Trenton Reynolds: It is Friday, July 13th, 2018. This is Room in the Trees. a podcast about being an artist, making art, and living. Room in the Trees is hosted by Sabrina Ward-Harrison and me, Trent Reynolds. And this is episode 51, Your Special Sauce. And here is our conversation with Annabelle Lindquist.
Sabrina Ward Harrison: So I want to introduce Annabelle. Annabelle reached out to me a few... few weeks ago and she had taken you had taken a workshop for me in maine portland maine maybe 10 years ago we we think yeah we don't we can't remember that long ago just some sort of decade and I remember the workshop but I actually I don't I think it's a covered balcony somewhere and so I had been I had been over the past few months ruminating and thinking about how to translate these workshops and true living experiences that I've been doing over the past two decades to sort of parlay them into something that can be offered to people that are not close to me geographically. And I just thought, how am I going to do this? And I want it to be authentic and have a vibrancy to it that can be communicated. and you reached out to me not knowing I was thinking any of these things and I was scratching my head wondering how to do this and said hey you know you should be you should be thinking about doing these on you know translating this stuff into an online course was like yeah I know you said I have this I've created this class to help people do that and I'd be happy to you know show it to you and talk about it and I was just so I just felt it was sort of this divine clearly some kind of like Yes, because I what I need to bridge the things I needed was someone who knew my work and had experienced my workshops But understood the technical part of transit translating that so I signed up for Annabelle this course and We had a great conversation. I think within a few days after connecting and we found out we were born within two days of each other or three days of each other. Yeah. Yeah. And just had a really great, you know, really sincere, wonderful connection. So we've been taught, I've been doing the course and creating this and building the content and going through this process and having we've been having weekly conversations so I've just really appreciated them and really am fascinated by this whole big world of knowledge commerce and I'm just excited Talk about that further in Trenton. You had created Trent. Sorry. You created your, I know it's old school. You can call me Trenton. I know. Trenton and I went to high school together years and years ago.
Trenton Reynolds: So that's what I've grown up into the man who's known as Trent.
Annabel Linquist: So where was that in California? Yeah. Yeah.
Cool. Cool.
Trenton Reynolds: So Annabelle, how did, yes, I too have, I've spent actually a lot, a lot of time trying to develop online courseware, thus far unsuccessful in actually publishing anything. So this is something that I'm really interested in, and when Sabrina said she was working with you, I was, you know, surprised. It was obvious to me that we needed to get you on the podcast. But Annabelle, how did you get into... Well, no, first, just in terms of the story, why did you reach out to Sabrina when you did?
Annabel Linquist: It was just super random. I just... I only use Facebook for, like... I mean, I don't really use it personally, but I was just on Facebook one day and I saw that she was doing another live workshop and I was just thinking, "This girl better have an online course going on right now," because I'm so obsessed with them. Yeah, so I just message turned and I'm like, "You do have an online course happening right now and if you don't, you need to be doing that ASAP." And she was like, "Uh, yeah." Help. This is awesome. Perfect timing. Yeah. But how did I get into them? Let's see. Well, a few years ago, I was researching how to... online marketing stuff like learning how to do online marketing in the last few years because I Became mysteriously ill and couldn't really do anything So everything I I just started Learning from bed anything I could do from my bed. So online Marketing is was something that I was super into just I I wanted to learn how to turn my band into a business. And I've been a full-time artist my whole life. So being an entrepreneur and figuring out how new ways of doing things has always kind of been what I do. And I also have... a technical background, so it's like I'm kind of a nerd also. So I was researching marketing and learning how to do online marketing with Marie Forleo's B-School, and I had started taking online classes, and they were just so amazing. And so... I also had a blog that is now like it's now like on the back burner. I took it offline, but I had a blog that just went kind of crazy. And then I wanted to. kind of start the blogging thing back up again and figure out a new way of monetizing that without being beholden to advertisers. And so I kind of figured out that online courses were an amazing way to have a digital product without you know, in a new kind of model. So I started researching that and then very quickly got obsessed with Kajabi, which is one of the all-in-one knowledge commerce platforms out there, which is the industry standard. It's actually, I think, like definitely the best. I try them all, every single one, and... even built stuff from scratch using WordPress and stuff. And you used to have to bring in 10 different kinds of software and integrate your members area and your login and your checkout and your autoresponder. Like there's just so much techie stuff and it took so long. And once I found Kajabi, I was like, It just got hooked. So so yeah, I just built a little course for creatives and
Annabel Linquist: And Like influencers to learn how to use this new business model to kind of leverage whatever they want to like leverage their business without having to like, you know, sell out to the whole advertising model or, you know, whatever. So that's sort of how it got started.
