A SIMPLE business plan to grow a $100k online course
In my early days as an entrepreneur, I thought that a successful business looked like this. Private jets, fancy cars, millions upon millions upon millions of views and subscribers. The reality behind a very successful business is that it's actually data driven, super boring, wildly predictable, and very simple, which makes it easily accessible and duplicatable to anyone, including you. And that's why I wanted to make this video.
This comes from a lot of experience of being able to grow my own online course business from zero, absolute zero, all the way up past the eight-figure mark, and have helped thousands of people all over the world take their experience, their skill set, their expertise, package it into a highly impactful, transformational and scalable online course of business in every niche and imaginable. And they're scaling all the way up to $300,000-plus in some cases per month, on a consistent basis, without any ad spend at all. And I'm talking everyone, from DJs to dancers, to accountants, to people who teach exam prep, to skincare experts, to Airbnb rental experts, to realtors, to bakers, to crocheters. Yes. I said, crocheters, multiple and beyond. So give this video a like, if you want
to see the behind the scenes of what a very simple business plan looks like, when it comes to growing and scaling and impacting all the people that really need you in the world with your online course business. That's what we're going to dig into today. If you want to learn even more about this and see some real world case studies and examples, you can go to workwithsunny.com, which I've linked to that, in the description below. All right, let's get into it. Here's what we're going to cover.
The importance of the rule of one. Number two, the ironic truth of attracting quality leads, the secret of consistent sales, tiny, but mighty team, and ops to scale to the Moon. Okay. So let's dig into the rule of one. And what that means is one offer, client, and message. Now, this is so important, because a lot of people try to run before they walk, when it comes to business, and they want to start all these different businesses and offers and courses.
And they don't realize with every online course you create, you're essentially creating a new business. And you're going to understand, as we go through all of the factors in this video, why it's so problematic, and why it leads you to not being able to grow or scale the business, and just staying plateaued, stuck, and in a lot of the cases, not able to really generate any revenue at all. So in order to extract your one, offer one client and one message, it has to start with you, and your experience. Because ultimately, what you're doing with an online program and an online course is, you are creating transformation, based on your own experience, your own skill set, your own expertise. That all boils down to this proven process that we've used to help so many people create and scale these really impactful online courses. And what that is, the first step is really identifying your own heroes story. So what have you been able to achieve for yourself in terms of a transformation? A couple of clues and things you can think about are, what are things that people ask you for help for? What do you have career or life experience around? What's a hurdle or a challenge or an obstacle that you've been able to overcome? What is something that you would like to teach other people, so that nobody has to experience what you went through? Or what do you want your legacy to be? What do you want your impact to be in the world? Those should all spark some light bulbs. And I'm thinking, next week, I'll do a whole deep dive
video on how to really identify your hero story, and dig deep on your niche, so that it can really help you. So let me know if you want that in the comments below, just by putting Hero. Oftentimes, your ideal client is a mirror for you. So this is the zero state. And this up here is the hero state. And your online course bridges the gap between these two states. So you're taking the client from zero all the way to the hero outcome that they're desiring. And oftentimes, it's something that you've been through yourself or you've been able to help other people achieve. Within this hero story, you start to identify
three key factors of a highly scalable online course business. And those are one ideal client, one specific place on their journey, that is really a tipping point where they have urgency to create a change, and to actually achieve the hero outcome. Because without any sort of urgency or need or desire to actually create that transformation, they're not really interested in what you have to offer, and they don't really care, and they're not invested. That leads to bad clients, that leads to not getting a lot of results,
or social proof for your online course. This is really important, and then, the one specific outcome. So let me give you an example of one of our clients, and her hero story, and how it turned into identifying these three key factors that make up who her one ideal client is. One specific ideal client is ambitious, driven women. One specific place on their journey is they are obsessively thinking about food, and it is controlling their lives, and having a negative impact on everything that they do. And the one specific outcome is freedom from their obsessive thinking around food, so food, freedom, and complete and utter body acceptance, and body confidence.
