I want to offer a li
[2023-03-21 03:15:17 PM] : I want to offer a live workshop to better understand common pains reported by my Ruby on Mac customers. Eventually, I want to create a course and/or ebook, but want to start with a workshop to get feedback and understand the problem better. My initial thought was to limit the initial cohort to 10 people, and give it for free in exchange for feedback about the content and my teaching style. Is 10 a good number, and is free a good idea, or should I charge for it at a discounted rate?
Then once the first workshop is done, and the feedback is incorporated, do I do it again with the same people, or another set of 10? If the first workshop was free, at what point does it makes sense to start charging? Once the feedback is unanimously positive?
For those of you that have taken this approach, what has worked for you? Thanks!
1 Reply
[2023-03-21 08:11:31 PM] : zooming out a bit, what pain would the workshop be addressing? what fix does it offer? (is it like a live support workshop?)
[2023-03-21 08:41:53 PM] : The workshop would be addressing the pain of not being able to troubleshoot Ruby and/or gem installation issues. As one customer put it:
The few times I magically had a running development environment I panicked at the thought of having to switch ruby versions or even do a bundle update. To me, it's the most opaque aspect of the whole ecosystem.[2023-03-21 08:44:02 PM] : It's not a live support workshop. It's to educate and allow people to become more confident in handling issues when they arise. Or being able to clone any Ruby project and be able to run it locally. I have several real-world scenarios from customers who failed to get a particular project running on their computer, and I was going to use those to teach. My goal is that everyone should be able to get one of those projects running and understand what they're doing in the process. [2023-03-21 08:47:32 PM] : In addition to that, I was also going to explain how development in general works on a Mac (Homebrew, PATH, shell startup files, etc). I would also explain how Ruby on Mac guarantees a successful setup, and why all the other solutions they tried before finding Ruby on Mac didn't work. [2023-03-22 10:08:22 AM] : Would the workshop have value outside of you saying "and the solution is Ruby on Mac!" ? To give you my experience. I ran a free live workshop during my last course launch. The course is on how to get more grip from your tyres on a race track. The live workshop was on how to run a successful test day at a race track, and I used tyre tuning as the subject - clearly! - but it could have been any subject because the workshop focused on how to test rather than what to test. Invariably I got specific questions about tyres, so I tried my best to answer them as fully as I could, aware that everyone by this point already knew I had a course on the subject launching the next week. At no point did I say you'd need to sign up for the course to learn that - I just told them best I could in the time. I didn't put a limit on the number of people signing up as I wanted as many as possible to come along. In the chat it was also nice to see some people just helping share their own experiences to help answer questions too - so we all learnt. Not 100% sure if this is useful to you , know I read this back haha, but if you can make the purpose of the workshop clear - from their point of view, what will they get from it - then you might even be able to charge for it straight off the bat. And if they want Ruby on Mac you could do them a voucher or something to get their money back from the workshop? Webinar sales funnel stylee! :slightly_smiling_face: Good luck and hope this helped a bit? [2023-03-22 10:12:19 AM] : i’ve done this. i taught a workshop to 10 people. i changed $50. i actually had to do two cohorts. the workshop went fine (not great but fine) and i learned a lot about who my audience members are and what they would need out of such a workshop. i think most of the details you’re considering REALLY don’t matter. for me the big benefit was just doing something that put me in closer touch with my audience members so that i could repeat the process, doing it a little bit better each time. [2023-03-22 11:55:22 AM] : Thanks Samir. The workshop is for people who already bought Ruby on Mac and want to better understand the basics of working on a Ruby project. One of the specific pain points is how to manage dependencies and switch between different projects that use different versions of Ruby and different dependencies. This is not something you can do with "Ruby on Mac", the product. The value of the workshop for attendees (which will only be open to current customers for now) is to better understand the basics and be able to troubleshoot issues more quickly and confidently. For me, the value is to learn what things people struggle with and want to understand better. This will help me create a better book and/or course for this material. [2023-03-22 11:56:18 AM] : Thanks jasonswett. That makes sense. I'm looking for the same benefit that you experienced. [2023-03-22 12:07:35 PM] : i wish you good luck! [2023-03-22 05:36:08 PM] : Not a lot to add that hasn't already been said. if your primary goal is lead gen for future sales, a free workshop on a pointed problem (or set of related problems) can be very effective. if your primary goal is quality feedback, charging something nominal (like Jason's $50) is good for getting people who have real skin in the game with these problems. The thing to remember in all cases is that some % of people won't show up. So 10 can be fine if they feel like it's going to be very special access to you, but you might want to raise it a bit just to make sure the drop-off rate doesnt eat into your participation as much. As for repeating - doing the same workshop multiple times with incremental improvement is a GREAT way to develop it into a product in your portfolio. that's how 30x500 started, and many others. I'd be cautious about testing it completely free then charging. It's possible and many do it, but the challenge is what I mentioned above: people who attend something free have different needs/expectations than someone who paid to be there the first time. If the goal is to charge, then charge. you can make it "less than the target price" the first run and raise it subsequent times, but going from free to paid is different from going from $50 to $100+ [2023-03-22 05:36:25 PM] : i guess I did have a lot to add :sweat_smile: [2023-03-22 08:51:14 PM] : Thanks, Alex! That's very helpful.