Last weekend, I had one of those weird “full circle” moments.
The kind that stops you in your tracks and makes you take stock of your life and career.
And it happened in Nashville, Tennessee of all places!
This was quite special for me and I wanted to tell you about it, if that’s OK?
In order to explain, let me take you back to the summer of 2014…
..[cue whimsical music]..
So, I was living in Qatar, busy working in my English teaching job.
A year earlier, in my spare time, I started my fledgling language blog. Now, after 12 months of audience building, I decided it was time to make my first product.
Exciting!
And also scary!
(How would my devoted email list react when I dared to ask them for money???)
Anyway…
I’d been thinking about this for a while, when a Facebook ad popped up selling a course with a bold promise:
“Build and launch your first product in just six weeks, even if you’ve never made anything before, don’t have a list and are terrified of selling!”
(Or words to that effect.)
Talk about the perfect message at the perfect time!
This was just what I needed.
(And hey… I already had a list of 2,000 people, so I was ahead of the game!)
The course was $1,000, which was a huge investment for me at the time.
In fact, I had approximately $1,000 in my PayPal account – the total amount I had made from making a smattering of affiliate sales since starting my blog.
Long story short:
I bit the bullet and bought the product.
“If this ain’t a sign, then I don’t know what is!” I thought.
To this day, I still remember how the course was delivered:
- one live webinar a week
- over six weeks
- your product launched and sold by the end
(The course was called “Seed Launch”, because you built your product from the seed of an idea — from nothing. Nice, right?)
Every week, I diligently watched the webinar and implemented the instructions, step-by-step.
In the final week, I launched my course.
– my first bloody launch! Hurrah! Big moment!
(I’ll tell you the results a bit later.)
Anyway…
The course I built and sold was called “Speaking Bootcamp”.
The premise:
Learn to speak your new language with confidence.
I delivered the course in exactly the same way as the Seed Launch course itself was taught:
- one live webinar a week
- over six weeks
- you get the result by the end
Nice and simple.
The course went great.
People loved it.
But that’s not the end of the story. (Oh no… this story is faaaar from over!)
[Sidenote — you know how you always remember the one negative comment in a sea of positive ones? I still remember the one negative email I got back then in 2014. The dude said: “You’re a sellout, Olly. I’m leaving now to follow a proper language blog.” — Bastard!]
Anyways… results of my launch:
..[drumroll]
..
$2,000 in sales.
Now before you scoff at such a modest product launch, I want you to know this:
I was over the moon!
Sure, $2,000 isn’t f*** you money, but here’s what it did mean:
- I had invested $1k and earned $2k (double your money, baby!)
- I had got over my fear of selling
- I now had a product to sell
Of course, at the time I had precisely ZERO idea what was to come after that…
Namely: quitting my job, building a language empire and selling 1.5+ million books.
But looking back, I know one thing for dog-gam sure…
Had I not taken that course and launched my first product, NONE of that stuff would have happened.
This bookshelf domination, for example, would not exist:
So, I am eternally grateful for that little “Seed Launch” course.
Innit funny… the little things that randomly come your way… in a Facebook ad of all places!
Life changer.
Now, having read your way through this story, you’re probably wondering what on earth this has to do with Nashville, Tennessee…
And what this “Full Circle” moment was for me.
Perhaps you can guess.
Until then…
Olly
