Pua walks business owners through the top five reasons they should be monetizing their knowledge and experience through online courses. She talks about some of the common misconceptions about courses, including how many businesses don’t think they have something to turn into a course. In reality, she shows us how any business—virtual or in-person, service-based or product-based—can build online courses easily and quickly.
When it comes to online course creation, Pua reminds people how simple it is to transfer their knowledge into an online format that makes it easy to learn. More importantly, she reinforces how having courses can help build trust and credibility, leverage knowledge for additional revenue streams, and serve a subset of clients who may not be ready for higher cost traditional services.
If you’ve been considering an online course—or even if you’ve thought “there’s no way for my business to create a course”—this episode will change your mind and get you thinking creatively! Listen in to learn how simple the process can be.
Resources discussed in this episode:
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Contact Pua Pakele | RBL Media:
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Transcript:
0:00
Give it a shot. People know you, they don't know them. They've opted into your email list. They want more from you. I guarantee you have people on your list or following you on social media that want more from you, and they're not getting it right now.
0:19
Hello and welcome back to the RBL Media podcast. I'm your host, Pua, and today we are diving into a topic that is—it's an oldie, but a goodie for me. And we are talking about why any and every business owner can benefit from creating an online course to reach more people, to make more money, and to create a lasting impact for your ideal target audience. And you don't have to have an online business. You don't have to be a coach to be able to utilize this resource to bring you closer to the business and life of your dreams. I don't know if you know this, but this podcast used to be called the Course Creators Academy podcast, and my web design niche was online course creators. To the point where if you've ever heard of the networking—it's a professional networking group called BNI—and I was a member for just under a year.
1:29
And I joined like right at the height of when we were just crushing it with online course clients. And typically, BNI is full of a lot of traditional… Well, I think that's actually changed, but it's still very well known for being… Like serving trades really well. So, you know, plumbers, electricians, realtors, property managers, those types of industries do really well in BNI because it's a referral based organization. And there were these little like sub-communities within each chapter called Power Teams, and they're essentially like your referral team. So you're basically training your entire chapter to sell for you. So you come in and you practice these, like 30- to- 60 second pitches that you do every every meeting, and you meet once a week, so you get really good at your elevator pitch. And it was so interesting going in as a web designer who serves online course creators, because that niche is so foreign to these traditional trades that it took a lot of education to get people to understand how someone like a roofer or an electrician or a realtor might be able to benefit from something like an online course. And this idea, this resource, this industry, was brought back to my awareness recently by two people, two clients who came to me. One is a woman who has a book and a passion, like a palpable, tangible passion for what she teaches and for how she helps her clients and what she wrote her book about. And she… So she is a one on one coach, and she's finding that, you know, this is, this is a thing that, and I actually am not going to tell you exactly what she does, because I want her to have, like, a full on launch party, like entry to the marketplace. So I would love to have her on this podcast at some point. And I'm sure you'll hear from her. But for now, she's a coach. She serves clients one on one. She wrote a very, very impactful book that actually touches on some of the pain points and challenges that people have in the traditional medical system, and she provides a solution for a problem that a lot of people are struggling with. And so through her writing, through this book and through referrals, she has had a really successful one on one coaching business, and is looking to provide and create an online course to provide people with an opportunity to learn from her in a more engaging fashion than just through the book, but not scale her one on one coaching business so much that she can't handle it anymore.
4:31
And anybody who's out there thinking like, well, online courses or even group coaching, how does that possibly replace one on one, coaching, or whatever else that I do. I don't… I'm not a coach. I don't have any interest in being a coach. What are my options? So today's podcast is, it's all about this, and before we dive in, I also want to share another story and this is about an online course, and about group coaching. So if you are a coach, and you're out there and you're like, “Oh, you know, this sounds great, but how am I going to replace this one on one experience?” I recently joined a course and online coaching program that was group coaching, and it's phenomenal.
5:20
It is so powerful when you have and and say, you know, it's not even a group coaching, but more of like a community, let's say, where it's a little bit more passive group coaching. You still commit to being there with your group every, every so often, right? In Zoom calls, or in real life, you could create a community where maybe you're going live in the community via, you know, Facebook Live or whatever that looks like for the platform that you're using, but you're not doing like live calls. You know, there are so many ways to set this up, and what I want to say to you is, I got probably more value from being around other like-minded entrepreneurs and people that have the same goals or similar goals that I have, similar challenges that I have, under the guidance of this person that I know, like, and trust to bring us closer to this individual and collective goal.
6:16
So there's that. Take it or leave it. I highly recommend if you are considering scaling your business or enhancing your client experience in any way, keep listening, because this is really going to be interesting and hopefully helpful. So the first reason why I think online courses are so beneficial for people is it helps you to establish authority and trust. They're very similar to books. If you're a published author, you are already… You have a leg up on anybody who does the same things that you do but hasn't written a book.
