Teri Ijeoma Shares How She Sold $30 Million in Online Courses, and How You Can Get Started Too

Have you ever had a boss that has nitpicked every little thing that you do? Well, for Terri Izeomo, that was her experience as an assistant vice principal. She then left to become an online course creator. And she's doing very well. She's going to give you millions of reasons why you should think about doing the same thing that millions. That's a hint at how well she's doing. But as I was chatting with her, I realized there was a deeper story. A story about how any of us can get over the apprehension involved with entrepreneurship, how we can ignore the naysayers, who wants to stick with the status quo, and how we can just tune into science saying, you know what, go ahead, take that risk. So yes, we will cover how to come up with an idea for your course, how to form partnerships to increase your reach and revenue, and then lastly, how to charge your true value. But first, let's start with Terri.

Sure. Thanks for having me, Terri. You know I love your name. So my name is Terry Gioma and I'm a full time day in swing trader and I travel around the world. That's literally what I do. And I also teach people how to do that. I now have taught over 7,000 people how to trade stocks for income so that they can pay for the little things like their kids daycare or, you know, a new car that they like, or they can do the big things like paying off their debt and buying a house. But how do you do that with trading? So that's what I teach and I love it, absolutely love it.

So a few things to note here. First of all, it's clear that Terri really enjoys the topic she's talking about. That's so important for you as well. If you want make a course and you're bored with a topic, you know what, your course is going to be boring and your students are going to be bored as well. So make sure you actually care about what you're talking about. Another thing, her topic, trading stocks. I always say if you want to make more money, solve more expensive problems. So obviously the outcomes from her course are going to be very valuable, meaning she can charge more for it as well.

I always say you have to learn it, live it, then teach it. So how did you learn this, then live it and then how do you teach it to people now?

So I actually went to MIT for undergrad and in MIT they give you two directions. You either go to Wall street or you go to business Management consulting. That was like I was a management major. So those were the Two options. So I interned on Wall street at Morgan Stanley. And this is back in like 2005, 2006. And so I interviewed or interned with Morgan Stanley and learned about stock investing. But then I ended up taking a job in management consulting. Went down this long path. One of my, excuse me, one of our clients was Teach for America. So I went through this path of like working in nonprofits and working in education and for education equality. But this whole time I would trade on the side and I would use that to supplement my income. And then it finally got to a point. My last job was assistant principal of an elementary school. And I had just had enough. My bosses were crazy. They were so nitpicky. They would like nitpick about the color of the thumbtacks that I used to put stuff up on the wal. Really? Like, seriously, this is what you, you're getting on me about? So I decided, I can't take this anymore. I'm going to make my side hustle. My trading my full time thing.

Can you imagine someone bugging you about the color of the thumbtacks in your wallet? Who does that? Who walks by and says, nope, not on my watch.

I want to go back for a second. Because you're at this school, they're telling you what color thumbtacks to put on the wall. I'm not sure if that's why you.

Don'T have anything in your wall right now.

Maybe if there's some residual from that. But what was it? What was going through your head when you quit this steady job? I mean, I imagine your friends and family are like, what you're doing, what you're trading stock. That's so risky. Like, what was going through your head? And. And how did you continue pushing forward with some of these naysayers that might have been in your life?

Such a great question. And I always talk about my aunt, excuse me, my mom, and then my grandmother, because they were like the two angels that sit on your shoulder. My mom was the, don't do it. Don't quit. You can stay at that job, you can trade and work at that job. Because her big thing was she wanted me to have insurance. She wanted me to have a consistent job. And then there is a title that comes with being assistant principal. Like, like people turn their head when you say that you're assistant principal of a school. When you say that you're a trader. People are like, what are you talking about? Isn't that risky? Like, you get a total different reaction. So my mom very much was stay at that school stay at that comfortable paying job. My grandmother, on the other hand, she's a firecracker like me. She's a gemini. I'm born June 19 and June 21. So she was like, oh, they told my baby something crazy. You don't need that job. Tell them to kiss your butt, like, walk out today. And her big thing was, life is too short. And I actually had a friend pass away. And I realized that for myself, life is too short to be in something that you hate. And I would have all these days where I'd be crying in the bathroom, crying because I had to put on a face and pretend like everything was okay. Crying because it never felt like I was getting anything right. Like, everything I did, they just had something to say. And my grandmother was the one that was like, baby, your life is too important for that. Like, life is too short for you to be crying every day. Like, there's got to be something better. And that was my real turning point. Like, I got to figure out how to just be out this building.

