In this episode, host Julie Hood gives advice to course creator SarahJane West-Watson of FitFannyAdams.com. She’s juggling home, a family with young children, a brick-and-mortar business, and a course creation business… all in the middle of the lockdown!
In this episode, host Julie Hood gives advice to course creator SarahJane West-Watson of FitFannyAdams.com. She’s juggling home, a family with young children, a brick-and-mortar business, and a course creation business… all in the middle of the lockdown!
Join Julie on Monday, January 25, 2021 to create your first (or next!) course in just an hour a day. Visit 24HourCourseCreator.com/daily to get more details and sign up!
KEY TAKEAWAYS
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
https://24HourCourseCreator.com/daily - Let's create your course. Starts January 25 and runs through February 26, 2021.
Connect with Sarah Jane West-Watson at https://www.FitFannyAdams.com
Facebook at https://www.Facebook.com/FitFannyAdams
Instagram at https://www.Instagram.com/FitFannyAdams
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Today's episode is inspired by a quote from Jim Roan. If you really want to do something, you'll find a way. And if you don't, you'll find an excuse. Don't you just love that quote and today's guest is finding a way and I can't wait to introduce you to her. Let's jump in. 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. So before we start, I want to first tell you about the 24 hour course creator daily program that I'm hosting starting in a couple of weeks. And We were actually going to start this week and I moved the date. So in a future episode, I will talk about that a little bit more with you, but we're starting on January the 25th of 2021 for the daily program where you can work together with a group and work together with me with coaching.
And I'd love to have you join us, go to 24hourcoursecreator.com/daily. And you can get more information. We're starting on January the 25th, and we're going to have a blast. So I'm hoping you can also join me now onto today's guest. This is actually a new type of episode. My guest today agreed to a live coaching session.
So she let me ask her all kinds of questions and find out what's going on with her business and her courses, and sort of talk to her about where she should go next and get some clarity around her best next steps. So I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed talking to her. And we chatted so long that I turned this episode into two episodes for you.
So the next one will come out early, come out tomorrow. We had such a good time talking. So I hope you enjoy this as much as I did. And let me introduce you to Sarah Jane. I am so thrilled today to introduce you all to Sarah Jane West Watson. And she has very generously agreed to do a live coaching session with me and let me share it with you all.
So thank you so much for being here, Sarah Jane, this is fantastic. I'm so glad you could join us. Yeah. And so before we get started, I want to give everybody at the beginning in case they want to go back, tell us where you're at your websites and your social media and stuff, so that if somebody wants to come back and find you I'll put it in the notes too.
But I like to have that at the beginning, My business fitfannyadam's dot com. So I've presence online at fitfannyadams.com and then also Instagram and Facebook are the only channels that I really use, which is just @FannieAdams. Perfect. Perfect. Okay. So, let's start by telling everyone where you're at right now, because you've got a lot of stuff already started.
So I'm excited to work. It's always really fun to work with folks who have jumped into the pool already. So tell us where you're at. So I, I have a bricks and mortar premises, and so, but I am very much in that space of trading time for dollars. So I'm a hands-on therapist and I'm a, an instructor and I specialize in women's health and core restoration.
So I have always been reliant on me being physically present to actually kind of fix people if you like. And so now I really want to step away from that. And it's always been a goal, but to step away from that in order to be able to generate a, something that I can communicate to a larger number of people, but generate more of an income that doesn't require me to be present.
Cause one of the biggest frustrations I have is I love learning. I love growing, but when we childcare and everything else that comes into play, if we're trading dollars for time, I actually have no time to work on growing the business or, you know, expanding my knowledge and that, that I find really grates me and gets to me over time.
Yeah. Yup. So how old are your children? So I've got an 18 month old and a seven year old. Ooh. Okay. Wow. Congratulations. And, and I hope you're getting a little sleep now and then, so I'm going to sleep as Well. And everyone who's listening should also know we are in the middle still of the pandemic.