6:53
It doesn't mean you're better than them at it. It doesn't mean that you provide a better quality of service, but people will see you as more credible simply because you're a published author. Now, don't take that and use that information for evil, right? You have to actually provide and do good work, because the truth will eventually come out and you'll be you know… So, just take that disclaimer. But if you want to set yourself apart in the marketplace, writing a book, creating an online course, are things that you can do to really help to establish your authority and trust. Now this makes sense, right? If you are in the eLearning space, or if you have some sort of skill that you can teach, right? So let's say you're a painter, and you have in-person art classes, and you teach at a local community center, and people pay $25 per class. Is that a lot or a little? I'm just throwing that out there. And your classes are capped at eight people. Which is so awesome. They get one on one time with you. They can get feedback from you. You can assess their strokes and their, you know, it's like… We all know what an art class is like. It's awesome.
8:12
And you can't possibly add a ninth student, nor could you create… You can't, let's just say, because of your schedule, you can't have multiple classes running at once, so you are capped at eight students per class, one class at a time. So you're essentially… Your income is capped. If you create an online course, perhaps you can sell it for you know, you could do… Get eight classes for X amount of dollars, and it's a little bit less than the one on or the “in real life” experience. You don't get that in-person feedback, but your guidance as an artist that people have come to know through whatever your marketing channels are. They know you, they like you, they trust you, they want to learn from you. You then have an exponential… Like your potential is exponential, as far as your income, right? You could sell this to every human on the planet, and you don't have to... You only have to spend the time to create the course once. And you can edit it and update it whatever, right? If you're a personal trainer, you can only take so many one on one clients. You only have so much time in your schedule to do group fitness—if you even want to do either of those things. But how awesome would it be to create these small courses, this suite of courses, that people can buy at their leisure, creating a course like building strength at home with minimal equipment.
9:47
These are all over the place, and they're wildly successful. Especially for fitness, because sometimes when people are just starting out on their fitness journey, they're embarrassed, right? They don't want to go into a gym. They don't want to do a group class, but they can't afford personal training. This is a phenomenal option for them. And because you're so good at what you do, you can produce results in an online course way, right? So we talked a little bit… Number two is diversifying your income streams, and we've already talked a little bit about this. So the thing is, the same thing with a website, right? We build websites for people, and sometimes they're like, “Okay, well, my website's up, and I'm not really sure why I'm not getting any sales. So you must have built me a bad website.” And we then ask… And this, this conversation does not happen often, and it hasn't happened for a long time… But it has happened. I've had this conversation, you know. “Oh, but the website must be bad. You must have done something to our SEO.” And I'll say, “Okay, well, we can look at that. I have a question, though. How are you marketing this?”
10:53
Well, we do Instagram Stories. Okay, cool. Could I see your Instagram account? Could I see your analytics real quick? Okay, you have 75 followers. Awesome.
11:05
You're getting there. I'm not here to shame you. However, you're not gonna sell your suite of products to an audience of 75 Instagram followers if you're just posting stories. That has nothing to do with the website. People aren't getting to it because they don't know it's there, right? So thinking about that from an online course perspective—you create the course, you then have to market the course, right? So let's just say, in an ideal world, you've got your email list of people who know you, they like you, they trust you. They want more of you. Maybe you have a high-ticket offer that they aren't willing to invest in. Quite yet, we've got courses. You can have low ticket standalone courses that are out there serving two purposes. One, always provide value. That must always be your number one priority.
12:07
Create a course that provides value. Any kind of transformation. It can be small, but if somebody's life is better because they took your course, your course is a success. Now number two for low ticket courses, these are phenomenal funnels. At the end of your course, what's a “next step” for them? Book a call with you. Let's talk about your results. Here's another course that's a great segue, and you have, perhaps, like, a three sequence course suite that allows people to kind of chunk down their results based on whatever framework it is that you teach. This is so, so powerful. And what I want to remind you is like, do one at a time. Don't get overwhelmed. You can plan, plan all you want, but remember, do not get stuck in the motion versus action hamster wheel.
13:02
This is a concept that I recently was reintroduced to when I reread Atomic Habits by James Clear, and he talks about when we're in motion, we feel like we're making progress. I will typically think about this as being in planning mode. Like you can plan and plan and plan and schedule out your calendar and plan out all your funnels and map out your email sequences. Great, you've got it built. Now you gotta use it. And a lot of times we get way too stuck in planning or in motion, and we don't take enough action. So remember, plan it a little bit. Take action. Record the course, put it out there. Ask people to buy it, right? And this brings up a lot of imposter syndrome in people. Who am I to create this course content? Who am I? This person has been doing that for so long, and they do it so much better than I do. I can't possibly create a course. Okay, maybe that's true. Maybe they've been teaching this for 10 years and you've been thinking about it for 10 minutes.
