How We Save Coaches & Course Creators 40 Hours a Week in Client Delivery

you are the reason your business is not scaling. And that might sound stupid, but your business needs systems and not heroes. This video explains what all of that means. And look, if you have 5 minutes, I encourage you to watch this entire video because as soon as you start it and as soon as you get to the 5-minute mark, you'll be like, oh my God, I suddenly understand why I'm stuck at 30K a month, why I'm stuck at 50K a month, why I'm stuck at 100K a month. So if you have time and you really want to scale your course, coaching, community, or education business, this is the video for you. And this is a problem that if you're saying you're doing 6 figures a year right now, this is probably the reason you're not doing 7 figures a year, acquisition aside. So what you'll learn today: why relying on heroes, instructors, or just heroes in general is a risky approach to your business, how to implement a systems-based approach to course delivery, the role of a customer success manager in scaling your course— and by course, whenever I say course, I mean course, community, education program— practical steps to create your student success system, and common misconceptions about scaling your course business. If you're running an online course or coaching program, you will likely experience this challenge. The more successful you become, the less time you have. And this is very normal for all of my clients. And I realize that I have to make this video because there's so many misconceptions in the industry about how to scale these businesses. And especially for people who are stuck between the $30K a month mark and the $50K a month mark. At that revenue number, in my opinion, in the education space, you have product-market fit. Bit. Some of the insights I have come from working with these 7-figure course creators and who actually used to work 80, 40 to 80 hours a week. So they used, essentially used to work full-time jobs servicing their clients, but now they have a predictable, scalable, and essentially automated customer success system which doesn't need their constant involvement. Like, I recently had a customer who made $100,000 in one day, right? And he said to me, Kyri, me and my partner were talking And we were worried that if we make $1 million in one day, which is feasible in their particular niche and their offer and the way how much that the big audience they have, could we fulfill all of those clients? And now we have, because they have my system, of course they can fulfill $1 million in a day. Um, and that, that number might sound crazy to you, but there's people who have like $30,000 months and they can't fulfill their clients. So imagine trying to fulfill $30,000 a month and then 100,000 in a day. You can't. Your business will just fundamentally collapse. I'm going to use a well-known figure called MrBeast. Obviously he doesn't have a coaching program, but I'm going to use MrBeast as an example of a very well-known expert and how he would fail to scale a business because of his expertise. The expertise trap, or the hero trap, I call it. With his charisma and expertise, he will crush on community calls. And like on school, for example, you might join the school, you might actually own a school, you you do a weekly call, a weekly call every 2 weeks, and then you might DM students, you know, in privately on the sidelines to give them help. You might even do one-to-one calls with your students. Students will be getting amazing results and everything is going perfectly, like from 0 to 30K a month, you can do this perfectly. But there's a fundamental problem with that approach, and that is the hero trap. And you will encounter this between 30 and 50K, and it is a choice to stay at 30 and 50K if you never overcome this, okay? When your business relies on one person, and usually someone as talented as MrBeast, someone who is like, someone who is almost a genius at what they do, and they don't believe that anyone else can do what they do, you don't have a scalable business. You have one, a high-paying job, which is, it's cool. If you make $30K a month, that's cool, not gonna lie. But you also have a ticking time bomb. And the data that I have gathered working with literally thousands of students and the data I have gathered working with 6, 7, and some 8-figure businesses is the course businesses that depend primarily on the founder's personal involvement hit growth ceilings, number one, as in like they cap, like you can never go past $30,000 or $50,000 a month because you physically can no longer sell your time anymore. And second of all, which is even worse, they experience high student churn rates. And if your student churn rate is above a certain threshold, your business will just never fundamentally grow. So that is the hero trap. You're essentially stuck selling your own time. And it's more than that. You actually believe that nobody else in the world can do what you do, which is actually a big misconception and very like, it's incorrect. And that is what will stop you from growing past $50K a month. So let me talk about some more consequences of what happens when the hero needs time away. Now imagine MrBeast has to go away and film one of his 2 weeks locked in a basement challenges. Community just starts to die down. Engagement drops, momentum is lost, and the community culture suffers. And once your community culture suffers, it's almost impossible to get back without— it's really hard, guys. Listen, I've managed communities of 20,000 people plus. If the culture sours, it's like imagine you have a pool, a swimming pool, and you don't clean it. And it just gets dirtier and dirtier and dirtier, you've got to drain the whole thing and start again. I mean, that's what I assume. I've done management, but like, it's just you can't let this happen. You have to do everything in your power to not let it happen. And by community, just the community can— it doesn't have to be like an online school community. If you have a Slack community where people are responding messages to you, they can talk to you. If you go away for 2 weeks or you're busy or you burn out and then your students are left, like, they can't message anyone. Community just means they're willing to actually trust you and stuff. It will go. Your refund requests will increase. Students will feel abandoned and question the value they're receiving. It doesn't matter if you're the best fucking person in the world and you can deliver the best results in the world. If they don't see you and they don't know you exist anymore, you're going to get refunds and you're going to lose money. And your reputation damages. Word spreads that results aren't consistent and this hurts future involvement. The thing