82: Christian de la Huerta: How He Pivoted from Live Events to Virtual During COVID

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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.

And my guest today is Christian de la huerta. He has 30 years of experience and is a sought after spiritual teacher, personal transformation coach and leading voice in the breathwork community. He has traveled the world offering inspiring and transformational retreats combining psychological and spiritual teachings with lasting and life changing effects. Christian, thank you so much for joining me. I'm very excited to chat with you. Learn more about your journey into entrepreneurship, learn more about your coaching business and your pivoting that you did last year into online courses.

It's a pleasure to be here. Destiny, thanks so much for having me on your show. Thank you.

Well, why don't you take a few minutes and walk the audience through how you got started in your business and kind of the journey that you've taken over the years?

Yeah, well, I've been doing retreats and workshops and private coaching and group experiences for the last 30 years. So it's been over 30 years now since I worked for anybody else. I used to work in my degrees in psychology. I used to work for psychiatric and addictions hospitals, but more in the community relations department. Not so much the treatment. The clinical part of was, you know, it's been a journey as it is for most entrepreneurs. In the beginning it was difficult, especially when, I mean, first of all, overcoming the mindset, fears and limitations, right? The not feeling ready, feeling like, who do I think I am? You know, that imposter syndrome stuff that so many of us relate to. And yet at the same time feeling a sense of mission, feeling called to do this work, knowing that what I teach makes a difference in real human lives. Because it's stuff that I, that I've, that I live is not just stuff I read in a book or learned in a weekend, seminars like stuff that I practice day to day so that I know from personal experience that works. And yet still, you know, like I, I didn't hold it, I've held it as a mission, not so much a business. And I got started at a time that was before social media. So if, say that I started a new in a new city, like how do I reach people without having a, you know, the ability to advertise? So what I would do is I'd go and, you know, and find the spiritual bookstores in a city because my work is kind of psycho spiritually. The coaching that I do is psycho spiritual derived, you know, both psychology and spiritual teachings. And so I'd go find what the local magazines were, start finding the stores, events and I would go with my business cards and just start meeting people like that and little by little putting up flyers in laundromats and coffee shops. It's a lot easier these days when you have social media to help spread a message and you have meetup and that kind of thing. So yeah, it's been quite a journey. And then also financially it's been a journey and the ability to move into a viable sustainable model. Happy to talk about that as well.

So you started this probably many years ago when people didn't even have a website. More or less. Social media didn't even have a website.

Oh yeah. Oh God, yes.

So that presents challenges finding people. And it sounds like you found some of these unique ways to go out and find your ideal customer, your ideal client. May I ask, what year did you launch your website?

That's a good question. Huh.

And I, you know, probably I'm throwing that at you.

I don't know, it's been, I would imagine it's been at least 15 years, 20 years, but I don't really remember for sure when that was. I'll tell you what a huge shift was in my relationship to being an entrepreneur. For me, like I said, it's always been a mission. I've always been very mission driven. And a few years ago, probably four or five years ago, I had a realization that it was also a business and that I was actually doing it a disservice, I was dishonoring it by not treating the mission as a business. So I'm almost embarrassed, not quite, but almost embarrassed to say that up until about four or five years ago, I didn't even have a business account. I was running it all through my personal account. And now I've got two different corporations, one for my publishing ARM and the other for the retreats and the coaching. I've got CPAs, I've got an attorney. A couple of years, three, four years ago, I also hired a virtual assistant, which was a huge step to take. So I've been running pretty much as a solopreneur like so many of us have, and then realized that if I was really going to fulfill the potential of this mission, that I had to put in some business structures that I didn't know about.

And I think a lot of people out there can relate to that. You know, they're getting, especially coaches like what you are, they're getting into that field to truly serve and help others and fulfill their mission in life. And kind of the business is an afterthought. And I really like what you said there about the mindset. Mindset shift that you had and how you were doing it a disservice by not treating it as a business. So you, you had your website out there. You probably didn't get into social media until at least 2010, I would think, or after that, how, you know, begrudgingly. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about during that time period you had your website. When did you, you know, tell us about a little bit about your marketing and how you were finding people at that point?

