54: Meredith Noble: How She Grew a Recurring Revenue Online Course Business

Welcome to the Course Creators MBA podcast. I'm your host, Destiny Kopp and in this podcast we're covering actionable tips to grow your online course business. But before I begin, I want to let you know that this episode is sponsored by my Course in a Box program which helps you create your revenue generating course in less than a week. Course in a Box is on the AppSumo Marketplace at a special deal and the link for Course in A box on AppSumo is in our show notes. And today we're in the middle of a course creator series where I'm chatting with ordinary course creators just like you. We're talking about their journey in their online course business, how they got started, the challenges they've experienced, and how they overcame them. These are real discussions with real people and today I have Meredith Noble with me. Meredith is an entrepreneur, community leader, outdoor adventure. She is part of Geeks in the Woods, a new wave of pioneers building technology companies from remote yet connected. Valdez, Alaska. Meredith is the founder of Learn Grant Writing where her team helps those looking for a career change become freelance grant writers. Her experience has been featured in vast company and and her book how to Write a Become a Grant Writing Unicorn is a number one bestseller for nonprofit fundraising and grants on Amazon. Meredith has secured over $42 million in grant funding and her students have secured over 250 million, a number that grows daily. Meredith, thank you so much for joining me. I'm very excited to chat with you. You have a very interesting story and I want to learn more about grant writing.

Woo hoo. Let's do it. I'm excited. Well, why don't you start at the.

Beginning and tell us a little bit about your career and how you kind of found your way into the online course in entrepreneur world.

Absolutely. It was by accident, that's for sure. So I left my grand consulting job, basically pledging to never write a grant again. I was burned out. I had a very different sexy startup idea in mind, which I affectionately call my three month mba where I learned a lot about a good idea doesn't necessarily mean there's a business underneath it. So I ended up kind of scrambling. I didn't want to go back and get a quote unquote normal job again. So I started grant writing consulting again, the exact thing I had left and pledged to not do. And I was getting asked out for coffee a lot, which I think is a common story. People saw value in my knowledge and they wanted to understand how to write grants as well. But there's no amount of Coffee, one, two or three cups where I can give you everything you need to know. And I was getting frustrated by that process. Even doing a one or two day workshop just wasn't the right method for actually learning an entirely new skill. And so I was actually home. My grew up on a cattle ranch. I was home helping my family with calving season. I'm going around in circles on a tractor and I thought what if I turned this into an online course? And as our phones are so creepy of devices, it's like it. The next day I had an ad to Kajabi and I thought oh cool, I'll just try here. Like no plan, no backup, research, anything. Right. So I just started creating the course right then and there. I didn't outline it, I didn't do anything. I just started filming everything I knew. And as you can probably imagine, that was a little bit of a waste. It was a great learning opportunity. I have a lot of get up and go but it wasn't structured in a way that was like for example, basically I did what I think many, many people do. We think we have to have a product built and then we can tell people about it. Right.

I think everybody, a lot of people make that mistakes, me included. And I have a doctorate of marketing, so there you go.

Yeah, I think it just, I think it's an interesting thing. It reminds me of this one time I went to a Krav maga class which is, you know, self defense fighting. And I was so amazed at how the natural impulse on how to defend yourself is not how you defend yourself. Like it's, it's not what comes intuitive at all. And I feel like that's sort of what happens here. It feels like create course, then tell people about it, then they buy it. And really it was no, there's a lot more that you can be doing on the front end that doesn't involve creating the course at all. Right. We can actually pre sell it, make sure there's demand. So that led me down signing up for Amy Porterfield's digital course Academy. And I would say that was the biggest turning point because I had a nice structure and roadmap to follow. And so I followed that and basically scrapped everything I had done. The first round built, outlined the course, but I actually only and I pre sold it, but I only really built out the first week and then I could incorporate these beta student feedback and build out week two and build out week three. And I'm so thankful I did that because they gave some great feedback in that Product was what we built our first six figure business on.

So tell us a little bit more. Did you have your website created before you started building the course? Did you have your email list started? What did that process look like?

