94: Jem Millett: How She is Building Her Business Before Transitioning to FT Entrepreneurship

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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 today my special guest is Jim Millett. Jim is an entrepreneur, a leader, and a woman on a mission. She has been a leader across startups and corporate environments for decades. She knows what it's like to work her way up from the bottom of the ladder, and she is passionate about helping women take control of their careers. She founded Good at work club in 2019 with one goal, to bring together amazing women who want to get good at work so that they feel good at work. With Jim's help, they will align their highest values, share their gifts, and succeed like never before. Jim, thank you so much for joining me. I am so excited to dig into your story and to learn a little bit more about your business today.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

So why don't you take a few minutes and tell the audience a little bit about your story and your journey into entrepreneurship.

Absolutely. So, funny enough, it started in elementary school. My first business was filling balloons with corn starch and water, and I would sell them in second grade and I would decide if someone would have to pay a nickel or a quarter based on the shoes they were wearing. So entrepreneurship is definitely something that's just always been in me and I've always known that. I've wanted to, you know, start my own business as an adult, but it took many years until after I was 40 to really find the right business where it was attached to a meaningful why and kind of like heart or hand to heart of service of other people.

So I want to ask you, so you were filling these balloons up with cornstarch and water. What was that like? What did that do to the balloons? I have never done that before.

Yeah, so it almost becomes like a fidget toy or like a stress ball. It's just like an interesting texture and people would squish them like little kids would squish them. I mean, we were all little kids. They thought it was just a fun toy. It was homemade and cheap for me. I mean, I don't know how much my parents cornstarch I used. I definitely didn't pay them back, but it was fun.

Well, now that you're mentioning it, I think my kids have actually made those either at school or here. So you mentioned that you would decide on what to charge people whether it was a nickel or a quarter based on the shoes they were wearing.

Yeah, you know, I, it sounds like a funny thing, but I came from a really big family and so our clothing was not expensive by any means in a lot of hand me downs. So if a kid's shoes looked super clean and new, then I would charge them a corner. And if they had shoes like me, you know, a little bit worn or cracked, then I would charge them a nickel.

I get you. Okay, so tell us a little bit. You mentioned that it took you a while to kind of get into entrepreneurship and I think a lot of people that are listening here today, they can relate to that. You mentioned that it was after 40 before you found something that was really attached to a, you know, attached to a meaningful why. Tell us a little bit about your experience in the corporate world and kind of what you did before you started moving into entrepreneurship.

Absolutely. So I was everything from retail, like service as a retail for digitizing things all the way to working for an EMR company which is like an electronic medical records software as a service, which is, which really that's where I learned so much about scaling. I was able to come in early, less than 50 employees, and help build process and sales process. That really launched us from being a 1 million annual revenue company all the way to 41 million annual revenue company in less than four years. And then I moved over into the education market and worked with a boot camp and kind of scaling their sales from a 4 million to $41 billion over multiple years in revenue. It's not annual reoccurring, but that's the yearly revenues. And so that was a lot of testing what I did in a small SaaS and in a large corporate while managing multiple salespeople, marketing people, kind of over a lot of different areas in that career. And it led me to good at work club through being a director, vp, manager, you know, these different leadership titles and the Number one thing, you do these surveys with your employees because you want to be named good at work or like the best places to work. You want to make sure everyone's happy and thriving. And so you do these internal surveys with all the employees at all levels. The one thing that I saw every survey, no matter what title or authority someone had, was that they wanted professional development, they wanted their company to invest in them and to create career laddering and professional development. But I'm going to be really honest, that's not what businesses are in business for. Right. They have their specialty. And so in order to fill that need, people would really kind of hire out companies who would come in and do an event or train for a three hour session or send you to a conference. And what I saw over and over is kind of that halo, like summer camp halo, where you get back from it and you're super excited about it and you're jazzed up and then within 90 days you've kind of lost the momentum and it's not something on the top of your mind being worked on continuously.

