81: Alicia Diaz-Blevins: Don't Call It a Dream, Call It a Plan

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Before we dive into today's episode, I want to ask you an important question. Are you wondering why your hard work isn't reflecting in your bank account? If so, I've got something that could change the game for you. With my Digital Product Accelerator One on one coaching program, I'm on a mission to help entrepreneurs like you bank consistent revenue without sacrificing your time, time or sanity. Imagine shifting from 90% client facing work to enjoying consistent revenue from your digital products, all while reclaiming your time. You already know that you don't need another course and a one size fits all approach isn't going to cut it. What you need is a strategic long term plan tailored just for you. So if you're ready to build the profitable, freedom giving business you've dreamed of, apply to work with me by going to destinycop.com apply I cannot wait to learn more about you and your business. Welcome to the Course Creators MBA podcast. I'm your host Dr. Destiny Kopp and I help business owners increase their 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. 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.

And today my guest is Alicia Diaz Blevins. She is the founder of Alden Group. She's a business consultant, coach and Speaker. She supports CEOs, executives and leader and online entrepreneurs to grow their businesses and make them more productive and profitable. After more than 25 years as a senior executive for different companies in Mexico and and in the United States in the last three years, as an online entrepreneur, she knows what truly drives companies to achieve successful results. She is the author of several online business and productivity courses, author of the ebook Digital 9 Steps to Start yout Own Business Based on youn Talent and you'd Passion, and author of the ebook Guide for successful entrepreneurs 5 Steps to Success with a Digital Course. Alicia, thank you so much for joining me. I'm super excited to jump in and learn a Little bit more about your journey and your story as an online course creator.

Hi, Destiny. I am so happy to be here. Thank you. Thank you for the invitation.

So why don't you jump right in and you can go back as far as you want and tell the audience a little bit more about your journey and how you got started.

Oh, my goodness. Do we have enough time for that?

Yeah.

Let me tell you a little bit about how I started in this world. I used to work for corporations all my life. Since I am originally from Mexico. You can see my accent, right? So I am from Mexico. I was there working really, really hard in order to get to the. To have a good position in the corporate world. I am a business administrator with a master's degree in business. So I work on my life in Mexico in the human resources and finance area. And then like 22 years ago, I moved to the States and I continue working in corporations as a consultant, as a CFO and CIO and all that stuff. But all those years, I had always had the idea of creating or starting my own business. Right, because you work for corporations. It's wonderful to work in corporations. It's wonderful to be a leader, to be a mentor, to do different things.

But.

It'S not your business. It's not your own purpose in life. So I work hard and I earn good money, and I climbed the ladder, the corporate ladder, and I was blessed to have great positions, but I was empty in some part of my life, right? So here I moved to different companies. I worked in Atlanta. I work in Austin, Texas. I moved to San Antonio to work with a corporation here in San Antonio. They had their headquarters in Germany and everything went well. But one day I got to my office and there was a sign at the entrance that said, don't call it a dream, call it a plan. That day, actually, I took a picture of that. I don't know who put it there, but I took a picture and I said, this is so true. It was like, well, Alicia, you have always been dreaming about building your own company and do something different and follow your purpose, follow your why. Right? At that time, I had already read the book, the start with why with your why. And I loved it. And I said, I think that I need to start working on my own dream. And little did I know that that day was going to be my last day at that company. It was weird because I was so happy in the morning and I was so excited about that message. But, you know, it's like the turmoil that happens in companies and calls and conference calls and meetings and all this stuff. And then you forget about your stuff. And in the afternoon, the lady that was the president of the company asked me to meet in her office at 4pm, right? And I said, okay, do you need anything special? That sounded a little bit weird to me because normally we had our meetings with the director. Meetings it was in the morning and we had. I was part of the board of directors. So we had like the board of directors meeting normally at 2, and that was canceled. And that this was set up at 4pm, right. So little did I know that she was just returning from her trip to Germany and. And I asked her how your trip went. She said, okay, but I felt her, she was a little bit nervous. And then she told me, well, Alicia, I only want to thank you for all your help during this situation because we have had some problems in the company. It's like, but today is your last day. And I was like, what? Like, yeah, today is your last day. So, okay, after the shock and everything, you can imagine, you don't expect that and crazy stuff were happening, those type of things. To make the story short, I had one week to give everything and deliver everything and organize everything in order to leave the company, right? And after the shock, I said, okay, what should I do? And I remember that message that I saw at the entrance. It's like, don't call it a dream, call it a plan. So I have always thought that things happen for a reason. So of course, as I said after the shock and everything, I said, okay, maybe this is a good opportunity for me to, to start building my dream. So I said, what can I do? And then I started looking for different options, right? I had been a consultant with a company, so I said, maybe some consulting. And then I be. I love teaching. I was a college professor when I was in Mexico, so I said, maybe teaching, right? But here in the States, to be a professor at college degree, you know that it's like you have to have a doctorate. And said, no, I'm not going to do a doctorate right now, so never mind. So then I thought about, okay, what about investing in a franchise, right? So I started investigating about franchises and you need to invest a lot of money. And this was not about the money, but it was something like I didn't feel really passionate about that. Correct. So then you know that Google follows you every time that you search something. So I guess Google saw that I was looking into opportunities to invest or to start a business or something like that. For all the research that I was doing that, of course, the advertising start coming to me, right? So I had immediately different advertising from different online courses and startups and franchises and all that stuff. And one got my attention that came from Amy Porterfield that we both know. And that advertising was about when she was launching at that time her program, Webinars that Convert. And she was mentioning that if you want to build your online business, you can do it through webinars and then you can even earn money when you are sleeping and help people and all that stuff. So I said maybe this is something that I had been looking for. So I joined one of her. It was an evergreen webinar. At that time I didn't know what an evergreen webinar meant. Later on I learned that it's something that you have there like an evergreen, right? It's like it stayed there and then you can watch it at any time. And it got my attention and I watch it and then I bought her program without knowing anything about her. I bought her program because it convinced me. What she said convinced me. And since I was looking for something like that, I got into that, into the online business. So that was my first, first approach to online business.