So that was obviously a very powerful story, and I think we can all relate to that, right? Anytime you had an idea where you. You want to do something different, but all these naysayers say, oh, don't do it. You know, why are you not happy with what you have? Then we just stick to the status quo. And they might have a good reason for it, but the thing is, at the end of the day, you have to live with your decisions, not them. Now, on Terri's end, she had that experience, but she also had a not so subtle push that entrepreneurship was the route for her to go.

I want to go deeper on what you said in regards to, you know, you left your job and now you're, you know, you're traveling the world, there must have been some kind of apprehension about that too, because, you know, you don't have health insurance. Like, you're saying before, how long did it take you to feel like, okay, this is going to work? Because sometimes people start their journey towards entrepreneurship and things don't work out as well as they want to immediately, and.

They go back to having a 9 to 5.

So when were you, like, you know what? This is going to work? How long did that take? What did it feel like? If you can give us some background on that, that'd be great.

You know what's crazy? It took me the whole school year to fully have enough confidence to leave the school, because I actually. I had a friend pass away in October, which is right when the school Year starts. And that's when I had wrote in my journal, like, lord, if I could do anything with my life, what would it be? And it was my two favorite things. I would travel around the world and I would trade stocks. That was October. But every single month after that I questioned it like, well, I don't have enough money to travel. Oh, well, I don't think trading is going to be consistent enough. So it took me about a year of consistently practicing, training and practicing until I started making money consistently where I felt like, okay, I can do this. But then there's this other piece of. I honestly, you're going to laugh at me, Terri. But I had said that I would quit my job and start traveling. And I got so afraid that I signed another year long lease. And I was like, never mind, I'm not going to travel anymore. I'm just going to stay put right here and I'm going to just do another year of trading to practice again to see if I really was onto something. But do you know my apartment flooded and I lost everything. And that was when I was like, okay, this is a God thing. It's bigger than me. I said, I'm going to stay. And I was on the 25th floor of a high rise and the 27th floor had a pipe bust and all the water came into my unit. Everything was destroyed. My furniture was gone. My everything clothes had mildew and mold. I literally had two suitcases left to my name. So by the time that October came, when I was supposed to leave for my trip, then it was now. I don't have anything else left. My lease, they let me out. The lease, that was a thing. Money. Insurance had given me some money. And so now I was like, okay, God, clearly this is you, because nobody has a flood on the 25th floor. That was big for me.

You may have heard the saying before, when you got nothing, you got nothing to lose. And I'm not saying that Terri had nothing, but obviously her apartment flooding, that was a pretty big sign that it was time for her to move on. Now, on your end, I hope things never get that bad. But do pay attention to those subtle clues, right? That gut feeling that you want to do something different. Now, what might hold you back is the time it takes to gain momentum. And I get it might take two years, three years. But guess what, in two or three years, you're still going to be two or three years older. But you can also be two or three years older with your own business. But for now, let's stick with Terri and get some granular details about how she found success as an online course creator. It all started when she left her job and started traveling the US and the world.

You mentioned earlier that you've taught over 7,000 people how to, how to trade. How did you scale that? I mean, I mean, I'm guessing you're not doing this all one on one, so can you give us some background in regards to that as well?

Sure. And to tell you the truth, I didn't ever think that I was going to be teaching people how to trade when I left the school. I thought I was leaving education behind for good. But when I had that first class in Thailand, I actually enjoyed it at first. Like this was the first time I was teaching something I was super passionate about. And I'm teaching them like what I'm doing in my life. So I actually thought that I would once a month have an in person class. That was my thing. It was, I think it was May of 2017. I had my first class in Texas, in Dallas, and about 71 people showed up. And I was like, oh man, this is great. And I charged like $60 per ticket. And I said, oh man, I just made $3,000.

Woo hoo.

