245: Logistics For Tech Aspects Of Course Creation - #GrowYourLife

Hello, welcome to the Grow youw Life podcast. My name is Jeremiah Krakowski, and on this podcast we talk about ways that course creators and coaches can grow their businesses, make six figures online. Now, today I'm going to talk about something I've been asked a lot. We're going to talk about the nuts and bolts of what you actually need to put together an online course or coaching program, because we use the exact same technology for all of those. Okay? So one thing that I'm going to say is this, number one, and we're going to break all this down for you. We're going to give you the answers to this today. This is actually one of the first times I've really done this at this level. And it's a recent training right here. So learning all the tech stuff is not going to make you any money. Actually selling your course and getting clients what makes you money, even being the best trainer, teacher, coach on the planet, not going to make you any money. And I understand that some of y' all think that that's what's going to make you money. It's not. It's the ability to communicate and connect with potential clients at scale 10, 20, 30, 40 people at a time and getting them to pay you 500 to $1,000 minimum for your course or coaching program. Okay, now the process of, like, what do you actually put together that is so simple and easy to learn? And we're going to break it all down for you pretty much in this episode right now. This is why I think a lot of people, they are over complicating in their head the whole process, when really they need to focus on putting an offer together, communicating, connecting with their potential target base instead of worrying so much about getting all the technical aspects perfect. But even though I say that, for some reason, people are still hung up and stuck up on the fact that they don't know all the technical aspects. That's what this episode is going to be for. I'm going to actually use this episode to send to people who are like, hey, how do I put all this together? And we're going to keep it very simple. In my coaching program, the Client Growth Accelerator program, we have complete courses where I take step by step by step by step in that program. And I walk you through every individual step and layer of every aspect of putting all of this together with the courses that we have. And so what I'm going to be able to deliver in a short podcast episode style pales in comparison to what our paid clients as part of my coaching program get. And so understand that if you want to dive deeper, you want to have that step by step, you like my teaching style and you want somebody who can hold you accountable, support you, answer your questions along the way, who's patient enough to work with you, to be able to know exactly what you're going through and what it's going to take to get you through some of those hurdles that you have. You know, I believe a lot of people tell me this is that, that I break it down in a way that they actually can understand. And that's what I hope to do for you here today as well. And for any of those who want to join our program, you know, there is a waiting list over at my website over at the client growth accelerator program right here. And you can read all about the different courses and stuff that we have in the program. You can go through those. But jump on the waiting list for this and make sure to join as well one of the future live events that we're hosting. You might see our ads that we run on social media. Make sure to join one of our future live events because that's the best way to learn the step by step process. We're actually hosting one December 18th through the 22nd, called Create and launch your six figure course or coaching offer. I'm going to break down the nuances, the nitty gritty of every, every aspect of putting your course or coaching offer together. Okay, but understand. And this assumes that you already know what your topic is that you're going to coach on, what the topic is that you're going to teach on. Nine times out of ten, most people ask me, Jeremiah, how do I find my niche? How do I figure out what topic to work with? So we're not actually going to talk about that here today. This assumes that you already have a niche. This assumes that you already have. That if you don't have a niche, we have other podcast episodes that really can break that down for you as well. And if you just go over to YouTube and type in the word niche, Jeremiah Krakowski, here's what I would do for you. Just to find this right here. Type in the word niche, Jeremiah Krakowski into YouTube.

Okay.

Finding your niche for courses and coaching. Finding your niche, using AI to find your niche. So I got a number of trainings in here all about dialing in and finding your niche, doing the market research to find your niche, all of that. And so that's in here on YouTube right here. This was a, this is one of the best ones I did on it. Picking a profitable course topic or coaching niche. Okay, so if you're stuck figuring out the niche, go on over to YouTube, type that in, and that those are actually gonna really help you as well. I even did a podcast episode. It was two hours long. This was like four years ago. How to create, market, and sell online courses in any niche. And I break down for two hours. This is kind of the first time I ever taught this, the process of selling courses. So we got a lot of info on this topic. You know, if you go to YouTube and you type in courses. Jeremiah Krakowski, picking the best course topic to sell online. Step by step, creating your own course. Time management for creating digital courses. So you'll find we have a number of different trainings on courses and niches and all that for free right over here on YouTube that we've put together over time. You know, the easy guide to creating an online course right here. Okay, so what I'm going to break down here for you is kind of those nuances of, okay, what are the steps that we need to actually start to put together? What are those things that we actually need to compile to make sure that it's all gonna work? And so one of the first things that you're gonna need is you're gonna need some kind of a page where people can register for it structurally, you know, the content wise, you can, you can map this out once you pick your niche. But if we're talking about what teaching platforms, the links that you use, the length of the course, how to match the expectations that people have of the pricing, that type of a thing. Okay, we're going to talk about that. One of the first things I'm going to say is this. Stop worrying about matching quote, unquote expectations of compensation. That's. That's rooted in an employee employment mindset. And, and in business, you get to decide what you're going to charge. 500 to $1,000 minimum, that's what you're going to charge. It could be as simple as you have videos that you recorded with a cell phone and you sell it for that much.