So this, this topic definitely interests me because I worked in the corporate world for many, many years and I think in one of the organizations I was with, I was in their leadership development program. And not everybody got into it, right. They really just started. A select few people got into it, but definitely can relate to what you're saying, that employees, no matter who you are or quite frankly what level you're at, right, you want the company to invest in you, you want to make sure that you're doing everything that you can do to move up the ladder or, you know, kind of from a professional standpoint, learn everything that you can learn. I also think is interesting about what you said about, you know, companies would send employees to, you know, whether it was a conference or whatever, and that the, the excitement from that, or, you know, maybe they have like a company retreat, the excitement for that generally only lasts about three months. And I think there's been research on that, if I recall correctly, that you get about three months out of that. So what, you know, kind of what led you to start what you're doing today, kind of kind of walk us through that process. And how did you transition from working in this corporate world into your online business?

Yeah, so Good at Work club really came from, I tried for about a year to beta, like a coaching program for leadership, like you want to become a leader. And I worked with eight women for over a year and it just wasn't getting the right traction and really what it came back to was the feedback that I was getting from those women were they wanted professional development, not necessarily leadership development, because there's so much leadership development out there, but they wanted more like what are my career goals, how do I identify the gaps and who's going to hold me accountable to doing all the work to get there and really owning their professional development. And this, this pivot really happened when Covid happened because people lost their jobs. And so less than 5% of businesses in the US have professional development, let alone across all stages. Now, if you lose your job, your professional development stops. Right? So I saw this gap where, well, how come someone can't own their own professional development and take it with them to every job, Right? And not just in one spot. So that's really where that pivot came from. I'm really excited that I have been lucky enough to hustle and run Good at Work club as a 5 to 9. I still work my 9 to 5 at Chegg, which is an educational company. But the goal is by the end of the year that I will be turning in that resignation, which they're aware of. I've talked to boss about it all the time. The goal is to, you know, make this the full time job. And we're in early stages and seeing a lot of traction and success. So I believe we're on target for that, for the revenues to be high enough to justify more of my time spent there.

So thanks for giving us a little bit more context. And that's something that I wasn't aware of, so I appreciate that. So you mentioned that you started working with eight women. Was that like a coaching type environment that you were doing that in?

Yeah, I was doing one on one coaching, kind of like really trying to specialize and niche into their careers. I thought that would resonate higher, move them into leadership type of thing. And my price point was around $2,500. And a lot of people, you know, executives. That doesn't sound like a lot of money. But if you're an individual contributor, that's, you know, straight, it's your first or second year after an internship straight out of college. That $2,500 is a lot of money, especially when you can't write it off because it's individual and it's not education like college education. So, you know, that's why I think we were really stuck and not getting the traction we wanted. And so with Good at Work Club, the idea is to have monthly curriculum focusing on professional development skills, have quarterly one on Ones to create accountability of a professional development plan, but do more group coaching settings and give a sense of community where you're connecting with other growth minded individual contributors who are trying to explode their careers, not necessarily executive coaching.

Okay, so let me ask you something. When you started out as the one on one, you said that they were paying $2,500. Was that like for a six month program or 12 month program or what was that for?

Yeah, that was for a six month program with weekly one on ones. And so we had eight women buy in and do it and get a lot of traction from it. But again, scalability was super important to me and I just couldn't see that I could grow this to the masses and hire people at that price point with that much one on one time. It's like trading my time for the money. And I needed to come up with a way that we could help more people and it wouldn't be only my 40 hours a week is the cap or ceiling of the money that could be made. And really how do we make it where it's not dependent on a person's schedule to make the money, but it's still servicing and giving women that professional development and accountability that they were craving.

And I think this is a great discussion because I think a lot of people listening here are trying to figure out what is the right type of product or service to bring to my audience. You know, what can they benefit from, how can I help them without doing all of these one on one. So I love what you're kind of doing here and where you, you know, the membership that you created to serve your audience, but also, you know, help them in a way that it's affordable to them. So talk. Walk us through your launch of your membership. I know you're in the, or you know, in the initial stages and in the, in the very early stages of it. And how are you finding members for your membership?

