#232 - 7 Steps To Creating a 7-Figure Course

A lot of stuff comes up as you sort of start scaling and if you don't have a team to make sure that the wheels don't fall off in that time, you're not going to have the capacity, you're not going to have the energy, you're not going to have the creativity.

Hey, hey guys, it is Kate here from hellofunnels Co and welcome to Doing It Online podcast. Today we are talking about seven simple steps that you need to take that everyone needs to take if you are wanting to scale your online course to seven figures and beyond. So this is going to be a juicy one. I hope you've got your pen or your notepad on your phone ready and let's go.

So as I mentioned, there are a series of steps that I've noticed that need to be taken to be able to start scaling your business partner past that six figure mark. So from quick backstory on my previous businesses for anyone who doesn't know, so this is actually hello Funnels is I call it business 3.2 because I've been creating online businesses since 2007. 2007, sorry. And I made all of the mistakes along the way and I seem to be really good initially at getting businesses quite quickly into the sort of the mid, mid six figure mark. But then they would get stuck and I would stay stuck frustratingly for years and I'd be doing everything like, and I'll talk about, you know, some of these common things that people do that kind of keep them stuck. And then at the end of it I get so frustrated. I completely bought business and start again. And then I get back to that same point and I'm like, what is happening? Why am I not moving? And it wasn't just me. I had, you know, friends who I've made along the way who had similar businesses and we all kind of kept getting stuck at the same point points. And then one by one we started to get unstuck and start growing and I noticed again that there were these real commonalities of things that we finally sort of figured out, finally put into place, finally started focusing on that made such a big difference. And so then we started sharing this with our clients and started noticing the same for them. So that is what I'm going to be going through today. So as I mentioned, it's a juicy one. I hope if you're going for a walk, it's a long one, or if you're sitting down and listening or doing the dishes or whatever, have a pen nearby because you're going to want to take a couple of notes. So number one thing that you need to make sure you have locked down or else it's going to be very difficult for you to scale beyond that six figure mark is that you need to be so crazy clear on who your dream client is, like knowing them like you know, your best friend kind of thing and how you can actually add the most value to them. And it's not always what we first think, it's not always what our first offer is and it's also not always what we directly market. But we need to know, like where do we come in and where can we be the most valuable, like make the biggest impact, the biggest change, the thing that is going to make the biggest difference in their lives, obviously in a positive way. Because when you actually know that those two things really clearly it makes a huge difference about how you structure your offers and your programs, what you deliver, how you market it, how you price it, all of that stuff. But if you don't know that, if you're still going broad, if you're still trying to be kind of a little bit good at a lot of things to a lot of different people, it's going to make it really, really hard for you to then become seen as like the expert, the go to person, the master of something. Because you're not, you're just kind of good at a lot of things. So kind of good at a lot of things can get you to six figures. It's going to be really, really hard for that to then get you beyond that point. So that's number one. Number two is you need probably max two really strong offers that play into who is that for that target market that we talked about and that one way you can add the most value and at least one of those offers is going to need to be a premium offer again. Gone are the days of being able to come up with like a 297 program and then just send a bunch of $2 leads to it on Facebook and scale it to the mo that used to be able to happen. And it's probably the story you've heard about some of the people that you follow on the Internet. But sadly it is rarely, very rarely the story today unless you happen to be like a Facebook ads savant, which most of us are not. Most of us are just kind of okay at it and do the best we can. So if you are not like some Facebook ads magician or you do not have like hundreds of thousands of people on your email list already trying to push past this sort of like earnings and profit ceiling just with low ticket offers. And I think low ticket is anything really under a thousand dollars, you're going to need something that, that's a next level and that can be, again, that can be a bit of going back to the drawing board, testing some things out. But one of the things that I was noticing and seeing, not just with my own business, but again with friends, was this. It was sort of like there's this belief that, okay, this is how you grow. You create a great offer. You know, start, sell a bunch of them. And once you've got that offer, like, okay, you just spend more on ads and you should be able to make how much you want from spending more on the Facebook ads. But unfortunately, the truth is, as your budget grows on Facebook, generally the cost of acquiring a new customer, the cost of making that sale also grows. And you're going to end up hitting a point where actually you're probably spending about the same as you're getting back. And then it's gonna be pretty impossible to grow past that point. And it's also pretty sucky