#176: How We Sold Out Our First Launch in 48 Hours with Wingspan Performance

Welcome back to another edition of the Course Creation Incubator podcast. I’m your host, Gina Onativa, here to get you stoked about your digital offerings and help you build up the digital based business of your dreams. And I’ve got a special treat for today’s episode. Last week we talked about how to move on from the Wonder Ones and really get your course done or your digital program, whatever that looks like, whether as a group coaching workshops, a hybrid course, whatever it looks like to have a successful transition to course creation.

 When it comes to making that successful transition from consultant to course creator, there is no better example than Wingspan performance and my friends Cathy Maday and Ivan Konermann, who came to me about two years ago to collaborate on a done for You course which would eventually come Wingspan performance Academy and I had an absolute blast working for these guys and working with these guys on their course.

 They’ve since launch three times wild, The successful launches, they sold out in the first 48 hours of their first launch because they had such that pent up demand in terms of folks wanting their knowledge and wanting their expertise. And you’re going to hear them talk about their journey about how they wanted a way to expand that. People have been asking for this course for years.

 Does this sound familiar? Are people asking for a way for you to package up your expertise in a different way that they can access? Well, you’re going to hear Kathy and Ivan break it all down. By the way, Wingspan partners with leaders around the world to strengthen their behavioral performance and communication. Their approach centers on creating more intentional outcomes by developing healthy behavior systems, more productive interactions, and more meaningful relationship.

 S Guys, that is not hyperbole. That is legit. What they deliver their course is incredible. You’re going to hear us break down their course as we go through this episode. This episode is brought to you by our Done for You services. If you want to work with us like we worked with Kathy and I then go to course Creation Boutique Ecom slash course to apply. 

We only take a few experts each quarter. We’d love to work with you. All right. Let’s listen in to this awesome episode with Kathy and Ivan. Kathy and Ivan, I’ve been wanting to you on forever. Welcome to the show. It is fantastic to see you again, Gina. Good to be here. Good to talk with you again. So good to see you guys.

 So take me back to when you were first thinking about building your online course. Like what? What made you think you might want this for your business? Well, I’ll tell you, way back, even even before Ivan joined Wingspan, it was about nine or ten years ago. And. Wow. Really? Yeah. Where it really started is that the leaders that I was working with in our coaching were asking for it, and so they wanted it for their team members.

 

They wanted it for even family members. They wanted family members to learn a lot of the tools because it is about leader behavior. And so that just so that, you know, it was years of wanting to do this. Yeah. And that didn’t stop. So even I’ve been with the company for six years and the whole time it’s probably not a month has gone by where it hasn’t been.

 So what have you got for a course or. I want to, I want to have so my team members go through this. We haven’t got the budget for them to do this other thing. How do we get them aware of what you all can can offer and how they can use these tools? So. So part of it was scaling how folks could access the tools.

 Another big part of it for us was how do we have another revenue stream as a business that wasn’t the same thing and how do we diversify our offerings? So so it sounds like the demand came early on, right? People knocking on your door saying, okay, where is this? And then how do you know as a business owner that the time is right to move forward with this?

 You know, people have been asking for years, but now it’s going to become a focus and a priority. Like how did you guys know it was time? Well, it had been I would cringe every year that I didn’t think progress on it. Yeah. So then we started to learn online, do research, and, you know, we’re both billable and so and we’ve got, you know, established clients, big, big programs.

 And so it was so difficult to find quality information out there. And so really the timing was, you know, things like that. Yeah, Yeah, it really was. So again, Alvin and I were talking about this the day after. So Perry was telling me what he was working on. And I said, Well, tell tell me more about Gina, how she help.

 How do you work with there? How she helping you and the very next day I contacted you, and which I’ll be honest, I was a little nervous about, I was like, Whoa, this is going really fast. What what the heck? This is going Really? So I was a little nervous. And then she came back and was really excited.

Okay, well, yeah. Give us a shot. Let’s see what this is going to do. You know, like you and I met and then boom, like, perfect fit for each other. And I was then I came back to Ivan. I said, we’re going to we’re working with Gina and her team. Here’s what it’s going to look like. We’re going to learn more.

And that was it. And then we’re off to the races. So you were really critical for the timing. Okay, I love this because one of my questions for you guys was going to be, how did you know you wanted that help, right? How did you know? Okay. We needed to hire someone to guide us. Yeah. And that’s I’d just like to add the the thing that we so we had probably like a lot of business out there, probably plenty of people listening right now.