Well, no, I really didn't. I resisted every step of the way. The idea of even having a lead magnet and giving away my knowledge. At first, honestly, I thought, well, that's terrible. They should pay me for my knowledge. I didn't like the idea of having a blog. I thought, why? That sounds like so much work. Like, just take the course, you'll get what you need there. Like, I resisted everything. And of course now I've come to realize, like, those are the most powerful tools in your arsenal. Like a very valuable offering helps build trust and rapport. And my blog is one of the number one reasons we get, you know, great quality traffic leads. So, yeah, I did start with building out the website really quickly. Of course I was building the course concurrently and did have a place for someone to put in their name and email. But it was obviously not gaining any traction because I didn't think about the marketing portion. I didn't think about. I just wasn't thinking about the customer. I didn't know my customer and that was where I fell flat. I knew my customer as a consultant, but my customer from a core perspective was very different. And I was not nearly dialed enough on that to even know where to reach that person.

So tell us a little bit more of the timeline. When did you start this process? You could start back at the Kajabi kind of fiasco, seeing that ad, and then started building. So what did that timeline look like?

So that was June 2019, if I'm getting my years correct.

And I am putting you on the spot here.

Yeah, you remember it all times. A bit of a time warp, but basically, I mean, it was a year of trying to do everything the hard way and I was making no Progress. I made $2,000. I mean, just nothing. And I was working very hard. So that was not working. So then I. Yeah, but also I ended up deciding to write a book. I knew that that creates a lot of authority in the space and I felt that that could be a way to build trust before maybe you would commit to a higher ticket item. So I did sort of put the pause on, you know, figuring out what's wrong with this course business so I could double down on the book launch that in September of 2019. So that would mean actually that I had started in 2018. Goes to show this is no one is an overnight success. So then September 2019 launched the book. And part of my thank you for those that were on my book launch team was I gave them access to the course for a dollar. Like, if you wanted it and you were on my book launch team, you could have the course for a dollar. But it was my way of also getting additional beta students that could help me really shape that new course. So that launched November of 2019 was Working super quickly. And then that would be what I guess you could call a soft launch.

And.

And then I did a larger launch in January under the traditional live launch model, and that went super well, and we were off and running.

Was that January of 2020 when you did the major launch for your team?

Correct, correct. And I did not have a decent email list. Like, it was tiny. I think I had. Boy, I would think I had 1500 people on it. Maybe, Maybe so. And who knows? The quality, like, it just was not solid. And I knew that people had a limitation limiting belief on learning grant writing online. They feel like they need to go to a workshop. So I ended up taking at the time one of the biggest leaps of faith I've ever made, which was booking out this huge theater in Anchorage, Alaska. It seats 400 people. And you can. It's a really fun theater because you can have. They actually have tables. You can order pizza. Right. It's a great venue. And. And I thought, I'm going to do a huge live workshop, charge for it. But I will also then present. You can continue your learning and take my online course at the end of that. So it was a four hour live workshop. I charged $90. And not only did that event, I mean, I was terrified. It wasn't even a sellout because of course I time it on the same day as the other biggest event of the year happens in. In Anchorage. Um, anyway, it sold out and I was asked to do it in a neighboring community that sold out and they wanted a second day, so I added a second day there. So I was in four different communities in Alaska, which, mind you, this is a lot of distance between these places. Right. And I think I did like $25,000 or so in revenue just doing these live workshops. So even if they, you know, they didn't buy the course, I had still more than covered my cost to do that event and really, like hit the ground running with my business.

When were you doing these live workshops? Were they in January too?

It was right in January. Yeah. And I had all this pushback. People were like, you're Putting. You're going too fast. You need more time to market this and think about it. I wouldn't have. I would have had to cancel it. Right. If it had been one month later. Because then Covid hit. So it was such a weird blessing that I'm such a hard charger. And I was like, no, I'm doing in January. I gotta go. Because I was out of money at this point. Like, I had turned off my consulting revenue to focus on the book, to focus on building this course, building this business. I had to take a loan from the bank of dad. Like, five, $7,000, I think, just to get me through January. And then I had this event, and I was good. I was set. Right. Like, I had. I had made back. Yeah, I just had set myself up. Well, in addition to the live launch, I think it was like a $45,000 launch. Right. So that was like, a really solid start. And it proved out that a different approach works when you really don't try to just figure out everything the hard way.

So is that 45,000? Did that include the 25,000 for the workshops, or was that separate?

