Transcription
If my audience were to disappear overnight, I know the exact steps that I would take to create a successful online course business—at a minimum, taking it from zero to six figures in the next 12 months. And I don't just say that to throw out numbers; I say that because we've done it, and this is the work that I do, and I have dedicated my life to. We've now served over 3,000 people in over 600 different niches all over the world.
To take it up a notch, in this video I'm going to do this for a niche that I have no experience in, and so you will really get a good idea that this strategy can apply to any niche of any kind. So let's dig in. And really quickly, comment below with "give me the guide please," and we will send you the direct link to my free ebook on the 10 steps to scale your skill set and 10x your impact without trading time for money. Okay, so for the purposes of this video, let's just hypothetically say that I am a dog trainer.
So first and foremost, in order to build a successful online course business, it has to be based on something that you know. So you have to check off one or all of the items on the list: it's based on an expertise in a certain area, a skill set that can be used to help others, career expertise or experience, or a transformation you've gone through yourself or helped others go through. And in order to create a successful online course business, we have to know what we're ultimately going to sell; so that is our offer. So it starts with the offer, remembering that people pay for transformation; they do not pay for information.
So if I'm a dog trainer and I just choose to create a dog training course in general, it is going to put me in a sea of competition and a whole lot of free information that's already out there. So why would anybody pay for it? So we have to identify the core transformation that I'm going to deliver with my offer. So how can I dial this in to be a specific and transformational niche? I'm actually going to use an example from one of my clients. Anna spent 18 years as a professional dog handler in the police force and is used to training dogs in high-intensity settings under a deadline. Anna had no room for error when training her dogs in the police force, and Anna leveraged a games-based training approach with the dogs she trained. Now Anna wants to take that expertise that she has from being in the police force and a dog handler and apply it to loving families all over the world who have dogs, but they aren't sure how to get them to be well-behaved or to train them properly.
So understanding the offer, the offer is based on the transformation your program will provide, and we call this taking your client on the Zero to Hero Journey. So creating a transformational offer that works and gets results starts with the end in mind first. So we have to start with that hero outcome. So if I'm Anna, I'm going to start with the end goal of the program, which is confidence to go places together with their dog, a happy dog that's part of the family, and a dog you understand that creates a healthy and harmonious home environment.
Now the next step is, okay, that's the outcome we're creating, but who's the ideal client? Because the ideal client has to be at a place where they're going to take this seriously, do the work, and actually get results. So we would reference this as the zero state; so this is where they're starting at, and this is where they would need to implement our program and curriculum to get to that hero state. So that zero state would be described as: they recently got a dog, and the dog is showing signs of aggression, destroying items in the house, and creating an anxious, fearful, and unpredictable environment for everyone in the home, which is creating stress for everyone in the family.
So not only are we identifying the ideal client, we're also identifying what we call the Tipping Point, which is the most important part to creating a course that actually sells versus a course that nobody wants to buy. If I chose the ideal client and their zero state to be they're just thinking about getting a dog and they want to make sure that their dog knows how to do the basic commands, what's the issue there? Well, first of all, they're just thinking about getting a dog, so the path to take them on that ideal client journey from Zero to Hero becomes much longer, and also there's really no pain or urgency involved. So I talked about this in last week's video where I shared that there's a difference between a vitamin course and a prescription course. A prescription course is a must-have; you have to get the prescription, do the work, in order to get the result that you need, and that is vital to you. A vitamin course is kind of like a hobby or a nice-to-have, and it's usually priced at a low price point; people don't really put a lot of time or effort into doing the work in a course like that.
So the next step is finding your people; their TR. So we need to understand where are these people hanging out, and that actually is easier than you might think. So we want to use some clues that are in the zero state to identify where this person would be hanging out. So we added words like aggressive; we used bad behavior. So by doing a very quick search on Facebook and looking up groups that would be for dog owners like this, I found the Reactive and Aggressive Dog Support Group. It has 61,000 members in it; that is a lot of people who would need the help that you provide. Now, is everyone in there going to be an ideal client? No. But are there going to be people in there that absolutely are ideal clients? Absolutely.
