← The Amy Porterfield Show
The Amy Porterfield Show
The Brutally Honest Evolution of My Courses
00:33:04
The Part of Course Creation No One Talks About (And Why You Need to Start Anyway)
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Hey there. Welcome to the Amy Porterfield Show. Let yourself have the time and space to figure this out. It will come together. You will make money on the way to finding what's in your zone. But you have to take action. You have to do the things. You have to put yourself out there. You have to. You have to make mistakes, create the course that doesn't work. Just get it over with. The faster you get that over with, the easier it is or the faster you'll get to something that will get you in your zone of feeling great about what you've created. Hey there. Before we dive in, I wanted to tell you something exciting. So you've probably heard of Digital Course Academy, right? But have you ever heard of the Digital Course Academy experience? Probably not, because it's brand new. Why the name change? Well, this year, for the first time ever, we are offering a new experience, including. My coaches are going to review the most important pieces of your work that you learn how to do inside Digital Course Academy. My coaches are personally going to give you feedback on your sales page, on your opt in page, on your webinar reg page, and and on your full course outline. The goal here is to give you personalized feedback so that you sell more digital courses. In addition to that, for the first time ever, we have created a suite of AI tools called Porter that are going to be yours for an entire year inside of the Digital Course Academy experience. So if you ever have a question, Porter can answer it for you on the spot. It's been trained. And on my 16 years of creating and launching digital courses, it knows every video, every PDF, every audio, every exercise strategy question I've ever answered on digital courses. So any question you have, Porter will support you in the moment. And here's what's cool. If you want Porter to help you write your launch emails, it can do that. If you want Porter to help you flesh out your course outline, it can do that. If you want Porter to help you write your social media posts to promote your course, it can. It can do that. So for the first time ever, I am offering a level of support that I've never been able to offer before, which is why Digital Course Academy is different this year. But because I've offered so much support, this will be the last year that you can get Digital Course Academy as the experience. For the current price, it will increase next year, which I haven't increased the price since 2019, so this is a big deal. So this is your final year to get into the Digital Course Academy program with the added support as your experience going through the program at the price it is now. So if you've ever thought about creating a digital course, you've been on the fence, you've thought about it forever. Stop thinking, start doing. I will teach you everything step by step by step on how to create a digital course from scratch, even if you don't have a big audience, even if you don't have an email list, even if you're starting from scratch. If you and then I will teach you how to launch that course with modern marketing strategies that are working right now. All you need to do is go to amyporterfield.com yes. To get all the details inside of the brand new digital course academy experience. That's amyporterfield.com yes. There's a podcast out there called How It's Made and I love that podcast. It's so, so intriguing to go behind the scenes of the creation of something fantastic and learn the good, bad and ugly, the messy middle, how it all came about. And I thought, you know what? I want to do a How It's Made episode about digital courses, where I started, what it looked like in the middle, how I got to where I am today. And I think you might be surprised as to how it all came about. Here's the biggest takeaway. I'm just going to go to the very end of this episode. Here's what I want you to take away from this episode. I want you to pay attention to how one action, whether it worked or not, led to the next decision and how that action within that decision led to the next decision and the next action in that. And so I want you just to see how it all came together. It was not streamlined, it wasn't a perfect plan. I didn't even have a plan when I was starting. But I want you to see how when you get into motion, there will be clues to where you need to go next if you pay attention. And I think as I share my story, you might get the courage to say, okay, I just need to get into motion. I just need to get off the sidelines, get on the field and make something happen. And so that's my hope for this episode. It's going to be a quickie one. I'm just going to run through what it's looked like over the years and give you some insight along the way. So as you know, if you've actually, you might not know if you're an OG and you followed along. You know, I started in 2009, but I really didn't get going till 2010. Like it wasn't official to until 2010. And that's when I created my very first digital course. And it was all about how to do a book launch on social media. I had went to an event and, and I was working with some women that encouraged me to just get my course out there. And because I had worked with authors marginally in the past through some of my consulting work on social media, I had just gotten started. They said you could do this. I had never helped anyone on a book launch using social media. Number one mistake. And so I got really