Imagine transforming your expertise into a profitable online course that not only bolsters your income but also helps others move past common pain points. We're here to guide you on how you can achieve just that. I will share my personal journey of crafting my online course, The Untangled Path, centered around finances. We'll explore how to pinpoint and offer solutions to prevalent issues, establish yourself as an authority, and comprehend what the community truly wants.
As we journey further into the realm of online course creation, we'll dissect the fundamental elements of building a successful course. This involves selecting a resonant topic, carrying out diligent customer research, setting the format, and deciding on the pricing. We'll shed light on performing effective market research, pre-selling your course, and setting achievable sales goals. Moreover, we'll share strategies on leveraging social media and other tools to boost the reach of your course. Gear up for this enlightening chat that might just give you that nudge to start creating and profiting from your own online course.
Imagine transforming your expertise into a profitable online course that not only bolsters your income but also helps others move past common pain points. We're here to guide you on how you can achieve just that. I will share my personal journey of crafting my online course, The Untangled Path, centered around finances. We'll explore how to pinpoint and offer solutions to prevalent issues, establish yourself as an authority, and comprehend what the community truly wants.
As we journey further into the realm of online course creation, we'll dissect the fundamental elements of building a successful course. This involves selecting a resonant topic, carrying out diligent customer research, setting the format, and deciding on the pricing. We'll shed light on performing effective market research, pre-selling your course, and setting achievable sales goals. Moreover, we'll share strategies on leveraging social media and other tools to boost the reach of your course. Gear up for this enlightening chat that might just give you that nudge to start creating and profiting from your own online course.
Welcome to the smart, wealthy stylist podcast. I'm your host, emily Cardin. Over here. We're dedicated to helping hairstylists manage their finances, stay organized, healthy and manage their time and mental well-being. We focus on staying healthy in all areas of life and maximizing productivity. If you're a hairstylist looking for these things, then this is the podcast for you. Together, we'll avoid burnout and step into being the smartest, wealthiest stylist that we can be. Welcome back to the smart, wealthy stylist podcast. Today's episode is going to be about course creation and how to create your own online course.
Speaker 1:
I know, for me and so many other hairstylists, we have something that we want to share or we had a problem that we just couldn't find the answer to, and so we problem solved and we created the answer to our own problem. Well, when you are solving your own pain points, you can probably imagine that someone else is probably having the same pain points that you are. So something that is really cool in today's day and age is that we have the opportunity to be able to share our expertise or share our resolution of pain points to other people. Through online courses, subscriptions, classes you name it. You can create something to help someone else while also making more money for yourself and helping you reach your goals financially. It's such a neat concept because by creating a course, you own it and it's something that you are pouring your heart and soul into and you are sharing it, and you can change others lives with the program that you designed to change your own life. It's a powerful, beautiful thing, and I actually just finished up my own smart, wealthy stylist course.
Speaker 1:
It's called the untangled path, and this one is specifically finances. On the untangled path I have seven stepping stones and one of the biggest one is finances, and this is what I've been really really, really focusing hard on recently, because we're trying to get out of debt and you know I want to maximize my time behind the chair. So by doing that, I was able to figure out plans and systems that I put in place to maximize my time behind the chair. I no longer worth nights and weekends. I was able to raise my prices and become a six figure stylist and I am a solo, sweet owner. I have a salon in where my garage used to be. My husband turned our two car garage into a salon for me, so I have all the overhead of a salon, but it's just me. So if I can do it, anyone can do it.
Speaker 1:
You know I've I've paid off $45,000 in debt since October and you know we're still on that path, and it's just crazy to me to think that there are so many hairstylists that don't know their numbers. You know they're just out there floating around and just hoping that they make it. There's no retirement, no investing, no, nothing going on. So I want to encourage you guys that if I can do it, so can you and anyway. So I've been working tirelessly on this course, just making sure it's perfect.