Just. It did. That was in total. Because that was. I'm like, trying to kind of remember the snapshot, but that was the in total period of. Yeah, both of those events.

So you launched your book in September 2019. In November 2019, you did a soft launch where you gave everybody access to the course for a dollar. And I'm assuming that gave you the opportunity to get testimonials and get feedback.

Yep, absolutely.

You did the launch in 2020 for your course, which included the live workshops, and you made $45,000 there. And then Covid hits. So what happened in the rest of 2020?

Yeah, so Covid hits. And in the grant writing world, it was an absolute gold rush because everyone was trying to make sense of CARES act funding. So we weren't planning on live launching again until mid to late May. But the demand was just starting to really come in. People wanted to take the course. They wanted to understand what was going on. And so we ended up hosting a webinar on April 9, which it turns out is National Unicorn Day. And that is our mascot. So that was kind of fun. And it was the biggest webinar I have ever had. I think I had 500 people attend that. And they weren't all actually great leads because we were also talking about the, like, the funding that doesn't have to do with grants. And so I think it was attracting a lot of small businesses trying to understand what was going on. But. But nonetheless, it was a huge, successful event. Did the live launch, thereafter, launched the course. But also we were getting, like, launched it again, right? Opened it. It was open for a while. They could buy, and then we closed the cart. But in addition, I was getting asked for a ton of consulting work. And I thought, you know, I have just trained up a lot of very talented grant writers. What if I hired them? So I ended up doing that. And of course, I couldn't manage this huge new launch in addition to all this consulting work. So I brought on this gal that lives in my hometown, and she had just moved here a couple months prior, and I said, hey, you're an amazing project manager. Can you just coordinate all the consulting work? And I can pretty much be not touching that. And she rocked it. And it just went gangbusters. I think we did, like, $150,000 in. In four months on consulting work. And, you know, we were employing all these really cool students of mine. But as you can imagine, this was a period of complete and total chaos. It was like I was back to the place that I had said I was. I was leaving forever here. I was consulting and trying to build this course business, and they just take so much from you to try to move both forward. Don't get me wrong, I'm so grateful for consulting. It's the easiest business you can start. It's a very good place to learn the ropes to business. It's what paid for building the course business. So I'm grateful for it. But there does come a point where I was growing resentful about it because it wasn't the business I wanted to be in. So that's kind of the middle of 2020. Just chaos. Like, I was just really overwhelmed. Right. And I decided at that point, at this point, Alex is the gal that had taken over as the project manager. I talked to her and I said, you know, I want to just close this down and go all in on the course business again. Like, just completely close down consulting. And that was intense. I had held some contracts that were like, for example, I had one contract that was $50,000 a year recurring every year for a couple years. And, you know, I said no to that. And you start adding all of those up, and you're like, wow, we are turning down a lot of work for a course business that doesn't even cover our monthly costs. Right. And that's where I was at in about August of 2020.

Mm. So in August of 2020, did you what. How did you do it? Did you fire your clients or did you continue with it? Or what did you do?

Yeah, yeah, we.

Edge of my seat here, right?

Oh, I know. Gosh, it was intense. We ended up. Well, we wrapped up the projects. That is, I guess the beauty of grant writing is that they tend to be these projects that come. You do them, and then they are over. And so we were wrapping them up. I have one that will not die that I'm still actually dealing with today, but it's almost done. And, yeah, turned down all of those. I mean, it was. And the clients weren't happy. They were super bummed. Like, they love working with us. The hardest part was letting go these students that we were employing. And I think some didn't understand, like, we're a startup, not like an established company. And I think they felt like it was a more secure employment than I think we felt we could promise. Right. So, like, there was a lot of challenge in this transition. And then it was just back to Alex and I. And at the same time, Alex approaches me and she says, meredith, we need to talk. And I was thinking, oh, man, she is going to deliver some sort of information that is hard for me to hear, but she is here to give me the truth. So we walk down to the lake Edge. We sit down and she said, meredith. And she starts tearing up, and I am like, oh, no, this is going to be so bad. She said, can I come and work with you full time? And I was like, oh, my gosh, this is a dream come true. This gal is so capable. It was my goal to be able to afford her. Come like, Jane 20, 21. And she said, I know you can't afford me full time, but I'm willing to take the pay cut. I want to go with you on this journey. And so that was just this incredible moment of realizing someone else sees in my business what I see. Enough to put a lot on the line. And so we. We use the slicing pie model for splitting up equity. We could talk about that later if you want. Got her all set up. I said, I'll pay you what I pay myself. And we were away and running. And we did everything that fall that I thought was the correct things to do. We need a bigger email list. We need to run ads, and then our sales will follow. And guess what? They didn't. And we lost thousands of dollars every single month. And then November comes, and I was at loss. I didn't know what else to do. Like, I've done everything. I thought that was correct. And the business is okay, but it's not actually growing, it's not actually scaling. Even though we've done everything I can think of now what? Right. So that's November 2020. Not that long ago.

