Why Online Courses Are For Everyone with Kerrie Rycroft

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

If you notice that you have key processes that you’re working through with all of your clients and customers, you need to think about whether or not you can turn them into a course.
You need to take a look at what you’re doing offline to turn them into an online programme. Not only will it save you time, but it will allow you to help more people.
Courses can be a great way to convert customers into one-on-one clients.
The basics that you need when it comes to creating your courses are Zoom to record videos, Canva to create worksheets and slides, Mailchimp to guide people through your funnel and then a platform to build your course.
Try to keep it as simple as you possibly can. You don’t want to overwhelm your course members.
Hobby courses are becoming really popular, is this something you can do?
If you have lots of topics to cover, don’t put it into one big course. Instead, create lots of smaller, actionable courses.
If you are in an industry that regularly changes, creating a course that is easy to change is important.
If you sell a product, don’t write off doing a course. You can teach people how to make your product, or how to run a successful business.
People will be buying your course because of YOU and your experience.
You need to allow 3-6 months before you start making a profit from your course.

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…

One of the most important things you need to consider when it comes to an online course is that it needs to be really actionable. Every time you communicate with your course members, there needs to be an action they can take.

Kerrie's flagship Launch a 6 figure course mastermind starts again Monday 5th August. You can sign up here and use the coupon code THW for a 50% discount on the one off fee making it an amazing £645 for the year. https://t4s.site/profitableonlinecourse/august-mastermind-thw/.

HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS

Introducing Kerrie – 05:24
The Basics of Creating an Online Course – 15:00
What Are the Best Platforms for Courses – 20:40
Business #1: Devon Baeza – 27:00
Business #2: Lagina Masala – 34:30
Business #3: Violets Digital – 44:11
Business #4: Felt n Fings 51:55

Transcript below

Hello, and a really warm welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. I hope you've had a great start to your week. Now, I'm jumping straight in on this episode because honestly I loved it. It was so good. It was a different format, but it was brilliant. So let me explain.

In today's episode I'm interviewing [Carrie Rycroft 00:00:55]. Carrie was introduced to me via a friend because one thing that's really interesting is I don't often interview lots of people from the UK or locally to me. Because lots of the people that I admire and look at and learn from who I want to bring to you, my audience, tend to be American or from not around here. There don't tend to be many people who do what I do where I currently live.

And what was really fascinating was I was out for dinner with a friend the other week and she said to me, “Do you know what, Teresa, I went to this talk and there was this amazing woman there who teaches people how to do courses online.” And I was like, okay, that's really interesting, I don't hear too many local people doing that. And she said, “What was the best thing about it was, during her talk she actually said, ‘Who thinks they can't have a online course? Who thinks that their business is not, what's the word, that doesn't suit it, or that's not something they can do in their business?'” And people put their hands up and she picked one person, and that person said what they did, and she said, “Okay, by the end of today, we would come up with a plan, come up with an idea, and start your online course, and you'll start marketing it.” And literally just did it there and then.

It was amazing and my friend was like, “She was unbelievable, it was great.” And I was like, that's a real skill. Because actually there are some businesses that are super easy to do online products for. So if you're in the knowledge industry, if you're a coach, anything like that. When you're teaching, then it's easy. You can take anything online, and I'm doing the same. And it's great. It's a brilliant way in which I can teach more people and have more, what's the word, more impact without having to physically be sat in front of people. So it's an amazing way that we can learn and teach now. And I do a lot of stuff online in terms of how I learn.

So anyway, got in touch with Carrie. Really lovely lady. We hit it off straight away, had a really good chat. And we decided great, let's do a podcast episode. And Carrie came up with the most amazing idea that wouldn't it be good if we did something similar on the episode, i.e. I ask my audience, I ask you guys, do you think that you can't do an online course? Or do you want to do an online course and don't where to start? And if that's the case, then get in touch. That's exactly what I did. I was over on Instagram, I was doing Stories, I posted it everywhere. And I asked you guys to get in touch if you thought that was the case.

And we had a number of people get in touch. We had quite a few different ones to look at and we chose four different people who do different businesses. One is actually a physical product. Another one is a teaching product. And there's a couple of others. But we basically did an interview … We did a bit of an interview at the beginning, but we basically did an interview based on these people and these businesses and we talk about how they can turn their business into an online product.

So I think you're going to really find this episode useful because for me it was the most practical suggestions. It was really, really hands on, put her money where her mouth is, tell these people how they can do it online. Some great ideas, some great tips and strategies in terms of getting started and how to come up with it. And again, a bit like when I did the episode with Callie and Mike, the Membership Guys, which I'll link to in these show notes just in case you didn't catch that one. Really honest, really down to earth, none of the kind of get rich quick, I'm going to teach you how to do a course in three hours and you're going to make a million. None of that. It's just really straightforward, cool advice. And she's a smart lady. She's been doing this for awhile.

So I really think you're going to enjoy this episode and I think you're going to get a whole lot from it. Even if you're not considering doing something online, I still think you're going to get a whole lot of good value from this episode. There was lots of great marketing tips.

Also, the other thing I'd like you to let me know, is what do you think of the more interactiveness of the episodes? I love the fact that I can feature the people and I can shout out all the businesses and obviously let you guys know about amazing other businesses out there. And I'd like to feature you guys more. So let me know whether you enjoy this style and whether you think I should do more of this in the future. I would love to hear.

Anyway, let's get on with today's episode. And here's the interview.

Introducing Kerrie

I am super excited today to welcome the very lovely Carrie to the podcast. Thank you so much for coming on. How are you doing?

I'm really good thank you. And thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here as well. It's going to be fun.

My pleasure. And do you know what? This is so odd, because I interview so many American people, just because there's lots of people in our industry who are from America that know really good stuff and I want them on the podcast, it's actually really odd when I hear a British accent. And it's not been that long since I've … In fact, I've interviewed a few people who aren't from the States recently. So you're kind of the third person recently, which is unusual. It's really odd to hear this British accent coming back to me.

Branching out.

Yeah, into my own country. It's really odd, isn't it? Really odd.

Anyway, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. We've had such fun planning this podcast. And I am super excited about it because we're mixing it up a little bit. We're doing a few things differently and we're going to be doing a bit of practical side, which I think is going to be wonderful. I'm really excited about it.

But before we dive into that, let's just give my audience a bit of an overview of who you are, and how you got to do what you're doing now.

Absolutely. Such a long story of how I got to do what I'm doing now, but I started off a few years ago running a social media agency. I was a single mum with four children and I had left my ex husband, I had lost a big business that I'd been building up for years, and I kind of started again with a social media agency. Which, on the one hand was really good because it was my own business and it gave me a bit of flexibility and it allowed me to not have to go into an office 9 to 5, which is really difficult when you've got small humans relying on you.

But I really quickly realised actually, it was almost like having ten bosses rather than having one boss because doing social media for clients, as you well know through the agency side of things, it was only me working in the business so it required me being in front of my laptop 9 to 5 and then some all day everyday. It wasn't quit as flexible as I wanted in terms of being able to drop the kids off at school and pick them up and go to sports days and everything else.

And there was this gap between Christmas and New Year where they'd gone to their dad's for the first time in a long while, and I sort of had a really stern word with myself and said all right, okay, you have ten days on your own, just you and the dog on the sofa. What are you going to do? Are you going to carry on learning about how hard this is and how difficult it is and how you're not able to have the lifestyle that you want? Or are you going to get on and do something about it?

So in my mind, my two options were either I'm going to sit on the sofa for ten days and watch Netflix and cry and eat chocolate, which-

Good option.