14:12
Give it a shot. People know you. They don't know them. They've opted into your email list. They want more from you. I guarantee you have people on your list or following on social media that want more from you, and they're not getting it right now. We have the same thing. My Instagram is garbage, and it's becoming not garbage because I have an amazing team member who is helping me to revamp it. But it's something that we all struggle with. So please don't think that I am exempt from this. But I do want you to take action, knowing that wherever you're at is going to be helpful for somebody who's 10 steps behind you, right?
14:56
Okay, practical example. Let's say you are a brand designer, you're a graphic designer, and you have this high-ticket brand experience. And people, people that can pay for it will pay for it. You're phenomenal. And there's something inside you that really still wants to serve those startups, the small businesses, the entrepreneurs who really don't have the money to invest. And you know you're worth the money, and you provide a great result, but you want to serve these other audiences. Instead of saying—and you could do this too. You could say, You know what? I'm just going to gift my time for a very low ticket. You get the same thing for me. But this is charity. Nobody wants to be a charity case. But another alternative create a course—Mastering Canva for small business branding, right? Canva is a free resource. You don't need to be a graphic designer to use it, but you do need the guidance of a graphic designer to teach a non-designer how to use it responsibly to create their branding, because you should not ever be using Canva templates to create your logo, right? This is something that you could create and put out there and make an impact, provide value for audiences that aren't ready to fully invest in your one on one services.
16:33
Really powerful.
16:36
Number three, expanding your reach. We are so lucky that we live in this time. Like truly, we it's, it's such… And yes, there's a lot of craziness happening in our world. And as business owners, technology is so available, and it's so affordable. Chat GPT is free. I use it every day. Canva, I pay for it. It's very affordable, though, and there is a really robust free version. There's so… You can create a website for like, pennies on the dollar. There's just so much available to us, and one of those things is the ability to reach every single person on the planet with an internet signal, a Wi-Fi signal. Hawaiian Airlines has Wi-Fi on every every flight. Now, did I read that correctly? There's Starlink on every Hawaiian Airlines plane. So I flew to Japan last week or last month, and for eight hours, I was fully connected. And it wasn't just like, “Oh, you could just text, or you could just do certain things.” Like I could watch, I live streamed TV, I downloaded files and graphics and uploaded them, and it was, it was really fast. So people are very connected, and with an online course, you're no longer limited by geography.
18:06
You don't… You no longer have to have people come to your painting class, right? If you're a baker, you own a bakery, and you are known in your community for being the gluten-free bakery. And everybody that needs to eat gluten-free or is interested in that lifestyle, they know to come to you. Can you mail your your pastries and your cakes across the country? I mean, I guess you could, but there would be a huge cost to that, and it would just take a lot of logistics.
18:43
Could you teach a course on gluten-free baking basics and sell it and supplement the income that your bakery makes? And you just… That's the thing! Like, yes, you pay monthly for the platform, so you want to make sure that those costs are covered, but you put effort into this one time, and that can just be out there, selling while you sleep, selling while you run your bakery. It's so awesome.
19:12
Okay. Number four, if you are not a an online business, this is the one for you. Okay, so I know a roofer, and he is a residential roofer, and he provides each of his clients with access to an online course portal. As soon as they sign a contract with him, he says, “Hey, here's”– and he like, it's so epic. He has this email sequence that everybody's opted into, and it takes them up until the day of their installation. And then he actually has a post installation sequence. He's… It's genius. One of the things that he does is he provides his clients with an online course that helps them to get ready for their installation.
20:00
How can I prepare my home for the day that you're going to arrive? And he does really cool things, like he'll give them gifts of like activities to do with your family the day that you're getting your roof installed, so that you can go and have fun and come back and you have a brand new roof. It provides people with an experiential education. Realtors will use this. So I know a realtor who, when she first meets a new client, she has them… It's like, she's a really, really fun and approachable personality, and she has a really cool, unique style, where she makes boring things really fun. And her course, talks people through what do you actually need to know in order to buy a house? What language might you not know that would be helpful for us to communicate with each other as we're going around together to open houses? It's so cool, and people love it. They feel so supported. They feel like she's really taking care of them. It's just that, like that thing that sets you apart. And imagine her referrals, oh my gosh. You have to work with this—You guys are looking to buy a house? You must call her. She is gonna just, she gives you all these great resources and and she taught us all about how to be successful in the housing market, and it's because of the course.