Well, you know, I think because I've been doing it for 30 years, I've been growing my mailing list since then. So a lot of it were people who heard me speak somewhere or who read something that I wrote or when my first book came out 20 years ago, I got a lot of media. So people who hadn't, who, you know, went to a speaking event at a bookstore or at a workshop. I also used to speak on the college circuit. So a lot of my email came from that, from people who actually met me somewhere or read something or were interested. Now it's a different game. And especially as you were talking about last year, after 30 years of doing retreats, suddenly screeching halt. I went from flying a hundred thousand miles a year to zero. And my income, like, also came to a screeching halt. So. But, you know, but it's such a, such a, I mean, it's. As a testament to what I also teach is that not feeling, not allowing ourselves to feel victimized by life. So instead of having a victim relationship, like, woe is me, oh my God, like, how horrible I can't do events and how am I going to survive? And all the stuff that we, that we do to ourselves, it's like, okay, well, here it is. It kind of sucks. And how am I going to show up? What am I going to do in response to the situation? Because that's very empowering. So rather than have a paranoid relationship with life, like, you know, like what life did to me, if it only had been for this or that or the other thing, then I would be successful, then I would be happy. It's like, all right, well this happened. It's not the way that I would have wanted it. I didn't see it coming. And what am I going to do in response? Right? It's very empowering. And also shifting from that paranoid relationship, me against the world kind of thing, to a pro noia, which is a great word, which is like life has a vested interest in us so that life is actually conspiring for our success and our happiness. So that was also a breakthrough in mindset when I realized that. And so last year it's like, okay, well I've known for years that I needed to, if I really wanted, if I was really going to broaden my reach, my scope and reach people who may never be able to come to one of my physical retreats. I've known that I needed to develop virtual programming and Covid kind of forced my hand. And so last year, for me, without minimizing or denying the tragedy of it, for me it's been a blessing because the mandatory timeout, the mandatory global timeout allowed me to finish the book, this book that I just released, Awakening the Soul of Power. And it also allowed me to finally create virtual programming.

So how many years before you came to that, really, you know, before you were kind of forced to do it, had you been thinking about doing a virtual, you know, offer or online course or group coaching program? How many years did it, was it three years that you first kind of thought, you know, I need to go down this path?

At least? I would say more. I would say probably more, five or six. And the reason why I started thinking about it, because I would see people come to one of my retreats and have an amazing life changing. And they really are amazing and life changing. And if people didn't have a support system when they went back home, if they didn't have reminders, if they didn't have like a conscious practice, it was very easy to start forgetting and to get distracted by life's infinite distractions and to be pulled down by the day to day and then the old voices of fear and self doubt would start creeping up and pulling them down again. And so that I started Thinking, well they need to have a virtual system to support them as they re enter, you know, re enter their lives again. So that's how I started thinking about it. But you know, so busy just flying so much from one retreat to another and just didn't get around to it. And then Covid forced my hand. Covid forced me to do it.

So around March of last year, you basically stopped traveling. Like the whole world stopped traveling. And you know, you came to a realization that now's a good time to kind of pivot. Tell us a little bit about how you pivoted and what that virtual online program that you have today, what it looks like.

