I Talked Myself Into Leading a Workshop

Am I really ready to teach? Here’s something I never thought I would be able to do when I was trying to be everything to everyone—

I am opening my very first group program.

I have been doing one-on-one SEO client work in the wedding industry for over a year. It’s gotten to a point where I have a decent size email list, about 500 people, and I’ve worked with a good number of clients.

While that’s going well, I’ve also heard multiple times from wedding pros that they would love SEO help, but my pricing is just not something they can afford. I’ve increased my prices three times now, so I’m hearing this more and more.

Given this feedback, my mind has been spinning about coming up with a lower priced option.

I toyed around with the idea of a course, but I feel like there’s a little bit of course fatigue in my target market, so I didn’t feel like launching a course was the right idea. I also thought that would take a lot of investment and time on my part to get set up.

I stepped back and asked myself two things:

1. What would provide a wedding planner or photographer the most SEO impact in the shortest amount of time?
2. How do I create that with the least amount of pre-launch investment and time on my part?

I settled on an online workshop—four 90-minute sessions, taught live and recorded over four days. I won’t go deep into SEO theory or concepts. We’re just going to work together to tweak participants’ sites live on the call, and to learn best practices for blogging and promotion.

How will it sell? How will it go? I’m not sure.

Selling an Untested Group Program is Scary

I’m worried that I won’t fill it. I’m worried that I won’t present it very well. I’m worried that the participants won’t get as much value from it as they hope to.

I was also worried I’d be too worried about everything to even try to do this (does that make sense?).

So 3 weeks ago, I just put the date on the calendar and told myself to make it happen.

I threw a dart out and decided to open 15 slots at $250 each. The cost is a little bit lower than I want it to go eventually, but I also think this is an introductory thing. I’m sure there’ll be some kinks to work out, and I want to feel confident that the value is there.

What I’m most excited about is that I just can’t imagine doing this when I was a generalist web developer. There wouldn’t have been something really specific that I could have guided a group through on a DIY basis. I could have tried to sell a workshop on website copy or planning your website content or DIYing a WordPress site, but there are courses like that everywhere.

When you’re not a known expert at anything in particular, it’s really hard to convince people they should learn from you rather than another course on the internet.

My Wedding SEO Bootcamp is the only online SEO workshop I know of for wedding professionals. I hope it goes well. You can bet I’ll check back in and let you know 🙂