Then that turned into the entire foundation of her offer, her client and her message, all one focus. So it makes it really easy to identify who she's serving, what she wants to be known for, and create content around that is super clear and magnetic to the right people. The transformation statement looks like this. "I help ambitious, driven women
go from obsessively thinking about food, and having to control every aspect of their lives, to being free from the obsession around food, and achieving total food freedom, so that they can be 100% confident in their bodies as they are, and have full self-acceptance." Now, this is why it is so important to have the rule of one when you're creating a really impactful online course business. If we have multiple different clients at multiple different stages on their journey with multiple different outcomes, how are you possibly going to be able to find all of these people? And more importantly, how are you going to create content that's actually magnetic to them? So this is why it's so important, in terms of your messaging. Because if there's multiple different tipping points or stages on the journey, your messaging, all of a sudden, goes like this, and you can't create a curriculum that actually leads to the hero outcome effectively and efficiently, because you're taking people all over the place. And you're trying to satisfy different clients at different places on their journey, seeking different outcomes. And that leads to a really bad online course that people don't need. And here's what's really incredible about this,
and what creates a true business. I talk about this often, but online courses have changed a lot. And there is definitely more focus on transformation, as opposed to tactics, because tactics can be found for free on the Internet. To achieve a deep and meaningful transformation for your clients, you need to make sure that you are really specific in who you're serving, so you can go deep with them. And ultimately, if the value of your outcome is so
impactful for your ideal client, it allows you to price adequately. So when we work with our clients, the lowest possible price point is $500, because the value of the outcome is so high. In this example that I just shared with you, the clients that are enrolling in that program are suffering in so many ways. It is affecting their day to day lives. It's affecting their work. It's affecting
their mental peace and clarity. It's affecting their relationship. The biggest indicator of how you price a program adequately to attract clients who are ready to do the work, and actually get results, and are super invested, because they're at the right place on their journey to take this seriously, is knowing what it's costing them to not have the solution that you provide. That allows you to charge a price point that allows you to really grow your business, make a really good income for yourself while also creating deep, deep transformation. Because it is true that people who pay, pay attention. And if you are invested into something, and think about your own habits, you're more likely to actually do the work, to take it seriously, and to achieve this hero outcome, so everyone wins. You have happy clients who are actually seeing results, and your business has so much social proof to back up that you know what you're doing, and you are the true authority and expert in that space. And not only that,
this is such a simple way to start your business, because it allows you to know exactly what your north star is in your business. And you're not trying to go in all these different directions. So it becomes so simple, peaceful, profitable, and purposeful. When you have your messaging down, it makes everything a lot easier and simpler in your business. Because when you know who you're looking for in terms of your ideal client, you know how to find them. And this allows you to grow a really successful online course business from absolute zero, which a lot of our clients have done. And in order to attract clients, you have to have leads.
That doesn't mean you need a lot of leads, it means you need the right leads, and having the right messaging, which we just covered. And every piece of content you put out has to be directly relevant to the transformation statement, and to your ideal client that we just went over. And when you do that, you get the right quality clients in the door, and you don't need a ton of leads. So for our clients in the beginning, it's not about going
on YouTube and pumping out a bunch of videos, because that ultimately takes time and effort. And you want to really test your messaging first, to attract your first round of your leads. So we help our clients get their first 50 leads simply by identifying, "Okay, who's my ideal client, where are they out on their journey? And what specifically are they seeking?" When you know that, you can then reverse engineer and go, "Okay, where are they hanging out?" In that example of ambitious women who are seeking freedom from food, there are so many blogs, influencers, YouTube channels that are dedicated to this, and Facebook groups that are all about this. It's not about going in and being spammy and
trying to push your message or make a sale. We are deep, deep, deep believers that relationships lead to revenue. It is all about really listening to people, and knowing how you can best serve them. So it's going at it from a approach of, "Okay, I now know where my ideal client hangs out. That's half the battle. Now, how can I add value in these spaces, through value driven comments, through creating content that serves a purpose, through sharing my own personal story that will really engage people to connect with me?" The more connections that you make, and the more you can ask the right questions to these people, the more leads you have in the door, and that builds the entire foundation of how you know that you can attract leads in perpetuity. So you have to have
very basic actions of identifying more people hang out online that are your ideal clients, building relationships with them through providing value, connecting with them, and listening to what they truly need, and then, hand delivering the solution to them that they're seeking. That is the generosity of the sales process, and of working with the right people. Because they're going to be grateful that they found you, as opposed to pushing your message at everyone, and people going, "Shh, I don't need what you're selling." The more intentionally you are about breaching the right people, it doesn't really matter what platform you're on, it's always going to convert, and you don't need millions of viewers, or millions of eyeballs. You just need the right people. So why this is so important is because there's really two flywheels that run the online course business. And this is what we've identified, this is what we work with in our business, and we help all of the people that we work implement for themselves.
