Episode 106 transcript:

Hey friends. Welcome back. So this week I'm going to do my best to show you a little behind the scenes and pull the curtain back on the online business school membership. It's been a while since we've really done a deep dive and talked about the content that's available in the membership. Um, and it becomes a little bit, um, it's hard. It's impossible, really for me to write this out for an Instagram post or something like that. So I figured, you know what, let's just dedicate a whole podcast episode to it. If you've been thinking about joining, let me remind you, this is the last week of open enrollment and then we close up until next year. So if you're wanting to make moves and get started now to set yourself up to open 20 22 completely different than where you're standing right now, this would be the time to go ahead and do that.

Invite you to join. I'm excited to support you, but let me explain a little bit more about what you get once you get in there. Okay. So you may have heard me talk about my CEO method and this is a method that really how I built my business. I just want to mention too, that that doesn't mean you are going to follow this exact method for your own business. What worked for me? What many of my clients have done? You can pick and choose and move around in the content in the portal accordingly. So what happens the day you join the membership? The day you join, you get an email welcome email with login instructions for the portal. You get an invitation link to join the private peer support, Facebook community, and a little bit more info for me about kind of what to expect, where to find, um, scheduled coaching sessions.

And we'll talk about that later, but let's go first to the portal. So when you log into the portal, you will have access to all of my courses, all of my templates, all of my downloads, digital downloads, workbooks, meditations, all of the above. Now you can start at the beginning and just work your way through or feel into what feels right. If there's something specific you're working on, go to that module, they are pretty, I think, pretty organized in the way that they're laid out and presented. So it's easy to find what you're looking for. My suggestion is to go to the peer support community, the Facebook group, and tell me, post in there, what you're working on, where you're at, you know, what you need help with. And I will direct you to a module so that you don't have to go in and try to watch everything to figure out the answer, that peer support group.

I moderate it. I'm in there all the time, supporting you and answering your questions. That's the hub. That is our community hub. That's a space that I want you to utilize. So back to the portal and your questions, if you post something, you're not sure where to find it. I will direct you to a module in the portal that I think will help you. If there isn't one, that's fine. I'll still tell you whatever. Um, I know about answering whatever question you have with where you're stuck at in your business. Now in the portal, going back to the CEO method, by the way, if it's a little loud here, it's because I'm directly under the kids' playroom and they just come from school. So they're upstairs playing. And I wanted to go ahead and do this. Um, before we get some dinner started so sorry for any background noise, but this is real life.

Okay. So the create expand offer method, CEO. This is how I built my business. I started with creating digital products and then I moved on to expanding my audience, to have people to sell the digital products to. And then I learned how to sell online. That's the offer piece it's effectively selling online, which is very different than selling in person. And there's a lot of nuanced things that I think can be really helpful for you to understand as you're getting started, setting up your online stuff. I'll also mention that this is not only for people who want to have virtual doula businesses. This is for any birth professional running, any, any type of business that falls under the umbrella of birth professionals or birth workers. So if you're a placenta encapsulation specialist, if you are an IBC LC, if you are a childbirth educator, a pelvic floor, physical therapist, anything that falls under that umbrella, this will be helpful to you.

Even if you don't want to do virtual doula work, this will be helpful to you. Even if you primarily want to offer in-person services, this will be helpful to you. Okay, we're going to start with a C and I'm going to explain that course. So the create of the CEO is course creation for birth pros. It is my original course that I made for birth professionals that was originally a course creation for doulas. It's a three module course, and you don't have to be tech savvy to make a digital course. I promise my first digital course was in FA in a Facebook group, honestly. So that's where we start. And I don't teach to platforms. I've had people ask me, you know, which program, which software they need to learn, how to do these things. You don't need a specific software or platform. I like to teach fundamentals that are universal.

You can apply this to any business, any industry, any niche, any software, any program, any tech skill. I start with the basics so that you can just take the first step and start your first course. And then you can get fancier over time. And I have content on that as well. So module one takes you through the content, the design and creation for your online course, how to build your content. And by the way, if it's a childbirth education course that you are planning to create, you also get included in this a copy of my sample core curriculum. So you can use that as well and brand it for your own stuff, change things around, put it in your own voice. It's a sample for you to use. And it comes in a Microsoft word document and slides and do what that as you wish, module two guides you through how to use media and technology for your course, because a lot of people are like, well, what, how do I like actually do it?