Or actually maybe I could look at creating some kind of online course in my business. Because I'd taken a few online courses, and I'd joined a few online boot camps, and I was quite sold on the fact that oh this is interesting, and this is an interesting way to be a customer, and it would be great to have this as part of my business. But I had no clue what I was doing. So I chose that options rather than the Netflix and the chocolate.

Well done, well done.

And over that ten days I built a How to Manage Your Own Social Media online course for people who either couldn't afford to work with me, or who I didn't want to work with for whatever reason. And I put it out there in that, it's a real dead gap between Christmas and New Year when everybody is just doing nothing. I managed to make two thousand pounds in that gap by selling … I mean, it was a really rough course. I look back at it now I'm like, oh okay, let's not look too closely at how that was put together.

But that made me sit back and go, okay, well that was hard work building it, but actually I've now got that that I can sell forever and that feels like such a nice way to make two thousand pounds rather than taking on four new five hundred pounds clients, or whatever it was. So that about three or four years ago, and I've gradually … I spent a couple of years transitioning all of my stuff over to online because the more online courses I built for myself, clients started to say to me, “How did you do that?” Or “What did you use, and what software, and how did you set that up, and how do you know what to do?” And I just then fell into starting to do it for other people. And now that's what I do. I build online courses for people, or I teach people how to do it themselves. And it's amazing.

I love it. And I love your story because your story and my story are kind of similar, other than the multiple of children. I just have the one and no husband, and you had four, which holy moly, man. That is no mean feat, is it?

No. And they've all got their additional challenges. My youngest has got a heart condition, so we're on the waiting list for heart surgery. We're in and out of hospital all the time. And my boy has some mental health issues. I had to homeschool him for two years. So it's not a nice, calm, quiet, easy home life. So having my own regular, repeatable income has just been a game changer for me.

I can imagine.

Knowing the bills are paid. Like on the first month, knowing that I've got enough money coming in that month to pay all my bills and everything and some left over, just changed everything for me.

Yeah. That's the whole idea. People start a business thinking I want a business because I'm going to be free and I'm going to manage my own time. And I totally agree, going from having one boss to then having clients just multiplies your bosses. And it does make that a challenge.

But also, I've never worked as hard as I work now. Don't get me wrong, I love what I do, and therefore it doesn't feel like I'm working as such. And also I'm in a privileged position where my daughter disappears every other week and goes to her dad's so I get to be mum and then I get to have downtime and do work.

But to have that recurring income when you have so much more going on in your life is just phenomenal, isn't it? Such, such a great thing.

It made a massive difference to me. Two years ago was when I really appreciated it the most because I took eight months off doing any kind of proper work, as in any consulting or any one on one coaching, because my son was quite ill and his mental health issues. And I took eight months off completely, and all I had was my online courses that were running. And knowing that I could do that and didn't have to make the really difficult decision of I know he needs the help and support and I have to take him to all of his appointments, and I'm homeschooling him … We had a big court case going on and I need to go and see all of the court appointed people who have to talk to him. If I'd have had to work 9 to 5 to pay my rent and pay my bills, that would've been such a horrible decision to make. It just made it much easier because I could say, right, well I'll scale back on all the consulting and I'll scale back on the coaching and I'll just rely on my online courses for eight months.

And it's amazing to be able to do that. Somebody said I was really lucky, and that kind of offended me because I was like, I'm not lucky. I've worked my butt off to get to this. But I think fortunate is probably the right word rather than lucky.

Yeah. You looked at your options and chose one, and that option happened to work really perfectly for the situation that you found yourself in. And we all hope that we don't find ourselves in situations where we have to take lots of time off work or we have things at home that are going to take over your entire life. Because there's not many people who are in the fortunate position who could then just go, I'm going to stop working, or take time off work, or whatever, because we can't afford to. You've got to keep earning money. If that's not a reason enough to make you want to look at an online course, I don't know what is.

Something I say to women all the time when I speak on stage and when I talk in front of large groups, I tend to say everybody here in the audience, all of your women, you have your own business and you work really hard at your business, is there anybody here who doesn't have somebody who they look after? Either a husband, or a parent, or children, or a partner. Every single person in the audience, usually about 99% of the people, will put their hand up and say I look after somebody else. And the next question, does your business look after you the same way? And they're all like-

No.

If any one of them had to take a month off, their business would just wait and just sit there and go, oh okay that's fine I won't do anything for this month while you're not working. I'll just wait for you to come back. And I think it's really important as women, we have something set up so that our business is providing. It's a two way street, it's not just for us working in the business and then having invoices paid for it. It's about setting the business up so that it works on its own and it supports you. That's what I'm really passionate about.

Yeah, absolutely. And like you said, I think to have that option … I've known actually some business people, they were women, took things like summer off because summer is hell trying to find childcare for one child let alone four. It's a nightmare. And they took the summer off. And it's not just the fact of you're sitting down and stepping out of the business for that time. All the cumulative work you've done in building your brand and building your awareness, all that time just basically falls off the edge of a cliff. And it's like you're having to start again. So the minute you then go, oh okay I'm back to work now, it's like oh let's go day one again from starting this business. Because that's what it's going to feel like. I love that.

For people listening, let's just talk briefly about really what the basics we mean by creating an online course and why obviously they want to look at it, other than the fact that you gave these brilliant ideas already.

The Basics of Creating an Online Course

I really believe that any business could benefit from having an online course. And that's something that I'm quite vocal about. I nag people quite a lot. It's very easy to describe kind of from a coach or consultant point of view. We'll start there.

If you're a coach and you work for people, either one to one or in a group setting, most of the time you'll have a process that you take those people through. Like a signature style, whether you know it is your programme, whether you've fleshed out to be this is my signature programme, or not. You will have a process that you take people through. So somebody comes to you, if you're a health coach, somebody comes to you and wants to improve their health, you'll have five or six different things that you will work through with them. And working with them one to one is great, but if you can take those steps and if you can take those things that you do with them face to face and turn them into an online product where they're delivered through videos and worksheets and questions and a Facebook group and group coaching calls, it frees up so much more of your time.

It's looking at how do you do things offline, how do you do things … If I came to you and sat down in front of you and said, can you help me achieve this goal, what would you do? And it's looking at those steps and then it's turning those into an online programme.

The way I like to think about an online programme, and we're talking specifically courses but this also goes for memberships and things like that, is that I get to help more people.

Yes.

Because I only have so much time. And I love it. And I love it when I do one to one consultancy, and I get on a call with someone, and someone says this is my business, this is the programme, this is the … And I go, blah blah blah for like an hour and tell them what to do. But I only have so much time. And also, understandably over time you get more expensive. And I am more expensive now. So what this is allowing is one, from my point of view selfishly I can help more people because I love doing that, but secondly, from the other side it's that you get access to someone's brain and knowledge. I've done lots of courses, made lots of memberships, of the most amazing people that actually I couldn't afford to sit down with them one to one because they would cost tens of thousands to do that. So the fact that I can be in their course and still have all that knowledge and have some access to them, for me is well worth that money.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's the beauty of it. It's more affordable for people. They won't necessarily get the same results that they would get if they worked one on one with you, but often it's a good way to convert people into one on one clients. One of my clients is a coach and she uses her online course not as a way to make money, but as a, if somebody wants to work with her one to one, they have to have done her online course before she'll even consider an application from them. It's only about 200 pounds, or something fairly low, and she's a very high ticket coach when it comes to working with her one on one. But the very first stage of her application process is you buy my course for 200 pounds, you work through it, here's the benefit that you'll get from that, and at the same time we'll work out whether we're a good fit to work together. And if you then want to come to me one to one, we'll knock the 200 pounds off the 10,000 pounds or whatever it is she is at the moment coaching.

