Ep. 048: Should I Create a Course? And How?
One way to add a new revenue stream to your business with with courses or other digital products. While marketers sell you the dream of "making money in your sleep" there's a lot more that goes on behind the scenes to make this a profitable venture. There are several things to consider before you start to create a single module or worksheet. And you might even be able to spend less time creating than you think! Tune in as I give an overview of what courses can be great for, if you should create one, and how to do it.
ADDITIONAL LINK:
http://bit.ly/erikapodia
LINKS & RESOURCES MENTIONED TODAY:
Get my free No-Sleaze Sales Method delivered right to your inbox: Get Instant Access Here
-
Erika Tebbens: Grow marketing culture and sketchy MLMs have given modern business a bad reputation. It feels harder than ever to succeed as an entrepreneur, even though we've got an abundance of info and tech, right at our fingertips. If you feel frustrated, running your business, stress over your sales schools or are baffled by marketing strategies, you've come to the right place.
You deserve to run a successful sustainable business without spamming all of your friends or wasting time and money on marketing gimmicks. This is the Sell It, Sister podcast, and you're going to learn how to make more money without complex systems or sleazy sales tactics. I'm Erika Tebbens and I teach highly motivated female and gender expansive entrepreneurs that selling doesn't have to suck.
I've been running successful businesses and teaching others how to sell smarter, earn more and create raving fans for over 15 years. And I'm excited to share what I've learned with you. If you want success without truly serving your clients profits without any passion or the next get rich quick scheme, I'm not your gal, but if you're all in as an entrepreneur, want to make a difference with your work and are ready to run a business.
You're proud of. Thank get ready to Sell It, sister, if you find that you're struggling with sales conversations, if they stress you out, or you find that you're always stumbling over your words, or you're not closing as many sales as you like, or you just are really petrified. Of coming across as that pushy salesperson.
I have great news for you. I have eight totally free, completely a hundred percent free, no catch, no sleaze sales method guide just for you. So when you download this guide and I'll give you the URL in just a second, you are going to be able to, you start selling smarter this week. Yes, really? So what this is is a framework, a customizable framework that works, whether you sell a product or a service or both. So this is not weird scripts that you have to memorize or anything really convoluted or complex.
It's just an easy way to remember what to say, how to say it and why to say it when you're having a sales conversation with someone, I think you're going to love it.
I know. I do. I know it's worked for me for many, many, many years. I know my clients love it too. It gives them a ton of confidence when it comes to selling. And that confidence translates to closing more sales. Right. So if you need this, if this is a tool that seems like it's beneficial to you, I want you to go to bit.ly/sellitsisterpodcast, it's all lower case. And it's all one word again. That's B-I-T dot L-Y Bitly, essentially forward slash sell it's sister podcast. It's really, really quick to go through, but if you have any questions or anything, okay. Be sure to reach out because I want to make sure that you are a selling superstar.
Hey, welcome back to the podcast. So this month, in case you caught last week's episode, we are talking about different things in regards to creating new offers, to grow and scale your business. And so this week, and next week we are going to be talking about courses. In particular. Uh, but last week I mentioned several different ideas and things to ask yourself before thinking about creating a new offer.
So I want you to be sure that after you listened to this, listen to that one, because it might give you some different ideas of new offers you can implement that maybe aren't a course, especially if you're like, I don't know if I should create a course, right. So. Uh, we are going to be talking about if you should create a course today, and if you feel like you should, you know, how do you do it?
Right? So I'm going to preface this by saying I'm not a course creation expert. That's not my, that's not my thing. Right. So I know about it. I love teaching. I have courses of my own, but that's not like my whole, my whole business isn't founded on helping people make courses. Right? There are plenty of people out there who do that. Uh, but that is not, that is not my primary objective with, with, uh, all of my clients. So I am just going to give you some basics to consider though, because I have helped some clients create courses and digital products, and also just being in the online marketing space. I, you know, you see in hear things and I want you to make the best decision for you and your business on a whole.
So I will say, um, one person who is great and I have had clients, uh, by her course is Amy Porterfield. So Amy Porterfield has the Digital Course Academy. Uh, and so I don't know if enrollment is like always open for that or if it's only a few times a year, but. I have heard from several people that is really good.