It isn't just five months ago.

Yeah, yeah. So that led us to doing this thing that we now do every month. And it's called a dedicated learning day where we sort of quote, shut down the office, put an out of office email up and say today is a deep learning day. And we just go take online courses ourselves. We dive in deep on whatever it is that we want to learn about. And obviously the mission of our deep learning day in November was what are we going to do? And so she ends up stumbling on Haley Burkhead's recurring profit program, which I was very skeptical about because Haley's style was just didn't feel like that was authentic to me. And I thought, is this just like some other person hawking their course advice? Right. Like, but we looked at it really closely and we decided, okay, where we're struggling is like our webinar does not convert where we have also like this business model problem. And so it's like we have some structural issues that have to change. And we ended up going, deciding to do this like signing up. Didn't even have like enough money to pay for it. Right. Like it was a time of I was fearing like, am I making this purchase from a state of vulnerability because like, I don't know what else to do or is this actually going to be the best thing we've ever done? And I didn't know the answer to that, but it thankfully was the latter. We hit that program so hard, we went and did like 30 informational interviews in two weeks. We really message mined all of those conversations. Figured out, okay, we need to go more niche. Instead of trying to teach everyone and their mother to be a grant writer, let's focus on helping those that want to become grant writing consultants or freelancers. Let's show them how you can actually make money as a freelance grant writer, because that is something we know. And we then also changed how the business model was structured. Instead of a one time fee, 350 bucks, then I serve you for literally the end of time. With the Facebook group, we decided let's restructure it so it's a year long program to help them through the career transition. We will do twice monthly coaching calls. We'll have a community group and we'll have this course which we added a few more modules to actually talk about freelancing, but otherwise it still was the original course. And so we pulled off that entire transition in three weeks because we wanted to be done before Christmas so we could both go home with our families and chill out. And then we, you know, we turned it on. We said, okay, here we go. And I was so afraid that my current members wouldn't want to come over because it's like a huge pay, a huge cost leap. Right. It worked beautifully. Like, we. So let's see. We did, I think, $25,000 in revenue in January. Half of that is monthly. Well, let's see. The numbers get me all mixed up because it's like we're talking to figures. Anyway, we launched it and like, our business has never been the same since. And we're like, profitable. We're not burned out trying to create content endlessly. We have great customers. Like, everything is now working. Now we have a sales machine that works and is scaling. And it's such a relief to know that, you know, we thought we were going to have to like, shutter our doors more or less in November, but we turned it around in a month. Does that make sense?

Yeah. So let's talk about the changes that you made. Sure you talked about those informational interviews. What exactly did you do and who did you talk to?

Great question. So we thought about who is in our program that we get good energy from, who do we love serving and who do we not like to serve too? And we thought, okay, let's really double down on that in our case. Woman. Let's reach out and talk to her. Because I don't think we fully understand what her end game ambitions are, what she really wants out of this. Is she really just wanting to be a grant writer or she wanting lifestyle flexibility? Is she wanting to travel more? Like we weren't getting at that deeper desire. So we had these interviews where we had a series of questions already prepped ahead of time. And we recorded them, listened intently, and then we uploaded those to temi, which is just use any type of translator service, got all those interviews back in text so we could read each other's interview. We then put all of the interviews in a single document, which was like 70 pages worth of text. And we studied them, we looked for recurring themes. We looked for. We even took the whole document and put it into a unique word identifier which is also free on Google. If you just search that and it will tell you how many words were used. Like it won't count, which of course the a. Those take up the Most. But once you get through those, you'll see the words. And it's so interesting. It was life. Like, what were the other ones? Flexibility, Love. Right. There were these other words that we saw, like, oh, the things we thought people wanted. Our word choice was not used by our ideal customer. And so we had to readjust ourselves to think about, well, what was the wording that she's using? And we updated our website, we updated our email copy, everything to reflect that voice that was, you know, we were making assumptions about. And it's very easy to do. You have to actually talk to them and study the heck out of the words they use to, I think really speak to that person. And now we get it. People say that they feel like we're talking directly to them and that's where.

