Hello, starting my journey, failures and business ideia

[Maxwell5]

Hi guys, about a year ago I read the Great Rat Race Escape and became a member of this forum, but only now I took the courage to introduce myself and talk about my business ideia. I already failed two businesses (food industry, ecommerce store) and I'm about to start my third, but this time I have more experience and better knowledge of what I need to do to make it succeed. So I'm making this post to document my entrepreneurial journey, and keep myself commmitted. This is gonna be a long one, but I hope I can get some insights and also help other people just starting out.

I've been a language teacher for some time now, and I noticed that, here where I live, a lot of the online language teaching programs/courses are really shallow and click bait ("my secret method is going to make you fluent in 3, 6 months!", "learn by just watching netflix series!"), they don't offer very good customer support, trail periods, refund policies, and the way they structure their course is truly awful (no logical order, from easy to complex, they just throw a bunch of random classes in there and make it into a course, a clear cash grab), and the few good ones are not affordable for most people (since most people want to learn a language to get better job oportunities, like English and Spanish, most don't have a lot of money to pay for a course).

So even though the industry of language teaching online is saturated, it's full of crap cash grabs, and the few who aren't, are really expensive. So I tried using my experience as a language teacher and adapt it to an actual worthwhile online course/program, that actually teaches you the language, gives you support and is affordable. The result is a business that really stands out from the crowd and I think is worth persuing, but I still need to make a few tests to make sure.

Before even thinking about the teaching method, I had some ideias in mind. My course had to have an excellent customer support. Really fast whatsApp communication and the students are able to schedule one on one conversations with me if needed. I also wanted to have an unconditional money back guarantee. At any point in the training, if you feel you're not learning enough or it's not worth your money you can ask for a refund. I also provide you with tools to evaluate your knowledge in the language, meaning you will know if you are truly learning and can ask for a refund if you find you are not. This forces me to make the very best course/program that I can, making sure you actually learn from it, and makes it a no brainer/risk free purchase from anyone looking to learn the language.

Now it's time to actually make the course content. I'm building my course to have:
-step by step teaching. Don't overwhelm the student with too much information. Have a nice learning pace.
-practice focused. Everything that is taught is put into practice (writing, reading, speaking and listening)
-tools to evaluate your knowledge in the language. That way you know exactly what you need to review before going to the next module and you can record your progress.
-techniques that help you memorize vocabulary faster and never forget.
-the course has a fixed daily study routine. Making studying and practicing a habit.
-have real world situations explained (how to do job interviews in the language, asking for directions, going to the supermarket etc)
-reading recommendations and other activities you can do besides the course to learn the language.
-Have any doubts? Just contact your teacher through whatsApp, email or even schedule a one on one online call. I'll make sure you learn or I don't want your money.
-free trail. I'll give you the first few modules for free and you can decide if the method is a good fit for you.
-All for an affordable price.

To make sure I accomplish all of that I'm making a sample of the course and will send it to a few people to try. I'm think of putting an ad up and try to collect a few emails of interested people, that way I'll have a list ready for when the course launches. This course is gonna cost me an immense amount of time to build (literally thousands of hours of recorded content alone), so I decided to divide the content into smaller chuncks, launch them one by one and bundle them together once they're all ready.
I tried comparing this course model with the big players, some of them have those perks but none of them have them all together. If I actually pull it off I think I'll have a winner this time.

I'll test the sample, gather feedback and only then I'll start building the actual thing. The amount of work I have ahead of me makes my head spin, but it's definitly worth it.

These are the steps I need to take now:
-build the course sample
-test the sample by sending it to a few people and using ads like meta ads, tiktok ads, google ads etc and collect emails.
-give the business a name, buy a domain and hosting service
-create social media channels (youtube channel, tiktok, instagram) so I can build an audience even without a product first, and hear what they say about my content
-launch the course when ready. It's definitly gonna take a lot of time, but hopefully I'll have a following on social media by then, this will deminish my ad costs.