Yeah, so it's been a lot of fun learning how to run ads in a digital world. So we've got not only network, you know, I post a lot on my personal Instagram. So I've gotten some of my personal network want to reach out to me when they've been struggling or stressed at work to work with me. But we've also been doing Facebook and Instagram ads and learning about that. We've been initially we created a basically professional development plan template. Kind of like here you can DIY it and create your own template and create your own professional development. And we've been running ads on that and then email marketing as well. So it's been a lot of kind of growing through value add, giving value to the audience and then advertising to potential new audience. And now I'm on what we're calling the podcast tour, where I'm talking to, you know, going on podcasts that seem relevant or people that I'm excited to talk to and talk about, including you, Destiny, to see if there's any traction.

In there as well.

So those are the main ways, you know, organic value, give value with free products as well as ads.

So for your Facebook and Instagram ads, is it the professional development plan template that you're using as the lead magnet or what are you using for your ads?

Yeah, that template is the initial ad. And then next week we are going to. We kind of did an AB test on that ad. We tested a couple different images, language, ran it a little bit. So it was a smaller spend, only a couple hundred dollars to kind of, you know, figure out are we honing in on the right aud, what's the conversion looking like? And then we're going to, I believe it is, at the end of this week, launch an ad that is going to really zero in on, you know, the opening of everything, like open cart we're running, let's go get the memberships in. And so I'm hoping that we're going to learn a lot from that first kind of launch ad as well. You know, I've heard many other course people who, entrepreneurs who are running courses as well as people who are doing memberships, that your first launch ad is not going to be, you know, a thousand, two thousand people coming in the door. It's going to be a few. And then every time you do it, you hone in on the audience and message better. And it gets better and better each time.

I'm just curious, have you done anything with LinkedIn considering, you know, what you help people with? I was wondering if you've tested LinkedIn at all.

Yeah. Interesting. We were just talking about how that was off our radar for a while, and we are just now in strategy stages to figure out exactly what we want to do in LinkedIn. Their cost for advertising is significantly higher, but we may get a better return. Right. So we're putting together a strategy and looking at what the budget would look like for there, and then we'll be testing that probably in July. I think we wanted to focus on the launch, how we had originally strategized it and, and learn what we can learn from it. And then do another one in July. So our cart will always be open, but we go through the launch mechanics every 30 days for the rest of the year just so we can get better at our advertising, if that makes sense to you.

It does, yeah. So basically it's an evergreen sales funnel, but you're still driving traffic through it.

Exactly.

And I think for a lot of memberships, that's, especially when you're just starting out, that's a great way to do that. So walk us through, what do you see as next steps? So you're, you know, gearing up for this membership you want to have, you know, I'm assuming you have a schedule or kind of a plan of how many members you'd like to see in this membership for you kind of turn in your 9 to 5 notice. Kind of walk us through. What do you see as next steps?

Yeah, so the goal is by end of year that we're at 1,000 members. Our, our cost is really low for members. So it's a low activation. What I like to call, you know, getting someone across the border. It's, it's the way I look at it is it's the cost of a gym membership. So it's $49 a month. But instead of going and working out your body, you're working out your career. And so we've kept it pretty low so that it's a lower cost, kind of less. Less. Oh, I need a demo less. I need a one on one conversation. But we're giving the value of something that's well, you know, like $400 a month kind of value so that we can really create that buzz and get more members in. As far as revenue goes at dollar month, it seems like not enough for profit. If you look at, well, 100 members, where, what, less than 5,000amonth, like that's not enough for a whole job. But if we can get to a thousand. And many memberships that I see that aren't about this direct to consumer for professional development. But let's take, I look at. What is her name? Jasmine Starr, who is social curator. So she's all about social media marketing for business owners. I look at hers and she's well past. She's like tens of thousands members. Right. And she's a very similar like monthly deliverable and then weekly support through group meetings in her Facebook, private Facebook group. So I know these things are possible. I'm just approaching it in a way that the professional development market has always been B2B and I'm shaking it up by going B2C and keeping it so low.