You want to get. Right. I mean those interviews are so, so very valuable. So somebody, you know, that would be one of the first places I would tell people to start if they were struggling in their business. So you took that information, you made updates to probably your sales page, maybe your webinar, your email, your website. So probably a lot of different places there. What other changes did you make to your business model?

Good question. So the business model changed. By switching it to a year round program, we made it possible to basically allow them to either pay in full or break your payment over 12 months. And so our pay in full is 1290 and the payment plan is $129 per month. And so what is so beautiful about this model, instead of charging $350 once, is that when someone's on a payment plan, that's monthly recurring revenue. So next month I think we just hit 14 or $15,000 in monthly recurring revenue. So in April, no matter what, we're making $15,000 and then we can just add on top of that versus starting at zero again. So that was a really good model. We also learned that if more than 35% of your, your purchases are more, you know, our full price, then you probably have room to increase your pricing. And so that also allowed us to figure out, well, how do we want to set our pricing? Because the original course, everyone was just paying in full because it was just a reasonable like 350 bucks, they could just do that. They didn't need a payment plan. So that shift has been huge. The other massive shift, I have to say, is that we just slowed the pace down like twice a month. Coaching calls is so much more reasonable for me, like weekly was too much. We tried to do that during these like 30 day challenges and it was exhausting. It was actually too much for the students as well. So twice a month just slows things down. And then I would say probably the most exciting change we made is we are done with sending newsletters. We were, you know, you're told, get out frequent emails, stay top of mind. Well, I was spending a ton of time, like half of my day on Tuesday trying to, you know, come up with some sort of great copy and a great email that was then consumed once and gone forever. So now we have all of our emails actually in a sequence to go out a week. But they're all, they're really good, right? And they're set. And so if someone comes in, they can start getting those emails as well. But we don't create any new additional content unless a student really. We're seeing a lot of demand for it in the course, then we will add it. But otherwise, like we got off that hamster wheel of just. And we don't even have a Facebook group anymore. A free Facebook group. We don't do. We don't really post Facebook content. Like occasionally we will just. So there's a little bit there. But like we got off that wheel of just feeling like you're creating content endlessly and it's not leading to sales.

So tell me about your traffic strategies and your funnel and how you've set that up. Where, where are you finding people or how are they finding you?

Great question. So our customers are finding us through four methods on the whole. So one, of course a lot of people start with a book. So they'll get my book, they'll read it and then that does link them back to the website for free resources. So that is where a lot of people come. We slay it on Google SEO, which is so awesome. My boyfriend, it's so helpful to data software engineer you, he helped us build our website and we went from having like 500 organic traffic visitors a month to what do we have last month? Almost 10,000. We went from like, I swear, less than 50 keywords that we were ranked for to over 2,300 the last time I checked in February. And that, by the way, that range went from. We launched our new website in late August. So like huge gains. So our best performing blog posts, for example, the top 10 grant databases brings us a ton of traffic. Our free grant writing class brings us a lot of traffic. We're ranked 1, you know, 1, 2 or 3 on Google for something like 300 different keywords. So I'm very, very thankful for that resource because that brings us a lot of clients or leads we're not paying for and they're really good quality. Then we also have. We have started. I was resistant to it, but we are actually using Instagram now. If you go and actually look at our Instagram Earn Grantwriting, we don't have any posts. We actually just posted 24 images that create like a single image and we don't add anything to it. Only thing we do are stories. That's it. So simple strategy and that's starting to work really well. Just having insta DM conversations with people or doing Instagram takeovers. And then the last method that brings us our best quality leads is YouTube. And this was also something I tried to do on my own and figure out and it just was not going anywhere. But it is a steady area of growth and our basically someone that comes to our website that came from YouTube stays on average for nine minutes. Someone that comes from anywhere else, their average is two and a half minutes. So there's a huge difference in terms of their stickiness and the quality of that lead. Like they are spending time on our website if they came from YouTube.

