Non-Sleazy Sales Process

In this week’s episode, I talk with Annie P. Ruggles about how to have organic conversations that lead to sales. Sales can feel natural and in this episode – Annie shares about her sales process.

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About Annie P. Ruggles

Annie has harnessed her hook like disdain for hard sales, tacky, self promotion, and overly competitive sleazeballs. And is an inspiration to help people find better ways to grow their small business.

As a founder of the Non-Sleazy Sales Academy, she’s guided hundreds of people towards making deeper connections, lasting impressions, and friendlier, more lucrative transactions and conversations.

Sales Processes Are Broken

During our conversation, Annie shared how even beautiful marketing, branding, and funnels won’t work if (and that’s a big if) you or your company don’t have a solid and supportive sales process.

Businesses of every stage need sales to sustain their bottom line, their team, and their livelihood. So as Annie continued to deepen their understanding about the sales process, she saw that heart-centered mom and pop shops as well as the one-person business owners didn’t have a better sales process.

The problem? There was a lot of misconceptions about selling and Annie wanted to fix that process through her non-sleazy sales approach. (Read that as supportive and engaging sales process).

And I'm going to go over here to talk to people about the misconceptions of selling, because that way we can keep these beautiful businesses alive.

Annie P Ruggles

Your Customer Journey And Sales

The sales process doesn’t begin at the discovery call, salespage, or application. According to Annie, it starts much earlier in the process and as a business owner or founder – we need to be aware of this process so we start off on the right page with our potential customers.

So if we can look at it, you hear selling is serving all the time. Instead, I want you to think today specifically for this audience, I want you to think selling is coaching and coaching is selling. That's the very first step.

Annie P Ruggles

Clarifying Your Unique Transformation

While it makes perfect sense to talk about the transformation on your salespages and marketing campaigns, the end transformation needs to be clear. The overall outcomes have to be spelling out exactly and seen, taste, felt and delivered through our marketing materials.

According to Annie, “When you’re thinking about things like email campaigns and especially sales pages, the person at the beginning of the course, your course, and the person at the end of your course should not be the same person. There should have been growth there, right? That’s why they bought the course. That’s why you made the course. So the person can transform whether they’re transforming their social media, they’re transforming their parenting. The person that came in and the person that went out are not the same person.“

Get the Step By Step Customer Success Roadmap

Educate, engage, and retain your customers into customers for life!

Guest Resources

Annie has an amazing podcast called Too Legitimate To Quit where she speaks with other business owners about sales processes.

You can tune into my special episode about Star Trek and the Course Creation and the Customer Success process right here.

Annie’s Instagram

Annie’s Linkedin

The Course Consultant Resources

Join me for weekly office hours to ask your questions and get free training about ways to build better curriculum, better testimonials, and lifetime customers with customer success strategies.

Join me inside the weekly office hours inside my facebook group.

Connect with me via Linkedin

Expand Your Message & Audience With Livestream Video

In this week’s episode, I speak with Tanya about how to incorporate livestream video into your content marketing plan and reach new audience to book out your course or service.

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Some of these links may contain affiliate links. Read our disclaimer for more information.

About Tanya

Tanya helps coaches, consultants, and course creators leverage on-camera content with practical strategies and tools so you can serve more clients, stand out and sell more services.

Getting Started With Livestream Video

Tanya recommends that you don’t need fancy lighting or cameras to get started livestreaming to promote your products or services. In Tanya’s opinion, getting started with Livestreaming is that it’s much less edited than having to commit to making a beautifully edited Youtube videos.

My, my goal is to tell people, just pick one, pick one, start with that and get to learn it first, get comfortable with it. If there's something you don't like about it after 30 days and go to the next one and try something else, but stick with one, at least for 30 days, that's the tool that I think I would suggest starting out with is some type of streaming platform that will help you to stream into either Facebook, YouTube, or the other spaces, depending on where you're trying to put your brand out there. The second thing I think I would recommend would definitely be you said this too, investing in a good microphone at some point. And if you're not quite ready to really, really just like dig in your pocket and find those black Friday sales that might be coming up for instance, then you may want to try just use an mic or a lapel mic is what it's called. .

Tanya

Facebook Livestreaming or Youtube Livestreaming?

Tanya shared that Facebook live video was a great place to start her content marketing plan. She also emphasized how important and easy it was to not focus too much on having a perfect background or camera. One of the things we discussed was how great Youtube was when determining how your ideal clients were finding you.

So I think that one of the biggest benefits is the fact that if you put, or when you create this library of videos on YouTube, if you're using the right keywords, if you're using the type of phrases and words that people will literally put into the space into the search space, because they're looking for a specific thing that's going to help you.

Tanya

Creating your Visibility Plan with Video

During the interview, Tanya shares about how important it is to have a visibility plan and how video can play a crucial part of that process. For example, Tanya talked about how she used video as a way to share her unique framework to book more of her services and program enrollments.

Conclusion

Now that we have shared how to get started with how to get started with your livestream content marketing plan, learn more about my weekly office hours and resources from Tanya and myself in the links below.

Guest Resources

Learn more about Tanya & Get Noticed with Video

Take Tanya’s Livestream Quiz

The Course Consultant Resources

If you enjoyed tuning into this episode, make sure you check out these helpful resources!

Restream: Confidently stream on multiple different platforms https://www.thecourseconsultant.com/restream

Ecamm: Easily share your screen, interview guests, and even use custom overlays using ecamm. https://www.thecourseconsultant.com/ecamm

By the way, did you know I hold weekly office hours and trainings inside my FB group? Click the link and image below to join and you’ll get VIP status to connect with other course creators, coaches, and consultants!

The Secret World of Private Label Rights & How to Sell them With Angela Tempest

If you’re a DIY blogger, content creator, or consultant without a team – you know that self-publishing articles is time-consuming. That’s why I’m thrilled to be talking with Angela Tempest about how to save time with PLR packs. In this interview I talk with Angela about how to produce a pack of work and then selling the rights to the work! To learn more about how to sell PLRs and the secret world that saving everyone hours and hours of work, read on!