Yeah. And I, I think that's a great approach. I was also, as you were going through that and kind of walking through your, your strategies, I'm wondering if there's any corporations out there that would be interested in buying this for their employees.

Yeah, so we've definitely discussed that because that's a whole different type of marketing, enterprise marketing and it's, it's not on the roadmap for this year but it is definitely something we can look at. I always wanted to keep it direct to consumer. Like I don't want it to be where we're customizing our curriculum for businesses but we're really focusing on how to own your professional development. Figuring out what's important to you no matter what industry or what company you're working for and it following you. But if a company wants to sponsor that payment, that's great, that's awesome. And we're willing to do some partnerships with it. But I think really the B2C a lot of people have a hard time seeing because there's not someone else who's done it before seeing the potential there. But I know there's so much potential there. We've already have women pre launch involved paying that monthly and loving it, giving us tons of great feedback. And that's not even a really big community yet. But as it grows it's just going to become even more robust because, because part of what you're getting is that community of like minded business, like minded women who are also trying to grow their careers.

I definitely see the value in it and I wish I'd had something like this 20 years ago when I was, you know, looking to build my, my skills and leadership skills and professional development. My closing question for you Jim is what advice do you have for other online course creators or entrepreneurs out there? And I'm particularly interested because you're in the process right now of really building up this business and leaving your nine to five. So I'm interested to hear what you have to say to them about that.

Yeah, I think it's really important. Number one, if you're doing it as, as the, like you know, 5 to 9 to replace the 9 to 5 is you have to know your numbers, you have to know the cost of everything. You have to understand how much do I need to consistently make for how long. Especially if you're a course person, like not you can get a bunch of sales, but can you 10 sales that month is what you need for revenue. Can you consistently get 10 every month. How many months do you need to prove that to yourself in order to know if you're a membership? Right. Those you need to pay attention to your churn as well. So maybe you get 100 sign up a month. How many are you losing? Are you paying attention to that churn? And what's the grand total number you need to know that you can consistently be at to cover your costs, cover that salary in order to switch over. So for me it was a thousand. I know I can switch over, hire a person and we can double our business once we hit 1000. We're like golden 100% can switch off of me working a 9 to 5. So really focusing on what that number is. The other thing that I would say for advice is if you're early stage like I am, you have to approach everything you do. It's great to have a goal like this lunch. I'm going to get 100. That's an awesome goal. But the real goal should be I'm going to learn. So when it doesn't hit that 100, you're not down in the dumps. You're not saying maybe this isn't the right thing, but you're learning from it so that the next one you can get better traction. And don't be afraid to talk to people and get asked the hard questions like what is what about what I'm providing for you isn't working. What do you feel like I need more of those hard questions, while you might be psyched up about your product, will give you so much insight in pivots that you need to make to better serve your audience.

And I think that's some great advice of really digging in and working with your clients, your customers and getting feedback from them because that's what you did right? You, you did that and figured out you I need to change how I'm serving them. So thank you for that. Jim. Where can people find you and to learn more about your membership?

Yeah, so our website is Good at Work Club instead of dot com. We're also on Instagram, Good at Work Club and then personally on there. I'm Jem and then C A Z. I'm in Arizona so jemcas if you want to look me up. But we would love if anyone, you know, wants to follow along. We're all about talking about professional development and how to be efficient at work and productivity and I will make sure.

That those links are in the show notes so people know where to find you. And Jim, thank you so much for sharing your story. I love talking with you because you're kind of in a different kind of journey, if you would, because you're in the process of Transitioning from your 9 to 5 to this as a full time career. So thank you so much for sharing that with us today.

Thank you. Destiny.

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.