excited and I thought I just got to get something out there. So I put it together. I knew social media well and so I just kind of aligned it with what it would look like to promote a book. And I put it together and I made $267. If you're an OG, you've heard the story a million times. I had made a few sales, but then if you back out a few thousand dollars for video production and getting my sales page together and all of that kind of stuff, I made $267 profit. I cried for an entire week. Hobie had to tell me to get together, get out of your pajamas, take a shower, and kind of push me back out there because I made it mean that I'm not cut out for this. I am terrible at online marketing. I should have never created a course. But the truth is I should not have created a course on something where I hadn't had real results. I had results in social media. I. I had not had results on how to launch a book. Ironically, it wouldn't be till about 15 years later that I would actually write a book and use social media to launch it. So there you have it. So I often teach my students to be really careful about creating something that you might not have the knowledge and skillset enough to create it. One, it's not fair to the person who buys it, obviously. But also it really takes a hit on your confidence because you do not feel totally confident talking about it, promoting it. And that is going to show in everything you do, especially if you do a webinar or any kind of video series around it. So it's a mistake many of us make. And that's why when I teach people how to create and launch digital courses, I make sure that we are focusing on where you've gotten results, either for yourself or for somebody else. You just need a 10% edge. You just need to be 10% ahead of those that you serve. The closer to it, the better. So you remember what it feels like and what you went through and all the steps you took and how you overcame some of the challenges along the way to your transformation that you're now sharing with others. So it's not like you have to have tons of years of certification or go to college for a certain subject in order to create a course. Absolutely not. But you want some expertise in that area, and you want to have gotten results for yourself or someone else. I didn't know that. I didn't know that way back when. And so that was the big mistake I had made. I also really didn't have an audience or an email list, so that hurt me as well. Okay. So the next time I went out there, I created a course about Facebook marketing, essentially how to put together a Facebook plan to market your business. This was more in my wheelhouse. And so with that second launch, I made $10,000. And I was excited, but still, like, wait a second, I thought people were making hundreds of thousands of dollars. So I was still pretty hard on myself. But it was proof that, okay, this is a course that's actually making sense. I can do this. And then over time, that course morphed into Facebook Marketing Profit Lab, where it kind of extended into more strategies and different ways that I can teach. I added a community. And so that course grew over time. And then somewhere along the way, during that time, Lewis Howes reached out to me and he said, do you want to do a course together? You create the course and I'll help you market it and we'll split the profits. And that was a huge opportunity for me. Lewis was definitely more established than I was. He had more experience. Experience than I had. So I felt very, very fortunate. And I still to this day credit him for really helping me understand how to do webinars and how to get myself out there in a bigger way, how to sell digital courses. So he was really a big part of my early days. And we created a program together called FB Influence Facebook. FB Influence, because we couldn't use the word Facebook. And it was $97. I did hundreds of affiliate webinars to promote it. So back in the day, the way I sold courses, especially my $97 course with Lewis, is we would reach out to people and say, can we do a webinar for your audience? Here's emails. You can send them. I will do all the follow up. I'll show up live. I'll do it just for your audience. And I did three or four of these a week, if anyone said yes, I was there. And looking back, this is how I got so good at webinars. It's putting in the time, doing the reps. And so that was a really amazing time for me in terms of my growth. I started to learn how to run Facebook ads. Like, all of that was really valuable, but I want to back up a little bit. I wouldn't have gotten to the place that Lewis had approached me. We did this program together. It made over a million dollars in revenue. And it wasn't extremely super expensive to promote because I was doing all these live webinars for affiliates. And I wouldn't have gotten to that point if I didn't start that first course. That was a complete failure. It was a complete failure on paper. Right. And so if I didn't do that, I wouldn't have said, oh, my gosh, that hurts so much. I've got to figure out a way to create a course that I'm more comfortable teaching and promoting. I wouldn't have ever gotten to that point, meaning I'd still be on the sidelines. And then from there, teaching that first Facebook course, then realizing, wait a second, I can expand and do something with Lewis, which is really cool because I had been putting myself out there, which he saw. Amy can create courses. She knows her stuff. We could do something together. So the Lewis opportunity wouldn't have came about if I didn't start at least promoting my course. Even in a small way. I was still very new, very