And so tell folks how that's affecting you because you're in the UK right now. Yeah. So we're in the UK right now. And so we ironically, I was just about to go back to work after maternity leave at the start of the first lockdown. So we then completely shut from March until we were allowed to reopen in July, but I had no childcare until September.
So we reopened in September and I think we were open for a months and have to shut. And we've just been staggered at open shut, open shut. And then this week we've just started again, a full lock down. And we also now have the pleasure of homeschooling as well until at least the end of February. Yeah, No challenge there then.So I'm sort of at that point now where I made a decision last time I juggled doing online work as well,
and I've made the decision, I'm going to be present for the homeschooling completely, but my brain is just going, you know, how do I make sure this doesn't happen again? And what can I be doing in this time to kind of move me forward? I have one I launched and I developed over the last lock down one online course, which I ran live.
Good. Good, good. But that was the challenge with the kiddos. Yeah, It was, it was, but I also will not protect you. It was not my prettiest bit of work, but I sort of, I'm one of those people that I got so much that I want to do, unless I broadcast the fact that I'm going to do it,
it doesn't have this effect. Do you know what I'm going to say? It's going to happen. And I was like, God, now I've got to deliver it. Good. So good. Because for everybody who's listening, I love that. Like that whole trying to make a perfect perfection thing that trying to make it perfect. That will get in our way so much.
Like you got it live. You have something to sell now. So that's fabulous. You're present. And you know, there was, there was something that I listened to. It took me a long time to get my head around that concept of if you wait until it's perfect, it will just never happen. And I was always waiting until, you know,
I was, oh, am I in the right space? If I got the right there. So day to day to day. Oh, but it isn't doesn't look like, you know, that they're all singing or dancing, amazing TV way of doing it. It's like, do you, it just doesn't work like that. No, no. And your students,
they want your content the way it's presented, as long as it's, they can listen to it and can hear you and see you. That's really, the, the bar is fairly low. You don't have to have that TV level, but they just have to be able to, to hear you and listen to you. So good job. Okay. So now that we kind of have a lay of the land of what you've got,
tell us what your first couple or your first question, let's start there. So my first question is around, well, really, so I specialize in core health and that, that is a broad topic. And it's the typical clients that I say, people who I write a postnatal and they need to understand how to read, breathe properly, how to engage with their core and how to fix,
or sort of say post birth trauma, be it pelvic floor C-section or anything like that. So that's one area that I wouldn't specialize in course, delivery. The other area is what I kind of call it a six weeks to wonderful. So I am not a personal trainer who stands over and beats you and is all about fitness. I'm much more about balancing and the fact that we moved so far away from,
from wellness in our fitness. So when I talk about wellness and fitness, we talk about nutrition. We talk about mental health. We talk about physical health and really getting that whole balance and understanding of purpose. So I have a kind of a six weeks to wonderful course because at the heart of it is kind of our core strength as well as, you know,
mentally and physically. And then finally to find that the third piece, that again, I kind of want to specialize in and have an online course on is, is nonspecific core restoration set might be post going to surgery. It might be post abdominal surgery. It might be people who feel that they've got a lot of chronic low back pain and they know their core is weak and don't know where to start and having a bit of a catch or for people who just don't know where to go.
Hmm. Gotcha. And go ahead. So Then my question really is having those three areas that said a lot of content to be creating and delivering through what my one kind of brand? Yes. Should I just start with one or, you know, what, where, where do I go with that? So tell me about the age group targeting for each one of these,
because if I'm thinking about it, right, they might be different ages. The age group for postnatal tends to be late twenties upwards with that philosophy that the joys of aging with style tends to go against us. And the six weeks to wonderful activity, let's say anywhere from early thirties to sixties, I have. And then that core restoration again,
I'd probably say it was 35 upwards. Okay. Gotcha. So, and I think there could be some overlap, right? Someone might do the postnatal and then they want to go onto the six weeks to wonderful, you know, I could see those working together. So, and, and the reason I'm asking you about that is I always like to start at the beginning and think about how we're going to reach our audience,
because that really is the secret to having successful courses is getting in front of the right audience. And when you have multiple audiences, which you, you're pretty focused in, you know, you're focused on your core. So that's, that's very focused when you have different age groups, some your content will resonate with one or the other. So it's trying to figure out,
you know, how can we work this altogether? So I think if it were me, I would definitely start. Oh, and which one do you have done already? You said you did one Wonderful. Oh, good, Good. That one actually was my favorite of all of them, because I think that has the, probably the broadest application to the most women.