And that gets a lot of people into her world who wouldn't be able to afford to pay her the huge amount of money that she charges, and quite rightly so because she gets amazing results. Sometimes they would get enough results from the course to be able to go away and do something else, and other times it would give them that I absolutely have to find the money to work with you, you are absolutely my ideal coach.

So I like it when people use online courses in different ways rather than just how do I make money by selling this? Sometimes it's how can I make my life easier? If you've got … One of my customers at the moment is a mortgage advisor. So everybody that comes to her, she immediately spends two hours going through a whole question and answer session with them, which then puts them into one of three or four categories so she knows where to advise them next when it comes to mortgages. We turned that whole process into an online course where you go through and you do all of that process yourself online, following her prompts and her questions, and at the end of it you've either got the information that you need to be able to go away and source your own mortgage, or you [inaudible 00:19:23] her and she doesn't have to spend that time with you because you've done that. And all that you do is [inaudible 00:19:26] this is me, and then she moves on to the next stage.

I love that actually. Sometimes I'm really [inaudible 00:19:36] when it comes to online courses in terms of it's a way to make residual income. But you're right, it's a great way to step people into a funnel, to get people ready, to take out a process of your business. Because she could sit with that client for two hours, go through all those questions, for them to go, “No, I don't want to work with you.” So she's just wasted two hours every single time she needs to do that, and this way it's done.

It's not the fun part of her business. When I spoke to her about which parts of the business do you really enjoy, she likes the creative problem solving when she knows which bucket effectively they fall into, [inaudible 00:20:10] is going right to how can I help you as a self-employed person with maybe only a year's accounts who wants to get a good mortgage? How can I help you do that? Rather than the question and answers in the beginning.

What Are the Best Platforms for Courses

That's brilliant. I love that. Okay, so course is great. We love courses. And there's lots of platforms out there. We could spend literally the rest of this podcast talking just about platforms, but there are millions of them. Really quickly, because I've obviously got some recommendations and we'll link to them, but really quickly what are your top few platforms that you're using if you're doing a course?

I teach people to do it very reasonably to start with. I teach people not to spend a huge amount of money until you know that your course is selling. It's really easy to get roped into buying all of these systems and spending $500 a month before you've even sold anything.

So I always tell people the basics that you will need is something like Zoom to record your videos on. You can [Camber 00:21:10] to create your worksheets for free. There's loads of really great templates on there you can use for worksheets. Clients use Mailchimp. It's free to start with, it does the job, it sends the automated emails, it gets people from one part of your funnel to another. And you can even get your course out there by Mailchimp, so you can send your course out as an email series. It basically does the job until you earn money from it, then you don't need to keep spending huge amounts of money on anything else.

I use a system called [T Press 00:21:40] dot site to actually build the sales funnel and build the online course pages. It's very, very similar to ClickFunnels, except it's built by a person in the UK who I know very well, a really good web developer in the UK. And it's $30 a month rather than the $300 for the full version of ClickFunnels. It took him quite awhile to persuade me to use it. I'd always been a ClickFunnels person. I trialled it, and it took me awhile to get comfortable with it and to find my way around it, and then I moved all of my courses onto it and then I started recommending it to clients. The package that I recommend, you'll pay $30 a month and that's all you'll pay for everything that you need to get your online course out there.

I really believe in getting people to do something before you start spending more money. Once you prove the concept … I think anybody can sell ten places on a course without Facebook ads, without spending huge amounts of money, if you know your clients and if you know that you're solving a problem for them. Don't spend a lot of money, get it out there. My first one, I look back on it now, and it was just embarrassing, the videos and everything. I keep thinking that maybe I'll be brave enough one day and show people and then I go, no that's fine-

I think that would help people because they would realise that it doesn't have to be perfect.

It really doesn't. It's more important that you get it out there. And then once you've sold the first ten places, you can start to look at scaling it. So you can say okay, so I've sold ten places, people have been through the process, I know it works, now I can pay to send some traffic there. Now I can pay to record my videos professionally. Or do whatever it is you want to do. But don't be fooled into thinking you need to spend a fortune to start with.

I am so glad you said that because how would I describe myself … I'm not afraid to spend money on things, and therefore I am swayed very easily by very nice marketing. This is the worst because I am a marketer. I've spent my entire life in marketing. And I know exactly what they're doing, and I, not fall for it, I allow them to do it every time. So when I look at the platforms I use, I use Infusionsoft. Very expensive, a bill's just gone out for $290 this month. I use [Cajarby 00:23:58], which I'm moving from Infusionsoft to [Cajarby 00:24:00], so I will stop the Infusionsoft thing. But [Cajarby 00:24:04] is a fairly hefty platform price-wise as well. I used to use Drip, which was a cheaper funnel type of thing, and that's great but still not that cheap. And I use Leadpages for landing pages and that sort of thing. That's not too bad, that's a fairly good price. But you add all that stuff up … Oh, and I had my initial course on WishList Member, so I paid out for that. But that's now moved over to [Cajarby 00:24:30].

I am one of these people that I am swayed by big companies, big marketing. And I do that. And also by how things look. So for instance, I particularly like the way [Cajarby 00:24:43] looks as a platform, and I'm much more about aesthetics, which is really odd. But I do … If it's beautiful to look at, or easy to look at, then that helps because I'm not a techy person.

So I'm really glad you gave us some cheap slash free options. Because you're right, I'm not doing it the sensible way. Now granted, I have a part of my business that I'm running and then the online stuff is along the side, so maybe I have a bit more of a budget there to do it, but really I shouldn't do until I'm confident that it's making money.

That's one of the things that puts people off is I don't understand the tech and it's going to cost me a fortune and I'm not going to know what to do and then I'm going to spend a lot of money and then it won't work. People are very quick to talk themselves out of doing online courses. My thing is always just to remove the cost barrier to start with. I've got online courses where I've signed up for like template packs where people will take you through using the templates that I've used and here's how to implement them. And you end up getting a link to a Google Drive with a series of templates and a video. My first reaction was, oh. And then I watched the video and then I used the templates and thought, well actually I've got exactly what I needed. Why make it any more complicated? Keep it simple.

Amazing. Let's get to what I'm really looking forward to. I put out on social media that if you'd like to be featured on today's podcast, then contact me and DM me. And we put some questions out there. Because what we really wanted to do was test you. And I joked in a couple of posts that I was making it hard because I was being mean, but I wasn't. I'm just being funny.

Basically we wanted people to come to us who a) wanted to do an online course but weren't quite sure where to start or how to get going, or b) which is the one that I quite like, thinks that their industry, their business, what they do, is not compatible with an online course. And therefore kind of saying how on earth could I do an online course? And we have picked four people to talk about today. And I'm going to link up to everything that we've got for them, so their website and their social media. So make sure you go and check them out. Obviously as well as linking up to all of Carrie's stuff as well. We'll have all that stuff on there.

Business #1: Devon Baeza

But let's get started on the first one. I'm going to introduce them and tell you a bit about them, and then you're going to tell us, you're going to help them. I hope so. Okay. The first lady that we've got on today's podcast is a lady called Devon. Devon, I apologise if I say your name wrong. Beaza. I think it's Beaza. B-E-A-Z-A. So I apologise if that's wrong. And you sent me a DM on Facebook. Basically Devon runs the Fertility Finance … She's the Fertility Finance Coach. We asked what kind of ideal client she had. She was saying that her ideal client is between 20 and 40s who's stressed about paying for fertility treatments, IVF most commonly. And then we asked what problem does she solve, and she said she helps women to save, make and manifest money for treatments. So she addresses money blocks and she recently ran the 30 day coaching programme called Fertility, Money, Mindset, which has amazing results and comprised of ten minute videos that she delivered in Facebook daily.