Trenton Reynolds: My suspicion is that a lot of our audience is, is facing a similar type of situation where, um, where perhaps they have something that they'd like to share with the world. You know, it could be something very small that might be accomplished well enough on Facebook or on a blog. Or it might be something more formal, whether they want to come up with some kind of class teaching a skill or distributing some kind of knowledge. And for me, I've sensed for the last decade you know, that all these different technologies are coalescing and it's like we can do this, right? It's no longer really that difficult to pull off But it's still difficult enough where it can be really overwhelming. Right. Because, you know, we kind of know what Instagram's like. We kind of know what Facebook's like. We know these basic interfaces and how to connect with the community and start developing an online presence. But combining all the bits and pieces of that of like, how do you set up a payment system? How do you keep track of all the people that are interested in you and have a meaningful interaction or conversation? There are so many little pieces that it can easily become just so overwhelming that people just kind of get frozen, right?
Annabel Linquist: Oh, my gosh, yeah. And I was one of those people.
Trenton Reynolds: Right. But it takes somebody like you, who I think is somewhat a rarity. Like, artists especially have it stereotypically, and I understand that there's a lot of people that aren't this way. stereotypically don't have much of a tech-savvy bent. You know, like artists tend to be a little bit less inclined to go into machines and Internet and technical stuff. So I think especially this community could really use an easy and welcoming user interface or way to access this capability and potential that is represented by the Internet. So you found a specific platform. and you've tested all of them. Can you tell us what the different pieces of the platform or what problems does this platform solve?
Sabrina Ward Harrison: That we don't even know are... I think in some ways it's like we don't know what's important, what really is important and what really isn't that important, what we can kind of... put aside and what it's like this part of the blueprint is the most is critical especially around the closing as you said trenton like we may have it all but then it's like you freeze before you think like launch and let's do this and then what has to happen for that really to happen
Annabel Linquist: You know, the most interesting thing that I found about this process is that at the end of the day, the tech stuff is not the thing that becomes the obstacle. It's the -- and especially for me, it was the organization, it was the content creation, the like so you're not only building a course and building all that content because that's like the real super intense but then you may be learning a whole new thing which is online marketing which is like a sorry which is like a totally different like half of the game you know because once you have the thing and it's ready to go then you have to really know how to get it in front of the right eyeballs, you know, and which can be, you know, kind of intense, especially if you've, you know, you know, you've ever gone into your
Sabrina Ward Harrison: Facebook, you know, power editor. I've been like, oh my gosh. What is a Facebook power editor? Just to
Annabel Linquist: Yeah, so that's just where you would promote. Okay, so basically in the marketing aspect, one of the best ways to do it is to put out a piece of free content and to start building your list and your list is going to be your audience of the people who kind of need your product and want that information. So once you build your free content, I love to do video content like webinars and stuff like that, then Facebook's probably the best way to target your audience and get that, your free content to come up on their feed while they're just doing whatever on Facebook. So they'll be like, oh look, a free training. Let me check this out, you know. So that's part of the marketing stuff. So not only are you having to build your course, but you're having to build like, you know, other content for your free marketing. But in terms of the tech part that can get super overwhelming for people who are non-techie, or people who even are techie um the reason i'm in love with kajabi is that it makes it so easy to have everything in one platform and um kind