In this episode, host Julie Hood shares the three levels of a course business and what tools and coaching you should consider at each level: Level 1 Course Business > Just getting started Level 2 Course Business > Infrastructure in place Level 3 Course Business > Ready to expand and grow
In this episode, host Julie Hood shares the three levels of a course business and what tools and coaching you should consider at each level:
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Some of the toughest decisions, for course creators revolves around exactly where they should be spending their money and on what, so today let's talk all about it and get a plan in place just in time for the black Friday sales that are coming this week. Welcome to the course creators, HQ podcast, helping you navigate the latest techniques for creating and marketing online courses.
And now here's your host Julie Hood. Welcome to episode 16, aware to invest your money. And where not to. today's episode is a free training for you on how to best invest your money. And depending on where you are In your online course journey and setting up your business, there are different things you should be investing in. And some things you should wait to invest in further.
So you'll notice today's session has a lot of questions and a lot of decision-making for you. So I'll give you my short answers, and then you can listen in for more details. If you're wondering exactly how it should fit in for you. Now, notice I'm saying that you should be investing your money and not spending your money. This is a message from my money mindset
coach, Erica Ross Krieger. And I do feel like it's really a fantastic way to look at what you're doing and how you're investing in your business for the long-term and not just spending money and sending it out the door. So I'm going to be talking about a ton of different tools and different websites for you. So I've put all of those. At coursecreatorshq.com/16 that's coursecreatorshq.com/16. So you can hop on over there to see all the different links and you won't have to keep track of all of them as we're going through. So a level one course business is just getting started online and there's one really early decision that you need to make right off the bat. And that's whether or not you want to use an all in one tool to manage all of your online course business or not.
And if you do want an all-in-one tool, then Kajabi is my favorite. You can get 28 day trial access coursecreatorshq.com/Kajabi. And the reason it's my favorite is because it makes the technology pieces so much simpler for you. Everything works together. It's all in one tool. You just get on and put your pages in, put your courses in. It also does a very important factor,
which is it host your videos for you. Because video hosting, once you start getting big can get very, very expensive because of the size of the videos. So if the easy answer for you is to go get started with Kajabi and jump right in. Now, if you're still interested in an all-in-one tool, but Kajabi might be slightly too expensive for you,
Podia is actually pretty good too. I'm not as excited about the way their courses are laid out for students, but it's not a bad tool either. So Kajabi first, then Podia. Now, if you've already started with some pieces online, let's say maybe you already have an email newsletter. Maybe you have started with a website. Then you might not want to spend the extra money on an all in one tool like Kajabi.
So if you want to try to work with different tools and get them to work together, here is my preferred setup. So you can get an email newsletter software that will create landing pages for you. So that's something like convert kit. I'm not a big fan of MailChimp. And the reason is it's a very popular one, but MailChimp only is very difficult to work with more than one freebie that you're giving away.
So convert kit is an easier tool to use from that perspective. So you need to get an email newsletter software, and then you also need to get a place to host your course. So my two favorites, as course hosts are teachable and think if, and right now for black Friday, they both have specials going on. So you can head out to coursecreatorshq.com/16, and I'll link to those special pricing for you. So this is really good time to jump in. If you're thinking about working in this direction and then you'll need a way to record videos for your course. Now, a lot of folks can get started with the videos on their phone, and then you just need a way to transfer them. Usually with the iPhones and the Macintoshs you can transfer directly Android.
You might have to look a little bit further into how you can get the phones, the videos off your phones and onto your computer so that you can upload those. And then if you want to do some kind of editing of your own videos, then you don't need another tool that can do that. So one of the ones I like is Camtasia because it works on both the Mac and the PC.
And then finally, when you're in this level, one, getting started grabbing a zoom membership where you can have the meetings feature so that you're not paying for the expensive level, which is the webinars feature, but the meetings feature. It lets you have longer recordings. You can have some students on. And so I really liked that initially as a place where you can do some video recording for your course.
So we've got the email newsletter software, the course hosting software. If you need some kind of video recordings software or zoom, and that will get you started, you can start making money with just those tools. The next thing that we will start thinking about is your website and how you're going to fit that into the puzzle. Now it's really easy.
Let's say you have teachable where your sales pages for your courses are. You can link from your website to those sales pages. So it's, it's easy enough to do messaged me and I can help you through it as you're putting a website together and then further on here, it's probably time to start thinking about where you could use some training. You know,
do you want to take a course on how to create courses? Do you want to get a course on marketing? Do you want to get a course on online business? So I try to do a one big level course a year to where I spend a decent amount of money and get started. So one year I did a big, an intro to podcasting.
One year I did and intro to social media. Another year I did a whole comprehensive online business, online marketing course. And so I try to invest in those one a year, something like that, where I'm spending a decent chunk of cash to get that going. And then the other thing I want you to be looking at at this level are some of these lifetime offers that I'll share with you in my email newsletter.
Cause I have saved so much money when I jump into these tools that give me a lifetime account instead of having to pay monthly fees. So keep those in the back of your mind. Now, a level two course business, those are the folks who've got some infrastructure already in place. They've got their email newsletter. They maybe have a tool to host their online course.