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About Angela Tempest

Angela actually started out as a content writer eight years ago, and quickly learned about P L R and the world of private label rights to help with her growing blog content needs. Now she creates her own packs to help others do the same for their content marketing at Blackbird PLR. I was super intrigued about PLR because I had never heard about this before. And when Angela who’s, one of my students inside of my membership told me about it. I was instantly intrigued. So I said, Angela, I need to have you on the podcast. Could you please talk to me about this topic? And so here we are!

What is Private Label Rights (PLR)?

Private label rights (PLR) helps you save time with content you’ve already created. Think of them as licensing out work you’ve already made. And you can actually sell it and make money from it!

How do you use a PLR Pack?

“I’ve been using PLR myself for a very long time,” says Angela. ” [As a content writer], you sort of think it’s great, but not everybody can afford to pay one on one for content. Right. Which is fair enough. Obviously we’re all at different stages, but it would be nice to create packs of things that people could use to. So that helps them along.”

According to Angela, you can use it as if you’d written it, so you don’t have to credit the author. “You don’t have to mention me. In fact, a lot of the time it specifically says not to mention the person that’s created it. So for example, in my pack, most of them have 10 blog posts around whatever the topic is. I like to say Pinterest marketing. So there’ll be anywhere from usually about 500 to a thousand words. And you can literally pick that up and put that on your website. If you want to. “

Won't That Hurt My Seo?

“People do get worried about duplicate content, but from everything I’ve read about it, Google, isn’t worried about you and me having the same content. It’s worried about you and you having the same content on your website.

You can in theory, pick it up, pop it on your website, put a couple of images and done, but I tend to find what people do and what I’ve always done with a PLR that I’ve bought is I’ll go through and I’ll use it as either like a research packet where I’ve got all that information in one place, and then I can tweak it and add bits to it and make it a bit more me, or I will take what they’ve written or what I’ve written and add more to it based on my own experiences or what I want to do.”

Angela on Getting Started With PLR

“I know one of the first places I started to get paid off from was when I started my food blog, I quite quickly realized that there was a lot of things that I want to write about in the food blog, but they didn’t want to actually make, because I’m a very fussy eater. And my husband’s a chef and he does the cooking and obviously he works long hours. So he wasn’t always around. It’s like, I need to write this article. And I discovered a really high quality food blog PLR site called kitchen bloggers, got to know the lady that runs it. And she does all the photos. She makes the recipes and everything, and it was a brilliant way to get some of the articles for the blog that I wanted to write about. But then I wasn’t going to actually be able to make myself because it would just end up going to waste, which drives me nuts. So that was how, one of the main reasons I started using it.”

How to Get a Hold of Angela's PLR Pack ASAP!

Check out Angela’s website: Blackbirdplr.com.

Angela also shares more about PLR right here.

Angela’s main website: Skylark virtual services.

Join The 25 Days of Course-mas 🎁

25 Days of free course business strategies, resources, and course discounts to help you chart your course growth strategy in 2022!

Conclusion

If you’re interested about making courses exploring different types of income to augment my existing services or to possibly replace one or two of my clients. Go ahead and check out my membership, the business of courses. It’s a great place to hang out online. I have lots of templates and trainings to keep you rolling and moving forward in your own online business for courses and digital products. Thanks so much for watching this episode. If you’re watching on YouTube, make sure to like, and subscribe to this channel and I can’t wait to see you on the next video!

Why Customer Success Matters for Small Business Owners

Why Customer Success is Important for Small Business Owners

In this week’s episode, I talk about why customer success matters and how you can increase your annual revenue for your course based business or SaaS using 3 simple strategies.

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Customers are the lifeblood of any business. People who buy your group coaching program, membership, retainer service, or SaaS product spend not only their money to achieve their goals, but also their time and attention. Customer success can be a critical factor in turning a one-time customer into a long-term customer, which means fewer costs for small businesses and more income as well as less work for the owner. If you’re a coach with a group coaching program, membership, or B2B SaaS product owner – you already know the struggle of getting customers in the door. But what happens to those customers after they enroll or subscribe to your program or product? Are they actually achieving the goals they want to? Many people find themselves working hard for a first-time customer and then struggling to figure out how to keep them around. With that in mind, it’s worth looking at customer retention efforts. Customer retention is key to long-term growth and profitability.

The Cost of Losing Customers

A recent study by Forrester Research found that it costs 5 times more to acquire new customers than it does to retain current customers. Other studies say this cost could be as high as 25 times that of a returning customer. It can be much more cost effective to find ways to keep the customer you have over trying to find a new customer.

Three Customer Success Stragies for Small Business

Improve Your Customer Onboarding Process

A customer’s first experience with a subscription-based business (memberships, group programs, or SaaS products) is often the most important. You have one shot at getting it right and making a good impression. Customer onboarding is a process that aims to help customers move from their a purchase or trial of program or product, leading to the customer seeing value and increasing customer retention – saving you pricey customer acquisition costs and higher customer lifetime value.

Education plays a crucial part in the customer’s experience and success learning how to apply the product or program towards their overall business or personal goals. This can be done through the use of self-service help documentation, video tutorials, or even on-demand email marketing automation or SMS campaigns.

Tweak Your Customer Onboarding Form

It’s important to create an onboarding form for your customers so that you can review the main reason someone signs up for your program, service, or product. The post-purchase customer journey is one of the best ways to elevate the customer experience. Consider adding questions about where they heard about your product or program first, what their ultimate goals are, and if there are any other questions they have about features or aspects of your program. Over time, you can collect feedback through mini-surveys to inform your marketing campaigns, product roadmap, business goals, and create a more personalized experience for your customers.