They’re going, oh, this doesn’t sound that hard. I’ll take that. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll take a course on how to do this. So we actually had purchased a course one another person to step us through this. Yeah. And at first we thought okay so okay this, this seems manageable. Then the further we got into it, it’s kind of like Alice in Wonderland.

 

We went down that rabbit hole and we said, Holy cow, there is so much in this. There’s so much nuance and there’s so much more to this. We just didn’t know what we didn’t know. And then once we learned what we didn’t know and then all these pieces happened at the same time, or we met you and we knew what we didn’t know and we said, yeah, that self, that self journey, discovery, baloney pushed that aside and we just didn’t have time.

 We have a thriving business in terms of our coaching, consulting and it was incredible how working with you and your team, how how much it wasn’t just that it was a massive project you helped with decisions because going back to we didn’t know what we didn’t know. Just little decisions were like what we’re doing and you were able to just help us, you know, step through this.

 Yeah. And also it was because we didn’t want a we didn’t want something that smelled like it was homegrown. We wanted something that when when people took it, they would go, dang, this is a this is a first rate quality professional level course. We didn’t want it to have that. Okay, the camera’s crooked or wait. They just repeated what they said from last time or wait.

This doesn’t line up with that because it would have been reviewing things that we didn’t know how to do that you knew to do? Yeah, well, we definitely would have not had a quality product like we got with you for sure, which is great for new, new business owners. Like you go. You just go for it and don’t worry about how it looks.

It’s just we had an established client base and they, they expect very high quality. Otherwise we I mean, we’re not going to compete with who else they have access to, like, you know, companies like Google. And so we and that’s where too. It was incredible to have not only you, we were tapped into your you and your team.

Yes, of course. Creation. But it it’s your network, too. Yeah. So, you know, hiring you and your team. And then you helped us to get Jen Pinon, who is amazing. Good. Amazing. And he’s like, I mean, we consider you all, like, ongoing members of the wingspan. Oh, yeah. It’s just when good and yeah back into you like that extended family and we’ve done and by the way we’ve done those we’ll talk about that in a couple of minutes when we talk about your marketing.

But then we’ve done those ongoing calls with you. I consider you part of the KB family, so that’s awesome to hear. And I want to acknowledge what you said, Cathy, that not everyone needs that world class because your course, by the way, is world class like it is A-plus. I’m not just saying that because we built it with you.

I just, you know, tooting our own horn a little bit. It is gorgeous. You know, it is the bearer, the standard, I think, of what courses can be. And and not everyone needs that out of the gate, to your point, Kathy. But you guys have been established and your clientele and the sophistication of where you’re at. Very appropriate.

 

Very appropriate. We’re going because part of the goal for us isn’t just to have this on our own, have this on our own. Good job. The instance model we want to be able to do is have this a lot of other people have school or other in-house learning environments. They can take our content and drop it right in and that’s what it’s at these points.

It’s yeah, we license that content. How does it sit in context or in that for a family of other very professional and on products, they want to make sure it was of the same caliber or higher. Yeah. So let’s talk a little bit about the process. I know Ivan, you were saying like, oh yeah, there was some ahas or surprises along the way.

Talk to me about some of those surprises that that happened as part of the process. So it’s it’s it might sound contradictory. First of all, it was the holy crap. Like it’s a massive undertaking. Also, though, some of the ahas were the really you’re you were able to be like, no, just, you know, just do this or or this is a best practice or doing this one.

 And it was just like, oh, boom. It was like we just took another big step forward and those were some fantastic Aha! I’m not recalling anything. And specifically though, it was like, Oh yeah, okay. Instead of us like waiting till the end, time to talk and then figuring and then googling it and oh my gosh, yeah, I, I think what stood out for me for you guys is because I was going through our going through our folders before I hopped on here.

And every course creator brings their expertise to the process. And you guys are accountability experts, right? Your communication expert. So that was something that was really fun for me. And you really held my feet to the fire and in a in a great way that that, you know, we are accountable for our experts as well. But you’re you guys were precision experts, right.

And saying, okay, well, is this what you mean, Gina? And then is this the next piece and is this the next piece? Like, I loved it. And and you ended up kind of taking our process, like, heightened to a different level, like when we did the Post-it exercise process, like doing a different kind of grid and then scripting and changing it up when we went to the prompter.