This is basically the crux of what she does, which sounds amazing. I have to say, it's very niche. But what do they say? Well, if I was American I'd say the riches are in the niches, but obviously we don't say niche we say niche. And it doesn't quite work then. But yeah, this is great. She's found a really specific niche that is a real need because I can appreciate if you were trying to have children and you have to go down the IVF route, and the money is a big thing, isn't it?

So she's been wondering whether that would make a good online course. Whether to do the 30 day coaching programme, whether it would make a good online course. And she wants to get some advice around that. So let's start with Devon. What do you think about that one?

I think that it would definitely make a really good course, but I wouldn't do it as a 30 day online course because I think people would lose interest. I think the first five or six days you'd have loads of engagement and loads of people watching the videos and taking action, but I think after that it would start to drop off. And one of the most important things when you do an online course is it has to be really actionable. So every time you touch a customer, as it were in marketing speak, every time you communicate with a customer, there has to be an action for them to do. You need to differentiate between … A book, for instance, is all about information and you read the information, you take it in. A course is about you implementing doing something.

So what I would do with those 30 days, I would try to break it down into maybe a four week course. Look at batching up, are there any themes where you could put seven together? And I would have a four week course, and I would structure it so that you have a video that goes out at the beginning of the week with some worksheets and some actions, and maybe take three or four or seven or eight of the daily content and merge it into one video with some really strong actions. And then when you're running a course for the first time, I like to run it live and have some live group calls towards the end of the week. You don't have to carry on doing that forever, but it's a great way to really get some good feedback on the course, and to help people. And then the next time you run the course you can include all the recordings, the question and answer calls, in there so it's more value for people.

So I would say take the 30 days, break it down into maybe four or five weeks' worth of content, and have a video go out at the beginning of the week with worksheets and actions, and then a call towards the end of the week to say, how did you go, did you do the actions, did you get stuck, do you have any questions, where would you like some help? I think that would be a brilliant online course.

Yeah, I do. Would you drip feed that content or would you have it all there straight up, straight away?

I would drip feed it to start with. The problem with having it all available from day one is that people will just jump to the bits they think more interesting. So in my course where I teach people to build an online course, the first two weeks are all about foundations and goal setting and ideal client. And everybody rolls their eyes at me and goes, oh I've done all of this-

Yeah, but they haven't.

I used to give all the content at once, and then people would say, “So I've built my sales page.” And I'm like, great, where's your ideal client work? “Oh, I haven't done that.” Well, okay, come back to me in a couple of weeks when you're not making any money and we can talk about how you need to go do the stuff at the beginning. So now I don't let people move to the interesting part of the course until they've done the bit in the beginning that they need to, because I'm mean.

No I like that. And funny enough, I've just bought a course that I'm working through. It's an abundance course, actually. It's not something I would normally buy. But for whatever reason I was drawn to it. And I know the guy, he's a really lovely guy. I met him at a conference a few months ago. And he's drip feeding content every day, and each video is like 15 minutes long, and there's some kind of meditation with it or whatever. And actually, I am very proud of myself because I've been doing it. Because it hasn't been difficult and it hasn't been long, and therefore I haven't felt like it's some massive, onerous thing. So actually breaking it down into those chunks and drip feeding it … If you're going to do it over four weeks, would you consider dripping things out a couple of times a week or not? Or just one a week?

I would probably start with one a week and get feedback on it. You don't want to overwhelm people. And one of the mistakes that most people make when they build an online course is they put way too much content in anyway. So when I'm working on a done for you basis, I tend to say show me all your content, and then we get rid of about 80% of it because there's so much stuff that you don't need. Everybody tries to pad it out with extra value and all of this other stuff, and actually people want the fastest possible way to achieve the result that you're promising them.

So I would start with just one a week, and I'm really strict with people and say cut out. If it's not strictly necessary, don't do it. Have it as a bonus, maybe, or add it in at the end, but try and keep it as short as you can. [inaudible 00:32:58] I've joined online courses where I log in and suddenly I'm met with like a hundred videos and 28 worksheets. And my first reaction is where do I start? And then I don't do anything. You want to make it really simple for people. On day one, watch this, do this. [inaudible 00:33:12] watch this, do this.

And like you were saying, the more simple you can keep it, and the less overwhelming you can keep it, people will actually do it. And that's the point of an online course. I don't just want to take your money, I actually want you [inaudible 00:33:28]. I'm so frustrated with people that join my groups and then never do anything. [inaudible 00:33:32] do you want your money back? Would you like a refund? Well, I haven't done it.

I agree. And especially with Devon's example, because it's such an emotive and important thing that they're trying to do. You do want to make that content. Whereas I think sometimes we over-deliver because we're trying to be really helpful, but actually that's not as helpful as it could be.

One thing that's just jumped to mind actually, Devon, if you've done this before through the Facebook group, I would go and have a look at the content that really worked well. Because you've done these videos each day. I don't know whether … I think I would go see which video really spiked, which one did loads of people comment on, just so that it can help you identify the content that was really resonating with your audience.

Absolutely. And you've got a great group of people that you can ask as well. You can say to them, which ones touched you the most, which did you find the most useful, what format, or what was most useful to you? You've got that feedback.

Yeah, I agree. I think that's great. Wonderful. Well hopefully that's helped Devon.

Business #2: Lagina Masala

Next one. I've got to just put a quick disclaimer because I was reading Devon's first one, and the problem is I never read on the podcast ever. I just talk and it just comes out in my head. I might have some guidance notes, but I never read anything verbatim. So I'm actually finding this bit really difficult. So if I suddenly say words that I've never said, like uh uh [inaudible 00:34:57] because I'm having to read, and I don't normally read. Luckily I know this next lady so I don't have to read what she does because I know her.

Our next person that we've got on is Lajina Leal and she has a business called Lajina Masala. She contacted me through Facebook and I'm going to link up to her website and her Facebook page and things. I know Lajina because she just happens to be local to where I am. Lajina teaches Indian cooking, and she also sells spices online. Oh man, her food is to die for good. Indian food is one of my favourite. If you're in America actually, you don't have a lot of Indian food in America because you have a lot of Mexican food. I guess that's your equivalent. But yeah, if you go to the states you can't get many Indian-

I know. I remember that from when I was travelling there. [inaudible 00:35:47] because I love Indian food. So I'm excited about this one.

Yeah. She's great. So she basically, she does a few different things. She'll do classes that you can go along. She also does corporate events where she can go and do an away day or a team day. And then you can also bring her in to your home, pay for her privately, and she'll do some teaching with you there. And then obviously what's great is she has these spices that go along with it. So she sells spices online, and they're so easy. You don't have to attend one of the courses in order to, one of her team building things, but I did and then from then on I make my curries with her spices every single time. And they are … In fact, I had wine tasting at my house the other night with some friends, and I said I'll cook for us after the wine tasting. We were a bit drunk by then. Anyway, I thought I'll do something easy, and I did three different curries and a rice. And bless Lajina, because she's local, she brought onion bhajis around, and everybody was like, oh my word this is the best curry I've ever tried.

So anyway, sounds like I'm doing a permanent advert for Lajina [inaudible 00:36:51] but they are amazing. Like I said, her ideal clients are corporate team building clients, home cooks who aren't so confident with spices, and she teaches people to cook amazing curries. So, online course for Lajina?

That's so much fun. What this made me think of is I've worked with a couple of florists before, three or four different florists, to put together memberships sites. Indian cooking made me think of florists, just bear with me, it will make sense eventually.