Well, you had to start from scratch. I had a mailing list, but that was it. I had very, I had social media and I had good numbers, but I wasn't doing anything with it. Like I had 15, 18,000 people in LinkedIn and I really wasn't doing much with it. I had 5,000 on Facebook and I really wasn't doing much with it. So I had actually hired a coach to learn how to, how to run a Facebook group. I learned about, you know, how to launch a virtual summit as a way to, to multiply my email list with people who were used to the virtual world because my people were all trained to the third dimensional reality retreats, to live events. And so I had to learn how to reach a different audience because there's not always 100% correlation in those two. So you know, so I learned about how to, how to do a launch, how to do a challenge. I had to learn how to create content. Like, I mean I had so much content, but how to put it in a format that would be, that could be delivered virtually. So I finally launched my, my year long coaching program in the beginning of this year and that was also a learning experience because initially I thought of it as a 30 day and, and I was, you know, I got stuck. I was struggling with what to put in and what to leave out. To have so much amazing content that I would come up against a piece of it. I was like, you know, I can't le. No, I can't leave that out. And then I was in the middle of that struggle. My business coach said to me, hold on a second, let me just ask you a question. What would you feel more confident in reassuring or assuring transformation after a 30 day program or a year long program? And it was a no brainer. Of course, a year long I can go much more deep into all the patterns that have us doing the things that we do and understanding how the mind works and how relationships. So it was like a no brainer. Two nights after she asked me that question, I wake up in the middle of the night and it was one of those zero to 60 moments from deep moments, from deep sleep to like wide awake and actually got out of bed because I didn't want to forget, risk forgetting. And I saw, I just saw how to create, how to structure the year long. And so once I got that vision, it all was only a matter of weeks. And so the way that I've structured it, what I'm loving about it, of course I'll go back to retreat as soon as it's safe to do so. I'm actually already scheduling some in the fall, assuming that will be okay by that to have group retreats with each other again in the meantime. What I'm loving about the year long is what I was saying, the fact that I get to stretch out the teachings, I get to deliver them piecemeal. So every week there's a little bit of content. So bite size. But here's the difference. Like this is what a year long allows me to do that I can't do in a retreat, in a weekend retreat every week to have a little bit of content. So keep it manageable. So I know we're all over scheduled too many demands in our lives. So bite size with interactivity. So every week they have homework, they have certain practices that are designed to apply the teachings to their lives so that they don't stay at just wow, that's a great book I read. No, it's like the purpose of it is to change your life. Not to. Not to sell, not to sell a book. The teachings are designed to change your life. So that's my goal, that's my intention. And so that's what this concept allows me to do. It also allows me to put a system of accountability. So for example, every, every two weeks we have a coaching call with me for two hours and I'm keeping the groups at a, at a manageable size so that I don't want to sacrifice intimacy. So we're keeping the groups at 20, 30 people and we're starting a cohort and another one in the month of May. And so I'll probably do them, you know, like start a cohort three times a year. So we'll see. I'm just playing with it now, accountability, which is important and have the support of both myself as a coach and then have the support of the group. So kind of a family that goes through the same experience together over the course of a year so that we can use the group as practices to test out new ways of being, new ways of behaving, new ways of communicating, new ways of thinking with each other in the safety of the group before we put them into practice in real life, where relationships are really at stake. And then another system level of accountability which I'm putting in is in the intervening weeks. So they meet with me every two weeks. In the middle weeks, they meet in smaller groups of dyads or triads. And this could be just a 10 minute check and call like, hey, did you complete that assignment? So again, designed to support and keep us doing what we said we would do.

So we may have some coaches that are listening here today and they may be thinking, oh, I'd like to do this. So let's delve into a little bit more about how you've structured the online content. You're doing monthly zoom calls, I think you said you had. And then some content was in your software program, your course platform. Tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, the course is all uploaded into ClickFunnels. So it lives in clickfunnels. And so they have it sort of like not quite a membership, but they have. They need a password to access that information. Also, ClickFunnel keeps a lot's good for keeping statistics of, you know, who clicks on your page and this or that so that you can figure out what landing page or what opt in page are really working. You can test them out. It's really good way of tracking that. It's not great. It doesn't communicate that software doesn't communicate. It has some challenges communicating with my client management software, which is infusionsoft. But right now we're sticking with it because of the ability to track them and because of the ability to create the site where they need a password. Like you can create all this stuff and it could live in infusionsoft, but then there would be no way to control it or to manage it. Anybody could access to if they could pass on that link and anybody could access it. And there are other systems that could work for this. That's where the content lives. The coaching call that gets delivered to them by email every week with a link to the new page where the content lives. Then the coaching calls are every two weeks with me for two hours, 7 to 9pm Eastern.

And you said when you launched this to the marketplace, to your audience, you did a challenge. I believe you said, well, tell the audience a little bit about that process and how that worked for you.

Yeah, I've just in the first time around, so I launched it in January. That particular group of pod of 25 people or so, they mostly came from my list. So I sent out because I've got an active list mailing list of so many people who've done my retreats, of my workshops. So that was a natural for them. This second launch that I'm doing now, I actually learned, I had to learn how to do a challenge, which I've never done one before. So how to figure out how to. And thankfully I have a coach, which is the benefit of the coach, of having a coach to help you with stuff that you don't know about. Somebody who can both hold you by the hand and maybe softly kick you on the butt from time to time as needed. So a launch was basically learning how to structure the content. So like a five day launch virtually where we send out an email in the morning with a little bit of content. At night we have a 45 to an hour meeting zoom session where people can come in with their questions. They're connected thematically. Each of the four first days of the challenge match each of the quarters of the year long, which is basically the first quarter. We talk about understanding the mind, the ego mind, how it keeps us in a self made prison of fear and limitation and reactivity and defensiveness and victimhood and how we break free from that so that we can step into our potential. Second quarter is power. Like personal power. How do we step into personal power in a way that's not about hierarchy, control, fear, force, domination, manipulation? How do we do it in a different way? Third quarter is relationships. Like how do we use our relationships as a way to forward our own process of transformation and healing and how do we remove the subconscious obstacles to love and the unhealthy relationship patterns so that sometimes have us feeling like we're stuck in the same relationship just with the different actors. Like I've been here before, just a different player, but it's the same, same patterns. So understanding why, why we do those things and why we attract certain people and so that we can break free and bring choice back into those equations rather than continuing to react out of subconscious unhealed patterns from our laugh, from our past. Then the fourth quarter is about life purpose. Like how do we know what we're really here to do and how do we remove the subconscious ways in which we have been playing small and selling ourselves out for an illusion of security and playing it safe and all Those things that we limit ourselves, you know, from a mindset of fear or fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of success, whatever the underlying fears are, so that we can break free from all those patterns and really step into our potential and to our purpose, which is ultimately what's going to fulfill us.