First and foremost is really the engine that runs the business. You have your offer, which we just identified and talked through. From there, you have to get people enrolled into the actual offer itself. From there, you create transformation. And from transformation, you create happy clients who are so excited to tell more people about your offer, and then organically, you start to get more and more humans that are ideal clients in the door. Now from there, because you know
exactly what your offer is, you know exactly, specifically who you're trying to reach, it allows you to crush it on any platform that you tackle, and you only really need to be on one platform that leads into building an e-mail list. Because your e-mail list is the only thing you own in terms of having an online business. For us, it's YouTube, but in the early days, I was testing on different platforms, and I was doing more direct marketing to people, and creating conversations, as I talked about. So it was more one to one, things like Twitter, or things like Instagram. I do think that it's important to test your messaging before committing
to YouTube, because you don't need a YouTube channel to scale to 20, $30,000 a month. Our clients are scaling to 20 and $30,000 a month simply by having direct connections with the right humans, because they know where to find them.. In terms of how to crush it on any algorithm, because you know exactly who your ideal client is, and how to serve them, and what your offer is, you then know, okay, ideal client/viewer/follower. And from there, that allows you to know, "Okay,
this is relevant content to this person." The more relevant the content is to your ideal client, the more the algorithm then knows how to categorize you on any platform. And from there, once you, the algorithm knows to categorize you, it then uses its internal traffic sources to organically find more of these people. Then, all of a sudden, this little flywheel
starts to work, and you have to put in less effort, you have to post a lot less, and you're organically attracting more of the right people, because you fed the algorithm with the right information. And this goes for YouTube, this goes for any platform, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, doesn't matter what you're using. The more relevant your content is to your ideal clients, the more ideal clients you will naturally and organically attract. So in the beginning,
in terms of attracting leads, all you need to know is who they are, where they're at in their journey, and exactly what they're seeking in terms of an outcome. That makes creating messaging super intentional and super targeted to the right people. So it's less effort, and more clients in the door that you can really have an impact on. So it's all about being hyper, hyper intentional. And when you know how to do that on other platforms, then when you get to a space like YouTube, which really is this evergreen lead generation machine, you know exactly what messaging works. And then you turn
those into YouTube videos, which work for you on autopilot, to bring in leads every single day. Because people all over the world, who are your ideal clients are searching for the content that you're creating, to solve their problem, and to create the transformation that they're seeking. So you're being discovered by new people every single day on YouTube. You got to lay the foundation, prove your messaging, test your messaging, know it works, and then dig into YouTube to make your videos as effective and impactful as possible to the right audience. That brings in this evergreen stream of leads, and allows your flywheel to start working on autopilot, and for more enrollments and more happy customers to spread the word, to get more people into your course. Make sense? Now, the key to consistent sales? Simply put,
math. And oftentimes, this is way overlooked, but now you have leads, now you know how to attract leads. So how do you actually convert those leads into paying clients and customers? As I spoke about earlier, in terms of the value of the outcome that you're creating with your online course and program, and I'm not talking about some very superficial tactical program here. The way that we create online course businesses that can truly scale to the Moon is, they're all about transformation, and so, the value of the outcome is really, really valuable to people. When that is the case, you want to make sure that you're getting the right people in the door.