So. So I loved working with you guys because you brought you brought that extra special precision to the process. So you guys probably didn’t know that out. Oh, you know just who you are. Right? So and and you talked about how busy you guys are, which you’re so busy. Right. And that’s part of the reason why people hire us to just get it done and make it happen.

How did you guys make the time? Because I remember, like Ivan, you were duck hunting, right? Like at one point and we’re in the middle of scripting. And then how how the heck did you make the time? How did you make it a priority when you’re such a busy business owner? Well, so first of all, one of the things that we really counted on and appreciated was your accountability with with us.

So here’s the process. Here’s what’s required. This is the date and otherwise, you know, the rest of it is going to run off the tracks. And so that you’re the accountable party that you provide in your process as well as the clarity was highly valuable. And that really that was key. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What I would add to that too, is that when we and I’m pretty sure you helped us make the shift in our mindset when we stopped thinking of it as, Oh, this is this extra thing.

And we begin to think of it as, No, this is production for our business just as much as any other coaching activity that we have. So when we thought about it that way, it became very easy to say, okay, we’re sticking these blocks in. And also for everyone listening, be really honest with yourselves about how much you work best in, say, 2 to 3 hour blocks and you want to like get in and make a big push or how much you’re past hit.

Lots of small hits. I can do 30 minutes. Here are 30 minutes. They’re 45 minutes there because when you’re clear on that, it’s going to help. Yeah, I want to highlight that because, Gina, you were brilliant in learning that Ivan and I work very differently. And so you are working with both of us as as content creators, and we work differently.

And so you were really fantastic at zeroing in on that so that we could work with our strengths rather than like, rather than like, adhere to a rigid process. You have your process, though it’s not like so rigid that, you know, I felt like I was really out of whack trying to work at it. You you really adapted it for us.

 You know, I think you bring up a great point because I remember, like Ivan would just sit down and write the scripts, right? He would just like bang it out. Right. And then but you had a more thoughtful process. I remember Cathy, and we’re like, okay, well, what does this work for you? Really? Okay, I got to I got to talk it out.

 And we and we figured it out right? And everyone’s got a different process. And that’s where and listen, I’ve got a course, I’ve got a six week program you can go through. But part of that program is figuring out your process and figuring out what works for you. It’s just not one size fits all. What works for Ivan didn’t necessarily work for you, and that’s okay.

 That’s great. That’s part of the process. Yeah. Recognizing that. Yeah. So it wasn’t necessarily that we found the time. It’s that the the deadlines that we all agreed to and the support we got to really lean on each other. The three of us really leaned on each other through. Yes. So that’s how we made the time. Okay. I love that.

And I and I love what you said, Ivan, too, about making it a part of your business and not just something on the side. I think that’s really important. The most successful course creators I’ve seen make it a part of their business and say, like, this is this is part of who we are now versus like, oh, this is just an extra thing that I did.

Yeah, right. So I think that’s really smart. Said Shift also made it easier to say, How do we put this on the calendar when our priority as a small business, especially as a service providing small business, is time with our clients? Yeah. So how do we begin to fit these pieces in? And that mindset shift really do make it easier to go.

 

This is every bit as important as these other pieces. So let’s go ahead and put that time on there. Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. Let’s start. So we’ve been talking about the creation process you guys have launched a few times now, which is amazing. Talk to me about some of the results that you’ve seen as part of these launches.

Yeah, the first one was crazy. We sold out in 48 hours, so we we did a limited we did a founder’s course, 25 spots. We put the word out to our our current client base and some other folks who had worked with us in the past and boom, that thing sold out in 48 hours. And we were we were pretty, pretty bummed, pretty pretty hard or worse about it.

And really just just just shocked and willing place. Yeah. Yeah. So, so surprised. Yeah. You had the demand, right? That people are asking to have bottled up the moment. Yeah. Great at what you do and you had the demand so. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And then where did you go. So you sold out, right? And then you had to close it and then I think you guys did you launch six months after that.

Was that right after the. Oh yeah. Yeah. 6 to 8 months after that. And, and we made some changes. So again that’s part of the just do it and that’s where you really you and your team really help us and help your clients to just speaking of launch you really help launch into it get get rolling with it because we learned so much in the doing.