Analyze The Entire Customer Sales Cycle

The customer sales cycle is characterized by several steps that are completed before customers are ready to purchase or commit to a final offer. The process starts with an awareness phase, where the customer is aware of what they need but doesn’t know which product suits them best. The next step in their journey is the evaluation phase, where the customer researches the different options available and decides which one is best for them. Once the customer has made a decision, the sales cycle goes into the final step, the purchase phase, where the customer finalizes their decision and purchases the product or enrolls in the program.

In the past, marketers had a fairly straightforward strategy for acquiring new customers. You may have previously created an organic marketing approach – relying on social networking, referrals, or Facebook groups or Instagram direct messaging. You may have created a sales funnel like a lead magnet or sales webinar. Or, perhaps you’ve already invested in paid marketing campaigns on Facebook, Linkedin, Youtube, or Google to drive traffic and increase leads and sales. Whatever your marketing approach, you’d hope that those who purchase would become repeat customers. Yet in today’s digital world of on-demand services delivered by remote providers, customers are constantly on the search for innovative alternatives. To improve customer retention, the focus should be on improving customer engagement to see progress towards their goal towards implementing and using your product or program.

Free Training: Activate Your Customer Success Cycle & Increase your Monthly Recurring Revenue

Learn how to increase profitability without worrying about increasing customer acquisition costs (CAC).

In Conclusion

In conclusion, customer success strategies are necessary for all businesses, including small ones. Helping your customer achieve their ultimate goal through your course, program, or product is ultimately the best way to improve customer loyalty and retention. In this way, not only will they feel valued and appreciated for purchasing from you but they’ll also be more likely to tell their friends about the experience! Are you looking for 1:1 support and help to map out your customer success strategy? Join me inside of the Client Success Activator Program!

Adventures in Course Creation and Marketing

Evergreen Funnels

So, you’re thinking about adding an evergreen funnel to your online business? This blog post will be covering some of the main considerations and case studies about what I’ve seen work in my business along with some trial and errors I’ve made. Keep in mind, these thoughts aren’t meant to make sweeping generalizations about what will or won’t work in your business. Overall, creating and selling courses requires a lot of up front work and a bit of determination and testing to figure out the models and methods that work best for you, your personality, and lifestyle.

Tripwires

By in large, tripwires have been the most successful evergreen funnel that I’ve created. By tripwire, I’m referring to a limited time discount coupon which is applied immediately upon someone entering in through a free lead magnet, normally something relatively similar in topic to the paid digital course, product, or digital download. I’ve had tripwires ranging in price between $7-$97 and many of them have sold fairly well.

The main consideration when creating a tripwire is to consider your traffic source. I’ve worked hard over the last few years to create “free traffic sources” which cover a variety of social media channels. Most of my traffic to my “funnel” is organic reach, although I’ve played around with paid traffic sources including Google Ads and Facebook ads. Below is an example of my breakdown of paid, social, organic, and direct traffic. By in large, I don’t use paid traffic sources, I generally rely on organic social media growth – which does take time.

I’m going to try to breakdown some of the bigger upticks in traffic that I’ve received which then resulted in either “brand awareness”, “increased subscribers”, or “paid or organic sales conversions”.

When students enrolled in a bundle, they often went on to purchase additional limited time discounted courses and programs. So even though I contributed to a bundle and wasn’t directly compensated – I was compensated through providing additional products and bump offers to potential customers.

Bundles

Back in November and December 2020, I participated in two bundles which meant that a bunch of different course creators contributed their paid products into one giant “bundle” for a one low-cost price. The biggest benefit from this was that I increased my email list by about several hundred new people in a very short time. I also had a lot of new compliments from prospective course customers, which was awesome! Many of these prospective course customers, then went on to purchase other digital products from me.

Some unexpected challenges that came from participating from the bundle included:

People unsubscribing to my email list after subcribing to my course
My course platform charging a fee “per student” once I surpassed a threshold of enrolled students.
Another unexpected benefit and new challenge was working with new subscribers that were from many different parts of the world. This made coordinating virtual events and time zones a new and interesting benefit and challenge.

Hosting a Summit

I’ve participated in many different summits as a speaker over the years, but this year in 2021 – I attempted to host my own summit. I planned the summit and hosted it within about 30 days. I had about 10ish speakers join me live on Facebook, Clubhouse, and Youtube which I streamed into my facebook group.

Hosting the summit gave me bigger visibility because I encouraged speakers to participate in the summit and contribute a bundle with their own digital course or product. I offered an affiliate commission for about 40% if someone referred a prospective course customer.

Benefits: I increased my subcribers by about 200 new people, but had a big drop-off of subscribers when I started promoting my bundle. My engagement within my Facebook group, page, and Instagram increased about 11%, but seemed to drop off right after the summit. One of the biggest long-term benefit was that I revived and increased subscribers to my Youtube Channel which proved to be the greatest benefit since I’ve made several referral commission sales from programs that I use and that I recommend. I also had several bundle sales and one of my clients benefited from seeing me host a summit.

Challenges: If I were to do it over again, I would have planned my summit much more in advance. I tried planning within 30 days, but this resulted in me working long hours writing emails and promotional graphics. I was also travelling two weeks prior to the summit being hosted. This resulted in me feeling stressed trying to figure out the tech and worrying about everything being done before the summit started. I may decide to host a summit in the future, but I think I would prefer to host it as a paid summit/ conference, running ads weeks in advance to get people to register – and then allowing speakers to prepare a slide deck.

Hosting a Bootcamp or Challenge

Challenges have been a great topic of discussion in some of my Facebook groups that I’m in, but I want to share with you some considerations and results that I’ve seen.

Challenges and bootcamps when free are a good list builder if you’re just starting out, but I believe that you’ll benefit more from charging a flat rate fee for participants, at least until you’ve run the challenge/ bootcamp once before.