Like that was almost the same as my assistant principal salary. So that was the thing. I was going to just teach one class a month and have enough money to pay for my bills and go. But during that class, I asked if anybody else would like me to teach them how to trade and I offered that I would teach them online. I just, I had watched a webinar. If you know someone named Danielle Leslie, she had said in her webinar, like, you just, just put it out there that you have it. You don't even have to have it made yet. Just see if anybody wants it. So during that live class, I asked if anybody wanted it and two people raised their hand. When those two people raised their hand, I was like, oh crap, I got to go make this class. But it just so happened that as I was teaching those two people, other people started asking me to teach them. So they were like, oh, when are you coming to Chicago? When are you coming to New York? And I started saying, well, I can't come there, but I have this online course. And slow, and slowly, and slowly people started coming. So at first I started doing cohorts and once a quarter I would do a cohort and just open it up on Instagram and then people would come. My first class, 2018, fall of 2018, I had 30, 35 people it was 30, but then there was, like, a few more that came. So it was like 35 people. And I was so excited that next year more people started coming. And most of my growth has been word of mouth. People have been having success in the course, and then they tell their friends and family. So the next year, in 2019, I had, like, 300 people in the course. I remember I did a podcast for teachable, and I was so excited because I had just passed 300 people. And I also, in 2019, passed my first million dollars in revenue from the course.

Wait, what? How do we get to a million dollars so quick? Okay, so in 2017, she did a workshop. Two people raised their hand and said something, and then she may charge 60 bucks for something else, and then there's like, $3,000. And all of a sudden. Let's just go back.

I get some questions, but slowly, people.

Well, hold on.

That escalated kind of quickly from 2018 to 2019. Like, you kind of glossed over that.

So can you kind of unpack this?

I mean, just for nuts and bolts, how much are you charging for the course? And what did that look like?

Originally, the course is 25. It's 2,500 for the first four classes. But then my students said they wanted to keep learning, so we opened up another section. I say we, but it's. I opened up another section for VIP students, and now I taught how to short sell, which is making money on the way down, and how to read charts looking at gaps in Globex trading and how to do options trading, which is just like another asset class. But my students actually requested to have more. So now the class is $5,000, and it's eight weeks. But it originally started out as just four weeks. So 2019, I made my first million, and then by 2020, we actually passed our first 10 million in sales.

Okay, so that's 1 million in 2019 plus 10 million in 2020. During a pandemic. I'm just gonna stop. Let's just get some more information on how to scale.

And when you asked about scaling, I think there's a couple things there. One, I think I didn't really plan it to be like this, but I love working with other business owners. Like, it's just something that I enjoy. And because of that, I had a lot of partnerships with other business owners that had audiences. So, like, I would do a YouTube video with, like, one of my friends, Erica Williams, and she had this great YouTube audience, and a lot of people came from her channel. I went on the Radio with Karen Hunter and just talked a little bit about what I was doing with trade and travel and people came from the radio. Then I had another partnership and it really was just organic. I like these people. Let's do something together. Let's be creative. And that's really how we started to scale between the word of mouth from students and then partnerships with other people.

Okay, that part was short but extremely impactful. One of the best ways to scale any business is to form partnerships with third parties that already have access to your audience. So for example, when I first started my business, I did digital marketing consulting and I reached out to the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce and said, hey, can I do some free workshop digital marketing for founders? They said yes, promoted me to their email list, also gave me a free conference room in downtown Brooklyn. I showed up, 50 people were there waiting to hear me talk. 10 of them asked me questions, two of them became clients. And I realized, well, hell, this is way easier than just dming random people on social media. You find the gatekeepers for your audience providing value in exchange for the partnership. And then from then, all you have to do is not mess up. Alright, so Terri is clearly an expert at generating revenue through online courses, and I'm sure people ask her question questions all the time about how they can do the same. But I had a different question, one that might be even more impactful for you.

So you've done what, 20 million in sales so far, which is roughly a lot. And I'll have to imagine that a lot of course creators ask you for advice. You know, how did you do it? You know, what should I do as well? But are there a few questions that people should be asking you that they don't? But is this so critical to success.

That it's important for them to know that yes.

One question is, what is your mindset around your course? When I think of myself, I don't.

Think I'm marketing for founders. They said yes, promoted me to their email list, also gave me a free conference room in downtown Brooklyn. I showed up, 50 people were there waiting to hear me talk. 10 of them asked me questions, two of them became clients. And I realized, well, hell, this is way easier than just dming random people on social media. You find the gatekeepers for your own audience providing value in exchange for the partnership. And then from then, all you have to do is not mess up. Alright, so Terri is clearly an expert at generating revenue through online courses, and I'm sure people ask her questions all the time about how they can do the same. But I had a different question, one that might be even more impactful for you.

So you've done what, 20 million in sales so far, which is roughly a lot.

And I'll have to imagine that a lot of course creators ask you for advice.

You know, how did you do it? You know, what should I do as well? But are there a few questions that people should be asking you that they don't? But is this so critical to success.

That it's important for them to know that?

