79: Cindy Bidar: Online Marketing Educator and Coach + Founder of the Six-Figure Systems

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Welcome to the Course Creators MBA podcast. I'm your host Dr. Destiny Kopp and I help business owners increase the revenue with digital products and automated sales funnels. In this podcast we tell the stories of ordinary business owners just like you. We talk about their story and how they got started, the challenges they've experienced and how they overcame them. And these are discussions with real people who understand what it's like to own an online course or membership business. Before we begin our show today, I want to let you know that this episode is sponsored by our flagship Course in a Box program which helps you create your revenue generating course in less than a week. Course in a Box is available on AppSumo at a special deal and you can learn more about Course in a Box by visiting the link in the show Notes let's jump right into our show.

My guest today is Cindy Bedar. Cindy is the founder of Six Figure Systems and CEO of CindyBadar.com Cindy's online career has spanned multiple specialties including content and copywriting, marketing and operations management, coaching and consulting. She's had the privilege of working with some of the today's most most profitable online businesses and has helped train Seven Figure marketing teams and overseeing the setup and management of hundreds of marketing and sales funnels. Through her training programs and one on one consulting, she helps her clients scale their digital course businesses by creating automated systems that improve conversion rates, increase sales and add more profit to the bottom line. Cindy, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm excited to dig in with this with you and hear a little bit more about your entrepreneur journey.

I am just thrilled to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me.

So why don't you jump right in and take the audience back to a time where you started and just take us along your journey and we'll take the discussion from there.

All right. Well, I got my start online back in 2008 and I worked my day job was in an automotive factory. I live in Michigan. And if you remember, 2008 was a pretty rough year economically for the whole country, for the whole world in fact, and the auto industry was hit especially hard. So I was always wondering, is today going to be the day that I lose my job? I I survived several rounds of layoffs, including one where my boss actually came to me and said we're going to let somebody go. We're going to either let the person in this department go or the person in that department go. So which department do you want to run in addition to your current to your current Responsibilities. So I, you know, I was, that was a very awkward place for me to be, right. And I knew that things were getting bad. And like I said, it was, it was just a, you know, it was always on the back of my mind that at some point I was probably going to lose my job. So I started looking for ways to supplement my income to kind of boost my, boost my savings account so that in case the worst happened, I would, you know, have a safety net to fall back on. And I discovered that I could make a little bit of money online writing content for people. So I was doing content creation. I kind of branded out into copywriting. I was doing copywriting for people. And I got in touch, or this, this through a friend of a friend. I met a man who hired me to write a couple of sales pages for him. And I wrote those sales pages and he paid me. And then like several months later, he called me out of the blue. I hadn't heard from him for weeks and weeks and weeks. And he called me up out of the blue and he left me a voicemail while I was at work. And he said, call me back as soon as you get this. And I had such terrible self confidence and such terrible self esteem that all day long I kept thinking, oh my gosh, what's, you know, he hates the sales pages. And keep in mind this was months ago that I turned these in, right? So I'm telling myself all day long he hated the sales pages and he wants a refund. And he all of these terrible things going through my mind. So I worked up my courage. At the end of the day, I got in my car to go home and I called him on my cell phone. And the first thing he said to me was, I need a project manager. How much would you charge me to work for me, 20 hours a week. And that was like the start of a whole new career for me because three months later I had quit my job and was working for that gentleman and a couple of other people. And I had a full time business going as a virtual assistant. I was doing things like managing technology, managing operations. I was still doing a little bit of copywriting and content writing for some other clients. And we had a really good thing going. When I say we, I mean my husband and I, he works with me, we had a great business going. And in fact, that first year, first full, full year in business, I tripled my day job income. So from that point on, I was hooked. I was officially unemployable at that point. And then, since then, you know, my business has. Has pivoted several times. I recently, just this past year, actually fired my final virtual assistant client. And what I do now exclusively is I coach other small business owners. I run a membership site where I train people how to build an online business. I sell corporations courses about building online businesses. I talk a lot about things like email marketing and content marketing and course creation. I teach all of those things that would be online business owners need to know in order to make a living from their laptop, like I do.