Yeah. Yeah. So we made changes for our second cohort. We were learning in the process, not what we anticipated. So we had goals and it ended up being very different than what we planned. We are filling our courses or our courses are being filled from more B to B work than B to C work. And so part of our our goal, I mean, our digital courses are a significant part of our overall business strategy.

And part of that is to not only diversify our offerings, diversify our customer base, reduce our risk for client concentration and of course better and enhance the how we’re serving them. And so we had so many leaders that are working with us directly that then signed up four of their team members. Eight of their team members. Yeah, because they did just like Ivan said, they wanted their team members to learn access and practice the same tools as they were learning just at a, you know, at a lower price point.

Yeah. More manageable cost. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead, Go ahead. Well, and so we’re it’s, we’re content, we’re like paying attention and, and learning and Yeah. And some little adjustments you know, for every launch. Well that’s before you go any further because one of the requests that we’ve gotten from some of our past and very strong clients is to say, hey, we would like to do a private cohort, so we’re going to have a, oh, you should do our major.

You guys are one cohort for next year. We’re going to have some private cohorts that we’re going to do just inside of one company or even inside of one team for a certain number of people. And so that that was a really neat way that we got to see how we can we can take this and we utilize us in different ways.

 

And now all we’re adding or is some additional time for our course coaching calls that goes with that course. So yeah, we’re also learning, Janna, we’re continuing to learn about the different aspects of launching. So, you know, we continue to reach back out to you because your job developer expert run helps with the getting, getting all of that stuff rolling down our website.

Good job, all that integration and the e-commerce part. And then there’s also the whole sales and marketing. Yeah. And then the course management. And so having, having in that founder’s launch, our very first launch, having Debby part time as a course manager. Now she’s a full time employee with me. Oh, I love that. I was just going to acknowledge you guys because you did hire you say course manager I say course concierge.

I think like same Debbie is incredible, right? Just keeping track of all these moving pieces and learning and Debbie’s always learning, so. Okay, show me how to do this or if we had to go back in the job, she’s okay. Tell me how you did it. So I know for the future, like she’s a sponge and she could it be lovelier.

And the fact that you dedicated even the resource part time and now it’s a full time resource. It comes back to you. Yeah. Because you put, you put that investment and that time and that energy and that money. Yeah. Yeah. For, for sure. Because the other component to that we’re continuing to learn is it’s a whole other sales and marketing effort.

Yeah. As you to expand like you said like double down on that signature course it now it comes time for the sales marketing. Yes. It’s so good. And I also wanted to applaud you guys because you were patient. You were curious, but patient. Right. So like in that first launch, we talked about tier pricing. We talked about other gizmos and upsells and things that you do.

I said just just do it as is. Boom, It sells out in 48 hours. Right? Then the next one, you add a couple more bells and whistles and then look at you guys. You know, you add a layer each time. Now you’re doing cohorts. That’s a great avenue of revenue for you guys. Just doing those live Perry does that.

We mentioned Perry Mathema. He does that as well. He does those cohorts for specific businesses. That’s an awesome revenue source. So you guys, I applaud you for for really focusing on that one course and not getting shiny object syndrome. Right? Like, okay, now we can create 17 other courses like, yeah, you’re right. Yeah. Yeah, it does happen. It does happen.

But the fact that you are really honing in on what you’ve got this, this income producing asset and like how can we leverage it in decent way in different ways, like just awesome. Well, that’s something that you created a lot of safety for. For us, the whole team in the process also is, okay, we’re going to make the decision and we’re going to execute on that decision and then we’re going to learn and that’s it.

Yeah. And like even our pricing, our clients are the ones that told us, Oh, you’re pricing this way too low. Like, so where we started somewhere and then we just continue to learn and that’s all we talked about, right? Starting at that lower price point, we’re like, this is a bananas price, right? This is a no brainer. And you’ll never charged and you’ve never charge that again.

 

Right? You just continue to grow from that. Right now, we’re close. Love that. Yeah, I love it. Oh, what’s so what’s next? It’s you’re going to launch one next year. You’re going to do these cohorts like anything else You guys are cooking up in terms of the course or launches. Yeah, well I mean we are aiming for are a big launch of Yeah the numbers go go way up.

We’re like yeah, times what times ten. Right. We’re involved. Yeah. Eight or ten with a ten. All right. Yeah. And then it’s our launch runway like 30 to 45 days. Yes. Starting to bring in ads. So there’s a lot that we’ve got. You’re adding those layers. Yeah. Yeah. Right. The upsell, the down sell those. Yeah. I think that combined with the private cohorts is is a newer piece that we’re doing as well.