They maybe have a website, if not, that should be at the top of their priority list. And there's some things that this level two that you need to be thinking about that you're going to do to get your business off the ground. And this is making sure that you're sending at least one weekly email every week. You want to be posting on some of the social media accounts,
I'd start with Facebook or possibly LinkedIn. If you're more business focused, start there and then you can expand. You might be needing some social media tools to help you with this at this point, or potentially a virtual assistant who can help you with some of this regular posting and regular email newsletters. The next thing I want you to start thinking about if you're at this level to place is what can I add as a weekly way to connect with my audience?
So this could be a weekly podcast, which I'm a big fan of. It might also be a weekly Facebook live weekly, YouTube. If you do the Facebook lives, download them and post them to YouTube so that they will live forever. But it's just one more way to help your audience, get to know you and see what it's like to listen to you and work with you.
So you're working on your website, you're getting going on this promotion. I also want you to start working on your mindset because this is the time when some of these mindset issues can really start jumping in and getting in your way. So periodically I will recommend some of my favorite mindset coaches for you in this level of your business, we're going to do some strategic,
what I call spaghetti throwing, where we're trying some different things or throwing it out there. And we want to see what sticks, what people like, what resonates most with your audience. So you're going to start thinking about how am I going to get in front of my potential students. And four of my top favorite ways are joint ventures, guest podcasting,
where you're a guest on other people's podcasts, publicity, and potentially Facebook ads. So at this point you might want to be thinking about taking some training or some courses in one or more of those areas. So I have different folks. Some people love to do joint ventures. They love to set up relationships with other people and work with them. So there's a special path.
You can go down for that direction. Other people are like, Ooh, I don't like doing those kinds of things. Let me just get publicity and get people headed my direction. So start thinking about what you want to try to see for getting in front of your potential students. And you're also thinking about at this stage, how will you be building your email list?
So I want you to be creating lots of freebies to give away each with their own landing pages. And if you want more information about landing pages, be sure to listen to episode 15, where we talk about landing pages further, and then also be thinking about the best ways to actually sell your course. So some people like to do big launches that they do every so often.
Other people want to have more of an ongoing evergreen sort of constantly selling their course. And you have to experiment to see which one of those will work the best for you. So at this point, you're probably ready to be investing in some specific courses or coaching in any of these areas. And then the level three course business is the person they are ready to expand their team and grow their audience to make a lot more sales and scale.
So at this point, you'll need some kind of tool to manage your team. You'll probably want to consider hiring an online business manager and you'll start thinking about what other courses can I add to my suite of courses like what's next for my students. They've maybe taken my first course, what will I add next? Will I go into some kind of membership or ongoing group coaching what's next for my students and then potentially even some done for you services depending on what area you're in.
Sometimes that's what will jump out next. So when I'm talking with my clients about investing in these different tools and what they, where they should be investing, one of the things that we start talking about is getting a coach to help you along the way. So I have one big question. I want to make sure that you ask, whenever you start looking at individual coaching and that is how much individual attention personal one-on-one advice for you,
will you be getting and make sure that matches the level of your expectation? Because I have come across quite a few folks who will get started with a coaching program. They think they're going to get a lot of coaching. It ends up being a lot of online group calls and they don't get the specific information that they need. So make sure you ask that question and then also start thinking about where you don't want to be spending your money.
So I'll give you some advice here too. Usually I see course creators. They will start with a certain amount of money that they have saved to put toward their course business. But a lot of times they will go through it and spend it all before they've gotten any money coming in the door. So I want your focus initially to be on getting your first course up and running and selling.
It does not need to be a masterpiece. It doesn't need to be your signature course is something I just want you to have up and running and selling so that it can cover your monthly fees on some of these different tools that you're working on. And then we can expand from there and get you selling lots and lots of courses for lots and lots of profit,
but typically getting started with something that's got a course ready and some cash coming in the door is a really fantastic way to get things moving. Now, typically I don't like to encourage Facebook ads right off the bat because they are kind of challenging to get them to work right away. And especially if you don't have the whole picture with the whole funnel put together.
So you can do some small amounts maybe to see if you can get some email subscribers, but don't spend a lot of your money on Facebook ads right off the bat. So this was just a very quick high level thoughts about where you should be spending your money at which level you are in your course business. And like I mentioned, I will have links to these at course,
creators hq.com/sixteen. So you can get some of these deals and make sure if you ever decide to sign up for some of these special offers, make sure and contact me because I'm always giving out special bonuses and special training in coaching with me when you sign up under my affiliate links for the different tools. So I hope this was helpful. Hopefully it gave you some ideas about where you should be spending your time and what not to do when you're trying to build your course business,
have a fantastic week. I will catch you next week. Thank you for subscribing. Thank you for listening and thank you for reviewing. If you did get some good ideas, I'd appreciate A five-star review on your podcast software. I appreciate you so much. This is the week of saying thank you. So thank you for listening and have a fantastic week.