Hey Reader,

I'm picking a fight with you today.

Why on earth am I suggesting you spend less time on your products? Do you really want to sell a mediocre info product and piss off your customers?

This is so worth fighting for though.

So I was talking to a member at the Studio who told me she wanted to turn the live training recording into a resource that her audience can access.

Smart move! Reusing what she already has.

But she went on: "I can do some extensive editing, make it a new lead magnet, then put it out there."

That's what got me to pause. I literally couldn't hear anything for another 20 seconds.

The 2 words "extensive editing" were threatening. Deep down, I was going "No. No. Please don't. Don't do that".

I'll use the rest of this email to convince you why this is not a great idea. If you prefer to listen to it on the Small School Podcast, you can hop over to Apple Podcast or Spotify. And if you prefer to look at my face the whole time, you can also watch it on YouTube.

Either way, hit "Subscribe" or "Follow" to always catch the new episodes.

By the way, I never knew there was so much work to produce a podcast (from recording to editing to transcribing!) but I'm enjoying it very much on top of my writing. It is a new way to express and share. Thank goodness for tools like this one that can automate and simplify a lot.

Back to the story. Why did I get so fired up when I heard the 2 words "extensive editing"?

Because I don't want her to spend hours editing a clip and have only 2-3 people opt in for it. Wouldn't it be a waste of time?

When you are uncertain whether a thing (a piece of content, a new course idea, a lead magnet) has demand, you want to try your best to bring people in the door first.

If nobody walks in the door, no one can see your "extensive editing". No one can see your effort in the product. From the return on investment (ROI) point of view, it is not worth it.

And this means your 1st iteration should look like this:

1. Deliver the entire recording clip as it is
2. Craft a pitch that gets people to opt in
3. Once you get a stable flow of subscribers, improve the product

See how you just embrace the Small School's philosophy and work on a very small step before investing more? Good job.

It is like running a restaurant.

You want a look that gets pedestrians excited so they want to walk into the door. They don't know if the food and services are good, but they are eager to find out. This is you writing amazing copy to make sure visitors want your resource.

You can always tweak the menus and services. You can literally change it every week! This is you finetuning your content once a good flow of people opts in.

Can you redo the restaurant's exterior? Yes, but that is going to cost you a fortune. I know, I know. Rewriting your copy for the product is relatively easy, but I hope you get my point here. Traffic and validation first.

Now, you might argue that the early people who experience your product might be so disappointed that they will never trust you again. Well yeah, so I don't mean that you give them a terrible experience. I mean 80% good is good enough, you don't always need to spend 80% more time to fix the remaining 20%.

This is especially true in the knowledge industry.

If you give someone the full recording clip, it might take them some effort to sniff out the valuable parts. Ultimately, they still get the value promised. For you to do extensive editing is really to get the product to a level that blows minds away and triggers word-of-mouth.

Say you are a perfectionist, try to break the whole task into 3 parts and pinpoint the 1 part that is the most impactful. Give your best effort to that 1 part and ignore the rest. That's how you move and grow fast. Through small incremental improvements.

Speaking of breaking the scope down, I've been working on my new product, Momentum Marketing, and decided to make it a 3-part series. This tiny reframe has already helped me make more progress than ever.

Reader, if you've experienced launch flops and wonder about the actual steps to create a buzzing launch when you don't have a lot to work with, take a look at this series.

You have until July 15 to pre-order it at $75. The launch price will be $150.

​Start to leverage Momentum Marketing​

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Cheers,
Kevon