And with this of course there’s there’s all these again for anybody listening, there’s all these additional kind of components to this. So it sounds easy. Oh, okay. Private cohort. So that sounds like a normal class just for individual group. Yeah, not so much. And that’s where again, the Debbie on our team is so amazing because she can say, okay, how how are we going to do this?

How do we ensure that this happens and all these little things that yeah, reaches out to junior for support. So those are the kinds of things where you, you won’t really you don’t know what’s around the curve until you get at least partway around the curve. Then you can see a little bit further down the road and then is like, okay, we want to figure this out or that out.

And then it’s it’s, it’s just this iterative learning process. So so I think embrace that concept for everybody listening and don’t think you’re going to figure it all out the first time because that banana’s you’re absolutely going to have plenty of other things to figure out as you go. I totally forgot. Also, like so our digital course has also been the part of the pipeline for our membership. 

Oh yeah. Accelerator. Okay. Tell me a little bit more about that. What’s the membership Accelerator. So and how is it a pipeline for that. Yeah. So it’s group coaching. Okay. Yeah. So we’re month to month. Month to month. Yep. Yeah. Okay. Couple times each month. We do a call every Friday. Yeah. So. So a second. I could do a call every Friday with you guys.

That would be amazing. That’s awesome. Be that you’re you’re a glutton for punishment or. Yeah, a lot of people people have said, hey, we, we, we want to we want to have this group coaching experience. Isn’t that great? Yeah. So either people had it in WPA and they said, We want to keep doing this. You want more, you want more, Or that said, Hey, we want this.

And what we realized is, well, gosh, to get somebody up to where they’ve got the the minimum to be able to jump in with the team and not feel like they’re confused or thinking means taking WPA. So now our our course is really this on ramp for this group coaching experience that we’ve got. Yeah that’s great guys. And love I love that.

 

Yeah yeah sure. There’s little courses that’s helping us to launch these other programs that that are, you know, it’s cohesive now with the business strategy. Oh, that’s so good. That’s so good. Guys. And then okay, we’ve talked so much about this course where I know you guys only you only open it, right? So, so often every year. But there is a wait list, right?

So tell folks how they can get access to this world class course. Yeah. If you go to wingspan performance dot com and if you look in the top top right it is on the home page. It’s on the home page. On the home page you’ll still see where it says coach or course you can just click right on the course and then they can join the waitlist.

Also they can we’ve got a a jump start course that they can watch to to learn a little bit more about us. And that’s just a 15 minute talk. Then we create a little quick course free. Is it free or is it a free grade beta? Yeah. Jump on out there once or was that gone? So you can take that little free jump start course and then you’ll start to learn more about and see our timing for the or the wings go.

You’ll nurture me to the waitlist from that jumpstart. Okay. I like it. Nice guys. Expert told us. Oh my gosh, it’s almost like I’m going to give you advice on that. And you followed it. Really good advice. All right. I know you guys are busy. I could talk to you all day. Thanks so much for being on today and taking the time, guys.

It’s a pleasure. And again, you’re you’re critical for us, like in our business strategy and our family as well. So thank you, Dana. Yeah, and I’ll just say for anyone listening again, if you’re in that spot of not sure, maybe I can pull this off on my own if you really want it to be a solid and also just a much more enjoyable experience, be sure to grab grab Gina on this team and they will absolutely take you across the goal line.

Yeah, for sure. So you guys eliminate all that stress and indecision and. And frustration. Just eliminate. Yeah. Thanks, guys. We should do this every day. It sounds great. I love it. All right. What did you think of Cathy and Ivan? Awesome, right? And they’re ahas along the way, so spot on in terms of their course creation and their marketing.

Please check them out because the course is excellent. Again, I’m not exaggerating. Wingspan performance dot com. You can also see they took action on their free jumpstart course that we talked about in the interview. So you can check that out as well And if you’re interested in collaborating on a done for you course with us go to course creation bootcamp slash course to apply and next week and talk about a platform that I know we could still reap the rewards of even for organic, and that is LinkedIn.

I’ll have a special guest on to walk us through what we need to be doing right now on that platform. Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss that episode and please leave me a review. If this has touched your life or moved you, or had you take action in any kind of way until next week, go create, be you and be brilliant and get it done.