So I want to go back to the sign, I want to go back to the sign that you saw on the door because I think it's so powerful and I think for people who are listening to this today, if this is something, if they're searching for what to do next, whether it's starting a business or even taking their business to the next level or pivoting their business. You said you saw that sign. It said don't call it a dream, call it a plan. Later on that day at 4pm you were called into the office, you were laid off. And if that's not a sign from the universe, I don't know what is. Right. And then you started searching. May I ask, what year was that?

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That was 2016, 17.

I lost track.

That's okay. So around 2016, 2017, that's when you started researching to try to figure out what you were going to do online. And I think all of us can relate when we start searching online, Google, Facebook, Instagram, everything is going to start sending us information or kind of showing us information that we may be interested in. So you saw this ad and then it kind of led you into, you know, this online course world. You love teaching, and you sounded like it was something that you'd be interested in. Take us to the next step in terms of you came across this, you came up with this idea. Tell us about some of the next steps that you had in your journey.

Yeah, it was pretty interesting because it's.

Like I joined that.

I started that course, right? The webinars that convert. And I was just starting the course when Amy Porterfield was advertising, also as a partnership with Marie Forleo. The B school program, right? So I have an mba, you know, and then I said, B school, business school, mba, Business administration. This is piece of cake for me, right? Because I thought, okay, it's a business. What could be different from a traditional business that I have already more than 20 something years of experience to an online business that is also a business. So, okay, so I decided and I joined this school.

And to my surprise, it was totally different. It was totally a new world. So at the beginning, it was like, so overwhelming. And to be honest, it's like, oh, my goodness, it's like even terms that I didn't even know what they meant. So it was like the pipelines and the funnels and the lead magnets and the landing pages and the checker pages and all that. I mean, a thousand different things that I said, okay, okay, wait a second, let me try to figure out what's going on. So that was the beginning. And since I love teaching, I also love learning. And since I was Mexico, it's like, you name it. I had my business degree and my master's degree and I had some specialties because I always believed that you don't know everything. You have always, you need always to learn and to be getting your knowledge updated, right? So I started working hard and learning and researching and did all that stuff. And then I was so happy and so like, yes, I'm going to do this. So I decided I am good in productivity. I am good in getting things done and achieving goals and organizing my time organizing agenda, helping people to do the same. So I said, okay, let's create a program about productivity. So the first thing that I did, I started creating my program. Building everything is like, as I said, I had already taught, so I know how to create content and how to put it together and put my slices.

Beautiful.

And okay, how do I need to present this? It's like, okay, I need to get through webinarjam or get through Zoom or whatever in order to start teaching. Right. So then I had everything ready.

Everything beautiful.