and stressful. So if you do not have that, that is priced, you know, with enough of a margin for marketing in it that you can scale it beyond that point, it's going to be really, really difficult. Okay, the third thing that you need is you need to have a team. It doesn't have to be a huge team, but you need to have taken off, you know, a lot of the day to day stuff because you're going to need to start showing up in a different way. You're going to need to have the space to start being more creative, to start being open to new ideas, to be pushing yourself. A lot of stuff comes up as you sort of start scal. And if you don't have a team to make sure that the wheels don't fall off in that time, you just, you're not going to have the capacity, you're not going to have the energy, you're not going to have the creativity. And so like basic things like, you know, outsourcing your content, your customer service, Facebook ads, help with some delivery, like maybe a second coach or something in your program. None of these have to be super expensive, but they are all going to be mandatory if you want to get to that next level. All right, number four, and this is one that I know a lot of people want to skip, is you have to have done the reps and you've got to have done them live. I see a lot of People, they come in like, oh, I just want to scale. I've created my course, I just want to start selling it on autopilot. And they haven't taken the time to do the live stuff. Now look, I don't love launching, I'm kind of anti launching myself. But I think there is no better way to go out and to learn and to test things quickly than to do it live. Unless you've got a gigantic marketing budget and you're happy to just burn through it. Testing things. Usually the best way to do things to start with is to do it live. You've got to do those reps. You've got to learn what your market responds to. You've got to learn what works, what doesn't. You've got to learn what messaging, what features you need to be highlighting and it gives you some amazing feedback to make changes to your offer, to your delivery, all that stuff. You need to have done those reps. And yes, it's no fun, no one wants to do them. But it's like saying that you want to get a six pack just by drinking protein shakes. It's not going to happen. You got to do the sit ups. So if you want to have a high six, seven figure business, you got to do the reps. Guys, you cannot skip those sucky first steps. I know everybody wants to, but if you do, all you're doing is actually putting yourself behind and making it take longer. So suck it up, put on your big girl pants, go out, do the live reps. All right, number five is you need to have some systems in your business around your marketing and your selling. Now of course, ideal world. And if you're one of my clients, those systems would be, you know, some sort of funnel. That means that most stuff is done really automated, really hands off and it's just running like a little engine behind the scenes. Not everyone wants to do that. You know, it's your business, it's your rules. You don't have to do everything completely automated if you don't want to. But you do have to have systems. You do have to know how to sell your programs, whether it's live or whether it's automated or whether it's both. And you do need to know that those systems work. You need to have spent the time dialing them in. You need to know that it's going to be reliable. You need to know that if you sit down at the start of the year and go, I want to do X sales and make X revenue this year, that means that I need to do this number of launches or I need to have this ad spend. Like you need to be able to do that kind of planning and that kind of reverse engineering. Otherwise you're just guessing and you're kind of fluke it if you hit your goals. But to be at a scale to that level, you need to be able to be making these guesses, a very educated guess, a guess that's based on, okay, I know what I convert at, I know what my ad spend needs to be. So you've got to have the systems, you've got to have some kind of repeatable, reliable way of marketing and selling. Your programs don't have to be funnels, although I think you're crazy if they're not. But you know, that's up to you. Number six is you need to know how to drive leads. So you need to know what levers you need to pull and push or buttons to press or whatever, you know, metaphor works for you to be able to say, all right, like I said, when you're planning out that year and going, I need to sell this many sales or get this many clients this year to hit my goals, you need to then be able to go, all right, well that means I need this number of new leads and I know how to do that. I know what works best, I know what platforms work best, I know what messaging works best, I know what types of ads, I know how to go out and get JV partners. Or again, there's a whole marketing mix in there of ways to drive leads to your systemized marketing and sales. But you need to know what works for you. And you need to know that you can press that button anytime you want for as long as you want to get you the outcome that you need. And then the final piece. And I think this is really, again, it's another missing piece. A lot of people don't, don't realize they need or if they do, they do it too late is whichever. That mode of driving leads into your funnels, onto your list. You need to make sure that those leads are paying for themselves right up front. This is one of our sort of mantras. It's one of our key KPIs that we get, you know, our higher level clients to really focus on. And it's one of those things that when I unlocked it and realized and got it working our business that really helped us scale up really quickly and is making your marketing pay for itself.