I think this would be a really, really good membership site type online course setup. A membership site is where people pay a monthly subscription, and it doesn't have to be a lot of money but the idea is if you've got a lot of people joining it adds up and makes it financially worthwhile to learn a new skill. People are going out less and less these days. People are spending less and less money on takeaways and going out for dinner and things like that, and a lot of people are looking to learn new skills and to learn new hobbies. So the hobby market is growing hugely where the economy is a little bit down and people maybe haven't got as much money to go out and spend as they wanted.

So something like this where if you have a membership site and you said I'm going to teach you one new meal, not necessarily just one new recipe, but one new whole family meal or entertaining type meal, every month. The way that I would structure that would be that I would have … So I would pick something. Either a birthday party or a particular Indian celebration, or I don't know very much about the culture. But if there's a meal … So I would plan, I like to plan these things in advance, so I would plan your first six months of content. So pick six meals. And not just curries. What bread could you do with it, and what side dishes, a vegetarian option and a meat option, something like that.

And then in that month I would start off, so I would have four pieces of content available that month. I would start by talking about the theme. Here's why I picked the theme this month, and here's why it's important, and here's why it's relevant, and kind of the story based stuff in there. The following week I would have a shopping list made available. So I would say here's what you need to go and find. I live out in rural Lincolnshire, it's not very easy to find anything around here, so to have a couple weeks before we're actually going to cook the dish, it would be nice to actually be able to go out and do the shopping, get the bits. A great upsell there to sell her spices as well.

Then I would probably, on the third week, do something where I'm talking through the ingredients and talking about why I'm going to use them and what difference it will make and why I use this rather than this. And I can't think of what this and this could be because I don't know enough about cookery. But you've been out and you've bought your shopping, and you're looking at everything and here's what they all do, and here's what they all add. Because I often use recipes as a good example when I'm talking about building online courses. People will come to me to learn how to build a course, and then they'll say oh I don't want to do that bit or that bit. And then they'll moan when they don't get calls at the end of it. I always say it's like making a cake. You can't ask me for my cake recipe and then say I don't like eggs, I'm not putting them in and then expect the same cake that I make at the end. To talk about what you've bought and why it's important and why you shouldn't mix things out because they look weird, it all adds to the meal.

And then the final week I would have literally a video of her making the meal, and the recipe available. And I would encourage people to submit videos of them making it or photographs. You could go … I get so carried away with this stuff. You could have how to stage a table, who to invite round. I love it. I think it would be brilliant.

The ones I've done for florists have always been around a seasonal flower decoration that you can do. And if you're charging somebody 20 pounds a month for something like this, it's not a huge amount of money. Most people can find 20 pounds a month for a new hobby. If you think about how much you spend on other stuff, 20 pounds a month is reasonable. If you've got 10 people doing it, that's 200 pounds a month coming in and all you have to do is make a video of you cooking something and the shopping list. It's quite a simple way to start ramping it up.

As somebody joins, I would have them join on that month's content, but I would have all of the previous months put aside that they can buy for 10 pounds. This is what we did in January before you joined, if you want to buy that particular one then it's 10 pounds. You can buy it and you can have access to it. So I think this would be great. People can pay for as long as they like, they can just dip in for a month here and there. I love it. That's what I would do.

Such a good idea. Lajina, if you don't do this then we're having words because honestly that is an amazing idea. I love that. And I was writing down things before you said them, thank god. Sometimes it's reassurance that I know what I'm talking about. But I was like, yeah, you'd need the shopping list. She could even do two levels of the membership, and the one level includes every month she sends the spices you need, so you get the spices so they're there ready. I just think that's brilliant. So, so good.

There's so much fun stuff you could do with it. You could say the first person to post the video of them making it can come along to your home next month and make the next one with you or something. There's so much fun stuff you could do with it. I love it. I want to join.

Yeah, hurry up because we're joining. You've got your first two customers there. It reminds me a little bit, and actually this is quite a nice concept as well, of the cook along things. Do you remember when, was it Gordon Ramsey who did the Friday night live cook along and he told you what you needed and stuff? He was manic, and it was all manic. And he'd go to other people's houses. But I do quite like the idea of an occasional cook along live, or something like that.

If you had a Facebook group running with this then you could absolutely do that. You could get everybody there live on Zoom. Because you can have Zoom calls with I think up to 50 people without-

I think so. And also, some basic video. So some basic chopping videos, some basic … She laughed at me the other day, this is brilliant, and I hope she doesn't mind me saying. She came round and brought the onion bhajis. I was like, thank you so much, that's amazing, I'm making curry, I'm doing whatever, whatever. Because there's so many of us I've asked someone to loan me a rice cooker, and she's like, “Why?” And I said, well I'd normally use those packet rices, and she's like “What?” And I said, I can't make rice. And she's like, “Oh my god, you're one of the smartest people I know and you can't make rice?” I was like no.

That would be great, to have a basic-

Exactly.

I think you should absolutely do this one.

Love it. Love it. Love it. Hopefully Lajina, you take that board and you do it, because I think you'll get loads of people signing up for that. And Lajina's a real, she's a great personality. So she's got lots to offer. She'll be good on camera. So I think she'd be great. She will be great.

Okay, on with the third one. I do know this lady. I think I've met her at least once, or I have met her at least once, maybe a couple of times. And her name is Kylee and business is called [Violets Digital 00:44:04]. She DM'd me on Instagram. And basically her business is that she offers social media services such as training, support and advice to small business on using Instagram in particular and content creation for social platforms.

Business #3: Violets Digital

Her ideal clients are local to East Riding where she lives. They're small to medium product based businesses, but they don't know where to start in terms of strategy or planning or creating content for social media. The prime problems that she solves or wants to solve is how to navigate all things Instagram and content creation. She gives practical advice, taking better photos, creative ways to engage in video, putting themselves in front of their audience.

This is a great one, and obviously this is an industry that we know very well. I can see already how she's got lots of options. But Carrie, over to you.

Actually what really excites me about this one is that her ideal client are product based people. There's a real need for more people to help product based businesses. So many coaches and consultants help service based businesses. Not a great deal out there for product businesses, so I love that. That was the first thing that I noticed, I was like oh that's really exciting that she works with product people. I like that.

Oh my gosh. Where to start. I think the problem with creating an online course here is going to be where to start-

So many ideas.

And don't do everything at once. I would have lots of really short, actionable courses. So maybe one on content for Instagram covering taking photos, what kind of lighting and backgrounds, that kind of stuff. I would have one one how to get more followers on Instagram, how to grow your Instagram. I wouldn't try to put everything into one course. I think it would be too complicated then. And I think the beauty of this is that if you niche it right down to really short, actionable courses … Let's start with Instagram. I'm sure if I said to, what's the lady's name again?

Kylee.

Kylee. Sorry, Kylee. I had a moment. I'm sure if I said to Kylee, if I was your customer and I came to you saying I want help growing my Instagram, what would be the five areas that you would tell me I need to work on? What would they be? I'm sure that it would be … I'm not really an Instagram expert, but I'm sure it would be something around photography and hashtags and lighting and all that kind of stuff. So come up with your topics, and even if you can create really short courses for each one of them, you've then got the option to bundle them together. So it's a PDF course or if it's a video, you could have five videos and people could buy each one of them for however much or bundle them altogether and buy it at a discount. That's quite a nice way to sell more courses.

Make it really actionable and don't limit yourself geographically. I understand if you work with people face to face you need them to be local to you. I get that, that makes total sense because presumably then you can go to their houses or offices and help them with the product [inaudible 00:47:02] and all that kind of stuff. That makes sense. Online course doesn't have to be local to where you live. The world is your oyster. You can start in the UK and work your way out, you could just start in America or Australia. There are so many people with product businesses that need to know how to use Instagram properly, and [inaudible 00:47:20] great places to start. But I would be really wary of having one big course that covers everything. So you want to think about a number of very short courses that you bundle.