Like, the content was organized to the point that you need to take your audience from point A to point B. So that was perfectly done. And then, okay, time to present it to the public. Right. So the first thing that I did was it was advised to have, like, what is called a beta test. So you put your program in the market, and you put the program and then you test it, and then you see if the people is learning, they like it. You need to add some more materials or not. I went all the way on the academic field, or I even take in consideration that I had to build an audience first. I didn't realize that that needed to be done at the same time that I was working so hard creating my program. So my first aha moment or realization was when I was so happy the program was already tested, I put it on the market, and crickets. Nothing happened. Not even a soul. Right. Because nobody knew who Alicia Diaz was. Yeah. People that I had worked in, organizations knew me, but I was not trying to sell that to people that already knew me from organizations. I was putting this out in the world, and nobody knew who Alicia Diaz was. So it was a big shock for me. So that was my first aha moment in this wonderful world of online business.

So let's kind of dissect that and figure out where you went from there. So you had this course. You're definitely an expert in productivity. You know how to take students from point A to point B. But you launched two crickets. You. And then you realize, I need to build my audience to, you know, and figure out where to go from there. So what. What were your next steps? What exactly did you do?

Yeah, so what I do, what should I do? Right. So then I say, okay, well, you need, first of all, you need to create something that people like, something you can get, like, known as an expert in your field. So you need to start Putting content, no content of value. What they call you, they teach you these industries, okay? You need to put some content to give some value so people know what you are good at. People know what you need to how they can solve a problem. And now after they see that you can't help them to solve a problem, then when you present the program now, then they say, okay, I know she has taught me or she has given me this free content for this period of time. I know that she can help you. Right? But after that, we are already talking about a period of time. And actually, to be honest, it's like, yeah, I have my savings, I got some severance from the company that I was laid off. But I mean, you cannot be without an income for a good amount of time. So at that time, without asking, I got an invitation to join another corporation. And to be honest, Destiny, at that time, I was like in shock that my program didn't work the way that everybody had told me that I was going to become. Not a millionaire, but I was going to make a good living on this industry at the beginning. And I said, okay, this is not really giving me the good living. I am used to a good salary because I used to work with corporations as a high level executive. So my salary was a good salary. So I said, I better take this opportunity.

So what year was that, Alicia? What year was that that you went back to work?

2019. Okay, 2019. So I had already like tried it for a year. No. And it didn't work the way that I wanted. So I went back to corporate. I think it was in March of 2019. And I was working in a good position with a good company here in San Antonio. But again, I was happy with the company. I'm not going to say I don't enjoy working in corporations because that's not true. I enjoy working with corporations. I enjoy working with this company. But it was not that I was passionate about, right. It's like when they tell you, what could you do even if you would not be paid? And that's what happens to me. I love teaching, I love helping people. I love making difference in other people's lives. I love seeing somebody when they tell me, alicia, thank you so much. What you taught me really has changed my life. That's what I love doing. So I work in that corporation for a year and a half, but at the same time I was building, continue building my company. I never stopped. So what I used to do is I used to work in the morning. I don't know if you have read the book the Miracle Morning?

I haven't. I've never heard of it.

Oh, it's a beautiful book and it talks about to create some habits in order for you to be more productive and get better results. It's a beautiful book that I strongly recommend anybody to read it. But in summary, what it tells you is to wake up one hour early in order to focus on yourself. And it gives you some advice about like meditation and exercise and putting together the things that you have to do during the day, etc. Etc. So what I did is I added.

Two hours instead of one.

I added two hours. So I used to wake up at 4am to do my routine and also to work on my business. So I was working on my business from 4am to 6am every day. Get ready to go to work, go.

To work, come back.

And sometimes in the afternoons I was doing also some work to try to build my company at the same time that I was also working with the company and earning some money. So I did that for like a year and a half.

And so that's a heavy schedule. How did you feel during that time? Were you burned out? Was it a lot for you?

No, no, it was. I was burned out, to be honest, because it was hard. I mean, and the problem also was that this company was like an hour away from where I live. So it was a two hours commute. That to be honest, that also helped me to get more like as I said, I am an avid learning, so I'm not the type of person that I am driving long distances without doing anything. So normally I used to listen to podcasts or listen to audiobooks or something, trying to get more knowledge. So those two hours were not like wasted. But yeah, I mean, waking up at 4am, working until 6, getting ready, go to work, work from 8am to 6pm pm, come back home and sometimes work in the afternoon. Yeah, it was not easy.

When did you leave that firm?

I left. I left in 2020, right after the pandemic started. It was in September, August of September of 2020.

And just, just so folks know, we are recording this at the end of April 2021. It's not going to be Aaron until later. So maybe, you know, a little over six months. Right. Since you've left there to kind of refocus your energy back on your business. And you recently launched your membership program. You want to tell us a little bit more about that?

