along the way, or if there's recommendations or even volunteers, if you want to step up and say, Hey, I would love to be on the show. Feel free to contact us and we will figure stuff out and try to get you out there listening to the three or four people that actually listened to this podcast. Maybe it's a few more than that, but needless to say, we will be back, but until next time, go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to building better developers to develop a new podcast. You can subscribe on Apple podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, anywhere that you can find podcasts. We are there. And remember just a little bit of effort every day ends up adding into great momentum and great success. Please check out school.development.com. That is where we are starting to pour a lot of our content. We've taken the lessons, the things that we've learned, all of the things that make you a better developer. And we're putting it there. We have a range of courses from free short courses up to full paid boot camps. All of these include a number of things to help you get better, including templates, quick references, and other things that make us all better developers.