Okay. I want a digital course, but like, what do I do? How do I record it? What do I do with videos? How do I make it accessible to people? And that's what module module two is all about is just really simplifying the media and technology. Again, you don't need fancy equipment. If you're listening to this podcast on a phone in today's world, you have enough to start honestly, video three discusses, how to get paid for your online course, where to host it online so that you can get paid and make money off of it and sell it in an automated way, how to position it within your business and how to price the course relative to the other things that you have. The other offers that you have, if you have other offers and reminder that each one of these modules comes with its own workbook, okay, let's move on to expand, which is the second course that you have access to in the membership.

This is audience expansion. This is an incredible course that I built when I was expanding my audience rapidly, mostly organically, meaning I do not teach Facebook ads. I do not teach any ads because honestly I have very conflicting feelings about ads, especially lately. I prefer to do most of the audience building. And especially the way I teach it organically, no ads. If you want to go and venture into ads, I can give you advice and the peer support community. But my content, my courses do not discuss ads. I have a feeling that sometimes when we rely too much on ads, it's almost like we're putting our power. We're giving away our power in our business. And I firmly believe that we hold the power and doing things organically. There are a lot of ways you can build your audience organically without using ads. So that's how I teach now audience expansion.

The course also has three modules. So there's three different videos. Video, one guides you through creating your email list with so that we go beyond a pop-up on your website that says, click here to subscribe. And I'll keep you updated on things. Or, you know, something with that very generic blanket statement, that many website, any website platforms just have built in as an automated. And if you have that, no judge, we start, we have to start somewhere. Right? But my question to you is, has anybody opted in other than your mom and your grandma and your niece or your cousin? I know I used to do it too. So they're then them, has it been effective? And unless you are beyond say, and you want to be on her email was to just hear anything that she says my guess is it's probably not. So I'm going to teach you how to create a lead generation tool.

That's effectively what we're talking about with this first step. It's not going to be the same for everybody over. I built a lot of them in the beginning. So after several months of doing that, I accumulated so many that I put them in a free, free resource library for pregnant folks. Yours might be very different and probably will be. So I teach you how to create some type of free thing, a resource let's think of it that way. You're providing a high service resource for free for your community, that you make one time and then they get to download it while you're sleeping. While you are playing with your kids, while you are doing whatever, living your life and they exchange their email list for this thing that you built and you created, and I show you kind of with, I have loads of tutorials, by the way that I show you, step-by-step how, where to put those types of things.

So that it's automated video two. I teach you how to use social proof to position yourself as the authority that you are. So let me explain what that means. Social proof is kind of like street cred, but for the online business space, social proof is what you see when you land on my Instagram and you browse around through my IgE highlights. Maybe you scroll over to the featured in highlights. If you haven't done that, I recommend doing it because it gives you a good feel for what I'm talking about here with social proof. So go to my Instagram, highlights and scroll over to featured and look at all of the spaces where I've been featured. So what I'm doing might to some, it might be like, oh yeah, okay, she's showing off or whatever. But what I'm actually doing is showing you proof of the authority that I have, that I take up.

And in this space, testimonials from clients, whether they were pregnant or other birth professionals, uh, times you've been on the news or featured in publications. So I teach you how to use that. And if you don't think you have social yet, I will teach you how to build it, how to get social proof, how to get your name out there, get the word out about who you are, specifically, who you're helping. And if you came to my free event recently, then you know who you're here to help and how you help them. And I will teach you, I also give you templates and scripts so that you can reach out to the appropriate organizations that you think would really benefit from your services. Their audiences would majorly benefit from hearing how you can help and how you can pitch them. So I give you the script, you change the words and plug in your name, you know, their name, whatever little words you want to adjust.