Yeah, yeah, so. So yes, after all that time that.

I talked to my husband and actually.

He was so supportive because he said, you know, you are killing yourself and, and I don't see you happy, so what really makes you happy? And I told him I would like to come back and focus on my business because I do believe even though I have a struggle trying to make it work, I love it. And the results, like small result that.

I have had, have been good, but.

Not to the point to live only out of that at the beginning. So we will just launch a membership. I love it. I mean we have had already some of where already got our founding members.

So we are so excited about that.

And actually it's no longer in productivity. And that was something interesting that happened with the Pandemic that a lot of people ask us, okay, how are you doing your online business? Can you teach us how to do an online business?

Because by that time we were already.

We don't have thousands of followers, but we have already an audience that was following us. It's like I have been able to build a group of followers of more than 10,000 people that we have been.

Able to attract with our webinars, our.

Master class and what we post in social media and all that stuff. It's like we don't have thousands of thousands of followers in our social media.

But we have had really good amount.

Of people that has joined us in our masterclass, in our webinars and different things and all the messages that I have received of thank you and aha moments and all that stuff. That's what really makes my life.

Right?

So we have. We were seeing, you know, because we do this in Spanish. So it's for another. It's a different culture. The Hispanic culture was really behind on this online business. The Pandemic really like push it that you cannot imagine how much. To tell you the truth, when we started in 2016, 17, at the beginning, we used to do our masterclass or our webinars through Zoom and a lot of people didn't attend because they didn't want to download the app or didn't know how Zoom worked. Now even grandma has cast Zoom app. It's like it changed. It changed a lot. So the Hispanic culture went jumped from zero knowledge or little bit of usage of online business to boom, incredible opportunity. So a lot of people were asking us, it's like, how are you doing this? How did you create your content? How did you organize what to post? How did you do the landing pages and all the stuff? So we said, okay, let's create a program in order to help the Hispanic community to learn that Right. Because there are a lot of programs in the market, but they are pretty expensive. So a lot of people cannot afford to pay those amount of money and more in the Spanish community. So we built a small program that was called the ABC of an online business in Spanish, it's called the ABC Digital.

And out of that a lot of.

People ask us to have more like help, more, more in the monthly basis or more like frequent. So we created our membership that is a club, that is a digital entrepreneurs club. So in the Spanish club, where we help people to go step by step to build the business slowly but steady, not to kill themselves, not to be.

Like what I am going to do.

Next and then we are having good results. I am not a millionaire. I don't want to be a millionaire. Yeah, of course, earning good money, why not? But our main interest is to be able to help people to build their online business without breaking the bank.

And what I'm hearing from your story, Alicia, is a couple of things. Number one, you're a continual learner. You don't give up and think about if you had given up and this whole pandemic thing happened and you didn't know that this market was out there that needed your help, that was primed to learn about how online business worked. So I think that's fantastic. And I love the niche that you have. I think this is a great niche to serve and you're the perfect person to serve them with it. So I love all that. Tell us a little bit specifically about how you launched. Did you use a challenge? Did you use a webinar? And tell us a little bit about how all of that worked and how, how did you get people on your webinar? Was it from your list? Did you do ads or what did you do exactly?

Yeah, we do different things and we have tried different type of launches. One of the ones that I really love doing are live launches or challenges because I really like the interaction with the people on my Facebook group. So I have a Facebook group that is called Lansa Temprender is like, like.

There to.

Start a business. You can translate. Doesn't translate exactly.

But that's more or less the idea.

Is like for you to dare to go and jump and get, get going into the online business. So we teach them because a lot.

Of people tell us like what I.

Am going to teach. I am not a guru, I am not an expert. So we teach them.

First of all, we work in their.

Passion for them to look at their passion, their why, what are the things that really, really, really drives them.

And then from there we work in what I call the part of my.

Knowledge where we show them that they don't need to be a guru or an expert in order to be able to teach somebody that you can teach somebody that is below the level of experience or knowledge that you have.

And I use like the Excel. No, I am not master.

I don't master Excel, but I'm pretty good at doing pivot tables and vlookups and all the stuff. So I can teach anybody that is below my level of knowledge and Excel experience. And of course I'm going to learn from somebody that is above my level and experience. But you have a lot of market and opportunity to teach different things, different knowledge, experience and even hobbies that you have.

And I show them about a lot.

Of people that I know, friends of mine, even teachers, everything that are teaching.

Others, like sewing, painting, like you name.