Back in February 2021, I ran a challenge called Love Your Webinar Challenge. I didn’t run any ads for it, mostly because the challenge was brand new and I didn’t know if it would convert well for me. I hosted each of the trainings live via Zoom for free, but found that most people didn’t want to attend live and preferred to watch the trainings. I did not stream the videos into my Facebook group, but hosted the replays on my website. People responded really well to the challenge, and a few went on to attempt to create their own webinar as a result of the challenge. At the end of the bootcamp, I did pitch my larger course or program, and most people seemed interested – but I didn’t have as many signups as I had hoped. The following two weeks, I promoted my full masterclass to prompt my larger program: Wondrous Webinars. This resulted in sales and I did incorporate Facebook ads. One of the biggest objections I faced was cost – and so I think if I were to do it again – I would charge for the challenge.

In August 2021, I ran a live free bootcamp and at the end of the bootcamp I marketed my membership – which did result in a good mount of new sign-ups for my membership. It also increased my email open rates and significantly decreased unsubscribes.

Paid challenges: One of the paid challenges I originally created was my 5 Day Course Creation Challenge. Some people were a bit confused why this challenge was “on-demand”, but on the whole – most people responded well to it. I also think that if you decide to host a challenge and you’re doing it for the first time – you can do it for free – and then charge for on-demand access.

Here’s an example of a breakdown of how each of the services and masterclasses that I’ve created have resulted in bookings or sales. A few of these numbers have gone up in sales and some of the products or programs have since been retired.

Evergreen Webinars

I’ve played around with running live webinars and evergreen webinars, and I have seen that for the most part, live webinars convert much better (at least for me). In December 2019, I created my own on-demand Masterclass called “12 Mistakes New Course Creators Make and How to Avoid Them“.

Over the years, I’ve found that live webinars are fantastic – especially if you can get people to show-up. Unfortunately the flip side is that you’ll need to create a time that most people can attend, and if your email subscribers come from largely different parts of the globe – this can be tricky.

Evergreen webinars often do increase my subscriber list, and result in people purchasing lower priced digital courses or programs. I think in large live launches with webinars are much more effective (as long as you have a good organic/paid traffic) source encouraging people to sign-up. Webinars are also great to run with affiliate marketing campaigns, but many other business owners need a good deal of advance notice before they decide to participate in a webinar launch.

Other Resources:

Evergreen Webinar Funnels with Angela Tan

5 Mindset Shifts to Promote Your Course on a Webinar

My Easy Evergreen Webinar Checklist

Open and Closed Cart Courses

Over the years, I’ve created new digital products and courses. Sometimes these courses are open and available on -demand, but I often find that “live launches” often result in better enrollments. This often requires a set period of promotional period window, and often incorporates longer periods of planning including prepping promotional marketing campaigns on social media (organic or paid) and creating email marketing campaigns to go out in advance.

One challenge of “always open” memberships and courses is that if you have a set monthly curriculum, people will sometimes stumble into the program and feel stuck like they need to catch up with the material. This can result in feeling frustrated with the program, because they didn’t start on the same page as some that have benefited from curriculum delivered live. I like to incorporate some sort of pre-recorded orientation for my membership, mastermind, and some courses. This allows students to identify their starting point and choose with course/curriculum that will help them, based on what they’re struggling with/trying to learn. With some of my courses, I also include an “onboarding email sequence” which gives new customers a step by step path to work through the content – and provides given prompts to review certain lessons based on where I’ve seen students struggle through content in the past.

Running Course Sales

Running a sale on your courses are a great way to boost your income, especially when you don’t have the time or engery to create something new. In October 2020, I ran a sale during Halloween called “Spooky Spectacular” – I didn’t incorporate affiliates into my marketing, but I made a few sales on products that hadn’t been sold in awhile. I’ve incorporated digital product sales into my business and I’ll admit I don’t always have them planned much in advance. The exception however is during holiday sales periods including Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, and New Years.

Additional Reading and Resources:

Latest Results of The Digital Product Toolkit

Waitlist Vs. Presale

Some folks really enjoy creating waitlists for a new course or program. I think this might work very well for larger signature courses or high-ticket services. If you like to plan things in advance and have a team and finances to invest in a larger course launch, then I think a waitlist is effective in building up an audience who is at least vaguely interested in what you have to sell.

Personally, I find that I’m very impatient with launching new things. I like to develop and create content quickly and see the result first hand from my efforts. This is why I’ve adopted a presale approach to selling courses and programs. This often involves me creating the Minimum Viable Product, and then selling the program and adding content to the course over time. This also leads to less effort on my part to create something, and more emphasis on creating content that my audience will find useful.

Additional Reading & Resources:

Want to Automate Your Course Sales & Streamline Your Business in Less than 30 Days?

Access my new free Funnelstreams course and learn how tracking conversions and sales is simpler than ever.

Working With Affiliates

Affiliates are a great way to boost your revenue for your course, without having to pay for paid marketing campaigns. I often find that guest interviews from podcasts are effective enough to encourage new signups for your email list as well as promote a paid product or course. I often find that my customers are my first affiliates, then peers or colleagues that I meet at conferences, and lastly new people that I meet inside of social media groups like Facebook groups. It’s much better in my opinion to work with someone that I know, like, and trust, than to work with a stranger that knows nothing about me or my business.

Additional Resources & Trainings:

Managing a Paid Community

Fostering a thriving paid community takes a lot of planning and support. In 2020, I did have some paid admin team members helping me create social media graphics and managing some communication for emails. However since late 2021, I’ve been operating as a solo business owner. My husband sometimes helps me review my business finances and I do have an accountant, but for the most part I do all of the marketing and business development. I may hire someone in the future to help me with admin, but I actually enjoy speaking with and supporting my community members.

Paid Facebook groups: I’ve tried a variety of ways to communicate with paying course customers, but it seems that Facebook groups are amongst the easiest and cheapest to use. My membership, The Business of Courses does incorporate a Facebook group where I post weekly trainings about upcoming and current trends in digital marketing for course creators. I also share monthly templates for Canva and Googe Documents for folks that want to plan out their marketing or create a new course.