Speaker 1:
I did a pilot program with some stylists so I could finalize some things, answer some questions, fine tune and tweak some things, and I'm just really excited because it's a full aspect of all different things that I have collaborated together that will all impact your finances positively. Those topics are how to reflect and set goals, how to untangle your finances, how to establish a budget, how to implement systems, how to set your prices perfectly, how to niche down and only see your dream clients and how to use social media as a tool. So each of those topics has a whole lesson on it and then at the end of it, you know you're managing your time better, you're making more money. You're using social media as a tool. You are taking a paycheck, your debt is paying off faster than ever. It is such a powerful thing to truly know your numbers and just get it all laid out there, and I have two different options. I have one, which is where you can actually have the workbook and the budgeting tracker sent directly to you during this presale time. The course actually starts September 1st, but during the presale time, whenever you do that, I will mail you the workbook and the budget tracker directly to you. Or you can go ahead and do the digital download and it's $50 cheaper. So it's $350 if you want the actual workbook or $300 if you want to just do the course and then you get put into a support Facebook group. That way, everyone can kind of be a sounding board for each other. I can be involved in your questions and you just have a lot of support within that group. So once you buy the course, you're put in the group and you can stay as long as you want. You don't ever have to leave, just unless you want to. So I love the support aspect of it.
Speaker 1:
So when it came to doing a course and creating the course, I had absolutely no idea where to start. So the very first thing I would say is do you solve a pain point for someone? So, whether it's color technique, helping stylists at pricing, how to present themselves on social media, whatever it is that you know how to do, that you have people come to you all the time and say, hey, what do I do in this situation? Or hey, what do you recommend? That is something that you could do, a course on, something that you could create an online course or a workbook or a class. However you want to do it, you could solve that pain point for them. And that was another thing. Like, if people ask you questions regularly, they see you as an expert or they see you as someone who they trust and they know that you're going to give them the best information.
Speaker 1:
Another great thing is, once you kind of know what your pain point is going to be, you can like watch those hairstylists supporting groups and all different things and look what the community's asking, see what they need and see if what you're wanting to teach a course on has some market value, like if people are needing help with it, like a lot of people, you're probably gonna have a really great chance of success and you can look up courses that people have already launched that are doing really well. This is called market research, and by doing market research, you're basically just solidifying that what you have is a sellable thing. A lot of times, people have an idea and it's just not marketable. And that's not to say that you shouldn't do it. Maybe there's a small group of people that really need help with what you're doing, and I think that that's valuable. So now, are you gonna make $5 million from it? Maybe not, but are you going to make some passive income from it? Yeah, probably so. Every little bit helps, and I know a lot of my friends and people who have asked me about creating online courses and all these things.
Speaker 1:
They're worried about oversaturation. And especially once you start looking into creating online courses, all of a sudden your Instagram is filled with all of these course creators and all these people who are creating programs and all this stuff, and you're like, okay, well, everyone's already doing it, so I'm not gonna make any money. There are 2.4 billion people using Instagram alone. There is plenty of education to be spread around. I would not worry about oversaturation. I would just utilize that positive mindset. Niche down on what you're trying to teach and run with it, create an outline and really just dig in to that pain point that you're solving for people and it'll be great. And I was talking with one of my friends who's also creating an online course and I was telling her, with my specific, what I'm doing with Smart Wealthy Stylist.
Speaker 1:
A lot of hairstylists don't wanna know their numbers. They don't care to know that Only 5% of the industry truly knows their numbers and that is literally shocking to me, but I was one of the 95% just not too long ago. So I just want to encourage you that, even if you think that it's not gonna be profitable, go for it anyways, because that's what I'm doing. I just thought this probably isn't gonna be the most profitable revenue for me to take, simply because I am talking about something that people don't wanna talk about. It's a sore spot, it's a major pain in their side. It's something that's hard for people to talk about. It's personal. Nobody wants to be open and say I have all this credit card debt or I'm doing this, this or this. They don't wanna talk about that. They want to keep it all swept under the rug and just move out their day. So whether I make a lot of money off this or not is irrelevant. If I make one or two lives better simply because I gave this course to them, I gave them the opportunity to truly untangle and unpack all of their financial burdens and put it all out there, then it was all worth it. So, when it comes to the actual course creation part, after you've kind of, you know, figured out what your pain point is and how you solved it, and that you find out oh well, there's a market for this. There's some people that I could help with this.