It, is how to do homeschooling that right now was so useful for a lot of people. And taxes, accounting or different things. So I work with them on kind of a challenge in order to teach them how to do that. And after that, of course I present my program. The last one that we have done have been since this is a low ticket program, we have done more like a webinar in order for in an.

Hour, an hour and a half, you.

Teach them all that stuff. They see the possibility. And then we present the program and right now we have our first founding members for the membership. We just launch it like a week.

Ago and we are starting. We just did another type of launch on Tuesday, but we have some technical difficulties that I didn't know about that may happen and they did happen. So as you can see, we are still learning. It's like I found out that the emails that I sent to my audience with the link to join our webinar didn't get to them because we were using a software provider that it looks that the way that they send messages, it goes to their spam folder. And I was not seeing that because I use another service provider in order to send the regular stuff. But I wanted this provider to send the personalized link directly to the people so then I could get some statistics. And I didn't realize that those emails were not been open because normally you have your own email there in order to tell that you are receiving. And I was receiving information. When I saw that I had 900 people register for my webinar and only about 30 show up, but were only 15 live. I said what happened here? Normally in this industry the percentage of people that shows up is around 30% of your list. So I was expecting 300 people joining my webinar and to my surprise I only had 30.

Like what happened here, right?

Yeah, unfortunately those tech issues, they happen a lot. So let me ask you this. What do you see as next steps for your business in 2021?

It's like there are different things that I want to do is like we want to continue with our membership and the membership right now this business I built it, I forgot to mention that this business I built it with my nephews. It's a family business. So we want my nephew to be kind of like the face of the membership. And of course I'll be helping in the background and of course teaching and all the stuff.

Stuff.

What I want to go back to my passion and what I really love doing that is teaching productivity, leadership mentoring. Because I think that I am good at that from all my years incorporation. So I am starting also a program that is. It doesn't have an exact translation in English but it's called high impact mentor or high impact mentoring. That is for professionals, that executives, managers to be a high impact mentor not only for their own, the people that report to them but also that they can build side job. Being a mentor and starting is to my passion that I don't want them to leave the same situation that I lived that you are working for a company and the company until they feel that you are needed there, they treat you well but suddenly they decide they no longer and they say goodbye to you because of that and you are in the middle of nowhere not knowing what to do. So I want to work with executives, managers, directors, leaders in order to help them start their own business without leaving their job, getting them strong enough, not waking up at 4am in the morning as I used to do or, or build it at the same time. So when they are ready then they can leave their corporate job and then they can start their own business.

I love that. And I have one last question for you. You've gone through a lot since you saw that sign on the door that said don't call it a dream, call it a plan. Back in 2016, what advice do you have for other online course creators and entrepreneurs out there?

Oh, I have so many. One, don't give up. Don't give up is the one important one because you will always, always, always have problems. And that is not only in the online business, it's in life. Right? It's like you will encounter challenge and you will have problems. And the important thing is that you have your why there. Why are you doing this to me? My why is to be able to help people is to be able to change lives. So webinar, jam, zoom and all the crazy stuff is not going to go in my way. So if I have my why clear, then all those hiccups, the only thing that I do is lesson learned.

To me, see what happened is like.

Take the step in order to see how you can fix it and move on. And that's it. So that would be one of my main messages, is don't give up, have clear your why. So any challenge that you can have, you can pass through that. So that is one thing. And the other thing is that if you are incorporated or you are thinking about starting your own business is start now. Start now and start preparing yourself. Get training, get a good mentor or a good coach, a good advisor, somebody that has already gone through all this stuff, that has already learned the pathway, that has already fallen 10 times and broken their arms and all this stuff. Learn, get ready, prepare, do things, start doing things from now. So when you are ready to say, okay, I'm ready now, then you start your online business. But you already built it. You already built the structure. You already have like the solid structure in order to start teaching or mentoring or coaching or doing consulting. So that could be my two main advices. Don't give up and start now.

I love them both. I love them both. So where can people find you?

Well, they can find me, I think everywhere. LinkedIn, basically. LinkedIn. I have my Facebook page that is Alicia Diaz Blevins. I have my Instagram page, Alicia Diaz. I have my company that is Alden Link Consulting Group and I try to be active, giving content of value every single day. So you can reach me there and you can always reach me through any of these social media platforms and I.

Will make sure that those links are in the show notes so people know where they can find you. Alicia, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your story. I'm so glad you saw that quote on the door that day and all of these events led us together. So thank you for sharing.

Thank you so much for having me. Destiny.

Thanks. 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.