You could probably do it as a membership site, so you could maybe have a six month membership site where you had a different theme each month. That might work but I think people would probably want the results quicker than that would allow. With the Indian cooking there's not really a result that people are looking to get. Having one thing a month spread out over [inaudible 00:47:53]. With this, I think people are going to want to take action now and get results now. Even the first course being delivered over four or five weeks, I don't think there's many people that would believe that they could manifest the money to pay for IVF within a week. That's not going to happen. That needs to be a chunk of time that you dedicate and go through it.

Something like this, Instagram content, people are very used to immediate results-

We want it immediately.

We want it now. If we can't have it now, then we want it five minutes ago or not at all. So I would look at making these all available from the beginning, I wouldn't drip feed it out. If you did it as a course, I wouldn't drip feed it. I'd give everybody access to everything-

Straight away.

But make them really actionable and really short and specific.

I think that's great. And for another reason, Instagram changes like the wind, as do every other social media platform. So if you had a number of your courses that were small … And in my head, I don't know about you Carrie, but I'm thinking like 19 pounds for a short course or something.

Yeah. Somewhere around the 20, 25 pounds. And then bundle them together. If you've got five courses that you're selling for 20 pounds each, then that's 100 pounds if you bought them all separately. Then you can buy them all for 65 pounds or something.

But if you had certain courses that were strategy, things like taking photos, that's great. That's never going to age so you're never going to have to update that, so perfect. And if you put everything into a big course you're going to have to edit modules, and if you change the way it looks, and if you change the way you look. I know it sounds ridiculous, but honestly you go through styles and it's all a bit different.

Exactly. And that is a really significant thing to consider. Last year I changed the colour of my hair every month, so [inaudible 00:49:43] green and then purple and pink-

Just to mix things up.

Yeah, I had loads of reasons for doing it. And I loved it. And that was quite a funny thing that people would be like … I'd post and say good morning, I'm going to the hairdressers. And there'd just be so many people trying to guess what colour hair I was going to have that month. But it made continuity really difficult in terms of videos. People would be joining one of my online courses, and in the eight videos they'd watch I'd have different hair in each one of them. It's fine if it's a them, but actually you probably don't want to be spending too much time having to re-shoot things.

No. I think if you know that actually this little course you did, you've got to review it in six months time because it's so specific about that thing that if it changes you know you've got to change that course. But then it's really easy to pull that one course without affecting everything else. I love that. I think that's brilliant.

But really, Kylee, like we said, in terms of this business, actually going for people with the product is probably a really good way, is a good niche because there are so many things out there on Instagram and there's so many courses online about everything really. And I'm not very good at niching down, I have to say. My membership that's coming out and might even be out by the time this is out, is not niche specific. But I would always argue you should go niche specific. Do as I say, not as I do. That's what I say.

That's exactly what I say. And Instagram is so perfect for product businesses because it is obviously so photograph led. It can be hard for service based businesses to know what to take a photo of to put on Instagram. It can be a bit more tenuous sometimes, I think. Not saying it doesn't work for service businesses, but it definitely is so perfectly positioned for products.

And I'm wondering whether you can niche down even further. Like is there a particular, have you had lots of experience in a particular sector? So beauty products, or-

Food.

Yeah. Because that might be a nice way to niche down even further as well and just see what that's like.

Wonderful. Like I said, as always with the others, I will link up to everything of Kylee's there as well in the show notes.

Business #4: Felt n Fings

The last one is Anya Marco. I have said that right, haven't I? Yes, I think so. Sorry Anya if I say it wrong. I get so scared about saying names. People sometimes say Teresa wrong, which it doesn't bother me in the slightest, but I like to get names right. So I apologise if I get these wrong.

Anya has got a business called FeltnFings. I'm going to spell that to you. It's spelled F-E-L-T-N-F-I-N-G-S. And like I said, we're going to link up to this so go to the show notes. Basically her business is that she has a felt flower business on Etsy, which again we'll link up to. And her ideal client, a person that loves to treat themselves or is looking for a gift or if they're getting married, that they want to keep their flowers forever.

She makes the most beautiful … And obviously as part of this we've been looking through what everybody does, and I went and looked at her stuff and it's just stunning. It's not like, you know sometimes when people do hand-make things, there's like the handmade and homemade isn't there? And this is so beautifully executed that it's stunning. It's such a lovely thing. And this is really exciting because she sells a product, so you would naturally say, and if I'm not thinking any ideas Carrie, I'm immediately going no she can't do an online course. What could she do an online course about?

But basically she does these amazing flowers that she sells to people who obviously want to treat themselves or want to use it as a gift or like I said, for their wedding. So those are her kind of customers. I guess in terms of customers it's predominately female. And her problem that she solves is not so much of a problem, more of a … Other than the wedding thing, which is I want to keep my flowers forever, the others are more of a luxury thing. So go on then, Carrie.

I'm so glad we got a product in there somewhere because products are notoriously, people will say oh no, I've got a product business, I couldn't possibly do anything online. And it is more challenging. It really, really is. A service is much easier to see in your mind how to create an online course. These flowers are amazing. I went on Etsy and just instantly wanted to buy all of them, and I'm now looking around my [lam 00:54:04] trying to work out where I could have beautiful felt flowers without the dogs or the kids getting hold of them. It's amazing.

When it comes to products, you do need to be a little bit more creative. The two most obvious online courses that come to mind, especially for this business, would be that she could teach people how to make the flowers that she makes. The crafting industry is huge. I've been heavily involved in the craft world for a long while now, and people like making their own things, people like to learn how to do it. So that's a huge growth industry in terms of teach me how to make my own felt flowers. A lot of people would then come back and say, but then they won't buy them from me, so I don't want to teach people how to make them themselves because it's obviously people pay more money for the finished thing than they do to learn how to make it. But it's two completely different markets. The kind of person that will spend, I can't even remember what her prices were like, but for instance the kind of person that will spend 20 pounds on a felt flower bouquet is completely different from the person who will spend 10 pounds to learn how to make it themselves. Totally separate customers. You're not going to do yourself out of one market by selling, teaching people how to make it themselves.

I couldn't agree more.

The person that will buy a pattern and learn how to make it is not the person who will buy it ready made.

No.

I'm one of these [inaudible 00:55:26] people that will go into Monsoon and look at scarves and go oh my gosh that's amazing, I'm now going to go out and buy woollen crochet that can make something that looks vaguely similar myself because I wouldn't spend 20 pounds on that finished scarf, but I'm happy to spend 30 pounds on the material to make it. Because for me it's the actual making it rather than it being the thing that I like.

So there's a huge market for teaching people how to make the products that she makes. And there's so many different flowers on there. This was the other thing that I was thinking when I had a quick look. If she'd only been selling one or two different types of flowers, that's obviously quite limited. But oh my gosh she's got the entire full garden full of different flowers. You can run it as a membership site where people pay 10 pounds a month and you give them, I don't know, two different patterns a month. Or you could have all of the patterns there available in the shop ready to buy, as in you download me teaching you. I think it would need to be a video based course. I was trying to work through if it could just be PDFs, and it probably could just a PDF course because it's the kind of thing that you'd buy a magazine and learn from the photos in the magazine, step by step photos. But I think the video would add some extra value to it.

So in terms of pricing, if you were selling a PDF of how to make a gerbera, for instance, I think if you had a video that went with it, that adds more value to the product and you'd be able to charge a bit more for it. So that's one thing that she could do that's quite obvious, would be how to make them. And again, the structure of that, videos, PDFs, either as a membership or as a one off price to buy. Any of those would work and I think would be brilliant.