Okay.

So don't get caught up in your head that you got to be at some level of incredibleness in order to be worthy of that compensation expectation. Like, that's just total ridiculousness at that point. And, and it's rooted in, like, it's rooted in job dollars for hours type. I work this many hours, I get paid this much. Thinking as a business owner, we don't operate that way. Businesses don't operate that way.

Okay?

We get to pick the price and the customers that are the best fit will pay it. And the price is a boundary on purpose to make sure that not everybody can get in. Only those that are the most qualified can.

Okay?

So keep that in mind and stop worrying about, oh, are people gonna think that I'm overcharging? Am I overcharging? Like, just get rid of that thinking. Overall, it's not gonna help you to try to even process through that. And it's, it's just not even healthy at all whatsoever.

Okay?

So when it comes to what platforms to pick, I use a platform called thinkific. Com and I find it to be one of the easiest and simplest to use as far as building a digital course, building an online course. And you get to go into Thinkific and you get to build what your course actually is. So if you go into my members area right here, Jeremiah Krakowski.com members area, all of these courses that we have, here's a mailchimp course. And this mailchimp course has these lessons. Lesson one, lesson two, lesson three. And each lesson I got checklists, I got summaries, I got transcripts of the lessons and the video lesson. I mean, we got all bases covered with all the lessons that we do. Any way that you learn best, we got you covered in our area here. Exploring mailchimp, automating it, technical aspects of deliverability, email marketing tactics, email analytics, automation and journeys. Okay, so realize that this is built in Thinkific right here and you go into the back end. Basically what you do is you record your content. How do you structure the content to record? The way that I start is this. We pick our niche and I like to brainstorm with ChatGPT about, you know, okay, what are some lessons that I could teach on this topic? And I'll pick a few of those and I'll pick a couple of them and then I will start talking about those topics. One of the things that I like to do to structure my lessons is that I might go right here. I mean, let's just. Let's just literally take what we're talking about right now, okay? Teaching the logistics of course creation, platforms to pick, taking, payment, matching compensation expectations, etc. Okay, so I'm creating a course about. Please map out for me five to eight lessons and detailed bullets of each lessons, topics that would fit the above information. Brainstorm a few ideas as well that are not on that list to make this course complete. Okay, so this is chat GPT right here. Using AI to help us actually even come up with some of these ideas for the structure of the lessons of the course. So like introduction, Choosing the right platforms, Pros and cons Self hosted versus using marketplace platforms Content development, quizzes Video interactive elements Structuring your lessons Pricing strategies how to set up payment gateways Navigating taxes Marketing and student acquisition how to market your course Right, so like we were already including marketing in here. Ethical copyright, terms of service privacy concerns Diversifying your course offerings Future trends in online education Explorer exploring advanced monetization Membership sites additional ideas Technical setup and integration can make a course on how to build your own personal brand. Course creation, accreditation, guest lectures adapting to different learning styles in fact, I mean building a personal brand and adapting to different learning styles is something that I've not necessarily taught, but it might be beneficial for me to teach on some of these topics. Right here I teach more on marketing. I teach people that once they have their course, and I believe this, I believe most people are overthinking the topic. The idea of creating a course they're over analyzing, trying to make it all perfect to feel like that's going to make them worthy of having success. And I'm sorry to say this, but after you do that, after you figure all that out, you're going to just come up with another excuse because that's your behavior until you deal with the root reason why you're focusing on the wrong things. While you're building your business, you want to focus in on very specifically how to communicate with, how to market to and how to sell to your potential client. You want to learn how to grow your email list and sell to the people on that email list so that they pay you a significant amount of financial money. Our clients pay me $2,000 minimum to work with me. That's what it costs, $2,000 minimum. And I have one on one coaching that's over $15,000.

Okay.

