I want to share an embarrassing secret that I bet you can relate to. 

I am literally one of the biggest procrastinators on the planet. It is an absolute dysfunction for me, and it gets in the way of a lot of things in my life. 

I used to be very, very bad at creating training programs. If I had to sit down and film videos or write content, it would take me forever. 

The reason I’m sharing this is because I know so many people that are great at something, and they have an idea for turning their knowledge into an online business, but they never actually launch it. And that’s because it takes them forever to get the information out of their head and into a finished product they can sell. 

If you’re one of those people (and just based on statistics and how many entrepreneurs I talk to every day, I’m guessing you are), I want to share a huge breakthrough I had many years ago. 

Quick interruption: I’ve also compiled ten of my best productivity hacks into The Millionaire Procrastinator’s Productivity Handbook. Click here to download your copy for free.

I stumbled across a way to hack my brain- a way to actually harness my procrastination and redirect it to create massive success for myself. And you can absolutely use this to your advantage too. 

How I accidentally learned how to monetize my procrastination

I have another huge dysfunction (That’s the last one for the day. I’m not going to admit to any more dysfunctions!). 

I absolutely cannot stand letting anybody down. That might sound like a humble brag, but it really is an issue for me. Often I won’t do something for myself that I should, but if someone else is depending on me I just I just can’t let them down. It’s really hard for me. 

I started to realize that even though I struggle horribly with procrastination, if I told someone I was going to have something done on Tuesday, I would absolutely get it done on Tuesday. Even if it was done at the very last minute, I would always meet the deadline. 

Once I learned this about myself, I started thinking: “How can I use this to get over my procrastination and get the job done?” 

And that’s when I developed a trick that changed my life. 

I figured out if I had one person that was depending on me, it absolutely motivated me to get something done. If I had 10 people depending on me, it motivated me 10 times more. And if those people were customers who had paid me in advance… I would do literally whatever it took to make sure I didn’t let them down. 

And that was the secret.

I had accidentally discovered how to harness one dysfunction to cancel out the other: I forced myself to be accountable, and the accountability actually beats out my need to procrastinate.  

This breakthrough completely changed my life. 

Today I make millions of dollars a year by taking things that I’m nerdy about and teaching people how to get the same results. A lot of people see the sales my business generates every month and they think I’ve got a giant list of past customers. They think I must have enormous resources or some secret sauce they don’t have. But the truth is, it’s just because I learned how to channel these dysfunctions and now I can take a concept for a product and launch it insanely fast.

I hope this lesson alone is worth the price of admission for reading this article. But I want to take it one step further and show you exactly how you can use this to launch a profitable training program in a week or less. 

The fastest way to launch a profitable course I’ve ever seen (and the cornerstone behind my business’s success)

This is the 5-part formula I use to launch all of my courses:

Step 1: Figure out what you’re going to teach

People tell me all the time “I can’t create a course, I’m not an expert in anything!” 

But it’s not about being an expert. It’s simply about teaching someone how to do something. 

I promise you there are dozens of things you can teach, you just haven’t taken the time to think about your knowledge and your processes. 

So set aside an hour or two, grab a pen and paper, and start brainstorming:

• What are some skills you have?
• What are some results you’ve helped other people achieve? 
• What things do you friends come to you for advice about? 
• What are you recognized for at work?
• What is something you learned in school that not everyone knows?

The answers are unlimited. Shooting free throws. Curing headaches. Writing books. There’s no end to the things people will pay you to teach them.

Step 2: Create an outline. 

This is probably the most important thing I’m going to tell you…

Once you know what you’re going to teach, DO NOT start writing an ebook, filming videos, or creating your digital product. 

What I want you to do simply ask yourself: “What is the big takeaway? What’s the one thing I want people to know?”

Then take that One Big Thing and use the 5×5 technique: 

Break your process down into 5 parts. What are the 5 steps you could teach to take someone from having no knowledge, all the way to being able to do the thing you’re teaching them? 

Now take each of those 5 major points and break them into 5 minor points. If you need to do 4 or 6, that’s fine, but in my own courses I always aim for 5 because it’s not too much information to consume, but not too little as well. 

You don’t need to write these steps out in full paragraphs. Simply write them out as bullet points in a google doc. Give yourself an hour or two to get the entire outline done.

Step 3: Start selling 

Here’s the part that’s going to be hard to wrap your head around: I want you to start making sales before you’ve actually created anything. 

I know that sounds crazy. But here’s a lesson that is imperative you learn: you’re not selling a product, you’re selling an outcome. 

Your customers don’t want an ebook or a training manual or a video course. They want your solution to their problem. They want the amazing end result that you offer. 

Without a doubt, the best way I’ve found to do this is through a live webinar. Use Zoom, use GoToWebinar, use whatever you want, but teaching on a live webinar is the shortest path to getting knowledge out of your head and into your customer’s brain. 

That’s exactly how I do it. I say “Here are the results I’ve gotten for other people, and here’s what I’m going to teach you so you can achieve those same results too.” Essentially all I’m doing is selling the bullet points I mapped out in Step 2. And when a customer buys, they’re immediately taken to a page that says “Thanks for your purchase, now sign up for a webinar.”

