$250,000 in 18 Months from One Digital Course

Now imagine being able to generate a quarter of a million dollars in just a year and a half with one digital course. Today, I'm pulling back the curtains to reveal the secrets behind my very first digital course and how this one product gave a huge boost to my financial freedom and my time freedom. If you have digital products, this episode will help you see new possibilities with what you already have to offer. And. And if you don't yet have digital products to sell, well, this episode will open up new doors that you may not have known even existed for you. You're listening to the Universe has yous Business. It's the podcast for rising entrepreneurs, coaches, and change makers who are here to achieve more while letting the universe do the heavy lifting. And I'm your host, Andrew Donovan. So welcome to this episod. This is gonna be one of those moments where I pull back the curtains and basically give you the whole inside scoop about an endeavor in my own business life and experience that was, I would say, relatively successful. So we're talking about how I used one digital course to generate a quarter of a million dollars in just 18 months. Now, what's significant about this is this was my first digital product that I'd ever sold myself, and it was my first online business I'd ever attempted at. And it was. I mean, a quarter of a million dollars in 18 months for your first try. I would consider that it was successful for me at the time, let's put it that way. And I've got a lot of people listening who are at many different levels. So whether you've already created digital content or whether you're thinking, hey, wouldn't it be cool if. If I could capitalize on what I currently know and what I already specialize in, this episode is gonna be for you, all of you. Okay, so in this episode, I'm gonna cover how I got the idea for this first digital course. I'll cover what made it work specifically. And then especially, we'll talk about how you can find your highly profitable ideas that are already embedded into your specialized knowledge and passions. Because I know that every single person listening to this episode has some kind of specialized knowledge. I know that you have a niche, maybe multiple niches, you know, valuable stuff that can be creatively packaged and monetized, which is really what the moral of this episode is. So let me tell you about my first digital course and how I turned it into a quarter of a million dollars in 18 months. First of all, the idea came from the business that I had been currently at that time, Building. So I was network marketing with a health and wellness company that I just love to pieces even today. And I no longer have that business, we actually sold it. But I still spend a lot of money with this company because I love their stuff. So the idea came from my experiences building that business. I had grown my own team in this company. I had become. If you listen to my origin story in the very first podcast episode, you heard a little bit about how I helped develop a business system with another team of experts and high ranked people in this company. And so I had a lot of experience with training people how to be successful in this network marketing company. And if you pay attention to my words, you'll learn pretty fast that I'm usually pretty intentional with the words I choose. At the beginning of this episode, I said that I was gonna help you figure out how to identify your most highly profitable ideas with the specialized knowledge that you already have. And that, my friend, is the operative word here. Because I had been building this business already because I had been training teams, my own team, other people's teams, developing this business model for in this company, I had a lot of specialized knowledge. And my specialized knowledge was how to systematically build this network marketing company. Build your own team in this network marketing company. Now, your specialized knowledge might be completely different from that, and that's okay. I mean, maybe your specialized knowledge is how to make cat shaped cupcakes, or maybe your specialized knowledge is how to restore antique and vintage furniture. Whatever it is, it doesn't really matter what industry it is you're in. I promise you, if you have specialized knowledge, there are people in the world who want to learn from you. And that can become a form of currency. That knowledge that you have, that specialization is, can be highly valuable. Okay, so that's where my idea came from. I had spent a few years in this specialization and one day I was listening to the audiobook called Launch by Jeff Walker and he was talking about launching a digital product. And I thought, ooh, I've been thinking about how I could maybe capitalize on this specialized knowledge that I had acquired over a few years. And then I thought, you know, I could make a digital course and I could launch it. And, and because I get really excited about things, this was the end of the year, it was 2017, and I thought, you know, I should launch it with the new year in 2018. And I'm not going to go into the launch process. Okay. I'm actually going to do a completely different episode about how that launch happened so successfully because it was the launch week was $10,000. And for me now that's, you know, that's a small launch, but back then that was a huge launch. And especially for it being my very first launch and with no email list to work with and very little money spent in paid ads, it was really successful. So I will do a different episode with a full launch debrief. But what I want you to pick out from this story right now is that I had a specialization. I created a digital course out of it pretty quickly and then I launched it. Now my goal when I did this was I wanted to make $100,000 in sales in my first year. And, and what was super cool is I launched the course on January 3, 2018, and one year later, exactly to the date, 365 days later, I had made $100,400. And that was just, I mean, that just tickled me pink. Like how precisely was the universe listening to that desire? And how much fun was it to be able to realize that I had aligned with my desire? So another thing that I want you to understand from this story is that I had one digital course that I was working with. I didn't have any extra upsells, no add ons to sell. And what made this work was one that I was really clear on, my specialization. Not only was I good at training people on how to build in this network marketing company, I was really good with turning into a step by step plan, something that was really cohesive, streamlined, very easy to follow. And so I didn't just work with people in this company. I worked with strategic thinkers in this company. It was very niche, okay, and I had a great offer. I made my course, I positioned it really well within my niche. I had a captive audience. Now sometimes people get really stuck on this because they think they don't have an email list, they don't have a reputation. Maybe