And what we have found is the only way that really truly works to have these legacy clients, that you would be happy to serve for the rest of your life, is to get them onto a Zoom conversation, to actually speak to them, ask them questions, and really prescribe and identify, "Am I the right fit for you? Is this program going to solve the problem that you have? Are you in a place where this is truly the transformation that you need, and are you the perfect match to create the zero to hero outcome that I have inside of my curriculum?" So our process of generating sales is simply from the messaging that we put out into the world, whether that is a story on Instagram, whether it's a YouTube video, whether it's an e-mail, it doesn't matter what the source is, could be a direct conversation. It's important for us to always take those people and to get them onto a phone conversation via Zoom, so we can really audit and identify, is this the right fit on both sides? And if it's not, that's okay, it's better to know before somebody enrolls into your program then after, and they become a bad client. So we do like to create a little bit of friction in terms of our enrollment process, so that we know we're working with legacy clients that we want to work with for the rest of our lives, and are truly committed to seeing results and outcomes. Because if you create a course that doesn't get results, what's the point at the end of the day, and it's not going to last very long. In terms of the numbers, let me tell you a little story, and break down the numbers of how you create consistency in sales. So we have another client, and she helps married couples who are
stuck and stagnant in the bedroom, go from being stuck and stagnant and frustrated with each other, lacking intimacy, and truly on the break divorce, to having a thriving, intimate relationship. When she did the work, to know exactly who she was serving, and ended up finding these people online, in all of these different hubs and platforms that she identified, because she really knew who she was serving, and where they were hanging out, she listened. And these people said, "I would pay a lot of money if you could truly help me achieve this outcome." This woman has so much credibility
to back it up, and so much social proof, because she's been doing this for a long time in a completely different format. This is the first time she's ever created an online course. And people said, "I would easily, at a minimum, pay $5,000 for you to help me create this outcome that I'm seeking." These couples are in the right spot on their journey, where they're like, "We need your help, we know we need your help." At $5,000 per client, this is how the math breaks down. So if the goal is to hit $100,000, let's say we need to start at $10,000 per month. From there, that is two clients,
two clients of 5,000, 10,000. Now, conversion rate, I've talked about this before, but on average, it's around 20%. That's on the lower end, but just to be safe, you kind of want to start there. And then, some people's conversion rates are all the way up to 90%. So conversion rate is 20%. That means that if you need two clients to hit
your $10,000 per month target, which equals $120,000 a year, that then means that you need to speak to two times five. So if you times the amount of clients you need by five, that gives you 20% conversion rate. Two times five equals 10 humans, 10 human conversations to achieve your goal of two clients and $10,000 a month, $120,000 a year. From there,
that monthly revenue would hit target. And that's how you do the math. So you just have to figure out, "How many clients do I need per month to hit my target? Then how do I reverse engineer that, based on a 20% conversion rate?" The simple way to do it is you just need to times the amount of clients you want by five. That gives you the amount of conversations and humans you need to connect with, in order to convert at least two of them. If your conversion
rate's higher, you're going to convert more. Now, here's the very exciting thing about this. Now you have your offer. You have your ideal client, very clearly identified. You know exactly who you're serving, so you know where to find them. You then know how to generate leads, and now you know how to create sales, and turn those leads into actual paying clients, who are going to get this amazing transformation that you provide. This is the foundation to be able to scale
to the Moon. You don't need anything else. If you know these four things, you can scale to your heart's content. The sky truly is the limit. And this is how our clients are able to go from zero, all the way up to, in some cases, over $300,000 a month in sales, for their online course on a consistent basis. And like I said, without any ad spend at all, because they know exactly what the math is behind their very simple business model. Which brings us to once you know how to scale to the Moon, and once you have consistent sales in the door, and you have profit, and you have cash in the business, then you can reinvest and truly become the leader of your business. And that means having a team. Like I said, it's a lean team that I like to focus on, and a tiny but mighty team. Because
you don't need a lot of people in this kind of a business to really be able to create the impact you want to. And to run super efficiently. You don't need really anyone at all. And a lot of our clients are able to scale to $100,00 without anybody in their business. But when you do want to start bringing people on to support you, so you can elevate from being the founder of the business, to being the leader, and to really focus on your zone of genius, this is an example of what our business now looks like, in terms of teams. So there's me. Then we have a head of ops, we have a head of community and content, and we have finance.
And then this entire section is all sales, so we call them our enrollment team.Each one of these people is part of it, our enrollment team. And that is the very simple structure and team that runs our business at this point. But in the beginning, it started out with just me. Then I brought on my now ops person, who started as an admin person in my business, to learn every aspect of it, part-time, and now, really is my right hand person. Then we started bringing on sales people and enrollment people, because we knew we had a proven offer, and we knew that we could really make a bigger impact, so why not bring on a team who's able to help reach more people, and get more people in the door, to create that transformation for them? But like I said, if you're just starting out, you don't need a big team.
