I'm Dickie. I bootstrapped a cohort-based course from idea to 1,400 students in 6 months. AMA 🔥
Dickie Bush
54 replies
I've built Ship 30 for 30 - a cohort-based writing course - from idea to over 1,400 students in six months. I've learned a ton along the way about marketing, scaling, building community, iterating and improving a course, and made just about every mistake there is to make. I did all this while having a full-time job!
I'd love to answer any questions you have on bootstrapping demand for your course, marketing, building, scaling, and everything in-between as well as how to manage side projects.
AMA 🔥
Replies
Clay Hebert@clayhebert
What gave you the idea for Ship 30 for 30? What prompted it?
Share
@clayhebert Ship 30 is the writing program I wish I had when I started writing online in 2020.
I had been following the class playbook of "owning your platform," with a weekly blog post and newsletter.
But the feedback loops were so slow. I was spinning my wheels with too many ideas to explore but no good medium to do so.
So I started writing and publishing small screenshot essays on Twitter (which helped me clear the backlog of ideas in my head faster).
10 days in, I knew I needed an accountability community to do it with me. And so I spun up a quick Typeform, tweeted out an interest question (I had ~1400 followers at the time), and the response was huge.
Long story short, Ship 30 was a solution to my own problem (that it turned out quite a few others had as well).
UpViral
What platform do you use for the cohort-based training?
@emarky We use Podia/Zoom/Slack.
But my due diligence on this was literally 0. I googled "course platform with referral program" and clicked the first one.
I think course creators spend 10x too much time thinking which community platform, tool, or tactic they should use.
The truth it, the tools do not matter. A good community will thrive with any tool.
What do you believe to be Ship 30 For 30's #1 driver of success? What would it be in one word?
@dylan_redekop Hard to choose one word. But the #1 driver of success is the shared community struggle in building a habit and skill that will benefit them for the rest of their lives.
LLC Toolkit
How did you get your first student?
LLC Toolkit
@dickiebush Thanks, makes sense! When you invited them over to slack, with the experience you've now, what would you do differently back then, when you invited first 50 people to slack?
Hashnode
Who has been the brightest writer you've encountered in Ship 30 for 30 from all cohorts?
Reaons: I try to follow all the alumni, and do not want to miss on the greatest :)
@rajat_kapoor There have been so many! Can't choose just one (that's like picking children).
We are working on creating an alumni directory that will showcase what every alumni is working on and writing about after completing the program, so stay tuned!
Hashnode
@dickiebush That's fair.
I will be looking forward to that directory.
Keep up the great work
Distributing atomic essays via the image vs repurposing it in a thread. What works better for you on Twitter (since you do both) and why do you think that is the case?
@rohan_mendiratta1 I think both have their merits. Threads will get better engagement, but require a certain style of writing (lists or stories really).
Atomic Essays are a good way to explore one single idea that you would ideally put in one tweet if Twitter allowed them to be that long.
Write Invisible
@rohan_mendiratta1 @dickiebush - what is an "atomic essay"
First of all, congratulations! :) How did you market and build your community for this project? Especially if you were working on a full-time job at the same time?
@rubenwolff The marketing comes almost 100% from my Twitter threads.
The landing page of our website has a free 10-day email course that converts quite a bit as well.
There is also some built-in viral marketing that aligns incentives between us and every writer. The better they write, the more attention they gain, and the more attention Ship 30 gets for helping them get there. Very win-win.
But by far the most marketing is done via word-of-mouth from members who love the program and share how much they love it with others.
Infinity Maps
@rubenwolff Was about to ask a similiar question
@rubenwolff same here! want to know how did you market and build your community!
Best advice for marketing the class?
@nico_medellin Create content that identifies and points out the problem you are solving, then position yourself as the clear solution.
Customer Engagement OS
What's the biggest challenge you face when building a cohort-based learning course? How do you control the the quality of each cohort?
@andrew_tsao The number one problem is the endless treadmill of improvements you *could* make when creating a course.
Literally everything could be better. So finding that balance of "good enough" is a tough game. And failing to set those boundaries is a one-way ticket to burnout.
Developing the skill of identifying "is this an incremental improvement or a 10x improvement?" has been both my biggest struggle and biggest point of success.
Since I do this as a side project, I have no choice but to spend my time on the big things that move the needle.
WebsitesToolz
Congrats! thats a great achievement. Guys i am the founder of WebsitesToolz we recently launched on PH. We just launched on AppSumo. Do check out our PH page for link to AppSumo.
Ariglad YC W23
Wow! Impressive! I'd love to see if any of these startups might require funding. We're looking to invest in 6 startups this year.
SaaS for Greater Good
Hi @dickiebush , when are you starting your next cohort?
Are you also teaching conversational marketing in your course, Dickie?
@dickiebush
1/ While running a CBC, what is the biggest hurdle you faced so far?
2/ To run a CBC, do we need to know everything about our niche? (Ex : I know a few tricks to write good content, but do I need to know every other type which exists)
3/ How is the experience so far running Ship 30 for 30?
4/ When did you learn that the CBC model is working out for you?
Thanks in Advance :)
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Congratulations! Feel like I need to get on this to improve my writing!
what tactics you use in scaling and marketing ?
thanks dickie, For this important Course info. 6 months course is very good to learn like image editing, Graphic Design. Then its easy to give image cutout service like: https://clippingway.com/image-cu...
Character.io
How did you manage your time, having a full time job and hustling to build this course?