Step 4: Build your presentation

Here’s the secret to this whole strategy: now that you have paid customers who have signed up for a webinar on your calendar, you have no choice but to get your course done. 

That might sound intimidating, but the good news is it’s not that hard. 

Build a presentation with PowerPoint or Keynote and simply walk your students step by step through the process of how to do the thing you’re teaching them. Since you have a deadline on the calendar and they’re depending on you, you will force yourself to actually put together a course in a logical fashion- and faster than you ever imagined. 

Still to this day I’m not disciplined enough to sit down and write copy or cut videos in a certain time frame. But when I do things live, it forces me to get my presentation finished in time.

Step 5: Deliver the webinar

This is the part that terrifies most people.  

The first time I teach this system to someone, they always say “It’s going to seem like I’m teaching on the fly. I don’t want to look like I’m winging it!” 

But the thing is, live webinars are actually a huge benefit to your customers because they’re not just watching videos, they get to be an active part of the course. They’re not going to care that you haven’t scripted every single word of the presentation, they’re going to love the fact that they can ask you questions. 

I personally love doing this because the questions people ask make the course a lot better than it would have been had I just guessed what they wanted to know.

I record the webinar, and when it’s over we split the recording into the five individual videos and upload it to a members area. That way when customers watch it in the future, they’re not just watching one big webinar, they’re watching individual videos with a logical progression. 

We always try to get the videos uploaded within 24 hours of the original webinar, so we can send out an email to all of the buyers saying “Did you miss the live presentation, or do you want to watch it again? It’s live in the members area, you can go check it out now.” 

Sometimes there will be a section I want to reshoot. And the great thing is, since the original version is live in the members area, I have an enormous incentive to get the new video filmed and uploaded as fast as possible, whereas normally I would drag my feet for weeks.

What this looks like in practice- my exact blueprint for enormous launches

I know this is a ton of information to digest, so I want to show you how this looks in practice. This is the exact blueprint for how I launch my own courses:

I’ll pick a day to give my live webinar- usually a Tuesday. No matter what, everything MUST be ready on that date. 

The Wednesday and Thursday before I’ll send out two emails that will lead into a sales email. These are to pique my customers’ interest and start getting them excited about the value I’m going to offer them. 

On Friday I send out the sales email, which explains exactly what they’re going to get in the course. And remember I sell it before I create anything, so basically I’m just selling bullet points. Essentially these three emails are like a mini sales letter, but delivered to their inbox, and these emails lead directly to a buy page. The sale is open all weekend, and I close it on Monday. 

While the sale is going on, I’m building my Keynote slides and polishing my presentation. By the time Tuesday arrives I’m ready, and I give the training live. Once the live webinar is done, my staff takes the recording, cuts it into pieces, and puts into the members area. 

And that’s it! That’s how I create profitable training programs in a week or less. 

If I would try to create a video course from scratch it would take me weeks, if not months, because I would procrastinate so much. But by doing it live, I trick myself and use the impending deadline to just get it done. As a result I’ve been able to create a super successful business- that I can run out of a backpack. 

My challenge to you

Now that I’ve shared my secret to success, I challenge you to use it for yourself. 

Here’s what I challenge you to do: I want you to sit down and think “What is something I’m good at?” Start brainstorming and pretty quickly you’re going to realize you have a training program inside you already- something you can teach someone to do on their own. 

Break the process down into 5 steps, and put a date on the calendar when you’re going to give your training on a live webinar. 

If you don’t have an audience or an email list yet to sell your live webinar to, ask three friends to join you on a Zoom call and teach them. Record the video, break it down into individual segments, and now you have a finished training course ready to sell to future customers. 

Next steps

Once you have your course finished, the big question is “How do I get my offer in front of potential customers?” 

There are many answers: organic traffic, social media marketing, affiliate marketing, Facebook groups and forums, paid advertising, and much more. 

But possibly the hottest advertising strategy right now is Facebook ads. This is probably the most powerful marketing tool that entrepreneurs have ever had access to… and you have access to it as well. 

It used to be that only the Coca-Colas and Nikes of the world could use cutting-edge advertising methods, because TV commercials and radio spots were so expensive. But now, even if you have a shoestring budget, you can say “Who is my exact ideal customer? How old are they, what gender are they, where do they live, how much money do they make, and what things are they interested in?” And you can pay to only speak to those people, and no one else. 

It truly is incredible. But it’s also a little overwhelming. That’s why I created the Facebook Ads Backpack Guide. If you want to harness the power of Facebook advertising to launch a 7- or 8-figure business that you can run from a backpack, just like I do, then this course will show you step-by-step exactly how you can do that. 

Click here to check it out.

If you have any questions about how to use this 5-part strategy in your business, please ask me in the comments below and I’ll do my best to answer. 

And if you use this blueprint to create your own product, please post a link to your sales page in the comments as well. I’m happy to share a little traffic from this page if you tell me how helpful this article was 🙂

And don’t forget, if you’d like to get more of my productivity advice, click here to download your free copy of The Millionaire Procrastinator’s Productivity Handbook.