unexperienced, but I was putting in the reps. So you have to remember that opportunities are not going to come your way unless you start putting yourself out there, even messy, even if it doesn't work. My first failed launch led to really amazing opportunities. That's the part I want you to walk away with. Okay, so from there, I eventually see, stopped promoting FB influence. Louis and I kind of started to do our own things, and he had already had a bunch of other things going on in his own world. And I ended up creating, well, in the middle of all of that kind of messy and murky. Like, I don't remember every detail. I was trying to remember everything for you. And I'm getting older. My memory is not as good as it once was, but I remember I did create an ads course during that time, and I sold that, and it did really well. And then I realized ads were changing so quickly, kind of like AI today. And so I turned that into a monthly membership. So way back when, I had a monthly Membership, but I didn't really know how to promote it. And I was better at courses than memberships, so that ended up kind of falling to the wayside. So there were a lot of hits and misses along the way. I tried this. It didn't work as well. This course kind of did well. One time I created a course a little bit later on again about Facebook advertising, like a brand new course a couple of years later after the first one. But I wasn't running my own ads anymore. The first one I was. Then I wasn't running my own ads anymore. And so I realized I am so inexperienced with this and I feel really self conscious about teaching something I'm not actually doing anymore. And I remember I would call Rick Mulready, who was also teaching Facebook ads at the time, and ask him a million questions. And I finally admitted to him, I probably shouldn't be putting out a course on ads if I have to call you and ask all these questions, because I'm no longer running my own ads. I had an agency doing it. And he was very kind and he didn't say, yeah, you're right. He just was like, mm, I tried to be a good friend. I ended up never launching that course. It never saw the light of day. So I also had a course that I created the whole thing and never launched it because yet again, I shouldn't have been creating that course. This happens. It's okay. If you create a course you shouldn't have created, it's going to lead to something better. Because when I didn't promote that ads course, it led me to think, okay, what am I really good at? And it was webinars. And so I had done tons of webinars for all of my courses leading up until that point. And that was a question I was getting. Amy, how are you doing these webinars? Because I was doing well. FB influence sold really well. My Facebook marketing profit lab sold really well. And so I have these courses out there and all of them were being promoted with webinars. And people started asking me, how are you doing these webinars? So I thought, okay, that's something I'm really good at. I have a great track record for me, I've never taught it to anyone else. I'm going to create a course and teach other people how I did it. So that was probably my first really big successful course on my own. Because FB influence, I'd say that was my first really successful course, the one with Lewis. But then this one was all my own. And it was called Webinars that Convert. So let me back up. I did have some success with Facebook Marketing Profit Lab. That one did well and it made like $30,000 in a launch, $50,000. So it had started to grow as well. I just knew I wanted to move away from Facebook. Facebook at the time was changing so rapidly, and I was starting to get good in different areas that I was more interested in. And so that's why I said, okay, I'm going to sunset this program. It wasn't because it was doing bad, but I knew I had some bigger, better ideas in me. So I ended up sunsetting that course. And then I created webinars that convert. I sold that for a while and then I created courses that convert. So webinars that convert and then courses that convert, and both of them did really well. But the challenge was when people took Webinars that convert, and I think it was a thousand dollar program. They would say, this is great, Amy. I now know how to do webinars, but I don't have anything to sell on a webinar. And then when people took courses that convert, it's a great. Now I've got a course, I have no idea how to promote it. And so that was a challenge. And of course I could say, yeah, buy webinars that convert or buy courses that convert, but that just didn't feel right for me. I felt like I wasn't giving them the whole strategy. And so at that time, I had gotten really good at creating courses and really good at doing webinars. And around that time, my partnership, I had a partnership behind the scenes. If you read my book, Two Weeks Notice, or if you've been around for a while, you know that that partnership happened for a few years during Webinars that Convert and really at the tail end of Facebook Marketing Profit Lab. Then we built webinars that convert and courses that convert while we are partners. And it did really, really well. But I got to a point that I didn't want to be in a partnership anymore. I had converted, completely lost myself. I didn't really have a voice anymore. And I didn't like the partnership. And so it was a horrible year of getting out of it because I gave someone 50% of my business during this time, a business that had already been very successful. So we had to do lawyers and mediation. It was really uncomfortable. About a year in my business kind of just stalled. I wasn't promoting, I