So I will teach you how to build up your social proof. Another example, go to my website, go to my homepage and scroll down what you see when you browse through my website. You'll see a lot of social proof. And I did that intentionally. It's kind of like the concept of, um, reading a ton of reviews before you buy, before you buy something. And I do that all the time. Uh, when I'm at looking for, you know, workout clothes at Nordstrom, if these yoga leggings are like a two star rating from everybody, I'm probably not going to buy them. You know? But if I see that these leggings that I thought were really cute, maybe they're on sale and they're five star rating. Then I'm probably going to go for it. This is that concept in a way, it just looks a little different, right?

So there's an entire module that teaches you how to do that. So that when people land on your page, on your website, wherever you're at online, they kind of browse around. It's stocking their internet, stalking you. And I do it too. And you know, you do it too. We all do it because what we're doing is trying to go through that. No, like trust journey to see if we know this, get to know this person, see if we liked them. And if we do, do we trust them? And part of that is stopping them, watching all their old stuff, reading through some of their posts, clicking around on their website, seeing who talks about them, seeing what people say about them. It's important. It's important because the internet online space is full of some really what word do I want to use? Unaligned individuals. And so to find the people that are aligned for us, we want to see social proof.

Even if you don't realize that's what you're looking for, that's what you're doing. And you've probably done it about me too. And I totally respect it. In fact, that's why I put those things there. It's showing off, but it's also like here's evidence of the work that I'm doing, right? So that's social proof. And then video three, module three, and audience expansion is all about your expansion mindset and how to move past and move through the fear of putting yourself out there. Because listen, it's not just you, almost every single person that, I mean, there have been only a couple of people I've worked with over the last several years that have no fear of putting themselves out there saying everything they want to say, being on video, all of the above, they are a rare breed. Um, people that I highly admire because I was not like that. I know it might seem like it because now I go on video and I do lives and I toot my own horn, but I had to build this up. I had to do the expansion mindset work for myself because I knew that if I'm going to reach the point and merge with the version of myself, that I desire to be, I need to do things a little differently. I need to make some changes and I need to do some scary things. And one of those was putting myself out there as scary as it was.

Okay. Let's move on to, oh, and the CEO methods. So offer this is the selling module. Originally it's called selling courses. It's basically the course I should say, not module, but the course itself is all about selling online. It is four modules. And let me tell you, if you have an aversion or resistance to selling, we have to work through that because you are literally, it feels energetically. Like you're putting your hand up in the air, like do it with me. Now, if you can't, if you're not driving, put your hand up in the air and holds it out. As though you're stopping somebody from coming at you. If you are resistant to selling online, you are stopping money from flowing to you. That is what's happening. And there's a lot of layers to this. We dug into it a little bit. We scratched the surface recently in the free event, but that's what's happening.

And so the truth is that you have to get comfortable selling because my belief is that you are doing a disservice to your community. If you are not offering them, your services, AKA selling, selling is a high, valuable service that you provide. And I had to learn that the way that I can wrap my head around that I should say was recognizing, cause I had a pretty nasty taste about sales as well. I did. And I've shared a lot about it over the past. Um, but I've had some pretty nasty sales experiences of people doing, you know, being sales-y and gross and icky to me and dropping in my DMS and telling me they can teach me how to lose 20 pounds in 20 days. And you know, all that nasty. And I had to work through my own stuff. And what I realized was there have actually been times in my life that some of the most incredible transformations I've had wouldn't have happened. If that person did not get comfortable selling and make that offer to me, they would have done me a disservice if they were so scared of selling that they were resisting it because then I wouldn't have known about their warm chocolate chip cookies. And the analogy I gave my client one time is that, look, if you've got warm chocolate chip cookies and I'm hungry, you better offer me one. Like it's a disservice. If you don't at least offer me one, right? So offer the chocolate chip cookies.

Don't hold out, don't hold back your goods. And I understand all the things that, all the feelings that this brings up I do. And that's what this course really covers. But let me walk you through the modules. So module one is all about launching your courses or launching your offers. It's online launching. And if you don't know what I mean by that, just the basics. Um, example. Um, two years ago, September of 2019, I took my, and I knew a little bit about launching, but this is an example that I think will be easy enough. I took my online virtual birth related workshops. I had a bunch of them at that point and I put them all together into a beautiful package. That was my online birth course. And I finally finished all the recordings. I edited all the replays. I bundled them together. I made a sales page.