New Content: One of the reasons I decided to go with a membership was because I realized that I wanted to focus on long-term support and development for my folks that joined. I really didn’t enjoy having to spend time launching a new product, supporting the customers for a short period, and then suddenly they were left with only what was in the course- and not the entire larger picture. I rather enjoyed having the space and creativity to create new content based off of what was pressing at the moment and existing trends.

Course customers often may feel more inclined to stay for a longer period when new courses or trainings are provided each month or quarter.

Pricing & refunds: I think it’s important to consider your profits when creating your pricing, but also realizing what someone is willing to pay. It’s a balancing act, but for memberships I’ve found offering monthly has worked more effectively and then offering an annual discount. For larger signature courses, I have also found that monthly payment plans are more effective than one-time payment options. All of my digital courses and programs have refund policies, normally within 7-14 days of purchase. I have a less than 1% refund policy for all the courses I’ve sold, and I believe it’s been I’m fairly communicative about the refund policies on the sales page and also try to support my students once they buy.

For failed payments, I’ll try to reach out manually to people to see if they wanted to continue access to my program. Most times it’s a financial situation, so I’ve worked out a payment plan specifically for them, or ended the membership if they weren’t able to continue the membership because of a time/financial commitment.

Onboarding calls & incentives: For both my membership and group mastermind, I include an onboarding call. I also found that offering an incentive to join and participate has resulted in better engagement with the overall course. Some incentives I include in my membership include getting featured on Facebook/ website/newsletter. I’ve also inclued salespage audits, podcast and youtube features for completing course content or sharing their review.

Additional Resources & Reading:

How To Protect Your Business Legally

Disclaimer: The information contained in this episode is for informational purposes only, and should not be construed as legal advice on any subject matter. You should not act or refrain from acting on the basis of any content included in this site without seeking legal or other professional advice. Some of these links are affiliate links. Please read our full disclaimer.

Before you draft that contract or terms and conditions for your freelance or course based business, you need to know these important things! In this episode, I speak with attorney Amy Nesheim, founder of Artful Contracts, where we discuss the legal side of protecting your services and courses legally without the headache!

About Amy Nesheim

Amy is a lawyer who helps protect creative entrepreneurs, freelancers, coaches, and consultants. Amy protects people through taking the guess work out of all the legal side of your creative business, especially so that you can get paid and keep the money that you work so hard to earn.

And so I wanted to basically serve all those people who were not coming into the law firm. They were five years down the line. And they had just spent all this time getting started with just open to risks, and not even like thinking about the legal stuff or feeling like they couldn't do anything about it. And so I wanted to address that.

Amy Nesheim

Protecting Your Online Business

After spending years studying and working as an attorney, Amy saw a big need for small business owners to get access to high quality legal contracts, templates, and resources to legally protect their business from fines and lawsuits. Unlike large organizations, coaches, consultants, and freelancers weren’t able to consult with a large legal department – but still needed guidance on how to prep legal documents such as contracts and adding important legal disclaimers and policies to their website – so they could avoid legal penalties. As a business owner myself, I found that Amy was spot on when describing how hard it is to find information about legal protections, that didn’t make my eyes gloss over because of the overly-technical jargon.

[I want to] empower people to take charge of their own legal protection in their businesses until they get to that point of being able to hire a lawyer.

Amy Nesheim

Important Website Protections

Besides setting up your business structure and protecting your assets through an LLC, some other important things we discussed included setting up important protections for the types of relationships you foster as an online business owner – one for website vistors, clients, and students. While I already had experiences drafting and using legal templates for my contracts, I was particularly intrigued by the way Amy described contracts between students and coaching clients for my group coaching programs. Amy recommends having contracts for each type of relationship.

For those that don’t know, I’ve worked in a variety of business models over the years in my business as a freelancer and agency owner – and have had to learn the good, bad, and ugly about trying to trial and error about protecting my business and time effectively through quality contracts. Needless to say, Amy has some incredible insights on the subject, and I honestly wish I had known about her years ago!

Check out some of these other blog articles I wrote about the subject of freelancing, high ticket services, and my journey from freelancer to course creator.

My Journey to Five Figure Months and Beyond

My Year in Review 2020

5 Easy Ways to Pivot Into a High Ticket Service

Course Creator Legal Policies

One thing that really struck me was how Amy mentioned that having a terms and conditions policy for your courses and programs was becoming even more important. This is a growing concern among the course creator community, because obviously – you work so hard to create your course, your signature VIP day, or service and you don’t want people to steal your ideas or even resell your product!

Unfortunately, even big time course creators are seeing copycats and downright sleazy people copying courses and even reselling them.

Check out: Elise Darma’s Youtube Video About Copycats

Protecting Your Business Proactively

I’m of the opinion that “better safe, than sorry” is a good expression and that’s certainly the case when Amy and I had our chat. I’ve had bad luck in the past – including the time I got into an accident driving a friend’s car and increasing her insurance premium! Luckily the issue wasn’t pursued and my friend was nice about it- though I never drove her car again. So – ya gotta make sure that your business is protected legally, because not doing so is the equivalent of driving down the freeway WITHOUT CAR INSURANCE. Could you safely drive down the street without an accident? Yup, but the question is – wouldn’t it be safer to have protection?

I mean I’m all for living the fast and fun lifestyle – but there are some things I avoid like the plague – running with scissors, parting my hair in the middle, and working with people WITHOUT a contract.

SUFFICE to say – I’d rather be protected in my business and I’m glad Amy’s out there to help.

Guest Resources

From filing a trademark, to getting your LLC whipped into shape, or your website policies in check, Amy is your go-to for legal resources for online business owners.

Check out Amy’s other free resources:

Instagram: @artfulcontracts

Youtube: Artful Contracts

How Jono Built a $1 Million Course Business

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About Jono Petrohilos

*This post may include affiliate links.

In this episode, I interview Jono Petrohilos. Jono is the co-founder and director of Fitness Education Online, the largest continuing education company in Australia. He also won the current fitness Australia Educator of the Year and sells over $1 million worth of courses a year. He’s absolutely the coolest guy! Jono is also the podcast host and founder of The Course Creator Community.