wasn't launching, because we had to just figure this out first. So that was a rough time. But after that, I wanted to create a membership. So I went to Canada with my small team right after the partnership ended. And I went to Canada to meet with Stu McLaren and said, okay, I want a membership. I've got to create something big. I've got to make some money. Because at that point, now I had to pay my partner to get him out of the company. So I needed to make some more money. And while we were there, building a amazing membership that later became momentum, which I have now. Someone at the table, a team member. We were talking about this challenge of webinars that convert and courses that convert, and she's like, I think we should combine them now. When she said it, I was like, fire in me. I was, like, mad at her, because combining two really big courses and starting over with them, that was, like, so huge to me and so, so overwhelming. And I was already overwhelmed with the year I had of getting out of this partnership and this new membership I was trying to create. So I was kind of mad at her. And so I went home and I was like, dang it. She's so right. She's so right. Hey, real quick, before we continue, a quick word about our sponsor, I've got to tell you about a really cool model that I'm a little bit obsessed with right now. So. So it's called the working genius model. And I'm telling you, it's going to transform your work, your team, and your life. And really, it will do so by leveraging your natural gifts. So it's an assessment that I recently took. It takes, like, 10 minutes, and the results you can apply immediately. You're going to discover how to increase joy and energy at work by understanding what your geniuses are. And it kind of blew my mind. Cause I thought, this makes sense why I do some things, and I hate doing them, and then I do some other things, and it fully lights me up. And it actually gave me permission to stop doing the things that totally drain me, because now I understand why they drain me. So it's really good. So essentially, you're going to get more done in less time with more energy and joy. Yes, please. Right. So you can get 20% off a $25 Working Genius assessment. And if you go to workinggenius.com and just enter the code marketing at checkout. So you're going to get 20% off. It's 25 bucks. It's worth every penny, but you'll get a discount. Go to workinggenius.com and enter the promo code Marketing at checkout. Okay, let's get back to the episode. So that's when we got to work to create what is now Digital Course Academy. So at this point, we're around 2018 and we're pulling both of those courses of stripping them all down, then pulling them together and starting from scratch. So I always tell the story of I was in the hallway at my house in Carlsbad with Jill, who's my longest standing employee. She's in the content department and we have papers everywhere and we're like, we could add this, we could add this and then we could do this. It was like a mess. But that's how DCA came about. And so in 2019, I launched digital Course Academy for the first time. And it launched to about $3.5 million the first time I launched it. Now you remember, I now have an email list. I have been in business since 2010, let's say so at least eight, almost nine years. And so that was my biggest launch ever. But it was like proof all that, all those mistakes I've made, all the hard work getting up into this point, all that, I don't know, I'm just going to try. It had led me to that $3.5 million launch of a brand new program that felt like me. This was it. I knew it. So I actually launched it later that year. I think it is somewhere around 5 million. So that year it did almost 8.5. Somewhere around there in the first year. And then after that, for most years I just launched it once. I did a really big launch and put my whole heart and soul into it. The whole company was involved, we got affiliates involved because that first one we didn't use affiliates. And so it just became my signature Course became. That's the word I want you to hear, meaning it didn't happen overnight. It was eight years in till I really figured it out. I made money up until then, so it wasn't like I struggled for eight years. But I didn't feel fully in my zone until Digital Course Academy came about. I want you to hear that I was growing my business. I was happy, I was doing cool things, but I wasn't truly in my zone with my digital course until about eight years in. Let yourself have the time and space to figure this out. It will come together, you will make money on the way to finding what's in your zone. But you have to take action. You have to do the things, you have to put yourself out there, you have to make mistakes, you have to create the course that doesn't work. Just get it over with. The faster you get that over with, the easier it is or the faster you'll get to something that will get you in your zone of feeling great about what you've created. And also, it's not like you have to create a course that doesn't work. I'll teach you how not to do that. But more importantly, create the course that might not be your end. All be all, but pay attention. Success leaves clues. If you get a little success there, what is your audience telling you? Oh, that's another thing. Your audience will absolutely tell you what you need to do. No doubt in my mind. And so with that, pay attention to what they want next. When I created webinars that convert, they said, amy, I need something to sell. So I created courses that convert. Then they said, amy, I really need both of them together. DCA came about, but webinars that