about reputation is, yes, word of mouth is powerful to grow your business, But negative word of mouth is just as powerful. You might get 1 or 2 new clients. Say you get— you saw 1 client and he tells you like, you do an amazing job, 10 out of 10. And then you go to— you get another client because of that. It also works the other way around. Like, you might get 1 client who hates your service and they tell 3 of their friends, oh, don't work with Kyri, his service is shit. And they tell one of their friends, oh, don't work with Kyri, he's shit. You now had 1 bad client who's turned into 3 people who are never going to work with you, who turns into 1 or 2 people who are never going to work with you. Negative word of mouth is just as powerful as like positive word of mouth. So the consequences of the hero trap are deadly. So the numbers don't lie. So in my experience, over 70% of course creators burn out within the first year when they're the primary support mechanism. And these aren't numbers that I found online. These are like based on what I've seen working with, you know, dozens and dozens and dozens of course creators and like tens of thousands of students. For 43% high completion rates in courses when there's a dedicated student success system. I have come into courses where— and by the way, this data is gathered from literature, and we mentioned it again, it's not out my ass. I have literally worked with clients who— I've got like CRMs, like client relationship management tools for thousands of students, and these are what I see. So the courses that have student support versus instructor only, or hero only, or founder only, whatever you want to use it, people use it 50% less. That's just a fact, and it's devastating for you. This will— you'll get so much refund requests, it's absolutely crazy, and the reputation damage is huge. There's a 5 times higher student lifetime value when you have systematic student infrastructure. So this is like, you know, I'll go back, I'll talk about it below, but when you actually have a way to actually service your clients at scale and at mass, and it's not just you, your student results— you'll get 5 times higher lifetime value of your students. That means that you're— what you turn a $1,000 client into a $5,000 client because, um, the lifetime value is bigger. Like I mentioned before, right, the front end of my product, of my client's products, is $6.8K usually. We upsell their clients to $25,000. So they get someone in at $6.8K and we get them to buy a $2.5K product. I mean, so, you know, $25K product is very substantial, and you can't really do that on your own. It's impossible. The most successful and sustainable courses and businesses in the education space aren't based around charismatic individuals. Actually, most of the individuals you'll see who own these businesses are introverts. However, because they're introverts and they know that they can't rely on charisma to sustain the business, they build robust systems around them so people can be given results consistently regardless of who is present. I cannot express to you how important and major that is, okay? Major. This is like, this key insight is make it or break it to scale past 50K a month. This is where the use of a strategic customer success manager comes in, but not the way most people think. And this is a systems-based approach to business. Important distinction. CSMs, and this is something that I've, dude, guys, I've done so many sales calls with people who are like to me, Kyri, how can the CSM replace me as an instructor? How can they have more knowledge than me as an instructor? Like, they don't know what I do. They're not MrBeast. That is fine for you to think that, but it's actually incorrect. CSMs aren't meant to replace the course creator or main instructor. So CSMs aren't there to replace you as an instructor. The job is to ensure students follow the systems that the instructor has created. So instead of MrBeast being in there and like making sure students follow the course that he has made, the CSMs are there to take that away from him and the CSM ensures that the students follow the course and that they can answer questions about the course. They're not there to become the instructor. So how do you actually do this in your business? So document, you need to create a detailed student map. Document exactly what students should be doing week by week to achieve success. Like, the more granularly they get, the better. Break down big outcomes into weekly action steps. Identify key milestones or potential roadblocks and create templates for common student scenarios. That's number 1. Number 2, build an accountability system. Develop processes and tools that keep students on track. Set up progress tracking dashboards. Create escalation protocols for— sorry, create escalation protocols for stuck students. And develop standardized check-in procedures for all of your students. MrBeast is not going to be checking in on 100 students a month. That is not— that's not possible. However, his CSMs will be. Number 3: iterate and remove bottlenecks. You need to continuously improve the systems based on real-world experiences and outcomes for the students. So the CSM's job is again to ensure the students actively follow the system that the expert has created, and you need to have a Darwinian user journey You need to build in accountability systems and you need to iterate and remove bottlenecks. And then once, like, you're iterating, the product will just get better and better and better. And because now the expert is no longer stuck in the day-to-day weeds of the business, they can actually improve the business and improve the product because the CSMs are giving them data from literally dozens and probably hundreds of students. So just a little example, one of our clients, I'm not going to name them though. So before working with us, they were stuck in fulfillment working 40 hours a week, which is a lot. It's like a full-time job in fulfillment, messaging students, chasing them up, doing the coaching calls. Um, checking their homework, a lot of stuff. They only had 42% completion rate of the course. That means 50% of the people— more than 50% of the people who paid for the product didn't even use it. And they were stuck to like— I think it was less— I think it was actually less than 50 people per cohort. Like, that was really bad. After implementing the system, they do less than 5 hours a week in fulfillment now. And I think that's just, uh, monthly coaching calls, like a few hours. I think it's 1 hour every week or something like that. Now the student says a 78% completion rate. So I know, I don't know if you think that sounds a lot, I don't know if you think that sounds like a lot, but let me tell you this. 42% means more than 