Yes. One question is, what is your mindset around your course? When I think of myself, I don't think of myself just as a course creator. I think of myself as a author. And I think people should think more of their courses as I'm an author. So as an author I do a book tour. With a book tour, you're going city to city, you're creating all of these little pop up events, you're doing organic things to just get your book out there. I think that's the same way people should think of online courses. It's not just this online educational tool, but it's you're an author of some content and then you have to do a tour to make sure that you get it out there. So I'm not quite sure how to phrase it as a good question, but like, what is your mindset around, like your position? Like you are an author and then the second thing is you are a CEO. That's the next part. You've got to have a CEO hat when you're thinking of a course creator. Like oftentimes I will admit, like I get a little frustrated because what I love is trading. But as a content and course creator I, what I do is I'm a CEO. I'm thinking about marketing, sales, operations, student service, customer service, then I'm thinking about like software. None of that has to do with trading, which is the thing I love. So another thing is thinking about those. That's a better question, like, what are the many hats that you wear as a content creator? That would be the question. I'm an author and then I am a CEO. And I think that's something too that new course creators need to understand. You are now going to be a CEO and for a little while at least during scaling, you may not get to do the thing that you love the most because you're going to have to do all the little things that make it work.

Lots of great takeaways here. First of all, think of yourself as an author doing a book tour. So you Want to get on podcasts? Do webinars again? Back when I was consulting, I used to go to libraries and coworkers spaces. Whatever you can do to get in front of your target audience and let them know what you have to offer. And then beyond that, you're the CEO and you know what, that involves wearing a lot of hats and some of them you might not feel like wearing. But the thing is, eventually you're going to outsource, automate or delegate that stuff. For now, you have to stay in the work and get a working business model. There's a lot of people out there.

Right now who are thinking about starting a course, but they're also thinking, you.

Know, I don't have anything to share.

That'S unique or authentic or like, I'm just not cut out for this. What advice would you give them in regards to just pushing through that self limiting belief?

I think that everybody has something that they're good at and there's something that you're better at than you probably even imagine. It's something that comes super easy to you that other people are really struggling with. So for me, I thought that everybody knew how to trade. I thought that everybody knew what stocks were. And then when I found out from other people, like, no, Terry, like we don't all invest our money, like it was something that was really shocking to me, but they needed to know it. Another thing I would say is in order to have a successful course though, like, don't think about what you can share, think about what do people keep asking you for? So for me, I didn't want to teach, but people kept asking me to tell them how to trade. They asked me to go to coffee with them, they asked me to go to lunch with them. So I found a need that people continue to ask for. So if there's something that people ask you about all the time, that's where I'd put your focus.

Okay, let's recap how to come up with your idea for a course. First of all, what questions do you get all the time from people? Your friends, your family, maybe your co workers? Well, if it's your co workers, it's probably because it's part of your job. But either way, what questions do you like answering for your co workers? And then from there, take those questions and create content for a workshop. I always say deliver content, live several times before making an online course. You get plenty of questions and those questions create content. It's going to keep on getting better and better and better from there. Record those Questions? Create the course and then do a pre sale. A pre sale is when you say, look, the course is not yet done. In exchange for your early support, I'll give you a 50% discount, see how many people actually buy the course, and then from there you can go ahead and finish based on the demand and the feedback you're getting from your audience.

For me, it sounds like if you have a course, it's a good way to say to people like, hey, if you keep on trying to pick my brain, here's this course you can buy. Instead of just trying to get free advice from me. If you had that experience where people just keep on reaching out to you for free advice and you're like, look, here you go.

Oh, definitely. Like, that's literally why I have a course, so that I can free up my time. Because otherwise people would always be on the phone with me, always trying to call me, and I don't like talking on the phone like that.

So.

So, so, yes, it is definitely a nice little out for. Oh, you want more information, that's great. I have this course, it's $5,000, and you can learn. And then when they come back and they say $5,000, I say, yes, I paid $30,000 and I've had tons of losses and 11 years of training. So you can do that or you can pay $5,000. Which one would you prefer? And 5,000 is just always the better choice.

That does sound like a pretty good deal. And you want to think about your offer the same way. There will always be people who want a discount, who want some kind of a deal. That's not your target audience. Your audience is people that are clear on the problem, they have, want a solution and are willing to invest in it because they know how powerful the outcome is going to be. That's what you're going to create. And think about it. The way that Terry grew her business was based on referrals, right? People do not refer courses because they're a big deal. They refer courses based on the outcomes that you're going to deliver.