We have clients who have scaled to ridiculous numbers, and still have a team of just two. And this leads to your operations. When you have a team, it's really important to dial in your operations. And really, what it means is that everything in the business is documented, so that if someone leaves, if someone goes on vacation, you know that you have a backup plan, and you can follow exactly the instructions and steps to do anything in their role.
We have an internal course, shockingly, that is actually our training guide inside of our business, and documents every single role in the business, every single duty inside of that role, so that it's really easy to take over for one another, when necessary and needed. So operations simply means that you have the foundation of the business, you know how everything works, you know your key activities to generate leads in sales, you have the proven offer, you got your messaging, you know your ideal client. Then everything else just becomes easily duplicatable, repeatable, and scalable, because it's all documented and easy to follow, and you're not just throwing spaghetti at the wall. Because the more that you customize and do one-off things,
the harder it is for you to scale, because nobody can come in and actually take over for that role, be a part of your team, or allow you to grow, because everything you're doing only lives in your brain. So you really only need team and ops. And this only really comes into play when you actually have a proven offer in a business. You have to have your offer. You have to know your ideal client. You have to have your messaging sorted, so you can attract the right leads and get sales in the door consistently, because consistent sales allows you the peace of mind to be able to bring on a team, and to create operations to remove you from the business in the day to day, so you can again stay in your zone of genius. Here's where this gets really exciting. So this is how you turn a $100,000 online course into, really, a seven-figure, eight-figure online course. When you know the math and when you know
all of your numbers that back the business, as we identified earlier, you know exactly how to scale, because essentially, you just need more leads and more conversations to achieve higher revenue. If we break this down, and based on the example that I shared earlier, so the client who's helping married couples, this person is probably going to start around the 5K price point. But the thing is, as you get more social proof, and as you get more credibility for your program, you can absolutely raise the price point, which means less clients at a higher price point, which means higher revenue and higher profit. Let's say she then moves the price point up to $10,000, and she wants to scale to $100,000 per month, which equals a 1.2 million business.
If that's the case, then we would just need to reverse engineer that target. So if the goal is 100K per month, that would be 10 clients, okay? 100K month, 10 clients. Conversion rate? The conversion rate as you grow. Remember the flywheel that we discussed earlier? It becomes higher and higher, because you have more credibility and proof, and your clients start to recommend more people to you. Let's say her conversion rate moves all the way up to 50%, for ease. If the conversion rate then becomes 50%, she needs 10 clients. That means she needs to multiply
this number by two. So that'll be 20 humans, 20 sales conversations a month, in order to achieve $100,000 per month. And that would be 1.2 million a year. So 10 clients a month would lead to having a seven-figure business. And profit means, okay, if you're bringing in revenue, some people may pay on a payment plan. And that means that the revenue is not a match to the profit. So you do want to be really aware of how much cash you're
actually collecting, and what your expenses are, so you know what your profit is. But with a business like this, and a business model like this, you can operate at a 95% profit margin. I've seen it in many cases, as long as you keep things lean and efficient and intentional and purposeful, your profit can be very, very high. This is how you take an online course business
that starts with a transformational offer, and you can scale it all the way to the Moon. And like I said, this is what we do. So if you're interested in creating an online course business, that's super impactful and transformational, be sure to click the link below, and you can apply to speak to a member of my team, a real human, so we can ensure that this is the right fit for both sides. And I hope that we can support you on the inside, and help you get your message out into the world, because that is the mission behind our business. My whole purpose is to create success ripples in the world, by allowing you to reach
a global audience with your zone of genius, and to create the impact that you're here to make. So I hope that resonates with you. And if you like this, and it hit home, let me know what your light bulbs were in the comments below. I love to hear takeaways. My love language is comments. I've mentioned that before. Let me know when the comments below, and I'll chat with you there, give this a like, be sure to subscribe, and I have a whole playlist on how to create an online course business right here.
So check that out next. I'll see you in the next one. Bye.
2022-06-22 19:45