21:29
And once you have it, so, like, she created the course, and then she's like, “Oh my gosh, I could create this and that, and this and that.” So she's created kind of a suite of services that allows her to serve her audience, and she's now moving into courses and programs to help other realtors to follow her model. So I feel like that's kind of the natural trajectory, too. If you're in an industry where, like you've sort of created something cool and niche and unique, it's worked really well for you, and then you can teach it to other people in your industry. So something to think about as well. It's kind of inception with the courses, right? Like you, you're in an industry, you create a course, you find a lot of success with it, and then you teach other people in that industry how to create courses. It's kind of awesome. Okay, number five—creating a scalable business model. This is all encompassing of everything that we've already talked about, but it's worth mentioning again, because no matter what you do, I would bet that there is a way for you to create and leverage an online course to enhance and scale your business. Prove me wrong! Reach out to me and say, “Pua, this is what I do, and I have thought through everything, and there's no course in the world that I could create that would help me scale my business.” Please, challenge me. I would love, I would love to have this conversation. It's such a great exercise in opening up your creative options.
23:04
A lot of times we feel really stuck, right? We have these moments where we're like, “I'm capped out. There's no room left in my schedule, or I don't know where to find my next lead, or I don't know how I can raise my prices anymore. So I guess this is where I'm at in my business forever.” And it sounds kind of crazy, but we've all had these thoughts. Could there be a creative mechanism for you to create something that is aligned with what you already do, but in a different space, for a different audience, that doesn't require you to trade your time for dollars. That could be a course, it might not. It's a question that can stem beyond this particular podcast. But it's something worth thinking about. Especially like it's not cheap to live in most cities in this country, so any sort of residual income that we can create for ourselves. Maybe you don't need it. But who wouldn't want an extra bit of cash? Right?
24:20
So I think it's, it's something that is fun to think about, and it's also quite lucrative. Now you might be thinking, “Okay, I'm sold, but where do I start?” I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to put a curriculum together. I don't know what platform to use. So here is my offer to you. If you know me, you know that my online course platform of choice is and always has been, Kajabi, and I would love to, if you're interested—and there are other platforms out there. This is not me trying to sell you on Kajabi. I want you to do your research, do your due diligence, look up other platforms, schedule demos.
25:00
And, if you decide that Kajabi is one of the platforms on your list, I'd love to offer myself as a resource to you. This offer is available through the end of March. Okay, so shoot me an email, DM me on Instagram. I would love to jump on a Zoom call and do a demo with you, for free! I don't—it's just something I like. I'd love to answer your questions. I'd love to show you how it works, and I am an affiliate for the platform, and I can offer you a 30-day free trial. I think on the website, you get 14 days free, so you have lots of time to explore the platform, put things together. What I love about it is it essentially is all-in-one. You can run all of your email marketing, all of your email campaigns, have your entire website hosted, all of your courses hosted. And it's designed as a growth platform, so the subscription levels are based on where you're at in your business. If you have a certain number of email subscribers, if you need a certain number of products or courses, all of that determines which subscription level you're appropriate for at that time.
26:15
So, one of the things I also love is when I give people this 30-day free trial, I suggest that you create as much as you can. Outline your course. You don't need to have everything done, but outline your course. Understand your price point. Think about your traffic and your marketing channels. And then as soon as you initial or activate your 30-day trial, dive into Kajabi and start building. Build one funnel, build one course, and create, you know, your checkout pages, your offer pages. So this looks like this—you create a landing page that gets people on your email list. You, I mean, depending on what it is, right, you might want to start to create some marketing emails for this, which you can run through Kajabi. Create your offer page, your checkout page. You can run all your payments through Kajabi. Create your course. Outline it.
27:16
There's great templates. You don't need much. You just need a little bit of branding, change out some pictures, customize your font, add your logo, and start selling. You don't need to build out your entire website. You don't need to build out your entire email marketing funnel and game plan for the whole year. You do not also need to build out three courses. You just need one good course.
27:44
Okay? Have somebody review it, check it out. Call me! I'll do it. I'm happy to look at your course. And then put it out there and just see how easy it is. And you can… The platform is robust. So that's, that's my recommendation is, like, don't get overwhelmed by all the things it can do. Stay laser focused on the things that you must do. Just the essentials to get your course created, marketed, and sold. And it's really not much.
28:19
All right, I'm excited for you. I'm excited to hear your ideas. If you're interested in reaching out and sharing them with me, please do. You can find us at RBL.media on Instagram, reach out to us at support@rblmedia.co. That email goes directly to me and my team—we all manage that inbox, so you will be responded to there. And I cannot wait to introduce you and guide you and see you thriving in the world of online courses. Until next time, keep crushing it!