of set everything up so you have like the And Kajabi also does the marketing stuff too, which means that you can host your course. And so you have the back end of your course with, you know, like you'll have a login and then people will be able to access your course with the login. But then you can also have a public area of your of your for your course, which would be your website and then a blog also. And then you can also. set up a whole marketing funnel with their course. And I think that Kajabi is the most elegant, definitely, platform that I've seen. So you can have like a landing page, which will then collect people's emails, and then they can, then they'll be on your list, and then they can watch your free content. And then in your free content, you basically can offer them whatever you've made and even if they don't decide to buy your course then you at least have them on your list and they can get to know you when you send out emails so the formula for this is actually like the cool thing about this is you don't need to reinvent the wheel there's a formula for all this stuff that totally works The difficult part about, for me anyway, like I'm a painter, and so I'm used to just being, you know, I'm like abstract all the time. But what I had to do was to actually discipline myself to use the other side of my brain when I was organizing the content that I was making for my... So what happened was I made my first course... I started to research how to turn a band into a business, and that was going to be my first course. But then, I think I mentioned before, I had, like, a mysterious illness, and I was just kind of in bed in my pajamas, like, making stuff on my computer, and that's how I kind of got into this. Well, I... I kind of put together a protocol and pretty much healed myself like an 80 80 to 90 percent healed myself And then I realized okay this is the perfect example for me to make a course and I'm going to teach myself how to do it and kind of learn to do it by doing it so I I literally went to Paris and And with just the only my only intention was just to like be surrounded by stuff that inspires me and drink some coffee and eat some cheese and make this course, which I did. But instead of taking like I thought it was going to take maybe a few months, it ended up taking almost eight months for me to build my first course. And then once I built it. I realized, oh my gosh, all of a sudden I have a business. And I don't necessarily want to be a health, like, any sort of, I actually don't want, like, I don't feel like my mission is to be, like, do this for myself. like it's funny because as soon as you have a course you're kind of like the authority so what I learned was I mean and I also gained like 20 pounds in the process because I just was spending so much more time than usual on my computer so then I had to make another protocol to lose like the 20 pounds because if you're going to be like sitting in front of your computer like I had to I was like, okay, well, I'm gonna go get some weights and make sure that I take a few minutes off every few hours because I just get so sucked into this stuff. But so anyway, the thing I learned, I learned how to make courses and really got obsessed with them. But then I realized you need to really be like dialed in to what your message is and what you're what you're what you're here to really say before you really start or else you're gonna have you're gonna be an authority or like have a product and then kind of realize that you needed to you need to know who your audience is first.
Trenton Reynolds: That's what I learned. I think it's interesting to me to hear you talk about that because I think a lot of us have, you know, the nature of creatives, I think, creative people are we have all these interests. And we have like sometimes to the point of like mass distraction, right? Like all these things that we start to accumulate and things that we kind of obsess over. at different points in our life, but it's a different process entirely to be able to take all of that massive information and interest and all these tangents, and from that create something that has structure and something that can then be consumable in a way that makes sense, some kind of cohesive structure to then present it to somebody else. And those are two different processes and sometimes can be a struggle. Totally. For people that are used to just kind of indulging in this mindset where they're just bringing things in.