Is that right? Would you agree? Yeah, absolutely. And I think, I think a lot of people want that whole concept of, oh, I want to feel good after a certain amount of time. And it's like that detox concept. Whereas what we do instead is we just read them with nourish, you know, that self love and nourishment.
So they often come out of it with something slightly different. So you write it as it can be applicable to any one of my clients really. Perfect. Okay. And then what are you charging for it? So I charge 189 Pounds for that. Gotcha. Okay, great. So here's where I would suggest you go next. And that is to think about two things first.
How are we going to build your audience? And I know you already have a freebie that you're giving away. It's gorgeous. I love the, she's doing a plank, which I personally can't do planks for more than like 10 seconds. So I love that picture that you have on there. So that's a great way. And you're talking about core, so it's a great fit for your audience.
And are you doing any online one-on-one coaching? I know you have the business that you have, the live mortar, brick and mortar you Offer it. Absolutely. So I will offer it for those that come. So three virtual. Absolutely. Yeah. Oh good. Okay. Because I also liked that sometimes for folks not, you have to be careful because it can kind of take over and you're still doing trading the time for money thing.
But what I like about that is it can be a revenue stream to where you can charge a little more potentially, and you can get some capital to work with, and it gives you maybe a regular income. If you sign somebody up for six months or something, it's That as well, I've got running, running alongside it. I've run classes each week and I run three different types of classes and they then sit on a membership platform.
So you can, I mean, they're all done now via Zoom. And even when we were allowed to get back in the studio with our reduced numbers, I filmed it live in the studio, nothing I learning. So I filmed it live in the studio. So we've actually got then or recorded a whole library of all of our classes that any members can access.
So what I was doing the six weeks to wonderful, you get unlimited access to all of our live or recorded classes, as well as the actual content. And then do you have an ongoing, if they want to keep access, You can just be a member of the classes. Absolutely. Okay, fantastic. I see you've got so many good things.
It feels like kind of all we need is to get you in front of more potential students and get you a bigger audience. I feel like, I feel like my, my BAU takes or takes up all of my time. And I've got, I've got a big fear factor of taking the time away from what I'm doing now and investing it in, creating something for tomorrow as usual.
So, you know, my, my, you know, the classes, none of that's shebang because I guess my, my background is as a physio. So all of my training is about being hands-on. It's not about commercial. Isn't, it's not that whole, you know, investment in time and understanding what's the outcome of it and the long-term Well,
and I think we need to honor that comment because when you have children, when you have a business you're already running, when you are serving clients already trying to find the space to do add to that, isn't a minor thing. It's, it's totally legitimate. And so I'll ask you a couple of things. These are just really, really minor things that I did,
especially when my children were small to try to get a few more minutes here and there when I can do things. So one of them is grocery pickup and delivery. And I know you guys are in shutdown now, so it might be a little bit different, but I used to spend a couple hours a week doing grocery shopping, and I stopped doing that.
I would either get it delivered or go pick it up. Are you doing that? Or something like that Made a big difference. Yes, yes. Especially for all my parents out there trying to figure out how to do that. So that's one thing, another thing is getting really intentional about your best times of the day to do things. And you'll have to experiment a little bit with this.
So I've figured out that if I can get up really early and I can do my best content work at like five or 6:00 AM before I start, sometimes even before I've gotten dressed, I can do some stuff. Now. I'm not saying that what will work for you? It's more figuring out what is your best time to do content? When are you the freshest and the most creative?