you're brand new in your niche in your industry, maybe nobody knows who the heck you are. That is totally okay. One thing that I had going for me is that I had been producing a lot of content online, lots of videos, and it wasn't under my own platform. It was under a few other platforms and with other brands and businesses. But people were starting to learn who I was and to recognize my face and my name. And I spent probably just under two years, maybe a year and a half really putting out a lot of content before I decided to launch my own personal brand. And what I want you to feel encouraged about is that you can start where you are right now. You can start putting out content, whatever form that looks like for you, and you can start developing your voice and developing a reputation and developing trust with followers online. Okay. And I had been doing that for a little while. I didn't have my own list of when I launched my course, but I had been developing a reputation. And the most important thing is that I am absolutely certain that I was in alignment when I did this. You know how I know I was in alignment? Because it was so much fun. Because I would wake up in the morning so excited to work on making my digital course, to work on my launch plan, to launch this first course. And then in the year that followed after I launched this first course, well, I still had fun. I got so excited learning how to do webinar marketing and how to run Facebook ads. And those are basically the only two skills I developed to make my first quarter of a million dollars. Oh, and then the other thing that I had fun doing was connecting with other influencers within my niche and guest speaking to their audiences. And that's really what made this work. Now, the thing that important to me in this story, and that I hope you take away from this episode, is that while it might seem kind of impressive to some people, making a quarter of a million dollars with your very first digital course ever, having no email list in as little as 18 months, what really stands out to me is the fact that I had only one product that I was working with. And it gets me wondering what would have been possible in. If I had known about what I use now in my business model. It's a term called Ascension model. Have you heard of this before? We use other terms in different. I mean, some people use the term value ladder, or that's kind of the only thing that people use. Value escalator. I've heard someone call. But Ascension model, value ladder. Those are the common terms. And that's what I want to talk about right now with you. Because if you can get the concept of Ascension, not only would you be able to do what I did with my first course, but you could make a lot more impact and a lot more profit in whatever niche your business is operating in. Okay, so let me define what Ascension is and help you understand why this would have been so valuable to my very first endeavors as an entrepreneur with my first digital course. So Ascension model means more value for your customers and more money for your business. Basically, an Ascension model is a way of packaging up what you know and what you do and what you offer into creative packages. And multiple levels of value. So I want you to imagine with me a pyramid drawn on a piece of paper and say there's five levels, five divisions within that pyramid, okay? Inside each level of that pyramid, you would write a different offer, Something that you offer your potential clients or your customers. All right? At the bottom of the pyramid, the bottom of the Ascension model, you'd have your most common, easy to access thing, your free thing, usually the free stuff you offer online. And at the top of the pyramid is your most deliciously valuable offer, your dream offer, the most expensive thing, the most valuable thing you offer. And then in between are different things that you get the point, right? It goes from low value to high value up the. Up the pyramid. And this is what an Ascension model is. So there are different levels of value within the Ascension model, and the Ascension model allows you to have different things for different people. The whole point of Ascension is that different people in your online, in your business world are ready for different levels of value. See, with me, I had one course. My course was around the $200 price point, which is kind of like something you might stick in the middle of an Ascension model. It's not super low end, and it's not super high end. It's 200 bucks, right? So kind of in the middle, lower middle, I would say. And that's the only thing that I had to offer. Now, there were many people who were aware of me online, who were probably avid followers, who probably liked what I did, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they were ready for a $200 course, right? And so because the only thing I had to offer was that $200 course, if I had someone who liked me but wasn't ready for that level of commitment, monetarily, time wise, et cetera, well, then I lost a lot of those people, and I did. I lost thousands of those potential customers by only having one level of value to offer. Now, when I launched my course, the feedback was so positive. I mean, financially, it performed well. The testimonials were like rave reviews. I mean, people. People would write online about how it just radically changed their business, how they made so many more sales, how they felt so much more confident. There were emotional benefits, financial benefits that my customers gained. And those are people that I think, geez, what if I had had higher levels of value in my Ascension model to offer those people? How cool would that have been if I was able to lead those people to deeper, more intensive experiences and consequently make more money for my business because they'd be paying More for a more intensive experience. I didn't have that at the time because, again, I had only the one course. So I lost potential sales for people who were ready for lower levels of value, not something smaller than a $200 course. I lost that potential, all those potential sales, and I also lost the potential sales of my most avid customers who would have been ready for more to experience more with me, and I didn't have anything to offer them. So are you seeing what an Ascension model does for a business when it's properly built out? It allows you, again, to have more levels of value to address different people's needs. And one thing that I love about Ascension is that it gives a clear direction in your business. Have you ever seen a brand that kind of has their focus all over the place? You know, they say, take my workshop over here, download my digital freebie over here, see my interview with this influencer over here, subscribe to my this thing over here, follow my this thing over here. And it kind of feels like it's scatterbrained and it's a little ADD and maybe a little bit hard for you to follow. Well, an Ascension model really cleans that up. It gives you just this fresh sense of