Annabel Linquist: Well, and that's what I've been... When I talk to Sabrina, it's interesting because I totally get where she's coming from. It's amazing to me. And it's also very rare, I think, to be fine artists to this degree where you actually... like hard to do anything else, you know? What do you mean? Because you have the ability to go so deep, you know? Like I think that's kind of a rare ability in two things. But for me, what I was saying to Sabrina is that like part of the reason I have in the last few years have been able to make the course building process so efficient for me is that I made myself start doing it in a very methodical very linear way where I start with my idea, I do my outline. I don't record my courses until I finish my outline. And then I don't even think about marketing till my videos are finished. So I make myself do it in a linear way, which is something that I don't, I don't do that for anything else I do. Like when I paint, it's totally nonlinear, you know? So that was a really difficult thing for me to like retrain my brain to learn how to do. And then once I kind of did that, it made my process so efficient. And another thing with course building is also like copywriting and stuff. You know, you have to turn everything into like an elevator pitch. Like you have to cut out all of the... you know, you have to keep people engaged, which means it can't, you know, it has to be like really amazing. And in short, actually, because people have a really short attention span. But with you, Sabrina, I actually feel like A lot of the rules that I had for course building, I kind of, for Sabrina, just said, like, forget this. Like, don't listen to this because yours is actually for artists. So you can probably be a lot more, like, you know, just be intuitive because your intuition is where your magic is with what you do. So you can break all the rules. But for the most part, for other things, it's a skill that's like a kind of annoying skill that I had to learn.
Trenton Reynolds: Well, Sabrina, we've talked about this in the past just in regard to workshops that there's this kind of established, I don't know, when you think of like a workshop, there's a structure, there's kind of a cliche, you know, this thing that we have in our mind of what a workshop looks like, what it feels like, the kind of communication that happens there. And you didn't want that for your workshops. It didn't feel like that was the right tone that you wanted to set. So we I remember talking a lot about this like how you wanted to avoid avoid that you didn't want this to be a workshop for everybody, you know, you wanted this to be a workshop for You know a specific kind of person that would be really able to To dig deep and get in be present for that that time experience, right And I think similarly we have this notion of what an online class looks like, what it feels like. You know, we've seen webinars, we've seen YouTube videos that are tutorial videos or demo videos. And my sense is that Sabrina doesn't want her online course to feel like that. She wants it to feel like...
Sabrina Ward Harrison: And that's what I really responded to about Annabelle's that was why I was like, what I loved is the sense of she was talking to me like she was a friend. She was talking like, she's like, okay. What I liked is the tone of Annabelle's chorus was, you know, starting off with what about Bob referencing baby steps.
Yeah.
Sabrina Ward Harrison: Baby steps. Baby steps. Have you seen that, Trent? Have you seen that movie? Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah. Classic. Classic. So there is something about that that felt personal, and I kind of got this rush of, like, permission. Like, I can just be me when I do this thing. I don't have to be, you know, like, how can I do this so I'm not this really serious, like, this is not that serious. This is about liberation. This is about freedom. And so I felt empowered to tackle that.
Trenton Reynolds: Well, that's the thing is I see this a lot in teaching too, or like being a news anchor. There's that kind of news anchor voice. And my suspicion is that when you get that job, you probably don't talk to your family with a news anchor voice, but there's this... There's a sense that that's what news anchors do. They talk with that voice. Yeah, and I think similarly like when people are making online courses there's probably this perception or this assumption they have that they're supposed to talk and speak in a certain way, but really what is so magical about the internet and so magical about these new technologies is we don't have to talk like that. Yeah, we don't there there is no template that we absolutely are beholden to and in fact what people are really searching for is is like an authentic voice. You know, somebody who they can relate to and not feel like there's this disconnect of a formalized way of communicating. Does that make sense?
Annabel Linquist: - Yes. - Yeah, and that's actually one of the first things I say with my course. Like I mentioned before, your audience, picking your audience, like your specific audience, turning that audience into one person. And that person is your best friend. And you know who she is, where she shops, what she thinks about, what her fears are, what her expectations are, and most importantly, what her problem is. Because you're going to be solving that for her or him. And so starting there and just... you know writing the whole thing or you know it's like using the course as like a phone call or a book or something and just Talking to that one person and so everyone who listens to that. Well, first of all everyone that this will is draw all the right people to you and then everyone who hears what you're saying just feels like you're speaking to them directly and it and That's like why it's it would be weird to do it any other way, you know all of you know so if you just can kind of like and ease into yourself and connect and connect and not be nervous about it or whatever and just treat it like your best friend then it just becomes like super easy and for me one of the questions I get a lot is you know what if I say um all the time like should I how how should how much editing should I do you know that kind of stuff and My response is usually, you know, like I make these crappy love songs. Let's like this project I did a few years ago that just like won't end. People still keep buying them. I don't even use a microphone. I use the mic on my computer. laptop and I can't there I can't listen to them because they're so bad but the reason people like them is because they're just like totally raw and a lot of times when I take my music and into the studio and try to reproduce it I can't do it like the magic is in that raw place and Sabrina like that's why you're you know everyone loves you because you just have this ability to be so open and vulnerable and people really respond to that. So, but again, there is with this specific stuff, people do have short attention spans and they don't have all day. So you have to find the happy medium there and yeah.