And if I go over to Instagram and I search something like dog training, I find all of these resources and accounts where my ideal client is hanging out—places like Kiko Pup or on YouTube, Zach George's Dog Training Revolution. And you go to the comments section, and there are a ton of gold nuggets of information for you as a course creator to see what do your ideal clients really need and want from you. And then on Amazon, I just simply looked up dog training or dog behavior, and I found *The Other End of the Leash*, which is a novel about effective communication between humans and dogs. And this is where I would take it a step even further to truly understand who I'm serving and what they really need; I go into the reviews, and I go deep. So I start with the best reviews. It says, "This is the best dog book I've read to date; it changed the way I interact with my dog, and I now better understand the reactions and responses. It also dramatically helped in dog training as I understood how she was perceiving what I was doing and saying. Highly recommend this book for anyone interested in adopting a dog or learning more about their current pet." So a couple of great clues in there: reactions and responses—that's absolutely something that you can include in your curriculum. And the other one that I noticed was how her dog was perceiving the actions that she was doing and what she was doing, which is another great clue and indicator of how you can train a dog more effectively, and another piece that for sure should be included in the curriculum if you have an experience in it.
But even better than the good reviews are the not-so-great reviews. So let me read you this one: "I enjoyed this book, but it wasn't exactly what I was looking for. It was more anecdotal than informative, and I was looking more for a detailed guide to understanding dog behavior." And then she goes on to say, "For example, as Dr. McConnell states, dogs pay much more attention to our body movements and facial expressions than our words, and she says that changes in our movements and gestures can be a neon sign to our dogs, but she doesn't go into great detail about which neon signs mean what. Instead, she advises looking in the mirror to see how subtle changes and facial movements are—raised lip, an arch eyebrow, etc.—can change our whole facial expression." She then goes on to say in the review that she understands how this could potentially help, but the thing that was missing was that she didn't explain in the book how to change the incorrect behavior. Ding ding ding! Amazing part potentially for your curriculum.
And then from there, my next step is to actually talk to real human beings. So you start to do a little digging; you start to figure out where your people are hanging out online, but then we want to actually talk to real human beings. And again, we start with our lowest-hanging fruit, and what I mean by that is your warm network. So it goes warm network, cold network, social posting. So we have to start with our warm network, which is our friends, family, co-workers, peers, social audience if you have it—if you don't, that's okay, too. So again, we just want to start with a simple message that says, "Hey, do you happen to know anyone who's trying to achieve X outcome?" So in this case, "Hey, do you happen to know anybody who's trying to train their dog? Maybe they have aggressive behavior or reactive behavior?" And then you would just ask questions.
What is the best possible process and strategy for creating an online course business? Listening. People think it's talking; people think you need to talk to sell; you need to talk to market. No. To be a really great salesperson or to be a really great marketer, you need to listen more than you talk. So by listening to people, they are hand-delivering you exactly what they need and want, which makes your course that much better, and it makes your marketing, your messaging, that much more effective, and it makes sales way easier because you've actually created something that people want. Who would have thought? And not only that, it's going to make the curriculum that much more effective.
I actually wanted to share a real example from one of our clients who went through this process. She said, "For fun, I outlined the structure of my POP (which is her offer) before I started doing my ICAs (which were these calls) because I was curious how much it would change after talking to people. After ICAs and realizing that people generally wanted one common thing, I not only changed the whole structure of how the material will be taught, but the order in which the topics are taught is actually flipped backwards. I dreamed of starting this data boot camp two years ago, according to my Reddit history, and without this process, I would have created an entire curriculum that doesn't teach in the way that people want to learn the material." And that, my friends, is why we need to speak to real human beings and actually do the work to understand what they need.
And if you need even further proof of why this is so important, listen to this; this is also from Christine: "When I just realized I crossed the 100K mark today, 11 months after starting. I remember seeing people post about this a year ago and thinking that would be crazy to reach, and today marks one month since I quit my job to focus on this full-time." So like I said, comment below with "give me the guide please" to get that free ebook on the 10 steps to scale your skill set and 10x your impact without trading time for money; we'll send you the direct link.
So by listening to people and truly understanding how you can serve them best, you now know exactly how to position yourself when you do want to market your course because you have a very clear transformation you're creating. So in this case, my unique selling proposition or my transformation statement, which is the entire foundation of your business, would sound like this: "I help new dog owners go from anxious about their dog's unpredictable behavior, which is leading to high stress in the home and an inability to enjoy taking the dog for walks, to leveraging games-based training so that they can confidently go anywhere with their dog without fear of aggression or erratic behavior, making the dog a happy, healthy, and harmonious addition to the family and home environment."