Um, I also have a friend, Melissa, you can find her at, uh, Uplevel Your Content. So if you just look on, on Instagram or Facebook, her business is called Uplevel, your content. And she is an expert, uh, education trainer and like content creator. I'm, I'm probably butchering what her actual title is and her expertise, but basically I have a,
I have a course with a friend where we teach farmer's market vendors, um, how to make more money at the farmer's market. And we actually had her audit our course. So what she is really great with is if you have a course idea, she is great at helping you. Uh, build it out so that people actually learn what you want them to learn and they, they will be enticed to like keep working through the material.
And she's also great. If you've already created something, she can audit it and give you actionable ideas on what to adjust. To again, make it easier for your students to understand the info. So she is a, she's an expert on all things like the meat of the course.
So definitely go, go check her out if you feel like you need some help with this. So, um, so yeah, so be sure to check out last week's episode two again, before you, before you dive into the realm of feeling like you need to create a course, if that's what you're saying. Oh my gosh, I need to create a course, like.
Again, we should have checked that one out. Cause you actually might find that you don't need to create a course. You could just do something else instead, but back to the topic at hand. So courses are a great way to offer a portion of your knowledge and scale at a lower price than someone would have to pay to hire you one-on-one. Right. So in last week's episode, I mentioned a past client of mine. She does Disney travel planning. She has a higher ticket one-on-one offer where she does all the planning for them. She also has a smaller course that we worked on. I coached her through when she was building it. So that way people can get her methodology, but do it themselves at a lower price point.
So they can also be a great way to fill in any gaps people might have on their way to hiring you for higher level work. Again, I mentioned this in last week's episode, this would be like, if you're a branding expert and then somebody is going to hire you. And they're nowhere close to being able to fill out that questionnaire that you need the answers from in order to start creating their brand.
So maybe you create a smaller course. That helps them answer those questions. So then they have the tools and the knowledge, and they're empowered when they hire you and you can also get right into it and do what you are excellent at because you have all of that information. Um, additionally, if you want to move away from one-on-one or supplement it, courses can do that for you.
So if you're like, I am so booked out with clients, I don't want to take on any more. I don't want to quadruple my rates just to make more money. Uh, but I want to have, you know, people have access to what I do with my clients. That is a great option for a course, or if you're like, you know, I just, I want more time back for myself and I'm kind of over like doing all of this one-on-one, uh, you can scale back your one-on-one if you have a course or digital product that is selling.
So courses I want to advise this is vital to know that courses are not this magic fix this like magic bullet that we are often. Sold. Right. So they're not a quick fix, uh, next week, we'll, I'm going to be talking about selling them in this episode, we're going to be covering more of the why and the how, but while it is super enticing to think about making money, while you sleep making money, while you're playing with your kids, making money, while you're on vacation.
And all of those things are freaking awesome. They really are. But this does not mean. That there's not a lot of work that goes into creating a course and marketing a course and delivering a course. So again, please, before you get sucked into the like magical glowing orb, that is passive income. Just know that while it is.
Amazing. It doesn't mean that you're just going to do something in an afternoon and get like, throw up a sales page. And then you're going to be sitting on the beach, sipping a Mohit while you're making thousands of dollars. There's a lot more of that that goes into it. So if you've decided, okay, I'm ready to do this.
I think I'm ready to do this. Want to do the course? I am ready to do what it takes. Then you can start thinking about what is going to be in that course. Right. So, Is there some basic level info that your clients must need to know? Is there something you're constantly teaching them? Is there something you do for your clients that you could teach another person to do by themselves?
At least in part. Right. So this, these are some questions to start asking yourself about what the course is going to be about. Right? So let's go back to that web designer example again. So a lot of times, cause I know, cause I've done, like I've had my own brand redone and they're all of these questions, right?
Like who's your competition? What are these adjectives that describe your brand? Who are your ideal clients? What do you do for them? Like there's just pages and pages of things that they need to ask. Well, what if you created a small course that actually shows people how to figure that out, right? When that be cool.
And then when they have that, then you're like, great. Now, if you don't want to DIY your brand, like now you can hire me and we're gonna get right to it. And because you already have this stuff done, right. Or maybe they don't even hire you right away. Maybe they hire you, you know, six months or a year from now, but at least they have more clarity in their business to go off of.
Uh, maybe it, you know, you do social media and not everyone is going to hire you to run their social media accounts. Well, can you show them how to use a platform? Like, can you show them how to use LinkedIn? Can you show them how to use. Instagram, can you teach them how to run a successful Facebook group?
Like, what is that thing that comes up again and again, that, you know, you can teach somebody else also, you know, is there something that you're like, I'm really sick of talking about this, right? Like, you're just like, I, I am tired of saying this one thing over and over. Like, if you're like, I am, I am tired of teaching my clients how to, uh, set up the backend of their like opt in and nurture sequence.