Or she could do a course teaching other people how to set up their own product business. There are so many people out there who are good at making things who have no idea how to make money out of it. I know some people who can knit and sew and crochet and make jewellery and make cakes and do the most amazing things, and they just make them for friends and family. They wouldn't know where to start when setting up a business. Now, she obviously has a successful business. I've looked on her Etsy and she's got like 700 sales I think, or something. She's sold a lot of felt flowers, she knows what she's doing. Teach other people how to do that. So a course for somebody who is creating and wants to make their own things.

It's perfect for mums. There's so many mums at home with children who would love to earn a bit of extra money by selling things they make. Teach them how to do it. What did you do? How did you get started, what steps did you go through, what mistakes did you make, what would you recommend other people not to do, how did you pick your prices, how do you manage shipping, what do you do if someone says it hasn't arrived? All of that stuff, what goes through people's heads when they think, I'm sitting here making amazing felt flowers but I've got no idea how to sell them. So that's one thing she could do. A course in teaching other people how to set up her business.

And something that holds a lot of people back here is that they'll say, oh but I'm not an expert. Or I only make 1,000 pounds a month from my business. Or I only make 500 pounds a month, I'm not an expert. But if you're making, two, three, four hundred pounds a month from your business, you can teach someone else how to do that. You couldn't go out there and say I'm going to teach you how to make a million dollars, because you haven't done that yourself, but you have to be, in terms of online courses and what you're teaching, as long as you are doing something that someone else wants to learn, you are qualified to teach. You can teach it. Obviously when it comes to things like therapy and medical stuff, it's a little bit of a grayer area-

Yeah, you'd probably need a qualification or two. But you're right. I totally agree that actually there are people out there like me and you that dedicate our whole life to a particular industry and learning everything, doing everything, and we have clients, and we do it for ourselves, and whatever. And then there are people who go out and do it themselves and go through all the pitfalls and the difficulties and the whatever. But they're just as qualified to talk about their experience and I think that's the key thing, isn't it? It's not sitting there saying I'm an expert, I can help any business launch. I don't know your background, so I apologise I'm not saying this specifically about you, I'm just saying that for someone who has done a particular thing … So if you have set up your own florist, or if you set up your own online business or whatever, then you might be able to then talk, but realistically say, like you said, I earn or I make roughly 400 pounds a month, 500 pounds a month, whatever it is, again we're making this up, this isn't Anya … I make this amount of money, and if you want to make that amount of money and you want this kind of business, then I can show you how to do that.

Like I said, you're not sitting there saying, I can show you how to make millions on the internet. Because that is a very different thing that you're trying to teach people. So she is a total expert in making a product, sourcing materials for the product, coming up with ideas, being creative, putting it on Etsy. I wouldn't have the first idea. I've never put anything on Etsy.

And I wouldn't feel comfortable telling somebody how to do that. I wouldn't know where to start and I haven't done it. It's about positioning. It's about going out there and saying this is what I've done, and I would like to show you step by step what I did. People are inherently nosy. They love to know behind the scenes, what did you do, how did you go about it. People love that kind of information, and it's really, really useful. So I think that would be another really good idea for a course.

Or you could go even more tenuous and do something around colour therapies and stuff. Because her colour combinations are beautiful. She could have a really simple course in how to put colours together, or how to work with colour. Because that's applicable not just for felt flowers, but interior decoration and clothes and style and everything. Just looking at all her colour combinations made me think I wish I knew how to put colours together that nicely because I'm very childlike when I try to put colours together. I'm like, oh red, white and blue, doesn't that look amazing? No, Carrie, [inaudible 01:01:31].

But you're right. I think sometimes we don't dig underneath. Where does her inspiration come from? Does she create those flowers based on things she's seen in nature? Obviously they're flowers, but you know what I mean. Colour combinations in nature, or from the styles on the runway. I'm making this up, I have no idea how she comes up with her flowers. She's probably sat there listening thinking, you're an idiot Teresa. That's fine. I'm happy with that.

But yeah, what's underneath it? Is there a particular skill or a particular thing that you're doing within your business to come up with this thing? So yeah, I like that idea. I think that's good. It just helps us look a little bit deeper into what we're doing.

And that's something that a lot of people don't do. When I start talking to them about building an online course there's so much that they take for granted that they know. And one of the ways that I often work with people to begin with is I'll have a big long hour conversation with them ask them loads of questions and take loads of notes and kind of drag the content of the course out of their head and get it onto paper. And then when I go back to them and say one of the modules needs to be about this, they'll say “But that's obvious.” It's really not obvious-

No.

It's just something you do day in and day out. You have to teach people how to do it. And sometimes having that kind of extra levels to put into it, like why do you do this, where do you get that from, it just adds so much more value. It adds not only more value to the course, but it makes people really see you as the person that is qualified to teach this course. If you're just saying here's what you do, you do this, this, and this. But if you're saying why do you do it that way and here's how I did it and here's how I did it another way and realised that it wasn't the right thing to do … Because people will always hear what you're saying and go, oh yeah well I can do this instead. Almost as a challenge. I could do it differently. Yeah, I tried that and it didn't work.

So putting those extra bits it … I think she's got some great stuff she could do then. Either like I said membership style or here's the courses, download them and go.

Perfect.

I'm going to go back and stalk all of these people, just find out what they've done.

And I want you to reach out. If any of you do these things, please do let us know because we would love to hear about it. It would be so cool.

Oh absolutely. If anybody actually set any of these up I'm more than happy to share them with my audience as well. That's brilliant.

One thing I want to touch on just quickly, which was not intentional, with all of these, they happen to be ladies, which against wasn't intentional, but with all these ladies that are doing what they're doing is that one thing that I want to add, which whether you agree or disagree we'll see, is I love the fact that they are all experts at what they're doing. None of them came to us and said “Oh I'm currently doing a job as this, but I really want to do a course on this. Can I?” Because that for me … One thing that people think when they're going to do a course online or think about selling it is, well you can get all this from the internet.

And I'm thinking particularly about the felt flowers, that you could. You could probably go on YouTube and find out how to do it. You could go onto every platform and find out how to do everything that everyone does without [inaudible 01:04:37] for free. And if you want to go around and look at all those things and take that time and filter out the terribleness, because there's a lot of terribleness, and the good stuff, if you've got the time to do that then great. But the reason people will sign up to a course or membership is because of you and how credible you are at what you're saying. And that you've had experience, and that you've shown that you're doing it.

And what I love about all of these ladies is that's exactly what they're doing. Anya is selling those flowers that look stunning on Etsy, Lajina is making curries all the time and has done this for year and cooking in different places and whatever, Kylee is obviously doing Instagram training and management and support and advice for business so she knows what she's talking about, and the same with Devon, this is what she's been doing for awhile, she's an expert at this, this is what she's teaching. For me, that's the reason they would come to you, and that's another reason why I would consider doing the online course. If you just stepped into something now, I would be really nervous to say yeah go do a course online about it.

And I think that's a really important distinction to make, and it's something that might, to my ideal client, is somebody who has a business, who has been working in that business for a couple of years, who has clients, who has testimonials, who know they do a good job, and who wants to now be a little bit cleverer with their time and their income. I don't work with startups. I have lots of people that contact me and say I've got a great idea for a company, I've got a great idea for a business, I want to launch it with an online course. And my response is, you won't have an audience, you'll spend a fortune trying to build an audience, you won't have any credibility. Go and do it, get out there and do the dirty work. I really think that having an online course is great, it adds an extra income stream, it positions you differently and it gives you opportunities that you maybe wouldn't have had, but nothing can replace the fact that these people have been out there doing the work for however long, and have the skills and the stories to tell to go with it. There's no substituting for that. You have to do the hard work.