So the YouTube strategy that you have is just videos that you've posted out there or do you post them every week or is this just like evergreen videos that you have?

Yeah, it's definitely been an evolving strategy. So what we do is we have them every six months. So I'm getting ready to do all the YouTube videos actually this week and next week for the next six months that we just do tons of them, right? Six months worth of videos, get them edited, but then they're actually scheduled to drop one a week. What has been so interesting is I think originally I was just producing the videos that I thought people needed. I wasn't spending time figuring out what are they actually searching for. And so that's been a big shift. Realizing, okay, now that we're going to be focusing more on this freelance grant writer, this person that wants to get into it with no experience though, I'm going to be creating more videos around that actually based on where we know their search volume. So, for example, how to become a freelance grant writer. I mean, that video is starting to really take off and get a lot of unique views and I need to create more around that. So it's like my strategy does get a little bit better every six months, right. Because we learn more and the business is changing. But yeah, on the whole we just like blast it. We have like a standard operating procedure. I Guess we should talk about this too because this is critical. That breaks down all of the steps of how to do this. We don't have to re remember in six months plus we have like a video editor that helps out and that's been game changing just to like not be chasing our wheels trying to get out videos like every month or two. It's like I do this twice a year. Right.

Way more efficient, most certainly. And I really do like that strategy. So thank you for bringing up. So when people are going to these various, you know, they're going to YouTube and they're making it to your website or going to Instagram, making it to whatever you have, you have there. I think you have your lead magnet there because I looked at it earlier. What is your best performing lead magnet? And then what journey do you take folks on to funnel them into your course? And you know the other question I have, so it's really a two part question. Is this an evergreen course or are you doing launches?

We are so thrilled to be done with launches, let me tell you that. So it was just taking so much energy. So it is an evergreen course. So there's a couple of resources people can come to the website and provide their email for. So the main ones are the free grant writing class. I turned my book into an audiobook, went down to the radio station and recorded it. So they can get a free audiobook, which is actually just a Spotify podcast. And then let's see, because this is a nice custom website, I was able to block access to a lot of like our free resources page or all these free video trainings. So they just have to drop in their name and email and they get that. So there's actually a lot of ways that we can get people's email from our website, but the main ones are registering for that webinar, which is our main conversion tool. So so basically how our sales machine is set up is that I know what's going to resonate with someone. It will differ in terms of why they would want to trust me to give me their email. But once I have your email, my one and only mission is to get you to watch that webinar because that is where we describe like debunk myths, deliver a bunch of value, and then ultimately position the course as the solution. And, and so that is like one way that we've really focused on simplifying our business is like even all of our email copy, like everything directs you back to watch this webinar because if you watch it, you will Know, if you want to learn from us, you can either get off our email list if you think like, nope, this is not a good fit, or you will take action. Right. So that is how we have structured our sales machine and model is like, okay, we can actually collect your email in a number of ways. Ultimately, we want you to take action to watch this webinar and then, you know, boom. Make a purchase decision or not.

So it's an evergreen course, and you have people coming through this funnel that you have set up every single day. Can you talk a little bit about the numbers that you're seeing now in terms of the sales that you're seeing, you know, on a weekly basis?

Yeah, I should have, like, pulled up our actual metrics database, I suppose, But I don't know if I remember off the top of my head right now what are like weekly averages or ballpark.

What month, whatever you have.

Yeah, I think our weekly average is about 7 to 10. So 7 to 10 are purchasing, I think a week. And so we're at, like I said, we're at that 15k monthly recurring revenue now. And then usually 40% pay in full, 41% pay in full. So then, you know, you Obviously just add 1300 on top of that. But what I try not to even think about the money that's paid in full. I'm just thinking about the monthly recurring revenue number. Because for any of our future business aspirations, you know, that is how we can show a banker or show anyone. Like, this is the revenue that we're generating that you can count on, like, month after month. So that's how we, I guess we have it structured is, yeah, we're getting about seven, seven to 10 a week. And one thing that we're getting ready to launch our first actually next week is are doing partner campaigns, like finding partners that have a similar audience and then co hosting webinars with them. These are a lot of work. It's basically like mini live launching all the time. So I have some mixed feelings about it. Right. I'm like, this is hard, but we are really. I'm not gonna knock it until we see what happens, because I do think it's a really unique way to gain access to other people's audience through a trusted medium. Like, it's, you know, they trust us if they're going to allow us to speak to their audience. And so that is something I'm curious about, if we'll see a good jolt from, in terms of revenue, sales.