convert and courses that convert would never have come about if I didn't start with that social media for authors course. That was a huge fat failure. I learned a lesson. You've got to give yourself permission to learn your lessons. You have to. And so really what I wanted, as I share all this with you, is to say every single action and decision you make, if you pay attention, will actually start to show you the path that is meant for you. All of us as entrepreneurs, there is a path. Our story is already written. I believe that our story is already written. So now what we need to do is make the decisions, take the actions, and pay attention to what our next best move should be. And every decision I made, not always right, it was rooted in, oh, so I got this kind of feedback. Maybe that means I should go this way. Maybe. And sometimes I went that way, didn't do really well, kind of took it back. And so I just want to remind you that you've got to get out there more. You've got to just create the course and let that first course guide you into where you should be. Maybe that first course guides you into something that has nothing to do with the course, but if you didn't create it, you wouldn't have realized, oh, I really wanted a high end coaching program. I learned that while I was promoting this course. Like, courses teach you so much about who you are, how you want to show up, what your message is, and they show you that you can do hard things and you can have success. And so you don't need a bunch of courses one course at a time. Building on each other could literally build a Million dollar business. So I had already hit multiple millions before DCA ever was created. So I had a $3 million year, a $5 million year, before digital Course Academy was ever created. So that means that you can have success along the way, even if it isn't your. Your course that's in your zone. That's another thing I want to remind you of. So where are we today? Well, Digital Course Academy is still thriving and not coincidentally, why I wanted to talk about this today is Digital Course Academy is open for enrollment. I offer this course once a year. A year. But here's what I want you to hear. This year is dramatically different than any other year. This year, in fact, we're not just calling it Digital Course Academy. We have decided to call it the Digital Course Academy Experience. And because I am a woman of integrity, I don't just slap on a word to make it sound extra good or different or special. This year it is very special. So I wanted to tell you about the evolution of dca, like how I got here, but I want to share with you what it looks like today. So, along the way, with most of my courses, I've always had a community. And of course I've had videos and PDFs. That's usually like how I've always done courses. I've done live Q&As in the community, but it's looked the same year after year. I've just updated the course to make sure it's very relevant to where we are today. Well, I made some bigger changes this year and I wanted to share them with you. Not just because I want to entice you to check out Digital Course Academy, which I do, but also to show you what you could do with your course. These days, it's so different than last year or any other year I've launched courses. So the first thing I want you to know is that inside Digital Course Academy, we now have live coaching where we're giving feedback to key deliverables. So I am going to have one of my coaches review your sales page. You're going to get direct feedback from a coach. I'm going to have one of my coaches review your opt in page for your lead magnet. Because many of you come into Digital Course Academy needing to grow your email list and you struggle with it. It's not your lead magnet, it's your opt in page where you're talking about your lead magnet. I'm also going to review your registration page for your webinar. It's usually not that people don't want to sign up for your webinar topic, it's that your registration page, the copy, the layout is all wrong. And so I'm going to help you review these pages to ensure that you are actually moving forward in the right way and you have someone to look over your work. So we are going to be reviewing four different really important marketing assets. Once you learn from me how to do them, you create them, you can submit them and get feedback from a live coach. That's pretty cool, right? My coaches are trained on looking for very specific things to ensure that you have a human touch looking at what you're doing. The second thing is we have created a suite of AI tools to support you. And the goal of these AI tools, think of it as an AI toolkit called Porter. So that's what we call it. Porter is your AI toolkit inside a dca. And Porter is trained on Digital Course Academy. Think of it like this. Porter has watched every single video, read every single PDF, has listened to every single Q and A that I've done since 2019 about digital courses, has listened to every podcast I've done about digital courses, and I have trained it with my IP to help you every step of the way. And one thing that Porter has that you don't is Porter never forgets. So I want you to watch my videos, I want you to download my PDFs, but you can't remember everything, right? And so when you forget something, when you get stuck, Porter is going to be there for you. And the reason I call it a suite of AI tools is that there will be a tool related to every single module that will guide you to your transformation. So if you've ever struggled to get to the end of a course, welcome to Porter. Because when you get stuck, if you're