You should test that – how Netflix got Offspring all wrong

You might be familiar with the concept of Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTs) – all the well-worn but broken record thoughts, assumptions and beliefs that we have. If you are a health practitioner working with clients in counselling, coaching or a similar role you may even spend a huge amount of your work week helping people to get unstuck.

What about your own though?

One of mine for my business was “I’d love to quit social media, but I need it for my business”

Did I test that belief? Not until almost 4 years into actually using social media for business.

I also believed I “needed” a professional videographer for my first online course so it was pretty and professional.

While it helped, I’m not sure that I can say I “needed” it. In fact, it cost me some huge losses in time and money. However, it was a brilliant lesson in avoiding favour energy, perfectionism and having the confidence to teach myself skills that I thought were beyond me. I’ve actually found it much less of a headache teaching myself to film and edit. It might sound daunting to you, but everything is figure-outable.

While I have, at times, obsessed over a certain professional look that I like my videos and content to have, I’ll share this valuable insight with you. I’ve now taken 3 courses with Leonie Dawson – a mum who works 10 hours a week and has made over 11 million dollars in revenue. All of her videos are pretty unfancy. Hopefully she won’t mind me sharing this, but in one of the call recordings her husband was in the background scooping up dog shit. While that might horrify some, and it might not be the aesthetic I’d encourage others to go for it made me laugh at my own ego so hard. I can only dream of being worth 11 million and giving so few fucks. 

When my mentorees ask “but which logo colours?” and “what do I call my course?” and “how much should I charge?” my answer is the same:

Tweak, test, polish

Just choose one option, put it out into the world and if you aren’t happy with the results tweak it.

Man, many companies use A/B testing for their Facebook ads. They’ll run two and see which one gets more clicks.

You’ve probably seen Netflix do it as well – when a show you’ve watched suddenly has a different cover. Sometimes it’s actually a bizarre choice like the person who was in charge has never even seen the show. For example, the current image for Offspring is a shot in Nina with her first husband. It’s not at all an iconic image for the show, but someone (or an algorithm) went “oh, a white chick in a wedding dress” that’s what makes viewers click.

Test, test, test. It’s not useful to get into analysis paralysis with completely untested ideas.
A helpful book is You Should Test That by Chris Goward

I’ll soon be getting to work on re-releasing course creation for the caring professions – I’ll be teaching you how I went from one sale to over 2000 sales in less than a year. I’ll also be putting together some handy guides on how to make a DIY course on an absolute shoe string budget – but not have it look shit (might have to work on the title for that one!)
Head to my mailing list for updates on new courses and content