I hope I'm giving people enough value to have a good business this time? What do you guys think?
I'll be posting updates now and then and record my progress here. Hopefully that can be useful to someone. And if this doesn't work out, we can think of other business ideias together. Thanks for your time if you read it all until here

 

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[eifesu]

Hi guys, about a year ago I read the Great Rat Race Escape and became a member of this forum, but only now I took the courage to introduce myself and talk about my business ideia. I already failed two businesses (food industry, ecommerce store) and I'm about to start my third, but this time I have more experience and better knowledge of what I need to do to make it succeed. So I'm making this post to document my entrepreneurial journey, and keep myself commmitted. This is gonna be a long one, but I hope I can get some insights and also help other people just starting out.

I've been a language teacher for some time now, and I noticed that, here where I live, a lot of the online language teaching programs/courses are really shallow and click bait ("my secret method is going to make you fluent in 3, 6 months!", "learn by just watching netflix series!"), they don't offer very good customer support, trail periods, refund policies, and the way they structure their course is truly awful (no logical order, from easy to complex, they just throw a bunch of random classes in there and make it into a course, a clear cash grab), and the few good ones are not affordable for most people (since most people want to learn a language to get better job oportunities, like English and Spanish, most don't have a lot of money to pay for a course).

So even though the industry of language teaching online is saturated, it's full of crap cash grabs, and the few who aren't, are really expensive. So I tried using my experience as a language teacher and adapt it to an actual worthwhile online course/program, that actually teaches you the language, gives you support and is affordable. The result is a business that really stands out from the crowd and I think is worth persuing, but I still need to make a few tests to make sure.

Before even thinking about the teaching method, I had some ideias in mind. My course had to have an excellent customer support. Really fast whatsApp communication and the students are able to schedule one on one conversations with me if needed. I also wanted to have an unconditional money back guarantee. At any point in the training, if you feel you're not learning enough or it's not worth your money you can ask for a refund. I also provide you with tools to evaluate your knowledge in the language, meaning you will know if you are truly learning and can ask for a refund if you find you are not. This forces me to make the very best course/program that I can, making sure you actually learn from it, and makes it a no brainer/risk free purchase from anyone looking to learn the language.

Now it's time to actually make the course content. I'm building my course to have:
-step by step teaching. Don't overwhelm the student with too much information. Have a nice learning pace.
-practice focused. Everything that is taught is put into practice (writing, reading, speaking and listening)
-tools to evaluate your knowledge in the language. That way you know exactly what you need to review before going to the next module and you can record your progress.
-techniques that help you memorize vocabulary faster and never forget.
-the course has a fixed daily study routine. Making studying and practicing a habit.
-have real world situations explained (how to do job interviews in the language, asking for directions, going to the supermarket etc)
-reading recommendations and other activities you can do besides the course to learn the language.
-Have any doubts? Just contact your teacher through whatsApp, email or even schedule a one on one online call. I'll make sure you learn or I don't want your money.
-free trail. I'll give you the first few modules for free and you can decide if the method is a good fit for you.
-All for an affordable price.

To make sure I accomplish all of that I'm making a sample of the course and will send it to a few people to try. I'm think of putting an ad up and try to collect a few emails of interested people, that way I'll have a list ready for when the course launches. This course is gonna cost me an immense amount of time to build (literally thousands of hours of recorded content alone), so I decided to divide the content into smaller chuncks, launch them one by one and bundle them together once they're all ready.
I tried comparing this course model with the big players, some of them have those perks but none of them have them all together. If I actually pull it off I think I'll have a winner this time.

I'll test the sample, gather feedback and only then I'll start building the actual thing. The amount of work I have ahead of me makes my head spin, but it's definitly worth it.