So let me ask you a couple questions. You gave us a lot to kind of unpack here when you received that call where he was asking you, call me back as soon as you get this. And you spoke to him. What year was that? Was that still 2008 or.

No, that was actually. That was actually 2010.

Okay, so you never actually got fired or laid off in the automotive industry even though you thought that was coming?

I did not. But, man, it was rough for a while, let me tell you.

Well, I remember those years like it's the back of my mind. I keep waiting for that to happen again. And, you know, I think people like us who had gone through that time and a lot of people in this world were impacted by that recession across the world. And it changes you.

Yeah. Yeah, it sure does. So I think we're seeing that now too, aren't we?

Well, you know, I was talking to my husband the other day. I'm a little bit concerned that it's going to happen again. I think the market, you know, the housing market's in a bubble, a little bit different from what it was in the past, but the housing market's definitely in a bubble. And, you know, I think you just, you have to be careful in times like this because it might happen again. So 2010, you called them back. You had that retainer, if you want to call it that, or that job as a project manager working 20 out, 20 hours a week. What. At what point did your husband join you?

My husband joined me right from the start. So he was. When I had a job, I was the primary breadwinner. So he was kind of right there right from the start. He didn't really. Wasn't excited about the job that he had. Didn't really want any part of working for somebody else anyway. He's a real independent, entrepreneurial kind of guy. So he was all in. He was a little nervous about giving up that steady paycheck, you know, because that's kind of. That is kind of scary when you make that leap. From being employed to being self employed. Now you're all, you know, you're responsible for your entire income all of a sudden. And, and that can be kind of scary. But I'll tell you what, it turns out that being self employed, running a business is a far better position to be in than having a job. I firmly, firmly believe that.

So he joined you from the start. So from like 2010 and now we're in 2021. So you've been doing this for a while now?

I've been doing this for a while, yeah.

Yeah. So let me ask you this. When did you decide to move and create your online courses and your membership and how did all of that come about and evolve?

How that came about was in 2016. I was hired pretty much full time to work with a business coach as one of her. I was her marketing and operations person and I was working, I was working 30 or 40 hours a week for her. So it was pretty much full time. She was paying me a great deal of money and it was fabulous. She is one of those business coaches who goes on exotic retreats everywhere. So I went with her to like Italy and Scotland and Hawaii and it was fabulous. But you know, I sat down one day and I thought, I'm building someone else's business and this is not what I want to do for the rest of my life because basically I had a job and don't get me wrong, it was a fantastic job, but it wasn't what I had originally set out to do. So I sat down with the husband and I said, I need to move on, I need to do something, I need to do something different. We need to pivot the business. And again, he was a little, he was a little nervous about it. Not going to lie because it was a steady, it was a steady kind of income. Right. But we decided together, okay, this is what we're going to do. And I released that client and, and started building the course side of the business at that point. And then two years, let's see, that was 2017. Three years later, I let go of my last client.

So I really liked what you said or the realization that you came to where you realized that you were building someone else's business. And yeah, you know, I think a lot of people listening can relate to that with the service work that they may have been doing over the years. I know that I personally actually can't. You know, I just recently I actually sent out my last retainer client invoice last week, you know, and that's really Why I stopped doing that work was I did feel like I was growing somebody else's business and I wasn't placing the amount of emphasis on my own that I needed to and my business wasn't growing. So I love what you said there. So you did that in 2017, correct? Is that what you said when you released that?

Correct? Yeah.

Okay, release that client. When did you launch your first course?

I launched my first course in May of that year.

May of this. You jumped right in.

I did. Tell me, tell me I didn't have a backup plan. I had to.

You had to. I hear you. I can relate to that. So when. So did you continue doing any type of client type work or how did you.

Oh yeah, I still had clients and I said my husband works with me, he has his own clients as well. So we did still have income. I just lost a big chunk of it when I released that one client who was taking up so much of my time.

Okay, so tell us a little bit about how your online courses have kind of maybe morphed over the year. I know you have a membership and we know that, you know, the first course that we launch, you know, it may change over the year and I know that you've added other courses to your portfolio because I've gone to your website and looked at it. So tell me a little bit about how that has transitioned over the years.