50% of people aren't taking your course. Nearly 80% is huge. It's like doubling the amount of people who are actually using the thing they have paid for. That sounds silly to say out loud, but double what they, they literally paid for your course and more than 50% of people weren't even using it. No wonder you're getting refunds. Like, I would refund if I wasn't using it. But now, 78% is way higher than industry average. The key wasn't removing the founder's expertise though, it was systemizing how that expertise was delivered and implemented by the students at scale. Some misconceptions for you. So, misconception 1: systems remove the personal touch that make my course special. Wrong. In reality, effective systems enhance the personal experience by ensuring every student gets the attention that they deserve. The instructor's expertise is amplified and not diminished. There is no way you as an instructor, or like a hero, as we're gonna go back to the analogy, can service 100 students, 200 students, 300 students all on your own, 1,000 students on your own. It's impossible. But if you have multiple CSMs, or even one CSM who's giving each your clients one-to-one advice and feedback, it's way more powerful, and you're gonna get way more personal touch. So it makes no sense to think that you're the, you're like the make it or break it in your business, because then you're just not going to scale. Two, I need to hire coaches before focusing on my systems. Systems should come first, and then CSMs need to manage those systems. And finally, specialized coaches can be placed if needed. This one means a lot of people say to me, Kyri, I can't give it to a CSM because my business is so complex and so technical. There's no way a CSM can help. This is incorrect. Because coaches, if you truly want to remove yourself from the business, are people who can like answer very technical questions. As long as a core product is very strong, and by core product I mean the course material and the worksheets you give people and all of that stuff, as long as that is strong, a coach can actually be the third thing. So the first thing you do is build the system, right? And like, that's what I build for my clients all the time. And that, that, that's just a detailed user journey. Essentially, that's a system, right? It's just a user system. They have to go through a process, rather. Then the CSM comes into the business and manages those systems and makes sure the students actually go through the process. And this maximizes the efficiency of your time and also increases student results. Now, if you need, you can hire specialized coaches down the road, but it doesn't go coaches first. Most people hire coaches first, not realizing the coach then just becomes another hero in the business, and then it bottlenecks the system again. You don't need to hire more heroes. You need to hire more, I guess, soldiers, right? Or more like people who are like pawns— that sounds terrible— but people who can kind of like— one coach can probably account manage 20, 30 people max. If you want to scale beyond that many people, you need to have a CSM because the coaches aren't going to maintain the systems because coaches are heroes. You need CSMs who can keep people accountable. I'm not sure that made any sense, but I hope you do understand that one. Number 3: 'My course is too specialized, unique for a systems approach.' This is the most toxic mentality you can have if you want to actually— it's actually not just toxic, it's very egotistical, to be real with you guys, to assume that your course is too complex. There's people out there teaching like rocket science in universities, for real. Your little coaching business or your big coaching business is not too complex to systemize, I promise you that one. The more specialized your course, the more you actually benefit from a clear system. It's actually the complete opposite. The more complex it is, the more you need systems, okay? Complex subjects with unique methodologies are exactly the thing that need to be broken down into manageable and repeatable processes and chunks. That is so major. If you're watching this video, you're like, you're on a sales call with me, let's just say, or, and you're like, my system's too specialized, it's too unique, it's too like, my course is too unique, it's too hard, that my niche is so hard, Kyri Nahlis, like, No, you're wrong. Like, your course is no harder than everyone else's in the world. You think it's harder because you've never actually thought about how to turn it into a manageable and repeatable process. And that— these three words are how you scale: manageable, repeatable, and process. Okay, so some key takeaways: if your course business currently depends primarily on your personal involvement for student success, you— like, implementing a student success system isn't a nice-to-have, it is absolutely essential for your sustainable growth. Remember, the goal isn't to remove your expertise from the equation. It's to create a framework where your expertise can benefit more students while requiring less of your time. Okay? Systems-based courses and coaching programs and education programs allow you to scale beyond your current capacity, deliver more consistent student results, create a business asset that can operate without your constant presence, and improve profitability while reducing your hours. This one though is massive. Like, create an asset that can operate without your constant presence. The whole point of an online business, in my opinion, is to like detach your time from the equation. You cannot do that without systems and you cannot do that without staff. So for some free resources, there's a student journey map template. Download a free template in the comment section. This is essentially how to do what I'm saying above to put this into practice. And System Audits Checklist— use the checklist below to identify gaps in your current course delivery systems. That is also below. Let's just put this into practice, okay? Start by mapping out one part of your student journey and what steps do most of your successful students take. How can you systemize this process for everyone? Share that unique insight in the comment below, or just make notes yourself. I don't really mind. And if you really enjoyed this, And if you found this helpful, please like, subscribe, and I will be doing one of these videos every two, um, once a week or once or twice a week to help you scale your online education business. I don't think there's anybody in the entire industry who manages more students than I do right now, so I really feel like if you own an online education business, it's in your best interest to watch these videos. So yeah, guys, thank you for watching the video. I see you on the next one.