So now we've started to talk to people who need what you're going to be offering, so you've started to build a potential list of clients, and you've also started to do the research on where they're living online. So from here, you built a little audience, and therefore you can absolutely start posting on social to generate even more people who are interested in what you do and what you have to offer. But what are you going to post about? Well, this is where we focus on what we call magnetic messaging, which is messaging that is going to attract and magnetize your ideal client. It comes directly from actually listening to your ideal clients, which we've already done.
So as someone who knows nothing about the dog training niche, I just did some quick Google searches based on my transformation statement, and these are the things that came up and the topics that I could create content around: How to stop my dog from attacking while on leash; how to stop my dog from attacking while off leash; why is my dog eating furniture in the house when we leave and how do I fix it; what is causing my dog separation anxiety and how to fix it; how do I get my dog to listen to commands like sit or stay? And so you're going to go to the platform of your choice and all of the places that I mentioned above where your ideal clients are hanging out, and you're going to start creating content on those topics that you know are perfect for your ideal client, and that is going to attract even more of them. And the people you've already spoken to? Well, they're your built-in audience; invite them to follow you and engage with you on your social platforms because they ultimately need the support you're providing. So this kind of content is perfect for them as well.
So that takes us along the path of warm audience to cold audience to social posting to attract even more people, which ultimately does what? It generates leads for the business. And in order to create sales, we have to have leads. From there, we would create the prototype version of your offer, which is what we call the POP—the Profitable Offer Prototype—which is the barebones version of your online course, live delivery to your clients, real-world feedback, which creates an optimized teaching process and allows you to then package your online course; you can sell it on autopilot. So by starting with a prototype, you can then sell to the folks that you have spoken to and done your research with and are the ones that need what you have to offer; test it with them. So you have some cash flow on the door; you have confidence that your curriculum actually works; and you have client results that you can use and leverage as social proof of how impactful the program is, which generates more leads and more sales.
And let's just see how effective this was for someone like Anna. So Anna got 40 clients into her POP at a price point of $497, generating $19,000 in revenue. And from there, you have a proven offer, and you have tested it and been able to get feedback to make it the best it can possibly be. So then you would package it into an on-demand version of your curriculum, which truly allows you to stop trading time for money and make an impact on way more people who need you and your expertise.
So Anna isn't the only dog trainer client that we have; we actually have another client named Britney. And once she packaged her program into her evergreen version of her course that people could study on demand, she was seeing really incredible results. She shared, "When I share, I made more this week than I made in an entire month working for somebody else as a certified vet tech after four years of college—on track to do $113,000 this month."
So let's just say I am the dog trainer in this case, and now I have proven my offer; I have tested it; I have now packaged it into an evergreen program that people can study in their own time, at their own pace, anywhere around the world. So I have a global reach with my client base. Then I would take my expertise, and I would really hone in on the pieces of content and magnetic messaging that have worked really, really well to attract clients on other platforms, and I would take it to YouTube because now I can create YouTube content that will work for me and generate leads and sales on autopilot every single day without me having to put in more effort. So it's important to understand that YouTube is a search engine at the end of the day, and if people are searching for the help that you can provide, you're going to show up for them and be the go-to choice and go-to authority for them. And this has been proven time and time again with so many of our clients and with my channel included as well.
So what it looks like is: you share your expertise for free on YouTube; you then have a global customer reach; you have productized your knowledge into an evergreen online course; and it creates unlimited earning potential. So like I said, this isn't theory; this is something that we have tested and proven. And truly, those are the steps that I would take if I had to start all over again today; if I had no audience, I had no business, those are the steps that I would take, and it's what's allowed us to support people in over 600 different niches. So if you're sitting there going, "I know I have an expertise to share; I know I can do this," comment below with "give me the guide please," and we'll send you the link for our 10 steps to scale your skill set and 10x your impact without trading time for money ebook, or you can just go ahead and click the link in the description below. Thank you so much for watching. I would highly recommend checking out this video next, and I will see you in the next video. Bye.