And even building an online course is hard work. I don't ever try to sugar coat it for people. There's so much out there on the internet about get rich quick and do this, and actually-

Build a course in three days.

It's really hard work. Yes, you can build an online course in a week. That's one of the things I teach. You can. And that's a hard week.

Oh, I bet you're working your backside off.

That's not a case of I'm just going to pop in for five minutes and do this. That's a full on week of work and then you have to sell it afterwards. I don't like the phrase “passive income”. I haven't found anything else that I like to replace it. But it's not passive. What it is, is you put in that one week or one month or three months or however long it takes you of hard work, you get your course put together, and then you can sell it forever. In a year's time you can still be selling it. So it is scalable and it kind of grows with you. It's not that you have to keep redoing it over and over again, but it's definitely an easy, quick-

No. And I think as well, the other thing about all these people which is down to their experience and their industries, is if they came to you and said, okay, I want to sign up for a course in a week or five days, a week-

A week,

A week. One of the things that I should imagine is a prerequisite is that they know their content so that's going to be easy to create, or easier. Because don't get me wrong, that bit is, that's the big bit. And that's the bit that puts me off doing big courses-

It's the content that puts everybody off. That's the one thing that everybody says, it's the content I don't know where to start. But you have to at least know, like I was saying earlier, if you have a process that you go through then the content is there inside of your head ready to be called out and put onto paper. Or I work with a lot of authors. So if somebody has written a book, that's amazing, you've got the content. You've done the hard work. Come along with your book and we can easily turn that into an online course. Or if you have five years of weekly blog posts, chances are we can take that content that you've already done and turn it into an online course. To come along from scratch and want to create a course from nothing, I'm sure that there are people out there that would help you do it, but I won't because it seems unnecessarily difficult and it seems that it would be harder to get results from. And I like results.

I'm from a [inaudible 01:09:04] background. I like numbers and results, and I like to be able to look at stats and know actually that's got a reasonable chance of being successful. I like taking risks, but I like calculated risks. I don't like to work with somebody who says I've got nothing, I've got zero audience, I've never done this before, but I think it would be great. Great, then go and do it, and then when you've done it then come back and look at growing rather than-

And it's not a case of build it and they will come, because that doesn't exist in this space I've worked very hard at this industry, you have as well, and it's still not easy for us. It's still not. We're not sat in the Bahamas with our feet up while the money comes rolling in. We still have to work hard at it, the same as anybody in any industry. Unless you're the likes of Tony Robbins or Brendon Burchard, but even those people, they're like marks in machines. I've seen what they send me, and they are working hard. There is a system there that's working hard for them anyway.

Like you said earlier, I work really hard, but I love what I do and I love the results I see people get. And I just love that moment when I'm working with somebody and they go, oh, that's how it works, or that's what I can do. That penny drop kind of moment. I'm not afraid of working hard, but I would rather be working hard at something that I know has the potential to bring me huge results over the next year. And it is a long term gain. I have people that come to me and say, you know I've been running a business for two years, I've got great results, I've got great clients, I need an online course now because I can't pay my mortgage at the end of the month.

Yeah, that isn't going to work.

No. You need to allow three to six months before you start making a profit from your course, generally. Some people do it sooner. I had one guy last year who we launched course, he had no … This will make you cringe, you might want to be taking a deep breath now. He had no Facebook profile, Twitter profile, he'd never been on LinkedIn, he had no social media whatsoever-

He basically didn't exist is what you're saying.

He had an amazing course and we managed to make him 2,000 pounds in his first month of launching. And that was fantastic, but it doesn't happen for everybody. Most people will take a good three or four months of testing and tweaking and getting it out there before you'll make money back. So it's not a get rich quick scheme and it's not an instant money in your bank scheme. What it is is just a more clever way of taking your content and doing something different with it.

And can I just have one more thing on this actually, because I know we've taken quite a lot of time and I appreciate your time. One of the things that I find to be helpful, I launched a course Content Creation Made Simple, it was a very simple, straightforward, direct course. Which strangely enough I had real trouble pricing because I felt like it wasn't big enough. But the point is, you follow those steps, you do what I tell you, and it will work and you'll create better content. You won't be stuck with things to write and put on social media. But I put this out there because I felt, I didn't feel credible enough, even though I had done loads of courses, I'd launched loads of memberships of clients, and I've gone through the process a million times over it felt like. I hadn't done one for myself and I felt like I'm not credible enough.

So I wanted to do that really, just so I could tick that box. And it did because now I can happily tell you that I know what it's like to be sat waiting to do a live webinar or going through a sales launch and that sort of thing. And now I feel more credible to carry on teaching that. But also, the one thing I find particularly helpful is I will go and train someone now, if someone says can we do some training, that I can add that course in, into the training price, as a freebie, as a bonus, as a do you know what, you're paying a lot of money for me to come and sit in front of you, so what I'm going to do is let's not waste time on this content bit because I have that ready and waiting for you, here it is, you do that before I get there and then you're way ahead of me and we can then do the good stuff.

For me, it's not so much about having that continuous income, because it wasn't meant for that reason. Don't get me wrong, when the membership is up and running that's what that's about, and obviously helping amazing people. But for me it was like, actually this is great because I can literally go either you can buy that, you don't need to pay me to do it, or I'll add it on as a bit of a bonus.

Yeah. And it does, it makes you more credible. It gives you that edge. And in this marketplace, whatever industry you're in, it's so noisy, there's so many people out there. Any edge that you can have … If somebody was looking for a coach, like a money mindset coach, if I was looking at three or four different coaches and one of them had an online course and one of them had different options, I would instantly think that person was more likely to be able to get me results just because you've done something different and you've got something. You're not just run of the mill, here's what I'm offering, a three month coaching package, one Skype call a week, blah, blah, blah. You've put the time and effort into doing something else.

And you've invested that. Carrie, thank you.

Thank you so much for your time. I feel like I could talk about this-

No, honestly, the audience are just sat there like come on girls, wrap it up. So I apologise that we've been talking too much. But honestly I loved this. This was so cool. Such a good idea. Now I'm not going to sit here and say this was my idea. I'd love to say it was, but it was actually Carrie's idea. But now she's given it to me, I'm going to steal it and maybe use it again in the future. I hope you don't mind.

But it was such a nice idea to get people in and get some real, actual businesses and some actual, real examples of how they can do it. So thank you Carrie, that was an amazing idea.

If you did like it, then obviously do let me know. That would be great. But obviously I'm going to hook up to everything to do with Carrie, I know she's got various good things on her sites and freebies and that sort of stuff. So I will put all that in the show notes, so do go and check them out. And Carrie, thank you so very much for being on the podcast. It's been great to have you on.

It's been lovely. Thank you for inviting me.

What did you think? I loved it. I thought it was great. I love teaching and I love being asked questions because it gives me a real focus and a real structure to answer back. So for me, that was perfect because we got real life examples and could give you real life suggestions and tools and directions. So I loved it.

Also I want to say thank you to the four ladies that we featured. I thought they were brilliant businesses. Do please go check them out. We've put all their links in the show notes, and obviously I've put all of Carrie's notes in the show notes as well. So do please go and take a look at that because it was really kind of them to contact me and to get in touch. Thank you to everyone else who did, and I'm sorry you didn't make it. I've contacted you. But thank you so much for those guys, that was really helpful.

And like I said, I thought that was a really cool episode. I really, really enjoyed that. Okay, so that's it from me this week. Have a wonderful week and I will see you here next week.

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