So you, you basically took the content for, or the, the structure for your year long program and kind of broke it out into these days for your challenge where it sounded like you were delivering the challenge content via Zoom too. Was it via Zoom?

Yeah, some people, you know, my, my coach really recommended doing it on Facebook Live. I'm not, I'm not comfortable with Facebook Live yet because it's, you know, for me it's hard to be completely present with the person and then be reading the little chat on the side. It's. I haven't mastered that yet. I'm like, when I'm present, I'm 100% present. So I haven't mastered that ability to do so with Zoom. It allows me to be more participatory. Right. So somebody asked me a question, they're right there and I can interact with them and engage with them more. It works for me. It works better. I like that format better, actually.

I like it a lot. I like what you did there.

Yeah, yeah. And then, so that was the first four days, you know, just 45 minute and. And then the last day, the fifth day is to kind of review the whole week and then explain, you know, how, how percent the year long as the solution to the problems and their challenges that we have been talking about all week.

So let me ask you this. You mentioned for your first launch, you launched to your email list for the challenge that you did. Where did you find the people for the challenge?

Well, I guess we started with a Facebook group which we started back in June of last year. That group went from 0 June to, I think we're up to like, I don't know, close to 1,000. So we're using mostly the group and a little bit of Facebook advertising. I'm still not sold on Facebook advertising. I'm still kind of testing it out. But we did get some new people from the summit. The summit was very helpful too and, and identifying new people and bringing them into my funnel, so to speak.

So tell us a little bit about the summit.

Yeah, so we did the summit last fall and so one of the typical summits were identified. I think it was close to 30 other teachers, coaches, I think it was, I forget the exact name right now, but it was unconscious. Leadership. So because I've been doing this work for 30 years, I know a lot of people who have been doing similar work, similar coaches, therapists. But the thing here was finding people who did have an email list and have at least 2,000 people on their email list. Because according to my coach who's been doing this for a long time, social media posts don't always convert to get people to actually come to one of your summits. That it's really the email contacts, one of the summits where you agree, where you will send two solo emails to your list and then everybody has a gift or some kind of offering, meditation, ebook, whatever it is. And then that's how people get people to sign up to their individual lists from the summit. And it was a great experience. I made amazing connections, I had incredible speakers. Definitely learn. Next time I do it, I'll be a little bit more strict on the email requirement because it was my first time out. I got a little nervous in the beginning about not having enough people. And so I allowed a few people in whom I really liked what they had to speak about, but they didn't really have an email list. So I snuck in maybe two or three people that I was more because I believed in their cause, that I wanted to support them, but I knew that it wasn't going to be beneficial to my ultimate goal. And so I think next year I'll be a little bit more on top of that and more. Did I convey what the expectation, not the expectations, what they're actually agreeing to do in exchange for being on the summit and holding them to it more than I did this time around.

So let me ask you this. I've hosted a summit myself and it sounds like you were the host of this summit. So that's a lot of work putting that together. Did you like the format for launching your program? Did you like the summit better or did you like the doing the five day challenge better? What do you think was more beneficial for you?

That's a great question. I think the summit. I definitely like the summit better, even though it was probably more work, but it was more enjoyable. It was kind of a lost opportunity because when we launched the summit, I didn't yet have the virtual coaching program designed. So I didn't like. Ideally I would have done the summit in September and in October you have the next step that people could participate. I didn't launch the year until January, so in a sense I didn't. That was a lost opportunity. So I'll do another summit, probably late summer, early Fall again and this time I'll be more prepared. Like, now I know how to do it better. The challenges, it's still, I'm still in the middle of that one, so I don't have the numbers yet. The numbers for the summit were great. I think I got probably 2,000 new people for my email list. And in selling the, it's a free summit, but if they buy the lifetime access, which is pretty affordable, I think 40, 47 bucks or something like that, I forget what it was. 37, 47. But enough people bought it that I think we generated like seven, $8,000 from that.