Oh yeah, totally changed. Totally changed. My first course I thought that I had to create these massive, you know, four figure courses, right. I thought that was the only way that, that people created courses online. So my first course which is still out there for sale is multiple modules. And I think it's, I think it's up for sale right now for something like three or four hundred dollars. And it took me weeks to create. I created it as I released it, so it was kind of drip fed, right. So every week I would release a new lesson and everybody who had purchased would get the lessons at the same time. Now what I've pivoted to in the last several years and it's always a work in process, right? There's always tweaks and improvements to be made. But what I've pivoted to now is I am creating what I call tiny courses which are based on a one problem, one solution framework. They're a much lower cost, they're a much lower barrier to entry to people and they're much quicker to, for them to study. They get the solution to the problem that they're facing right now. They don't have to take a 12 week or a 16 week course to figure it out. They don't have to Pay, you know, $1,000 or $2,000 to get the answer to this one problem that they're facing. And that has really been a game changer for me and for my customers. They love the self contained nature of them, they love the easy access they have to them and I love that I can then take those courses and leverage them in multiple different ways like in a membership.

So Cindy, I want you to know that I have chills like on my arms right now. And for the listeners and everybody who's list listening, you and I have never met each other. We didn't know each other before our conversation today. And one of the realizations and things. When I first started my own online course business, I built this literally it was basically a 12 week program. It was a massive course. 12 week program and that. And when I first got into this world that's what I thought we were supposed to do, right?

Yeah. What everybody does, right?

Yeah. So. But in the past, I would say two years, what I've done is changed my model so that I'm doing basically mini courses. And it's the, what you, is exactly what you described is the quick wins, bite size information and that's what my audience was telling me that they wanted. And you can repackage it in different ways like memberships and just one, you know, kind of tiny, you know, the self liquidating offers and different ways that you can package it. So is, I think it's very interesting that you and I kind of came to that same conclusion. So tell us a little bit about where you anticipate that you're going to go from here.

Oh wow. I have so many plans. You just have no idea. I have so many plans for the membership. I have so many plans for new courses. I don't see that, I don't see my current course framework changing much because it's been so, it's been so helpful to my customers. They just, they just love the format that my courses are in. So I don't see that changing much. But I would love to, you know, add more, add more resources to the membership. That's kind of my primary focus now is, is the six figure systems membership and I want to help those people to grow their businesses because that's, you know, they, they struggle with so many different things and you know, this destiny because you've, you've done this. But there are so many moving pieces in an online business. It doesn't matter if you're a coach or if you're a course creator or if you are a virtual assistant. There are just so many things that have to all be coordinated. You've got content to create, marketing to manage, and clients to deal with. And, you know, all of those things all have to work together. And. And so many people struggle with this, and it just leads to this overwhelming feeling of, I can't possibly do all of this. And. And when you're new, you know, we see people like Amy Porterfield or Marie Forleo, and they have these big teams of. Of people that all help them out. And. And what I'm seeing and what I went through and what you probably went through as well is, you know, we don't always have those big teams. We can't afford to hire 12 virtual assistants to do all of the work for us. We have to figure out how to do that on our own. So that's what my goal is in the membership and with my courses is to help that struggling solopreneur kind of figure it all out and get it all done without spending a fortune outsourcing it.

So let me ask you this, Cindy. Tell us a little bit about how do people find you. Like, what are your traffic strategies? Do you do a lot of Facebook ad advertising? Is it more evergreen? Do you do live launches? Tell us a little bit about that.

I don't do Facebook ads. I don't do social media. I do primarily content marketing. I engage with my email list a lot, so my customers are all on my email list, and that's where my primary source of content is, my email list. And I also have affiliates, and they have been such a blessing to me. Affiliates are what really kicked me off. When I was first creating courses, I was fortunate enough to know a lot of people in the industry, and I was able to reach out to them, and they happily promoted me, and I happily share a portion of my revenue with them as my way of saying thanks. So affiliates have really been a boon to me and content. And like I said, I don't really do social. I don't do Facebook ads. In fact, I tried to run a Facebook ad just a couple of weeks ago, and Facebook has closed my ads account. So I don't even know if I'm going to pursue that. I may or may not. We'll see. But I don't do live launches. I've done webinars. I like. I like webinar promoting, and I do that with affiliates. And I do evergreen webinars. As well. You can find those on my website. Yeah. So that's it.