overwhelmed, I have trained Porter to be your course assistant there with you, your sidekick, every step of the way. So, of course, you still get my course and you get actual coaches reviewing your most important assets and. And you get Porter to help you every step of the way 24 7. So no matter what country you're in, no matter what you're doing, it's there for you. And then we've really bumped up our community for this next round of Digital Course Academy. So you get to go into a live Facebook group, where my team is there, I'm there, I'm doing live Q&As, and I've got coaches and alumni in there. So I think right now, where courses are, and I've talked about this on the podcast already, courses are working really well. They're still thriving. People are making a lot of money with courses. And the industry is still growing based on many studies that are out there. Today, my students are doing hundred thousand, two hundred thousand. I just had a student do her first 500k launch with digital courses. I'm talking recently. So courses are still working, but they're different. People are looking for more of your stories, your perspective, your experiences. Three things that you will never get from AI. You can use AI to support you, but do not use AI to create your course and only AI you want to inject your. Your stories, your experiences, your insights, your nuances. That's what they're looking for. They want to learn from someone who's gone before them. They don't just need step by step by step. They could get that anywhere. They need you involved. And so another thing that we're seeing is community accountability. It's got to be involved, community accountability. Those are big parts of why people come into your course, because they want to connect with other people who are doing the same. And accountability is so important. We put people in accountability pods if you want to be in one, because we realize that the information is everywhere, but transformation is in your course. I want to say that one more time. The information you're sharing, they could get it anywhere. But if they want transformation, which involves getting to the finish line, having the accountability, getting your feedback, understanding how you've done it, that's the course. So play up your stories more, your experiences, connect with them in live Q&As. Use an AI bot to allow them to have your IP, your frameworks and content, and how you do it so that they have an extra support. Not that's not the only support they need to have, but that's extra support. So it's not just like they're going to jump on ChatGPT. No, they're actually going to get something that is filled and trained with your content. Now, I'm going to tell you really quick, just so if you're interested, and I probably should do a whole podcast about this, and I think I will. We use Formwise for our AI bots. So essentially someone doesn't need to know how to use ChatGPT or be really well versed in it. To use my AI toolkit, we use Formwise. We load it in there so easy and I can give people access, I can take access away, just a really cool tool. So I might have to do a podcast about that one. All right. So I wanted to take you on this journey because I think it's important for you to know that. That it didn't start how it looks for me today. It didn't start here. In fact, it was so messy in the beginning and that is how I got here today. You are ready to create a course. It's okay if it's not perfect. It's okay if it's not. Even the course that breaks your business open, it will lead to that. It will lead to where you are meant to go. Your story's already written. Create that first course. Amy porterfield.com DCA you'll get all the details, check out all the bonuses. We've got a 12 pay to make it really easy for you. But I just wanted to share my journey with you because I didn't get into every little nuance. I had failed launches. I had amazing launches. I had times where I thought, can I do one more launch? I'm so tired. I didn't tell you that. I also turned some of those into Evergreen along the way. Like I didn't mention that List Builder Society is a course I used to have that went on Evergreen. I never really live launched that. I like to have an Evergreen course and a live launch course. And in Digital Course Academy we have an entire training about Evergreen, how you can sell your course every single day and you don't have to do live launches all the time. That's in Digital Course Academy. I literally have covered every single course question or need that you would have to create a digital course from scratch and launch that digital course. I even have a section of Digital Course Academy where you can start out small and just do like a $97 workshop course that you deliver live just to kind of get your feet wet before you go for a bigger course. I have covered all of it. So if you've ever thought about creating a digital course, I offer Digital Course Academy and now this year, the Digital Course Academy experience once a year. I don't know if I'll ever do live coaching that reviews your work ever again. This is the first time I'm doing it. I'll deliver on my promise, but just take advantage of it now because I've never offered anything like that before and we have not increased the price even though we have live coaches looking at your work this year. So that's another really cool thing. Okay, so there you have it. Digital Course Academy experience. I hope I see you inside the program and remember, all you need to do is take action and make decisions based on those actions. Your path will show itself, but it will never appear if you don't get in the game.