Very good. I can tell that you've been extremely busy this last year pulling all of this together as a result of COVID So let me ask you this, Christian. What do you see as the next steps in your coaching business in 2021?

Yeah, great question. Well, now that we've got the program created now doing, you know, the second, the subsequent cohorts, it's a lot easier. It's like, now I know how to do it. Now I know how to do a summit. Now I know how to do a challenge. So, you know, so all the work of preparation is going to pay off. I'm probably going to launch, I see doing another launch now for the, for the year long in May, and I'm probably going to do another launch in, probably do another summit in September and then launch the next group in October. So I see that we'll continue promoting the book because you haven't, haven't been able to do any book tours. So it's been more like a virtual speaking engagement, a lot of podcast interviews. So I'll probably continue that process. So I will continue that process, begin to work on the next book. This first book is a part of a series of three. This one is on personal empowerment. The next one will be on relationships, and then the third one after that will be on life purpose and conscious leadership. So translate this first book, one on power to Spanish. And I think that's it. I think, I think those are the major goals for this year. And do the audiobook. We haven't recorded it yet.

Well, I think you have your hands full because that's a lot to have on your plate. You've been doing this for a while. You've been in your coaching business for over 30 years. You've accomplished a lot in your kind of online course business and pivoting this past year. What advice do you have for other online course creators or entrepreneurs out there or coaches?

I think you Know, persistence, persistence. If you have something that you believe in, that you're teaching, that you know your work actually makes a difference because of something that you lived that worked for you, like, don't give up. Right. Continue believing it. So for the last 30 years, I've had ups and downs. I've had groups where I had, you know, four people. And now I speak all over the world. Last year, before the, before the year before last, I went to China four times. So working with people, high level corporate leaders all over the world. But you gotta, you know, you gotta take one step at a time and just don't give up. Like, even when, when, when times are stuff, all, all the challenges, all the stuff that we have allowed to hold us back, all that stuff can be healed and it can be overcome and it can be transcended. I went from a painfully shy teenager whose adolescence was one long depression, who actually sabotaged my grade point average. I had all A's in high school, had a 4.0 except for 1B my last year. And I didn't do this intentionally, but looking back on it, I know that I sabotaged it subconsciously because there is no way that I could have been the valedictorian. There's no way that I could have gotten up in front of an auditorium of, you know, hundreds and hundreds of people. It's just, I wasn't ready for that. These days, you know, I speak all over the world. I've spoken to thousands of people. I've spoken on the TEDx stage. I could say that I'm a professional speaker and that I get hired to do keynotes here and there. And so that I know all those fears, all those, you know, what I call the self inflicted mind f, you know, the numbers that we do on ourselves with that cruel, harsh inner judge inside of our heads. Like all that stuff can be transcended and it can be overcome.

I think that's some wonderful advice. And I know folks who are listening here can completely relate to what you're saying there. Christian, where can people find you? And could you tell them a little bit where, where also they can find your book?

Yeah. The book again is Awakening the Soul of Power. It's available on Amazon, it's available at your local bookstore. Wherever books are sold. They just, you know, if it's the local bookstore, they just have to order it. The. In terms of how to reach me, I'm on. If they go to my. Probably their website is the best way. And then from there they can find my different social media platforms. So my website is soulfulpower.com s o u l f u l power.com and if they sign up to be on my email list now, they'll get a sample chapter of the book which is really inspirational. They'll get some of the power practices that I was talking about before, and then they'll also get a guided visual meditation on trust. If there's anybody in your audience who's feeling stretched, who's feeling challenged, who's feeling doubtful, it'll be very supportive in that area of how to move into that level of trust.

I will make sure, Christian, that those links are in the show notes so people can find you. I know that some folks are going to be interested in what you do and what you have to offer. Thank you so much for joining me. I loved hearing about your story and what you did last year in the pandemic to pivot in your coaching business. Like it was extremely inspirational story.

Oh, I'm so glad to hear that. I'm so glad. Thank you so much for the opportunity. Thank you for trusting me to have me on your show and thank you for all you do on all our behalf. I know what you do at supporting so many people out there, so thank you.

Thank you. Christian. 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 favorite podcast platform and show us some love there. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.