And that's how my business makes over a million dollars a year is we have members in our programs, we got one on one clients, we have high level consulting clients that pay us over 25 grand a client. And so all of that together helps us create this million dollar business that we have. Some of y' all are wondering like how does that math work out? Right? That's how it works out. We got these different levels that we work with people at depending on their growth and their skill set. And there's an opportunity, you know, when our clients are making $5 million a year, a $25,000 consulting contract is very cheap to that client. Does that make sense? And that's the only people that we really consult at that level is the ones that are already making multiple seven figures to help them get to eight and even nine figures overall. So, you know, I don't feel any guilt for charging $25,000 to somebody that's making $5 million. Does that make sense?

Okay.

But I also have free training like this. By the way, if you're listening to this right now, I believe that you can be one of those five million dollar clients that I have. I believe that you can be a 10 million, a 20 million dollar client, or maybe that's too big for you. I get it. I believe you can make 5,000amonth. I believe you can make 20,000amonth. I believe YOU can make $50,000 a month. Whatever level you want to make. If you're listening to this right now, it's possible for you to do that. But you got to break out of the thinking that has you stuck thinking that you got to get all the pieces perfect before you get started as well. The reason behind this is that you're not engaging with the right mentor or the right trainer or coach to actually help you with this. And that's where I come in, where I can help guide you and direct you and, and every little piece help course correct. So that you get the best results in your business. And that's what my commitment to you is and to our clients is to be able to create and get the best results in their businesses.

Okay.

So we use thinkific.com as the platform where we actually host the courses. And you can go in there once you record the lessons. You know, I record these lessons on my computer. Kind of like how I'm recording this podcast episode right now. If you're watching on YouTube, we actually have a video version of this podcast accompanying this where I'm actually walking you through using thinkific and using these different platforms so you can actually get a visual on how all this works overall.

Okay.

So understand that that's, that's part of this. So we have these video lessons that we deliver. I go in and I transcribe the video lesson. You know, right now we use this transcription software right here. We're actually auto transcribing this podcast right here. You can actually see in the podcast in real time. It's transcribing the exact words that I'm saying right now while I'm saying it, which is really kind of cool overall.

Okay.

And I love that we're able to do this. And so then what we do is we take those transcripts and we have the transcripts below. Every lesson, we use AI to help create summaries. We use AI to create these checklists, which is really cool. Basically, the AI helps break down the checklist. You know, you could actually take a transcript of a lesson. You know, let's just say that we're going to take the transcript of what I'm talking about right now. If I'm literally just talking about this right now. And we use this AI and I say make a checklist based on the following transcript of action steps. And I paste the transcript in here into Chat GPT and it goes to work and starts to put a checklist together of all the stuff that I'm talking about right now. So AI really is your assistant at being able to put a lot of these logistics together, at being able to really start to hone in on all of these steps to put together this type of stuff, which is really cool.

Okay.

And then thinkific is where it actually stores it and houses it. When somebody goes and buys my course, thinkific gives us links that they can use to pay. So it automatically generates those links for us in thinkific. And that's why I love using it is I can sell my coaching, I can sell. You can sell courses and all of that simply by uploading some videos. Let's go into a course right here. Let me just show you how you upload these videos right here. You know, here's a course that we're doing all on the Facebook Pixel. Facebook pixel clarity. So you create the lesson in here, you type it in, you upload the video, you type in the text just like you would Microsoft Word. And then you save the lesson. And then your students can actually see it right here and access the lesson, which is awesome. So, so, like, here's a lesson again on the Facebook Pixel and how to get that set up. If you want to run Facebook ads, there's a link right here for pricing. So this is a link that if somebody copies this into their web browser right here, it will take them to a page to purchase the course. So this is already built right into thinkific. It generates these links automatically for every course that you can create. You can even sell a bundle of courses. You can sell it as a membership recurring each month. You can sell it as a subscription, you name it. All of that is just literally one click of the button inside of thinkific. And it manages your clients, your contacts, all the people, and manages who gets access you can do payment plans, all of that inside of here. Okay, so thinkific is one of the best platforms that I know that does this. Another platform that I have used, it's really great. It's a little bit more expensive is kajabi.com kajabi.com also does this as well. Puts this together, very simple, very easy to use courses. Creates these links for payment and stuff like that. Now to take payment. Thinkific has their own payment provider that they actually have as part of this. So they're an all in one solution in. In including the. The payments, which is really kind of cool. Okay, so they, they have, let's see right here, features T commerce. They just added this T commerce function. Focus on creating, not accounting to where they literally do all the payments and the sales and everything for you. Which is super cool. Built right in, built right into thinkific. And so I think that that's really great. They even do like buy now, pay later type stuff. Apple Pay, Google Pay. And it's all built right in here as part of Thinkific. Available to Thinkific users in the U.S. canada and UK at no additional cost. So that's amazing right there. If you're not going to use that, we use a platform called stripe. Okay, so Stripe.com is, is a platform that connects to Thinkific and it connects to a number of other platforms as well. But you can go into Stripe and you can, you can create an account with Stripe and get started with them. If we, if we go into here real quick. Let me just check this out. So right here. Why would we do sign in, go to. So looks like they have this whole contact sales thing. But you can sign up right here.