- Hmm.
Trenton Reynolds: I think that, you know, also consider like the fact that there is just your laptop to record on or, you know, now we've got phones that are always with us there, there's even more opportunity for us to be able to find the moments when we can be authentic or the places where we can be authentic and be able to record that, you know, and be able to have that be part of our communication to other people. Like you don't have to go to a recording studio anymore to record music. Now you can just do it... In your bed, in your pajamas. In your pajamas and your bed, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, Annabelle, what would you say... Are there... you know the categories of or kind of how can you help us create a mental model of how to approach this or what things that we need to be considering are there kind of like the five pillars type you know is there a model or a way of thinking of this Which aspect do you mean, Trenton? I mean, that's the thing, is this whole thing. In the beginning, you've got the marketing side. You've got the accumulation of email addresses. You've got the how do people sign up. You've got the front end, the back end. Yeah. This starts to... really quickly feel overwhelming. Like where do... Exactly. How do we think about how do we think about all these moving pieces in a way that doesn't just
Annabel Linquist: shut us down? Well, that's why I... The cool thing about this question is that like recently in the last six months, well, maybe like seven months well since last summer, let's say, Kajabi started coming out with this, like, a totally new system that made it even easier. So they started out amazing, and then they just have really been upping their game, which is kind of annoying for me because I make tutorials, and I keep having to, like, remake the tutorials. That actually shows people how to do the back end part. But the interesting part is that if you, like... The most important stuff is not actually the technical stuff. I know that's where people think that they're going to get pushed over the edge, but there's so much help for that stuff if you really can't handle it. There's tons of people out there who can sort that stuff out for you. What people can't do for you is figure out why you are here on earth. And I think that's, for me, the most important part of course building. like going into meditation and really connecting with what is your message? Like what is your gift? And something I talk about in one of my free trainings is that there's a difference between a gift and a skill. You may have spent the last 20 years thinking, you know, building a skill and maybe working your way up the corporate ladder or you know, just doing something that you can do, you're good at, it's your skill, you're getting better at it, but a gift is something that you're just naturally good at, that people that people don't even think that they can kind of build their life around. So the first most important thing in course building, I would say, is figure out what your message is. And you can turn that message into a product like so what I mean by the gift and skill thing like maybe you've already you know people have like regular jobs you know but in in terms of And you know, I know a lot of artists like kind of do their art on the side and then just have a regular job. But if you figure out what you really love, you can, with course building, build your entire life around that. Like you've seen, we've seen that with influencers who have just found a way to kind of, you know, Be food bloggers or you know, whatever it is and figure out how to create A business model around that stuff and course building is actually the secret business model for influencers Which a lot of influencers don't even know yet But For artists, you know, it doesn't even have to be art related. It could be like, you know, someone who's super into knitting. You know, it could be anything. So figuring out what your gift is and finding a way and then also knowing that Who, what problem this gift is solving for whom? Like, who needs this and why? And once you can kind of connect with them, all the other pieces kind of come into place. And that's why I sort of mentioned Facebook before. Because Facebook is one way that is an amazing, and a very easy way to kind of set up your little sales funnel thing with your free content and everything. But yeah, it is overwhelming, but if they're like they're only like 10 pieces to it And if you're not doing it, but from scratch, which normally if people build this kind of thing from scratch They have like their website and they have like their members area and they have like all the different pieces and they have to put All of that stuff together. That's why I'm so obsessed with Kajabi because really Kajabi just takes care of all everything. Like everything