And what I'm hearing throughout here is that you guys are continuing to look at your data, look at what's working and what's not working and testing out new things, which is good.

Yeah, I think, Alex, for that. I mean, this is the kind of thing that I would struggle to be consistent with. And so I think it's a lot of times these, these businesses are. It's just there were one offs. Right. We're just, we're the, we're the everything. But it's hard to be everything. And so if you find somebody that wants to believe in it as much as you do, it is really nice to have someone that brings a different side of the brain.

It's definitely nice to have a partner, somebody that you can kind of bounce things off with. Yeah. So Meredith, what do you see as next steps in 2021? I know you just mentioned something that you're going to test with kind of the JV affiliate type partners, but what else do you have on the radar screen?

Yeah, absolutely. So one thing we're looking at is it is time for me to freshen up my book for two reasons. One, basically, it is a great lead generation tool. But since our business has made this shift, I do want to weave in some of that new language into the book. Plus there is the benefit of when you publish a second edition that is now two slots when someone searches grant writing books on Amazon or whatever. Right. Like, I will be taking up more real estate. So that's been a project that's been on my mind. I just really have to get into the mindset for it. And I think last night I figured out how I would do that. I have a girlfriend that's in the Coast Guard. She's going to Cordova, which is this beautiful little community that is. There's no roads to it. Like you have to take a ferry or fly there in a little, little tiny bush plane. And she said I could come with her if I wanted to. And I thought, great, I will go there for a week. Whole new community. And I'm gonna bust out the second edition of this book. So that I'm pretty excited about. Like all that comes with launching a book. It's great for business. And then I suppose, yeah, the second thing we're really doubling down on are those partnerships and figuring out what that looks like so that we are. I think one thing that's on our mind is this, you know, the fact that Apple is potentially removing. Right. This unique identifier. And so is our Facebook ads really going to be successful? We don't even like giving our money to zucks. Right. So one thing we've been really experimenting with is like, well, where else can we spend our ad money that also supports other small business owners? So other small podcasts, should we be running ads with them? Right. There's a lot of things we'll be experimenting with that feel a little bit more authentic to us while also helping us find our ideal customer.

Thank you for sharing that. And I have one last closing question for you. What advice do you have for other online course creators or entrepreneurs out there?

Yeah, absolutely. So don't build your course, rough it out and pre sell it. Make sure you have a beta group that helps you build it. Two, whether you have a course or you don't, and if you feel like something's off, go ham with those informational interviews. You learn so much. We now consider this something that we want to be doing and we do every six months. So. So we are planning on doing our next round in May. Like, there's always something to learn about your audience and how you can better serve them. And even if you feel close to them, you can always go another layer deeper. So big believer in that because their language is the key to unlocking the magic. My final tip would be that the term passive income is misleading because growth in this industry and in this space requires constant micro improvements and iterations. And so if you can embrace that this is going to be a learning and improving as you go journey, then you'll crush it. But I think where there's sometimes some confusion is just thinking like, oh, set it and forget it. And it's not that way. It's more like, just enjoy the journey, make it a little bit better every day, and you will find the success that you're looking for.

And that's the thing, though. The marketing never ends. You're always continuing to look at your data and figuring out where you can improve. And I think that's great advice. Meredith, where can people find you? Especially if they want to learn about grant writing, which after this interview I'm thinking I do.

Oh, that's so wonderful. Thank you. Yeah, for sure. Well, you can Visit us at learngrantwriting.org, pretty easy to remember. You can also find us on Instagram earngrant Writing DM us, and we'll be able to help figure out what resources we could share with you.

And I will make sure that those links are in the show. Notes for everybody, course creators. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you have any questions about course in a box, which is offered on AppSumo. Please reach out to me on LinkedIn or DM me on Instagram. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Would love for you to rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform and show us some love there. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.