How a $5 Video Inspired A $1M Business

From small beginnings to booked out personal trainer

Jono mentions that he got his start out as a fitness trainer where he ran a bootcamp helping people regain their energy and improve their on physical health and fitness. But, he says that when he first started out, he wasn’t hitting the benchmarks he needed to rank and become top of his game. So- he set out to figure out how he could become better than ever and become a stand-out trainer by learning from the Franchise chain owner who started out as a drop-out high school student, got fired from Walmart, and ended up starting a chain of 75 fitness centers. He educated himself through taking online courses to help improve his personal training business. Each course improved his rankings in the industry after he implemented on books, podcasts, and so much more! He eventually went from 20 students to over 100 and eventually went on to create a secondary physical location.

Jono went on to say that after spending months attending classes and absorbing everything he could about the industry, he felt that there was something lacking in the field for other personal trainers. So he set out to create something that modeled his own unique way of doing things to help more people achieve their goals and increase their income as a personal trainer. From there, he went on to simplify his process of educating others by creating an online course.

After downloading an ebook, he went on to Fiverr and started creating the simple outline for his course and hired someone to “pretty up” his Word Document to turn it into a sellable PDF.

I still remember I went on there, there was a guy that said he would slap himself in the face for five bucks. So, I purchased that one too. And he sent it over to me. And he didn't hold back. Like it was a hard slap, you know, like a really, really hard slap. And I was like, man, I feel sorry for what some people are gonna do for money, you know. But then I looked at the video he sent over. It was an unlisted YouTube video. And it had 100,000 views. And I'm like, hold on, this guy didn't send me a personal slap. He slapped himself once. And he's sold that 100,000 times of what this guy has made half a million dollars from slapping himself in the face that almost similar to an online course.

This inspired Jono to make his own version of his course using unlisted Youtube videos and embedding them onto a PDF to sell his course which he sold for $500. This goes to show that it’s absolutely possible to sell your course or product without having to rely on flashy salespages or fancy tech!

Guest Resources

Jono has some fabulous resources and conversations inside of his free Facebook group. The Course Creator Community! I’m inside the group and it’s a lot of good fun.

The Course Consultant Resources

Want to learn how to pivot from proposals to passive income? Join my free Facebook group where you’ll get access to live trainings. Plus, access to my 5 Day Course Creation Challenge!

I can’t tell you how excited I am to share about my latest new online course platform. If you want a sneak peek about the new course platform I’m migration to – check out my latest free course – Funnelstreams! This will help you track conversions, sales, all under one platform!

How to Keep Your Online Course Brand Consistent

In this episode, I speak with Brand Strategist Bethany McCamish who talks about how to create a brand backed by psychology. In our chat, we discuss how to elevate and unearth your brand using brand archetypes. Not only is it incredibly fascinating, but it’s proven to convert your audience into paying customers – especially so when it comes to creating and selling that online course!

As someone that has personally worked and hired Bethany to sell my service packages, I can tell you this is a MUST listen to!

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About Bethany

Bethany help purpose-driven business owners who are working to make the world a better place identify their unique brand personality and leverage it through strategy so they are both timeless and unmistakable, putting their mission center stage.

Prior to founding Bethany Works®, I spent five years as an English teacher and graphic design instructor building a regionally recognized curriculum. For more than 7 years Bethany was integrated into the Pacific Northwest arts community running and curating shows that tell a story, all while sharpening my communication skills.

Creating Psychology Backed Design

According to Bethany, the very first thing you need to figure out – if you’re going to be adding on products, courses, whatever it might be, is who you’re serving.

From there, Bethany recommends choosing a brand personality and mood so that you can know how you’re going to show up for who you’re serving. The good news is that Bethany has a free quiz to help you fine-tune your brand personality and archetype.

Fine-tuning your Brand Personality

“We know who the rebel is, we know who the jokester is we know who the hero is. And if you can align your business and brand with those archetypes purposely, intentionally, then you're making an easier connection with your audience, you're paving a path for them to get to you.” - Bethany

Bethany says that with each archetype, you are connecting to a human desire to create a really solid personality, that influences how you are going to show up.

Even though you may have been a rebel, the hero, and everything in between, Bethany says you need to think of your business as a whole and how it is portrayed through your branding.

“But you have to think about your offers and your business individually, separate from who you are as a person, especially at this point. “

She goes on to say that this is hard for solopreneurs. but it’s just really an essential step to take.

"And that's going to inform how you're talking to people the copy that you choose the words that you're going to use for calls to action, and your visuals, things like your color palettes, your fonts, your photos, all of that."

Grab my free Course Creator Starter Outline

Grab this free Course Creator Starter Outline so you can create high impact virtual training programs!

How to Keep Your Branding Consistent

So what do you need to keep things organized for all of your course content?

“Well – you need two fonts, you need to have a color palette, and you can have up to six colors. But usually it’s just good to keep three to five, especially if you’re trying to put together your own branding.”

Even though it can be hard especially to have so many beautiful and fun fonts, Bethany recommends sticking with two and having up to six colors utilized for your brand.

I mean, big brands have teams dedicated to it for a reason, and dedicated to staying on brand. And I think staying on brand can be one of the most powerful things you can do because you're leveraging design consistently within your business.

Guest Resources

Learn more about Bethany’s services.

Access Bethany’s brand personality quiz!

Learn more about Bethany’s Courses

July Alumni of The Digital Product Toolkit

Some of these links may include affiliate links.

In this episode, I share with you the results from the latest round of The Digital Product Toolkit. I also talk about resources and trainings I used to get started with Facebook ads. Finally, you’ll get a look at all of the amazing student showcase from the Digital Product Toolkit!

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One of my biggest regrets as a new course creator, was not getting support to answer my questions. Today, I’m going to be sharing with you real student examples of people selling their expertise in an on-demand course. Make sure to tune to the end, and as a special bonus – I’ll share how to get better testimonials using a student Facebook group.