you need is inside Kajabi. You open that thing up and then it basically, you can kind of figure out like how to do it technically. And on the other side, just knowing what problem you're solving, knowing who has that problem and how to reach them and those are actually the most important questions 'cause once you nail, those are kind of like the foundational things, once you kind of nail that stuff, the rest is just like you can kind of figure out. And another thing that's super cool about courses right now and the model with the free content is that there's so much free information out there that you can just get started for free, you know, and really figure it out. And then if you get to a point where you're, you know, you're downloading a million, like PDFs and stuff and you feel overwhelmed, that's when you go to someone who's done it before and just do the formula. And the formula is actually not that hard but sometimes it's really nice to know like what the next step is gonna be and how long that's gonna take and where you might get stuck. So that's why course building courses are actually super helpful for the overwhelm because the overwhelm can, like you know, this is like a spiritual process making a course. because you really have to dig deep. And if you get it right, if you connect with your message, all of a sudden, it's like it opens up your whole world. And the coolest thing about this is that once you kind of set up all of these pieces, you really can just put it on autopilot. You know, like this is so amazing for me because... before you know if I'm making a painting or something like you know that I'm trading my you know hours for dollars this is totally different you know all the site a bit more of that yeah sorry so like you know if one person downloads my course or 500 people download my course it's basically the same So all of a sudden--
Trenton Reynolds: - Like there's no more work for you to do.
Annabel Linquist: - Exactly, I mean, you know, I might have to hire some more assistant with like, tech, like, you know, like, support, supporting the students or whatever to answer questions. That's about it. So basically, you know, you do it once, and then it works for you. And you can put it on the autoresponder thing with like evergreen webinars, which is your free content that you can just like, is constantly running 24 hours a day, like selling your course. And so the model, the potential for this model
makes it
Annabel Linquist: is just totally amazing because it just frees up your time and then you can actually focus on other stuff or continue to build this stuff out if that made any sense.
Yeah, for sure.
Trenton Reynolds: Earlier you mentioned that it's really important to identify your audience and that one way to do that is to envision your best friend. How would you... Who is your audience? Could you give us an idea of the person that you envision when you're giving your webinars? Or who are you talking to?
Annabel Linquist: Yeah, so it's funny because Sabrina would be my audience, right? Yeah, when I built Super Crush, so Super Crush is kind of like, I sort of inspired by 80s and 90s stuff. I find myself going back there and it's interesting, I don't know if it's just me and I'm attracting what I'm into right now, but even on TV and stuff, I'm noticing that a lot of nostalgia kind of 80s and 90s stuff is coming back. Maybe that's just because people our age are making all this stuff right now, I don't know. But I'm really into this concept of what I call super crushing, which is just harnessing the energy that you had when you were in the 6th, 7th, or 8th grade. When you really had your first crush on someone and it was like you weren't a kid and you also weren't an adult yet. You weren't even in high school yet. You were just like your heart was open and you were just ready to just like, everything was just like candy, you know? And I think that is our power source. And I think that easily, you know, the first time we get our heart broken, that shuts down, we put up a heart wall, and then we shut off that power source. So... With what I'm making right now, I'm trying to help people get back in... Well, my goal is anyway to get back in touch with that super crush energy. I call it like sophisticated child self. So my course, I'm like building with that... with that in mind. So my ideal audience, um, resonates with that kind of, um,
like,
Annabel Linquist: like what Sabrina said, like, you know, when I, if I put like a clip from what about Bob in there and make that homework to watch that movie or also Jake Ryan, I'm super into, um, 16 candles for some reason, like the moment when, you know, Samantha walks out of the, uh, the church at her sister's wedding and Jake Ryan's like standing there in front of his like red Porsche and she's like, me? Yeah, you. I mean, that whole thing.