So with your content marketing, are you blogging? Are you podcasting? What are you. What strategy are you using there?

I am blogging, and by the time this episode is available, I will be podcasting as well.

Oh, congratulations. What's the name of your podcast? Or can you share it?

Yeah, I can share it. It's tinycourse, empire.com.

I love that name.

Love that name.

So tell us a little bit about the numbers. You've been doing this for a long time now, and in whatever you're willing to share, we're interested in hearing.

Well, the name of my podcast, like I said, is Tiny Course Empire. And that is exactly what I have built. So I am. I'm perfectly happy to share some numbers with you. I mentioned when I quit my day job, my first full year in business, I tripled my day job income. My day job income was $37,000 a year. So we were making over six figures within a year of launching, which was fantastic. We were working really, really hard. So there's a lot of hours put in in that year to make that kind of income. And I'm happy to say that now we are mid six figures and very, very pleased with that income. My goal next year is a million, so I'm pretty sure I'll get close. I don't know if I'll quite make it, but I'll get close.

So let me ask you this. Is that. Do you know the percentages between the courses and the coaching? And you might not have any services in there yet, but maybe your husband does. I was just curious.

Yeah, services are. Services are a really low, really low percent. Like less than 10% of income comes from services. The membership is probably 40% of our income. And courses. Let me see, Let me see if I can break it down. So services are less than 10%. Affiliate marketing. I do. I promote other people's courses and other people's tools and programs. Things like ActiveCampaign or ConvertKit, these kinds of things. That makes up about 5% of my income. The membership is about 40%. So courses is whatever's left.

Okay, so you've been doing. You've been doing this for a while. What advice do you have for other online course creators or entrepreneurs out there? Cindy.

Don'T stop. Don't stop showing up. This is the biggest as a, as a business coach and, and having, you know, several hundred people in my membership that I talk to. One of the biggest issues I see with people is they lose their momentum, they stop showing up, they let things get in the way, and you can't do that. Consistency is the absolute key to your success. You have to show up. You have to do the work every single, even when you don't feel like doing it. That's the best advice I can give to people. Just show up.

That's some great advice. And even when you feel like nobody's listening, nobody's watching you.

They are, they are. And, and you know what? I just read a book called the Compound Effect, which puts this so, so well. He makes such a great point that even when you think what you're doing is, is not working, like you said, people are watching, people are seeing what's happening. And, and those, those little actions that you're taking every day add up to huge, huge results down the road. Right? I could not have, I could not have launched my courses and gotten those affiliates to sign on with me had I not been building those relationships over the years. And even though, you know, nothing might have been happening, you know, five years ago or 10 years ago, even though, you know, I had met those people and I knew them and I was, I was, you know, networking with them, but neither one of us were in a position to help the other one out. But down the road, when I got to launching a course, then I had those relationships that I could call on. So those kinds of things that you just have to continue to put the effort in and to, to work towards that future that you maybe can't really see yet.

I think that some, some great advice, Cindy. Can you let people know where they can find you?

Absolutely. You can find me@cindybidar.com. that's B I D A R. You can find me where I'm on social, which is like Facebook and sometimes on Instagram, though not too much. I'm always Cindy Bedard. Like I, like I said to, said to you earlier, Destiny, I'm the only Cindy Bedard in the world. So if you find a Cindy Bedard, it's probably me. And if you find somebody who's not me, let me know because I'd be interested to meet her. So, yeah, I'm, I'm at Cindy bedard on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram sometimes. And cindybidar.com and also six figuresystems.com and you'll find the podcast@tinycourseepire.com and Cindy, we.

Will make sure that those links are in the show notes so everybody can find you. And thank you so much for joining me. Today. I loved hearing about your story and how you've grown your tiny Empire business.

Thank you so much for having me. It's always fun to meet with new people. I have enjoyed speaking with you today. It's been a lot of fun.

Thanks. Cindy. Thank you so much for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you love the show, we'd appreciate a review 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.