How I Got Started With The DPT

This program was originally launched as a series of templates and tutorials and sold for only $9. Over time, I improved the program by adding a workbook, more videos, and also incorporated live rounds of support every few months. I eventually raised the prices of the course and at the time of the recording, currently have a lite and full access to the course. I recently ran a live round of the course in July, where I offered 4+ weeks of co-working calls and live support. Here are the latest results from students that took action and launched their latest course.

Latest Launch Results July 2021

Most recently, I’ve been diving into selling my courses with Facebook and Google Ads. In June 2021, I hired Amber Rose to create amazing ad copy for my lead generation campaign which lead to a low priced offer.

As a direct result of working with her, my list grew nearly by 200 (possibly more due to iOS 14 changes) in a matter of weeks with a small budget and helped me see sales for the first time with ads. Some unexpected benefits, I saw after using ads included, three new podcast guest bookings and a summit speaking invitation!

I highly recommend Amber’s VIP Day option for those with a proven course/program that wants to build their list. Other done for you resources I recommend include Amy Crane’s Amplify membership and Laurel Portie’s $7 program. I’ve tried both of these memberships and I feel they are both incredibly valuable for those that want to build an audience and market using FB ads.

Student Client Showcase

Pro-Pitching Template

Sam Hawrylack is the owner and founder of Fire Up Freelance and How To Fire. The Pro-Pitching Template will help you get the exact wording and customization you need to send in client pitches so you can become a booked out freelancer. This is the same template she uses in her business that has been tested and adjusted for the highest client conversion.

Access her free resume template right now

Teach The Geek To Speak Membership

Neil Thompson is the creator of Teach the Geek to Speak Society, where he helps STEM Professionals with public speaking. Inside of the Teach the Geek to Speak Membership – you’ll learn exactly how to confidently deliver your next speech and command the stage like a seasoned pro – without sweating through your shirt or fumbling through your slides.

Access his free 5 Public Speaking Tips right here

You Can Cross Stitch Workshop

Erin Ulko is the teacher, author, pattern designer, kit maker, and crazy cross stitcher behind Purple Leaf Designs. She helps teach total newbies how to start – and finish – their very first cross stitch project, setting the foundation for a brand new creative + fulfilling hobby.

Join Erin inside of You Can Cross Stitch Workshop – a complete workshop that walks you through each step of your first cross stitch project – from start to finish! Join her waitlist for when the next workshop opens!

Easy Trello Training

Kat Sturtz is the founder of Rocking Your Path. Kat is a business life mentor and The Purgatory Relief Coach for People Who Think Marketing Is Hell…her twist as a Certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach. Her passion is helping home-based solopreneurs figure out what’s really got them stuck, stumped, or stalled. She especially loves helping clients break free from despair, leaking money, or making little at all.

Do you struggle making sense of Trello? Tried it. Ended up with a mishmash of disorganized info cards and convoluted workflows? End the confusion and head-scratching. And the hate. Nobody’s got time for that. Let Kat show you an easier, more intuitive way to take charge of Trello. Learn to rock it your way! Join the Easy Trello Training waitlist for access to the updated course!

How the Digital Product Toolkit is Different

The Digital Product Toolkit is perfect for those just starting with building an online course and even those “perfectionist” entrepreneurs ( I count myself among them) that need a catalyst to launch their online course – without the anxiety, tech stress, or worry of wondering if it will sell.

Not only do I offer periodic live rounds of support for full access members, you’ll also get an email course that pairs with the course so you can learn on-demand at your own pace. I also provide a full variety of templates for introduction lessons, student onboarding email templates, email marketing templates, and so much more.

If you’ve ever wanted to create a course – and don’t want to spend thousands of dollars hiring out a team or buying an expensive coaching program – this is the ultimate way to learn my strategies for creating and selling courses and templates FAST.

Past Alumni

I ran a similar live round of The Digital Product Toolkit back in January of 2021 and had some incredible students showcase their results. You can check the results right here.

Check out the January Alumni

3 Tips to Get Better Testimonials for your Online Course With Facebook groups

One of the perks of some of many of my online courses is that I offer live course feedback and support during periodic times of the year.

Live Co-Working Calls

Offer live coworking calls. I share a calendar for all co-working calls with quiet working time + some private q & a sessions. These calls help me see what new content I should be adding to the course and if something is missing. I use AddEvent and have used Eventable in the past to get people to add my zoom meetings inside of a link which I send to my customers via email and inside the group.

Dripped Homework Assignments + Social Posts

Provide dripped homework assignments inside of the student facebook group, during a live support round. I often schedule “homework” assignment posts inside of my Facebook group in advance. At the time of this episode, I currently use Coschedule for all my social media content. This gives people specific space to comment any questions or share their wins as they work through the content. Additionally, I normally share useful templates from inside my course inside the group so they can access it easily.

Ask for feedback with a Form

Asking for testimonials can seem awkward. But without them, you’re stuck with a course that doesn’t get results for your customers. Social proof if one of the deciding factors for people to hop in and buy your course. I generally ask people to share their feedback of what they felt before the course training about the topic, and what they felt. “after” joining my course. If students have specific wins they’d like to share about their course launch, I ask them permission to share it. Sometimes students also comment inside my facebook group, and I do ask if I can share their results as well.

Resources

Are you looking to expand your vision, message, and scale your business witha sustainable and online training program?! Learn all about the Business of Courses Membership!

How to Amplify Your Course Launch With Convertbox and Thrivecart

This post may contain affiliate links. For more details, check out my disclaimer.

In this week’s episode, I talk about how to amplify your course launch with Convertbox and Thrivecart.