These are the steps I need to take now:
-build the course sample
-test the sample by sending it to a few people and using ads like meta ads, tiktok ads, google ads etc and collect emails.
-give the business a name, buy a domain and hosting service
-create social media channels (youtube channel, tiktok, instagram) so I can build an audience even without a product first, and hear what they say about my content
-launch the course when ready. It's definitly gonna take a lot of time, but hopefully I'll have a following on social media by then, this will deminish my ad costs.

I hope I'm giving people enough value to have a good business this time? What do you guys think?
I'll be posting updates now and then and record my progress here. Hopefully that can be useful to someone. And if this doesn't work out, we can think of other business ideias together. Thanks for your time if you read it all until here

Sounds like a great endeavor.
I have seen a quote around here about being easy for a market to be saturated by bad offers so I have no doubt you can value skew that your way.
Do you know what would be the most barebones version of what you offer ?

 

[Maxwell5]

Sounds like a great endeavor.
I have seen a quote around here about being easy for a market to be saturated by bad offers so I have no doubt you can value skew that your way.
Do you know what would be the most barebones version of what you offer ?

I'm thinking maybe the first two or three modules, just enough for people to try the method for a couple of weeks and see if they like it, without the customer support, extras etc.

 

[eifesu]

I'm thinking maybe the first two or three modules, just enough for people to try the method for a couple of weeks and see if they like it, without the customer support, extras etc.

How long would that take to create ?

 

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[Maxwell5]

How long would that take to create ?

About a month. I'll have to write the scripts for the classes, record the videos, learn how to edit videos and audio and make the PDF files.
After I create the sample, I'll have to create a website, find somewhere to host the course, find an email marketing platform, make a few posts on all social media channels to create credibility, learn how to create google/meta ads and start collecting emails and feedback from people. This is hard for me because I don't know much about marketing right now so if people don't subscribe to my email list I won't know if it's because my marketing sucks or my course is bad, this will take me longer to figure out. The last part will probably take me another mounth or two.

 

[Maxwell5]

July 2023 UPDATE
I decided to change my strategy a little. Instead of working my butt off for six months, without any income, only to find out my product is a failure, I will do something different. I still think the course ideia is good but it's going to take too much time to create, so I will start with something else first: an ebook. I've been teaching online and in classrooms for years now, I'm fairly certain I can produce something of value to people really fast. Writing an ebook feels like the fastest and most efficient way to do that right now. So this is my plan:

-write an ebook that is actually good. I already have an ebook that I wrote a few years ago but didn't sell well. I wrote a list of all the mistakes I made back then, and will try to fix it this time. I am massively improving on the quality of the content and maybe I'll add a few bonuses to complement the product, like a study routine planner.

-start building an audience on a social media platform. I chose TikTok, because it's the one that gets my content in front of the most amount of people organically right now, without the need to have a big marketing budget.

-learn about marketing by trying to sell my ebook using digital marketing. I'll start with tiktok ads and then learn google and meta ads. Maybe I'll use pinterest, twiter, linkedin and other less popular platforms once I master tiktok ads.

-after I have a big enough audience and income, I can do the reasearch properly and make a better decision on whether or not my course is gonna be a good fit for my students. Maybe I'll have a different ideia that works better, maybe I'll find a better way to teach, who knows.

It all boils down to this: build an audience around my niche, figure out what products they need or want, create it and sell it. In the meantime I'll be focusing on my branding, and slowly build autorithy on the topic of language learning.
So far this is my situation:
-I have only 80 followers on Tiktok. Have been posting 3 videos every day. Most videos were generating about 200 views, which is very little, but just today one video generated aroung 1200 views. I'll duplicate the same formula from now on and see how it performs.
-My ebook will be finished by the end of this week. After that, I'll build the landing page on wordpress and make a few ads. My main goal is to test which types of creatives generate the most sales. After I find one that works, I'll doble down on it.

I'm curious to know what you guys think. Most of you have had way more experience than me and know a lot more. Have a few tips? Things I can do different? Let me know