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Are you considering creating an online course?

For your business, adding a course to your offerings promises flexibility, affordability, and the opportunity for your students to learn at their own pace. Plus, you create it once and can launch it over and over again, which means you’ll get back more time (the ultimate currency)!

In today’s episode, I’m sharing the hidden realities and the surprising benefits that often go unspoken in the online course world to help you decide if this is a journey you want to embark on. 

My Online Course Journey

Before I dive into what no one is telling you about online courses, I wanted to share a little bit about my own journey in the online course world.

Back in 2015, I was a few years into my entrepreneurial journey as a wedding photographer. I was shooting weddings, my business was exploding, I was starting to get awards, and I had hit that elusive six-figure goal.

When I hit that goal, I had this kind of wake-up call, this moment where it didn’t feel like I thought it would. Of course, it was an amazing accomplishment, one that I’d worked so hard to reach… But when I reached that milestone, what I found was that I was really burnt out and exhausted.

I couldn’t imagine myself doing this same thing for the next decade, let alone multiple decades until the age of retirement… so, like any entrepreneur would do, I sat down with some spreadsheets. Nerdy, right?

After a hilarious conversation with my husband that involved three words (screw six figures!) and a lot of reflecting about how happy I was before I hit this milestone, I decided to shoot half the amount of weddings the following year. I got my time back.

Why does this all matter, and what does it have to do with online courses?

Well, when I finally claimed time is my currency, I suddenly had both time and energy to learn, to explore new things, to check out new passions. And in that newfound time that I had, I found my first digital course and I was FASCINATED by it.

I wasn’t fascinated by the content inside of his course, but by the fact that my educator was able to create something once, sell it to many, make a greater impact, and teach people his system. So I asked his course creator to teach me how he created it, and you know what happened?

During the year that I shot half the amount of weddings so I could get my time back, I ended up making seven figures. 

It wasn’t planned, or on my vision board… but when I started to understand this online course world and understand that I could both do and pursue the thing that I loved while also teaching people and helping them on their own path, I was able to exponentially grow my business without the overwhelm and burnout that I had experienced as a service-based business owner! 

Since that day eight years ago, I have sold millions of dollars in online courses. I have scaled my business to heights that I didn’t even know were possible and I’ve also been fortunate enough to teach tens of thousands of students. (Maybe you’ve even been one of them!) And I never looked back.

What They DON’T Tell You

I wanted to set the stage as to what my own online course journey looked like so that you can listen to what I’m about to tell you through the lens of someone with experience who understands the importance of this digital course world.

So, my friend, below are the following things people DON’T tell you about online courses:

1. You can absolutely start simple (my first course was audio only!) 
2. You don’t need a massive following or audience to get results. (I had 841 people on my first course launch, the price of the course was $1,500 and did over $35,000 on my first course launch with NO paid ads in 2015!)
3. Perfectionism WILL delay progress and results (the message matters more than the method!)
4. You can update them ANYtime (I refresh my courses every year)
5. In reality, people aren’t paying for the knowledge (they’re paying for the convenience of having things laid out for them, step by step)
6. You don’t have to be a total expert (you just have to be one step ahead of someone else and be able to save them time, make them money, or entertain them!)
7. You can’t launch once and expect to hit a home run (every launch is a learning experience and actually helps grow your list, widen your reach, and refine your offer)
8. There will be other courses out there on the SAME topic that you’re teaching on (this is proof of concept, not a reason to not create it!)
9. Thinking through HOW you’ll support your students and keep them engaged should be just as important as the thought process around building your course (getting them success is HUGE!) 
10. Especially when building your first course, building a community of course creators can be really helpful (not many of your friends will “get” it, and that’s okay!)
11. Course creation can be rewarding! (it’s not just fears and challenges; the process can also cultivate joy, empowerment, confidence, and more)
12. The technology gremlins hit everybody, even the pros! (have your platform help info handy and if you can build an on-going relationship, do it!)
13. Building a digital course can benefit you in MORE ways than one (like repackaging content into other formats to grow your online authority)
14. No one tells you how much money you can make (check out Amy Porterfield’s recent podcast episode, What’s Your Digital Course Profit Potential?, for more info on this!)

I will never stop talking about digital courses, whether it’s teaching them or learning from them because they have absolutely changed my life. So I hope that today’s episode inspires you to think about what you could teach and how you could teach it and what that could look like for you. 

Whether you’re thinking more about the earning potential or you’re thinking about the freedom it could get or you’re thinking about the time you could get back or you’re thinking of the impact you can make. There are so many reasons that you should absolutely consider creating your own online digital course. 

It has absolutely changed my life. And I am just so excited to talk more and more about online courses in the upcoming episodes. I hope today’s episode served you, I hope you leave feeling so inspired, and that you’re dreaming a little bit bigger!

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