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Why I Chose Convertbox

In May of 2021 I ran a live summit called The Inspired Course Summit. I was absolutely excited to have amazing speakers join me during the summit, but unfortunately I ran into a plugin issue which resulted in my forms breaking right at the beginning of my live launch. It was a huge frustration/embarrassing moment not only for me, but also for some affiliates. Luckily I was able to quick.y resolve it by popping a Convertkit embedded form onto the website. This was a short term “band-aid” which didn’t really fix my problem- but did help me realize that I needed a better functioning form builder. Enter Convertbox. I was on the fence about Convertbox for a few months, until I decided to go with it – and now Convertbox is one of my favorite tools for lead generation and live promotional sales. I’m going to share some of my favorite features of Convertbox and how I’ve used them over the last few months in my business.

Scheduled Launch Sticky Banners

One of the easiest ways to integrate Convertbox and Thrivecart is to add a link on the button of a “sticky banner” to a Thrivecart checkout page. Alternatively, you can also link directly to a salespage for your course, program, service, or product. What’s awesome about sticky banners is that you can also add a fixed date countdown timer or an evergreen countdown timer. Banners can also be scheduled in advance!! This is something I really appreciate when planning a launch so I don’t have to wait until I’m down to the wire on my deadlines.

Promotional Slide-Ins

Slide-in’s as I like to call them are awesome for promoting your paid trainings and offers. I really like that you can customize the branding for your images, buttons, countdown timers, and fonts.

Segmented Opt-In's

You can also create segmented pop-up’s that provide the user different options to opt-into. For example, if someone clicks a button, you can trigger another Convertbox slide-in to appear which allows them to opt-in to whatever lead magnet or freebie that you want them to join! This is similar to a feature found in a software called “right message”. At the time of this article, Convertbox is offering a lifetime access which is amazing for all of the features you get access to.

Sales Generating Funnel Opt-Ins

In-Line Embed Forms

At first glance, I didn’t really know what I could use Convertbox for, I honestly just thought it was just “another form builder”. But what I didn’t realize was how powerful and agile this software when it comes to generating leads and sales. Convertbox gives you the ability to track views, leads, and conversion rates. So any traffic you do receive on your blog post, you can actually get more sales through the use of email marketing. You can even create blog or landing page specific opt-ins so the people who are interested in a topic, get the right opt-in at the right time!

Detailed Conversion Metrics

You can also create segmented pop-up’s that provide the user different options to opt-into. For example, if someone clicks a button, you can trigger another Convertbox slide-in to appear which allows them to opt-in to whatever lead magnet or freebie that you want them to join!

Facebook Ad Funnel Forms

When my forms broke a few months ago, I started to have some moments where I wasn’t sure if I should continue relying on my current systems – or invest in another platform to help deliver new email subscribers and leads. I did a ton of research on Leadpages, Clickfunnels, Funnel Gorgeous Funnels, and Ontraport – and eventually landed on Convertbox because of their lifetime offer.

Before, I was horrified at the thought of running Facebook ads and worried that my forms would break again or that I had to pay for a fancy landing page and form builder on a monthly basis. Thankfully I can now run ads without worrying about forms and can also even create a Facebook ad “funnel” with my Convertbox and Thrivecart to track views, conversion statistics, and track my ROAS (Return on Ad Spend). In case you’re curious, I’m currently inside of Amplify a monthly membership for FB ads. I also had some really great help from Amber Rose from Launch with Amber to get my lead generation campaign up and running!

The Course Consultant Resources

Are you looking for step by step support and guidance when it comes to generating new leads and sales for your business? If so, I’d love to invite you to access the special bonuses when you purchase Convertbox or Thrivecart. Anyone that joins through my link gets access to my monthly mastermind for a full month for free. I’m also offering a free discovery call to help you decide whether or not Convertbox or Thrivecart is for you. Let me know if you have any convertbox and thrivecart questions! I’m happy to give you my honest take.

Melody

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Table of Contents

About Annie P. Ruggles

Sales Processes Are Broken

Your Customer Journey And Sales

Clarifying Your Unique Transformation

Get the Step By Step Customer Success Roadmap

Guest Resources

The Course Consultant Resources

Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Transcripts

Table of Contents

About Tanya

Getting Started With Livestream Video

Facebook Livestreaming or Youtube Livestreaming?

Creating your Visibility Plan with Video

Conclusion

Guest Resources

The Course Consultant Resources

Listen on Spotify | Anchor | Get Transcripts

Table of Contents

About Angela Tempest

What is Private Label Rights (PLR)?

How do you use a PLR Pack?

Won't That Hurt My Seo?

Angela on Getting Started With PLR

How to Get a Hold of Angela's PLR Pack ASAP!

Join The 25 Days of Course-mas 🎁

Conclusion

Why Customer Success is Important for Small Business Owners

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Table of Contents

The Cost of Losing Customers

Three Customer Success Stragies for Small Business

Improve Your Customer Onboarding Process

Tweak Your Customer Onboarding Form

Analyze The Entire Customer Sales Cycle

Free Training: Activate Your Customer Success Cycle & Increase your Monthly Recurring Revenue

In Conclusion

Table of Contents

Evergreen Funnels

Tripwires

Bundles

Hosting a Summit

Hosting a Bootcamp or Challenge

Evergreen Webinars

Open and Closed Cart Courses

Running Course Sales

Waitlist Vs. Presale

Want to Automate Your Course Sales & Streamline Your Business in Less than 30 Days?

Working With Affiliates

Managing a Paid Community

Table of Contents

About Amy Nesheim

Protecting Your Online Business

Important Website Protections

Course Creator Legal Policies

Protecting Your Business Proactively

Guest Resources

Listen on Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Get Transcripts | Spotify | Anchor

Table of Contents

About Jono Petrohilos

How a $5 Video Inspired A $1M Business

From small beginnings to booked out personal trainer

Guest Resources

The Course Consultant Resources

Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Transcripts| Anchor

Table of Contents

About Bethany

Creating Psychology Backed Design

Fine-tuning your Brand Personality

Grab my free Course Creator Starter Outline

How to Keep Your Branding Consistent

Guest Resources

Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Get Transcript

Table of Contents

How I Got Started With The DPT

Latest Launch Results July 2021

Student Client Showcase

Pro-Pitching Template