Table of Contents
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Why Power Hours Still Work for Aspiring Course Creators
Power hours can be a valuable way to get paid in your online business, even if you’re an aspiring course creator that wants to move into creating a signature course or group program. As someone that’s notoriously averse to getting on free discovery calls, I found that paid consultations are much easier to setup and sell versus trying to give my time away for free. Not only are power hours a great way to transition away from only offering proposal or project based work, it gives people a taste of what your 1:1 offers or group programs offer if you plan on launching higher touch services later down the road. Did I mention that power hours are very easy to setup? If you’re not quite ready to hit “launch” on your group program offering or your signature course, power hours are a great way to get testimonials as you grow your business from “freelancer” or service based business owner to “consultant,” “coach,” or “strategist.” In order to setup yourself to accept payments and book your consultation calls, you’ll need a clear-cut strategy to drive traffic, sales, and connections.
How to Setup Power Hours to Get Paid
To get paid in your power hour or consultation calls, you’ll want a way for people to book time on your calendar and communicate with you. The setup is quite simple really, but you’ll want a way to follow-up with your clients so that they understand the expectations for the day of your consultation as well how to communicate with you. I’m going to share some super simple and easy steps to setup power hours in your online business.
Booking Platforms
To get paid in your power hour or consultation calls, you’ll want a way for people to book time on your calendar and communicate with you. The setup is quite simple really, but you’ll want a way to follow-up with your clients so that they understand the expectations for the day of your consultation as well how to communicate with you. I’m going to share some super simple and easy steps to setup power hours in your online business.
Calendly
Calendly is currently what I use to book my consultation calls. I like Calendly because it currently offers a wide variety of features including:
- Zoom Integration
- Calendar Integration
- Custom Availability Hours for Calls
- Customizeable Follow-up Text & Email reminders
- Group Meeting Setups
- Collect payment options
- Customizeable and required questionnaires
- Embeddable full-page options, pop-ups, and widgets
Acuity
Acuity offers a free and paid version and allows you to also integrate with your calendar as well as receive payments. I’ll be honest and tell you that I didn’t really like the user-interface from Acuity. I previously used Acuity on my website for another business, but it really didn’t seem to have as much customization options as Calendly in my opinion.
Book it like a Boss
Book it like a Boss is another popular platform which allows you to setup and integrate with your calendar as well as provide options for payment for Stripe, Paypal, and square. You can also customize your Book it Like a Boss page for multiple services as well as exchange messages directly with clients using their platform.
Payment Gateways
So why would you need a separate payment gateway if you can already accept payments directly from your booking system? Well, I’m going to share with you exactly why I believe considering alternative payment gateways can be beneficial for your business even if you’re not tech savvy.
Go from Clients to Courses!
Watch this free training where I’ll break down how to uplevel your course sales without hopping onto Instagram Reels or showing up in front of the camera.
Thrivecart
Thrivecart is currently my go-to payment processing platform for my courses, power hours, programs and services! Many people are surprised to find out that you can get paid for services on Thrivecart. I like to use Thrivecart to customize my customer workflows. Thrivecart also allows me to connect up my email marketing platform and provide an additional offer beside my 1:1 power hour session. It also gives me a chance to reinforce value by giving me the option to add student or client testimonials to the page. You can also see many different examples of things to sell with Thrivecart in this article.
Samcart
Samcart is another fabulous software which provides people with the option of paying you and offering a highly customizable ways to collect emails and follow-up with people after they book. Samcart is a great resource to use if you’re just looking for something with a monthly payment. I go over my full review between Thrivecart and Samcart in this article.
Honeybook
Although I do enjoy using Honeybook for project based work, I don’t really like to use it for power hour consultation sessions. I do however find it valuable to setup invoices, send contracts for signatures, and setup recurring payments for clients. It’s much easier than tracking clients down for a payment!
Forms
Having a way to collect important information can be handled directly through your booking link such as Calendly or Acuity, but you can also use other platforms to collect important information such as website url’s, documents, and other files. I find that having a strong formbuilder helps me keep track of multiple types of files and important information.
Paperform
I like to use Paperform to collect important information including images, email addresses, and links to files. What I specifically like about Paperform is that you can embed these forms on your website giving you the ability to add forms anywhere including your website and even your course platform! All of my services are currently application based so I collect details from potential and current clients and get an automatically notified anytime it gets filled out. Alternatively, you could use a system like Dubsado to streamline your lead generation and workflow automations if services are the primary percentage of income you receive. Since services only play a smaller role in my business – I think Paperform works pretty well for me!
Here is a list of all of the features I love to use with Paperform!
- Payment options for services or products
- Advanced conditional logic (perfect for those that offer multiple services or want to only show questions if certain criteria is met)
- Embeddable Code
- Image options for multiple choice responses
- Customizeable fonts and brand colors
- Automatic email notifications
- Customizeable redirects
Typeform
Typeform is another beautiful form builder which allows you to customize a step by step experience for potential clients or customers. Typeform has some beautiful features, but I prefer using Paperform because it’s a much simpler user interface instead of a multi-step option for client/customers.
Other Resources
I’ve written a ton about my journey in online business so just in case you want to know who’s talking here – you should go on and read these other posts. And these are accomplishments I’m celebrating for myself. So please just read these as such and not as any indication of me being super full of myself or rather “less cool” than others. 🙂
My Journey to 5 Figure Months and Beyond