Annabel Linquist: Yeah, it's just like, it's just like, oh my gosh, like this is what is missing, you know, and you know, we grow up and we just do all this other stuff, and we have kids and we get married or whatever, or we don't, which I don't, but I still feel like that's where my power is, and that's what I want to reconnect with. So that's the kind of vibe I sort of bake into my little trainings and stuff. So the person I'm talking to is someone who, gets that and and he thinks that like like wants to connect with that part of their self the ironic part of this is that that that this is what Sabrina is like known for and so good at doing so that's like so amazing it's it's such an honor to be working with her that's awesome
Trenton Reynolds: Well, one of the problems of recording in the morning is like I feel this urgency because I got to get up to school. But I think a couple of things that I'm taking away and maybe Sabrina, you can chime in too, is that... it's important not to let yourself get too far ahead of like not let the what is it what's it saying the cart before the horse like you got a first and foremost you've got to be able to identify what your message is what you really care about what's at the core what you're really interested in and understanding who very clearly who your audience is who is it that you're you want to communicate with and let that be the force that that pushes forward your the process of creating whatever course that you might be trying to create and that the tools now and Kajabi would be a fantastic place to start it sounds like, are sophisticated enough and accessible enough that if you aren't able to pick it up by yourself, there's going to be a community of, and free content on the online, that is going to help you get through that fairly easily, right? So, I don't know, it sounds like you're telling us not to get too overwhelmed by the tech and take that a step at a time and focus more on just getting the right content, right message.
Annabel Linquist: Yes, totally. What's your message? You know, that message is a product. This stuff is so interesting because once you have your... once you know what that is, you then have a platform to start a movement.
Trenton Reynolds: And you don't want to find yourself at the end having built up something that you don't really even care that much about. Like you were saying about the health stuff, maybe you feel strongly about it, but that's not really what you want to make your main focus or make your audience.
Annabel Linquist: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Because you do become... it all of a sudden you have a business you know that's why I think Trent I think
Sabrina Ward Harrison: something that you wanted to Trent that's why I think that's like there's things that you you and you're tinkering with things like I I could see you doing really looking at the things you really love doing and I just keep coming back to like the 3d printing and things like that where you love exploring this topic and the subject and You know, I don't know, whatever. I know you've already created a lot of amazing content, but, you know, in the future, I see some of these things that you have, you know, excitement around. Be really cool to see, of course.
Trenton Reynolds: Well, and that's the wonderful thing to me to think about too is that it can be so idiosyncratic. It can be so, like, it doesn't have to be this, like, appeals to everybody and can fit into a... No, in fact, it shouldn't. It shouldn't. A statewide curriculum, right? You want it to be idiosyncratic. Yeah, I'm sorry.
Go ahead.
Annabel Linquist: Oh, no, I was just going to say, like, you need to... The more powerful your niche is, or your niche, or however people say that, that's where the power is at because you're really... Because what you're doing is, like, you don't need to be, you know... Taylor Swift. You need like, I think, I don't remember what this is, but there was just this book that said something about you need a thousand super fans. You just need a thousand super fans to become a multi-millionaire. Something like that. I'm actually totally not, I'm butchering this, but it was something like, it was something like you, like, You know a few hundred people who are your hardcore fans and Sabrina like you can attest to this these people have been Following your every move for 20 years They are so desperate for your Well, desperate sounds a little bit negative, but they just are so into whatever you put out that I keep saying like oh that what you're building, you know, once you have that little cult following, you don't need everyone. You know, you want to actually repel the rest of the people who don't get it because those people are going to be the people complaining, the people asking, you know, expecting... You know, the people who are going to drag the vibe of your product down, you know? So you really... The niche part is the key to the foundation of whatever you make.
Right.