Speaker 1:
If you've never taken an online course or you are just completely overwhelmed or not even knowing where to start, I would recommend taking an online course. Become a part of a community, ask questions. I have another course called the Untangled Path Business, and it has a community with over 3,000 people who are also working on their businesses creating courses. You know all the things. There is so much great information on there, but you know, just learning how to optimize your business and learning how to use social media as a tool is vital for the survival of your online course. That course is $497 and it's just amazing to see how much I have learned in such a short amount of time.
Speaker 1:
I've taken lots of business courses and things. This is the very best one that has all of the information and just a huge, amazing community. So if you're not sure about creating an online course you don't really know what to do, what it looks like, how it feels I highly recommend taking my course and then go from there. You know, see, okay, this is how the slides work. This is how they did their video. You know all that stuff and it will teach you how to utilize every single tool available to you on the internet social media websites. You know having a positive mindset like literally everything is covered in this. I'll read you all of the modules just so you guys get a feel for what all is covered in this course Introduction to digital entrepreneurialism, how to set up automations, sales process optimization, email marketing, branding, content strategy, seo, training, success mindset, platforms to market on business tools, passion building and master resale rights. So it's just a really amazing course that covers every single aspect of business and growing your business, and so then, once your course is created, you have every single tool to make it successful.
Speaker 1:
I'm a firm believer in doing the work first. You know putting out, learn all the learning that I need to do in the forefront before I just jump in and sell. I know some people are like I'm just going to create it, throw it out there and see what happens. If that's you, you do you boo. But I like to learn and figure everything out first. That way it's easier for me to handle it as I go. And then, after you've taken that course and like, truly know what to expect, you'll have a clear vision on how an online course works and then how you can create your own for your own special niche.
Speaker 1:
So when creating an online course, the very first thing that you're going to do is to choose the topic of your course. So, like I said, this is revisiting that pain point. And then you're going to do customer research. So that's where you're doing. You know, testing the market, seeing if there's a need for it, what ages are they, where do they live. You know, really finding out who these people are that you're going to be selling this course to, and then select the format of your course. Are you going to do an online course? Are you going to create a workbook? Are you going to do in-person classes? You know how are how are you going to sell your course? And then you can test if your course is going to have a high market demand. You can, you know, ask customers, you can post in Facebook groups and you know all these. There's so many different places. There's reddit threads, you know. Dig deep and really look into these community groups because then you can really grasp at Is this going to do well, or is it totally crickets? Is there no one who's interested in this? And then after that you can pre-sell your course. So if you have a launch date, you can pre-sell your course and then use the money that you are getting during your pre-sale to continue to build your course, and it gives you a little bit of a push to get your course finished.
Speaker 1:
Not everyone does this. I think it's a great tool. I'm not doing this. I'm actually just pre-sailing my course, simply because then I know how many books to order to send out for if people want the actual physical copy of the books.
Speaker 1:
And then the next step is to outline your course. This is where you're going to set up your modules. So, like I said earlier for my Untangled Path Finance course and the Untangled Path Business course, they're each broken out into modules. Within those modules you're going to have those questions specifically around that topic. So you're just going to outline it out like what all you're wanting your modules to say. You know, break it down step by step. If you're teaching a technique, you're going to break it down step by step and then teach within each step that you have.
Speaker 1:
After you're done with that, you're going to set your course pricing and set sales goals. When you do that, you can figure out you know how many people you're going to need in your chair or not in your chair. In your, how many people you're going to need to sell your course to to reach your money goals. So say, you're going to need $50,000, you know you could sell your course at $25, but you're going to need a whole lot more people to reach your sales goals than if you had your price set at $500. You also have to factor in your value and stuff. But by setting your prices you can say okay, well, if I set it at this, I'm going to need 25,000 people to find my website and I'm going to need 50% of those to convert into sales, which is insane. That's probably never going to happen, but if you need, if you're selling it at $500, you could say, okay, well, even if 10,000 people got in front of it and only 1% converted, I would still meet my sales goals. You know, like however you want to see, that that's how you're going to set your prices, what your sales goals are, and then that will tell you how many people that need to see your product and then how many people need to be converted into sales.