Right. Could you create a mini training? That is just on that, that you can then either sell as a one-off on the front end or like, you know, give to your, to your clients. So that's like a bonus add on thing that they get, and then you don't have to explain it to them. Right. So there's all different things that you can have your, your course do.
Um, let's say you're a, a personal organizer this top of mind. Cause I was just speaking to somebody yesterday who does this? So you get hired, you come in, you organize somebody's home. Is there something that you can sell them on the backend that will help them maintain their home better in the interim?
Maybe you come back, you know, twice a year and you do like a deep organization for them, but maybe there's like an ebook or a guide that they can use in the meantime to help them just maintain the work that you did together. So next up, I want you to ponder, will you be teaching them something tactical and purely informational based or will it deliver something more transformational overall or will this be a combo?
So I'm going to use my own and then I'm going to use my, um, my good friend Kendra's as an example. So in my business, I created Sell It Sister first. So Sell It Sister is more transformational. It is a course that teaches the fundamentals of creating a really strong personal brand that speaks directly to the people you want to serve and helps make it easier for you to close more sales with those ideal clients.
Right? So it's all the, the basics, the fundamentals that I saw that so many women were missing in their business. So, so many women were selling this product or service and they hadn't really considered these foundational principles that help set them apart from their competition, help make them stand out in a crowded, a digital marketplace and help them confidently close more sales.
So while there are worksheets and actual things, they go through and they have these tools at the end to help them with their business. It's a lot more, uh, it's a lot more transformational, right? It's it's helping you really think and do that, do that deep work. Right. And then after that I created my smaller course called Conversations That Convert.
Now, what I was able to do is take that mini course and add it as a free bonus to the larger Sell It Sister course. But people can also just buy conversations that convert. So let's say you're like, I don't need Sell It Sister, right? Or I'm not ready for Sell It Sister. Uh, you just really want some help being more confident closing those discovery calls or those sales conversations.
So I created a course that was a lot more tactical. Right? So you don't need to sit back and like think and like journal and get really introspective or you don't need to do anything like that. It's very tactical and practical. It's like, here is a template that you can use, whether you sell a product or a service, I have one for each and then you go through and you map out your own, uh, like sales process and then boom, like you're ready to go.
Right. So that is a lot more. Tactical. Uh, so my friend Kendra, she runs Mother Like a Boss. She's amazing. And her two main courses that she has had, she has some other ones, but they're, uh, she teaches, um, home management to modern moms and she had a very successful house cleaning business for, um, over a decade before she started this business.
So she has one called Clean It, Like You Mean It, which is very tactical and practical. It teaches you how to clean your home in less time. So it's all of her stuff that she learned from. Being a professional house cleaner and so she teaches you the fastest and best ways that she's found to clean your house.
And then she has Homemaker Issue, which is a bigger course, and it is, it goes deeper into mindset and it helps you create systems and routines for your home. And it's just, it's more robust, right. So depending on what you're doing, so this could be again, like. Like coming up with your, you know, your personal brand that might take some more time to think about and get through.
But if it's a social media course and you're teaching them like tactical step-by-steps of hashtag research, that is probably not as, as deep a dive and nothing is neither is like better or worse. They're just different. And they're things to consider. Uh, so what does it need to include? This is what you need to think of next.
What does it need to include? What must people learn in order to be successful and know that bonus content can always be added later. We want you to focus on what's called the minimum viable product right now. So what is the absolute minimum that somebody needs in order to feel, or, or to actually experience like a result from this, right?
That is all that you need to put in at the outset. So. That course that, uh, my friend and I have that helps farmer's market vendors. When we first launched it last year, we said, this is a beta round. So the first round, the price is going to reflect the fact that it's the first round and we're releasing it in bits as we like, we're creating it and releasing it as it goes.
As it goes. Now you're going to have lifetime access when we reshoot it all and it's beautiful and shiny, you will get that for no additional charge, but if you are going to be a fast action taker, you can jump in now for the super low price, with the understanding. That this first round. Yeah. You're going to get amazing info and you're going to get results if you use the info, but it's just not going to be as pretty and polished.
Right? So we had stuff in there. We had our basic level training. We had our basic level worksheets, and then later we added bonuses. And now we're about to relaunch it this week and we're adding more bonuses. Right. So you don't have to. Have everything a hundred percent tied up in a pretty bow. The first time out of the gate, you can always add later, just think of what is the minimum they need right now to get the results that they want and that you are advertising.