clarity, and it gives your followers a clear path to turn into paying customers and then to continue up the Ascension model as they're ready to experience more and more with you. Do you love the feeling of that? Because the clarity for me is so, so valuable. Okay. So it gives a clear direction for your people, and it also allows you to build one piece of your business at a time while still making profit. How many times have you heard somebody saying that they've been getting ready to launch their brand or their business, and it's been a really, really long time since they've been getting ready? I see this all the time. And whenever I see this, my first thought is, my gosh, just make one product and launch it, and then build out the rest of your Ascension model while you're making money off the first thing. And I really love that because that's what I did, right? I built one level of an Ascension model with one offer, one course, one price point, and made a significant amount of money for me at the time with that. And then now that I know better, I would, you know, if I could redo that, I would, of course, build out more levels. I would have launched the first level and then built something beneath it and built things above it, too. Does that make sense to you so you don't have to build out an entire Ascension model. To be able to launch a brand, you start with one level. And it could be a high ticket item, a mid ticket item, or a low ticket item. I mean, there's not really a right or wrong way to do it. And so if I were to recap all the benefits here of having an Ascension model, what it looks like is an Ascension model allows you, if you build it out, if you at least start with a rough idea, you can just pencil it out on a piece of paper, draw that pyramid, draw the different levels, decide how many different levels of value you want your entire brand to have. Eventually what it does for you is it lets you find your business. You'll find your business feeling so much more purposeful because you see the big picture. You know that there is long term value that you're guiding people toward long term transformation. Okay? You'll feel that your business and brand are full of a lot more potential and you will understand more fully the value that your brand and business can bring to your clients and customers and the value that gets to come back to your business. I mean, just do the math, friends. So if I had, if I could make a quarter of a million dollars selling one course, well, if I had had a $47 mini version of that available for everyone who wasn't ready for the $200 course, I mean, I could have made hundreds of thousands of dollars selling that mini version to everyone who wasn't ready for the main course. And then after they'd gone through the mini version, then I could have upgraded them to the main course. And then for all the people who love the main course, if I had a deeper, more intensive experience, say a deep, intensive group coaching thing, or say a live workshop series or live mastermind or retreat, or maybe a coaching guided course for something like that that gave people more access to me. Well, I mean, I could have made hundreds of thousands of more with being able to upsell that. Is this clicking for you? Are you seeing what I'm talking about here? So my $250,000 experience was from one level of value and it was awesome. I'm so, I feel proud of myself for that. I love that my customers loved that course so much. At this point, that's retired. I've retired that course and I've actually pivoted that brand into what my brand is now, which focuses on digital entrepreneurships. And right now I am having a blast building out my ascension model for my coaching brand today. Did I start with my brand completely formed, my business completely formed, all the levels of value built out. No, no, we started with one level. We actually started with a mid ticket item. It was a course called Marketing Machine in a weekend. And that only comes out at certain times of the year. But it was. That's how I launched this, this brand that I'm currently working on, that I'm currently building. And we have new things coming out throughout the year that are different levels in the Ascension model. I'm kind of giving you away some cool trade secrets here. Are you loving this? So what I want for you is I want to see the value flowing effortlessly to your clients through your brand, and I want to see the value effortlessly flowing back to your business in the form of revenue, of sales, cash. Okay? And the most powerful way that I've ever learned to do this is truly the Ascension model. If you've got at least a rough draft idea of what your Ascension model could be, I mean, friends, there are no limits here. Your Ascension model can include physical products, and if you're an affiliate marketer, a network marketer, if you make your own physical products that can be part of your Ascension model. Your Ascension model can be digital stuff like workshops or online summits or courses. I mean, and you can creatively package all of these things. You might be wondering what's the best way to be able to get started mapping this out. And I've made a really cool quick start guide for you. Okay. It's my quickstart guide called monetize what you know. And it's just a simple cheat, cheap process to drawing out your Ascension model, at least the first version. And you know a little secret, you're always going to make changes as you actually build out your business. There's always stuff that's going to be modified and you're going to add new things on and take things off because your experience will teach you. And that's how your business really evolves. Okay? So that being said, start, start with the rough draft by penciling it out and use my quick start guide to be able to do that. You can download it for free@donavanrising.com plan and when you've got it mapped out, I love for you to DM me and my team a little snapshot of what it looks like because we want to see what you've done. Okay. We want to celebrate with you. And in that guide, there's a little video to help you with your model. And I tell you at the end of the guide how to start building out your model. Okay? And I'm excited for you. I hope that this has been inspiring for you. I hope that you are seeing new possibility because, like I said at the beginning of this episode, you've got specialized knowledge. It is valuable whatever niche you're working in. However, you make yourself distinguishable in your sector of the market space. That's valuable. And when you can let that turn into a beautiful and highly profitable Ascension model, well, again, that's more value for your clients and more value in revenue for your business. Good luck with your Ascension model, my friend. Do me a favor, hit that subscribe button, Hit the share button and share this episode with colleagues and friends and family who would also benefit from this message. That's how we get the word out. And I thank you for being here with me, and I'll see you on the next episode. Bye for now.