Trenton Reynolds: So resist the temptation to try to make yourself into something that you're not. To make yourself... more appealing to a wider audience or more palatable. It's in that specificity. It's in that, in your quirks, in the uniquenesses that you embody that people will really find connection and meaning. And, you know, don't... don't sterilize yourself. Your special sauce. Your special... I love it.
Annabel Linquist: No, seriously. It's your special sauce that is the thing that makes your course different than everyone else's. Because, you know, for me, for example, there are tons of people teaching how to make course building, but not from my perspective, right? You know and not the way I do it not the way I've all the tricks that I've figured out through my tested, you know and tested and tried and and you know failed and succeeded all you know everyone has their own process and I think that courses are Are such an amazing way to To show your process because it's different than everyone else's so your product is going to be totally different and which is another thing that people always ask like what if someone has already done this and I say well hey you know what your special sauce is if there if someone is already successfully doing this perfect because you know that there's an audience for that you know
Trenton Reynolds: Do you know G-Love and Special Sauce?
Annabel Linquist: Oh my gosh, totally. One time he stepped on my arm and I was like leaning up against the stage before a concert started and he stepped on my arm and then he asked me out on a date.
Trenton Reynolds: You're joking me. No. Oh my gosh. You got asked out by G-Love? G-Love, yeah.
Annabel Linquist: I'm sure he was like probably married at the time. This is like... This wasn't in the 90s. This was in like some 2000s thing somewhere like at Colby College in Maine or somewhere. Anyway, it was funny.
Trenton Reynolds: I'm thinking J-Love's probably... Yeah. That's awesome. That should be the title of the episode for sure. Special sauce. Love J-Love.
Yeah.
Trenton Reynolds: Special sauce, definitely. Should we go around and share a favorite something or other?
Sabrina Ward Harrison: Yeah, I absolutely love this conversation. I absolutely love it. I really-
Trenton Reynolds: Sabrina, do you feel like you said your piece?
Sabrina Ward Harrison: Do you want to- I love hearing Aladol talk about this and it's exciting. And I just am excited for you, Trent, because you are such a wonderful teacher. And so it's even more exciting because lots of people do these courses, but they aren't gifted teachers. you have that ability and it's beautiful and so intuitive to you. So it just, it's exciting to think you could, you could teach about anything and I'd watch it. Totally. Thank you.
Sabrina Ward Harrison: Yep. Yep. Sign me up.
Trenton Reynolds: Well, Annabelle, thank you so much for giving us your time. And where can, if people want to take these courses that you offer and how to do this stuff, where do they find you?
Annabel Linquist: Sure. My website is supercrush.social. And you can find it, I've got tons of freebies and free trainings and I think Sabrina has probably taken them all. So motivated, yeah, so supercrush.social is my website for my course building stuff.
Trenton Reynolds: Fantastic. And yeah, I'll definitely be checking those out. and the the website that you use for the course wearer again is kajabi how do you
Annabel Linquist: spell that oh it's so awesome it's kajabi k-a-j-a-b-i oh gosh i think that's how you spell it um and i also on my website i have a link for 15 off if people want to like startup they can they can use my link and get 15% off for a year and even if you do the free trial you can get like a 30-day free trial or something at the end of your trial if you decide to keep it you still get the 15% off which is kind of a big deal because it's But honestly, it's maybe like $100 or something a month. But if you add up all the other software that you would have to put together, I actually ditched all my other software, and I'm saving so much money by just using Kajabi. I sound like a Kajabi evangelist. I really am just like a huge fan. The guys who have the business, like the ethos of the company is just amazing. Their Facebook page with their Facebook group is like amazing. Their support's amazing. Just they're just, they're amazing. So yeah.
Trenton Reynolds: Awesome. And we'll definitely be, as Sabrina goes through this process, and I continue to try to do something, we'll be checking in. Yeah. Cool. Giving updates.
Annabel Linquist: Yeah, I'm so psyched for Sabrina's thing. I'm just giddy.
Sabrina Ward Harrison: Thank you, Annabelle, for a great conversation. And we will see you next with a video episode coming very soon. Go out there.