Uh, and then lastly, you know, what are, what are you including in it? How are you going to be, um, teaching it? Right? So there are, you know, are there going to be videos, audio written, sections, transcripts of the video or the audio worksheets, uh, will there be additional access to you? A Facebook group? Will there be something else?
Uh, you know, Like, maybe you, again, like if you're doing it for six weeks, maybe you run it live right. Maybe you have a Facebook group for your students. And then whenever you are like live launching it, then for the next six weeks, you do a call a week. Right? So that any new or previous students can take advantage of.
And then in the interim between launches, like you just have the group there and people can ask questions, but you're not actively popping into like teach something every week. Uh, maybe you're like, I don't want to do a Facebook group at all. I don't like being on Facebook. There's other things, you know, Mighty Networks and Slack, and there there's all these other different platforms.
Um, even on like Podia, I know that there's like a membership site of podium that I use. Um, And you can also, if you want to have like written parts or transcription of video or audio, there's a lot of services. You can get that done for relatively cheaply where you can just upload the video or the audio and they give you the transcription.
So if that sounds really daunting, but it's actually not, and you can even hire like a project VA. To do some of the worksheets for you. So you don't necessarily have to have that ongoing expense of the VA. You can have somebody just help you with the project of, of getting it all set up. So once you know all of the, of that, so you've kind of figured out, you know, what you want it to be about what problem I want it to solve?
What is the, the minimum amount of info you want to teach is going to be tactical and practical or more like. Bigger picture transformational or a combo of, of both. And you've, you know, you know that you're going to do, uh, some videos and some audios and then get them transcribed and, uh, have the text and then have a few worksheets.
Like you've got all the nitty-gritty. Then you have to think about where you're going to host it. So when I first finished sell it, sister, I actually had it on, um, just like unlisted pages on my website. And then people would get emails with the links to where those were. You can also put it behind like password protected, parts of your website.
Um, sometimes I think like if you use WordPress there's plugins where you can host different things that are like password protected on there. Uh, I, I use Squarespace, so. I, you can have password protected pages, but it's not quite as robust as some of the, what I've heard are some of the plugins for WordPress.
Um, but there are also stand alone sites where you can host your courses. So eventually I moved all of my courses and all of my digital downloads to a platform called Podia. So there's lots of different ones like Thinkific and Kajabi and Teachable and all of these different platforms. I just happened to use Podia.
It also has a membership feature. If you have like a membership group or you want to put your students in there or whatever, I haven't used that. I just literally use the hosting for the courses. And I have been very happy with that. And especially for my needs, it's pretty low costs are our farm one is on a Kajabi, the farmer's market one.
But I don't handle the tech for that. My, my business partner does. So, uh, the tech and the fees associated with that. But so for me, um, I really recommend Podia. I have a referral link. If you want to use it, you can go to, this is all lowercase bit.ly/erikapodia. So it's E-R-I-K-A-P-O-D-I-A.
And, uh, and I've, I've referred a few friends to that and they've been really happy with it as well. If you have questions by all means, reach out and let me know, uh, really, and truly right out the gate, you don't necessarily need to pay for a hosting site. Again, like I said, mine was just on my website at first.
Uh, but you know, it's, it's always a good it's. It's a good, nice option. That's a little bit more secure and you can create coupon codes and all sorts of cool stuff like that. So, anyhow, I hope that helps to give you a bigger picture of, you know, actually like the, the creation process right. Of a little bit of what goes into it behind the scenes.
Now this is not getting into any of the selling part. I'm going to be talking about that next week. Uh, but this is really just, you know, getting it, mapping it out and. Not wasting a ton of time trying to create 8,000 modules. Right. You can, you can keep it really simple and then you can build it later.
But as always, I hang on Instagram all the time. I'm @ericatebbensconsulting. Please tag me in your stories. If you're listening to this, if you had any takeaways or AHAs or anything, I would love, love, love to hear them. And, uh, you know, slide into my DMs. Tell me your thoughts. Tell me, you know, if you have a question.
About creating a course, or if you should create a course or you're debating between creating two different courses, whatever it is. I love hearing from my audience. So say hi to me over there, and as always happy selling
Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of the Sell It, Sister Podcast. If you loved it and you want more, be sure to subscribe so that you never miss an episode and then head on over to selltsisterhood.com to join my free Facebook community group. And as your mama said, sharing is caring. So if you got a lot of value out of this episode, be sure to share it with your biz besties too. Okay?
Now get out there and Sell It, Sister.