Do you, do you know, have you thought about it? No, I do. I don't think it's I've tried today or it sounds so logical. I always find that as soon as I creep past their rooms that are ah, but it is it's, you're absolutely right. So I've been trying to do that in, in the morning. I know I'm not an evening person,
but I've sort of said, right. You know, Monday starts, you always do everything at the start of the week that you need to get done. So it's like Monday night, I'll try and just ring fence some time to get, to just catch up or do the admin do that planning. But it's, it is. I started one thing that actually was really helpful for me when we could have childcare with,
I would book myself mentally into somewhere. Nice. So why did you go to a hotel that I knew? I wouldn't bump into anyone at the local coffee shop and I would just sit there, have no interruptions. It'd be nice surrounding. So I feel a little bit more inspired and motivated and just kind of just try and hammer it there rather than going on at home.
I do the laundry. I'll do this or do that. And that really helped. But I think now, especially, you know, you learn from lockdown where, where can we get that time? And one thing I've been saying with my husband is this time, actually, we're going to give each other half a day off completely. Oh good.And we'd just,
and then actually I could be at exercise or work or content, then that, that would be quite helpful thing. And you get a block rather than five minutes here, 10 minutes there. Exactly. So two pieces that fantastic. And when we get out of coronavirus, I'm, I'm sure you're already working on this is the whole getting some childcare. And one of the things that I did was there were some local teenagers that lived near me.
And rather than they weren't quite old enough to be babysitters all by themselves, what I would do is have them come over and just play with the kids. So I was here like, if anything would happen, but they would just keep them busy. And I knew they were, you know, they were okay and they were busy and I could kind of sneak off to my office and work a little bit.
Now I know you can't do that in, in shut down, but if something for the future to give you some time. Yeah. And I know that I'm also a very bad person accepting help. Oh, oh, let's get rid of that right now. Before you lose you. Yes. Let that one go. Absolutely. And it's, it's terrible.
I think it's yeah. Embracing, I don't know where it's from, but yeah. Just take all the help you can get, Excuse me there for a second. Yes. Okay. So now let's go back to the specifics of your business. So you're going to work in the time when you can, especially right now with homeschooling, you know, do what you can give yourself a break.
If you don't get a lot done between now and the end of February. That's okay. You got a lot on your plate. You will do what you can. The second piece would be to start making just a real quick list of things that you could do in five minutes. So maybe it's coming up with a headline for an email, or maybe it's working on one specific piece of a lesson,
just having that list. So, Ooh, I got five minutes. What's on my list. So you're not spending the five minutes thinking about, well, how should I use that time? So I actually have a list of... So I stopped us right there, right. As we were getting into another excellent part of this interview. And that will be in the next episode,
but let's recap, just a couple of the things that we talked about so that you can also use them if they fit into your business. And the first one was the concept of perfection and how that can just stop you in your tracks. You really just wanted to have that minimum course that people need to get started. The second thing was how I,
a couple of the things that I did with the grocery shopping and the local next door kids to when I had kids and trying to make some more time. The third thing was finding the best time for creativity for you. What time of the day is it? When is it the fourth thing was embracing the fact that you can get help and it's okay to ask for help and let people help you.
I know that's a big one for a lot of us and then using a five minute list. And it's a very specific list where, you know, it'll only take you about five minutes to complete the items on it. So you can use those items to fill those little empty spaces when you don't have a lot of time. So those were some big takeaways from this session of the interview.
And then thanks so much for listening. I really hope this inspired you to get going and that you can consider joining us for the 24 hour course creator daily on the 25th. I'd love to have you, and thanks for listening. Thank you for subscribing. If you enjoyed this episode, I'd really, really appreciate a review. Let us know if you'd like this,
because if you do, I will continue to do more of these. So thanks so much, have a fantastic week and I will actually catch you tomorrow with part Two of this episode. So take care.