Speaker 1:
And then you choose the right course platform. There's so many different online course platforms. I use Wix websites and they actually have a course creator on there. You can use their platform and it's included in my website fee. There is also Kajabi. There's ThinkEthic, there's Teachable. I mean there's so many different ones and you could just kind of play with those and see which ones in your price point and all those things. You can create stuff on Canva and then just sell those downloads.
Speaker 1:
There's so many ways to go about it. There's not a right in a wrong way, but by educating yourself and figuring out exactly what it is that you're wanting to do can then lead you into where you want to go, and then you will launch and advertise your course. After launching and advertising, it will get in front of the right people, people will purchase your course. And then the last step is to collect feedback and testimonials. Whenever people give you their feedback, you know if you need to tweak the course or not with testimonials. That's great advertisement. You can put your testimonials on your course website so people can say, wow, you know, this person's life was changed in this way. That's what I'm dealing with, or whatever it is that these people are telling you how it's changing their lives, how it's bettering them. People trust reviews. They want to see how it's bettering other people's lives. Can they trust you? You know they want to see the proof. They want to know that their hard earned money is going into a meaningful thing.
Speaker 1:
And then one step further, you know, after you created your course and all those things, you can actually do what's called master resale rights. So the business course, the untangled path business course that's what this is. I have a master resale rights to this business course. The roadmap company actually created this course and then, whenever I purchased the course, I have master resale rights. So I've already sold it once and I already made back my investment because you sell it for $497. And it's just such a cool opportunity because and it was so eye-wining to me because now I could create online courses for hairstylists that are kind of generic and then they can take that course, change it to specifically meet their needs, and then they would get the master resale rights when they purchase that course from me and they can sell it to whoever they want. No, I don't get a cut off of it. This is not MLM, this is not affiliate marketing, this is not commissions. You are literally just buying the rights to sell that digital product. So what a cool opportunity. So I mean, if you're a tech savvy person, you could always create online courses for other hairstylists to sell and give them the master resale right to that, and I would love to create that for people too. I think that that would just be a really neat opportunity.
Speaker 1:
So definitely don't sleep on those kind of things, because it's great passive income. That's not hard to do. I just love the tech age that we're living in. I am not a tech savvy person and I know I've said this a hundred times, but I'm just not a tech savvy person. But it's not that hard to do if you google it or youtube it or watch a, you know, some sort of instructional video and most of these things, these education platforms that you would post your course to have so much free education on them that will teach you how to do anything, even like on canva. You know, facebook, instagram.
Speaker 1:
There are helps, tips, tools, like in your menus, in your back office. There is so much free help that you can get just by looking around. And if you don't feel like that's enough, find a mentor, or ask someone who creates courses regularly or, you know, hire a virtual assistant, like the options are endless. So don't get discouraged. If you think I'm not tech savvy, I can't do these kinds of things, I truly believe that you can, because I am not either and I'm doing the dang thing. So, anyways, I hope this was helpful and just go along and, you know, figure out what you're wanting to do. Let me know.
Speaker 1:
If you create a course, I would love to check it out, or if you have any questions, I would love to answer them. I hope that you get creative and that you can add value to the community and help someone else solve their pain point. And, you know, be thinking. Maybe something that you're doing or some problem that you've solved is something that literally hundreds, if not thousands of other people are dealing with. You could be sitting on a gold mine. So be encouraged today, and I hope that you're on the lookout for something that could help you make passive income and help others have a better life. So I'll talk to you soon. I'll see you next week. Thank you for listening in today. If you have a burning question or a topic you want me to cover, leave a review and ask the question in the review. This is the best way to get your questions answered. Just remember you are a smart, wealthy stylist and you are capable of anything you set your mind to. I'll catch you later. Don't be a stranger.