Okay.

Anybody can sign up for a Stripe account. You know, if I just do stripe account1,2@gmail.com. striped person, stripe. Let's see.

Okay.

We'Re gonna create a, we're gonna walk you through in Stripe. You can create an account right here to get started with Stripe. They'll make you verify your email address first and then the process that they take you through is just giving them your tax information and things like that. I don't think you need to be an LLC anymore to get started with them. I could be a little bit wrong on that, but I'm pretty sure they added a feature now where you can even do sole, prop or individual and do payments now with Stripe, which is really cool. Okay, so I would recommend using Stripe. I would not recommend using PayPal at all for this. Again, we have a PayPal account. We do not use PayPal because anybody can hit you with a chargeback in PayPal as far as that goes. Okay, so as far as those logistics go, lastly, it really just comes down to you record recording the content, you using AI to help maybe put some of those pieces together. And then in Thinkific, you go into the back end and you get to. You upload it. You upload it into thinkific to. And they really are. They're a course platform is what it is. You upload into thinkific, they got a drag and drop builder right here, super easy to use. And then this is what allows you to create something that you can actually sell, sell to people, which is awesome. Okay, so I showed you how you do that in there. You upload the video, you go into their video library, you upload it, you set a price, they create the links for you and all that. That's literally it. That's how you create a course. Now you got something you can sell. All right, so that part is actually very easy as far as the logistics of putting your marketing together. I use Squarespace for this because I think we. We've tested over 15 to 20 different funnel builders in the last month, landing page builders, website builders and stuff like that. And I can tell you this, Squarespace is the easiest to use out there. It's the simplest. It's what we use to grow our business online. If you go to Jeremiah Krakowski.com this is Squarespace right here. When you register for an event like this, a training on how to create a course or things like this, this is Squarespace right here that has this page where people can sign up, you know, this page where somebody can sign up for my free prompts, this page where somebody can get on the waiting list for my coaching, this page where somebody can sign up for the my intensive with their email address. This is all in Squarespace. And so then once somebody signs up with their name and email address, that goes into mailchimp and we have mailchimp that's connected to this. And they got. You can use the free version of mailchimp for most things. They actually got free trials of standard and essential, which is cool for a whole month. And that's the level that you'll want to get started with. That lets you create multiple audiences and it allows you to segment out who are you contacting and things like that. And then what we do is you can send emails to people. So once they sign up with their emails, you can send them the link to your course, the link to sign up, the Link to a Zoom call. The link to schedule the call with you. You know, if you want to take scheduled calls, there's a resource called calendly.com Calendly.com is one of the best resources for scheduling calls. They create a simple link that you can use. It's a scheduling link where people can pick a time and date to meet with you. And they're super affordable. Their free version works for most people. This the standard version. I like it just for the one reason that it automatically generates Zoom links. It automatically connects to Zoom and you can also take payment in the standard version. But the free version for most people is incredible. Actually, they do have a Zoom integration, it looks like, I believe, with, with this one right here, the free version. So Calendly lets you create these different calendar links.

Okay.

And so for your co course or coaching business, 99% of all the tech and the logistics are in what I just showed you right now. Putting those pieces together now, here's what I'd love you to do. Take what I just shared and I want you to write me or comment. Go to YouTube and comment it. Go find this podcast episode on YouTube. Go find the number, go find the video and comment on YouTube or comment on my social media. Say, hey, I watched podcast episode number. Da da da da da. Here's what I am stuck on next and I'd like for you to share with me what where you're stuck now next and what your next questions are. Because what I want to do is I want to make this a series and I want to make continuous podcast episodes on when people watch this episode, what their next steps are. And we're going to create that for you.

Okay?

Which is really cool. So we're actually going to go to work together in these episodes and to start to do that so you've got access to me even if you don't, you're not in my coaching program to get the guidance that you need to have the success that you want. No reason to be stuck anymore, my friends. I can't wait to help you share this episode with somebody. You gotta watch back through it for some of the stuff that I broke down. And I'll see you very soon. We'll talk soon.