I did all the pieces and I put it on my website and I was like, boom, launch day. And nobody bought it that day. That's why you need some kind of launch plan. It doesn't have to be fancy. It gets to be very, very simplified, but I've launched a lot at this point. I've probably launched more than 30 times in the last, I don't know, four years. So I've learned a lot about launching. You don't have to do it the way I do it. You don't have to do it the way anybody does it, but I will teach you every single thing that I have learned about launching so that you can pick something that feels right to start with and knowing that each time you do that, you're going to learn something and you're going to do it a little differently next time and a little differently the next time.

So module one is all about launching online module. Two is how to create content that sells so 800 of you and others that don't listen all with all the time. But 800 doulas or birth professionals have purchased the digital doulas content toolkit. As of now, I'm clapping for me. I'm clapping for you because we go, all right, anyway, I digress the content tool kit. It's all about content, content, ideas, content prompts, um, how to repurpose your content, a content calendar for, for the year. This is different. Okay? Because this teaches you how to create, sell selling in your content example. Um, I'm going to pull up somebody in my head that I'm just, that pops up, right? So Courtney Kardashian on Instagram, she does not write content that sells. She writes a post, puts a picture up and post something that says like, um, midnight vibes.

And that's it. Or if you create a post that just says top three things to know in your birth business, let's give you an example, a context through your business. Let's say you go, you write a post, top three things to minimize nausea in your first trimester. Number one, Peggy pops. Number two. Uh, what is it? B six unison combo. Number three. Um, tell me out here, acupuncture. I don't know. It's been a while, right? So let's say you list those things and then you just leave it at that. That's not really promo content that sells. And especially this, I wrote this con this, uh, module and taught this module live in June of 2020, June, July, like the summer of 2020. And that was when I was really getting heavy into creating this deep written content that connects.

And I don't mean like icky. I mean, you've read my content. It's not icky sales and gross at all. The purpose of this type of content is to help people thoroughly understand what it is that you do, how you can help them. And what the offer is that this podcast episode is a great example. I'm not coming on here. Like you have to buy this thing, buy this thing. That's not what I'm doing. I'm giving you lessons. Also. I always lead with service, but the intent of this selling episode is to help you make a decision. If you decide no, or a guess either way, it doesn't really matter what matters my job is to make sure you understand everything you need to know about the online business school membership so that you can decide if it's right for you or not. My job is not to convince.

So this module is not to teach you how to convince people, but to teach you how to make sure that people understand everything it is that you are doing and how you can help them. You've answered all of their questions. You've given them all of the information they need, and then you let them do their thing. It's getting loud because my son is coming here. Just a warning. Um, module three and selling is how to create an email funnel that serves. So email marketing can be incredibly overwhelming. I know because I sat on my free email marketing plan. I started with MailChimp. I did not use that thing for like a year and a half, maybe. Yeah, about a year and a half. I did not touch email marketing. It was just too overwhelming. If you're on my email list, you get my emails. Maybe you like them.

I don't know. But over time I have really developed, I've studied and learned from different people and worked with various people who have guided me along the way. But I have created an email strategy for myself. That feels really good. And I, I, for my private clients, I actually do quite a bit of email marketing funnel reviews for them. But this, this module really guides you through the basics of how to get started, how to set one up. And I show you, um, a lot of screenshots tutorials behind the scenes of my email funnels, what they look like in the program that I used to use. Um, you don't have to use that program. The concepts apply any to any program you want to use. Like MailChimp, I think is still free to a certain extent. Um, there's various things you can start with and just, you know, leverage the free stuff if you want. That's okay. You can apply these concepts across the board.

Module four is all about sales pages that convert. Now, if you're like, I don't really need a sales page. You do. Even if all you're offering is in-person doula support services. If you have a services page, that's a good start. That's a great start actually. But now we need to build you a sales page. A sales page is a journey and it goes a lot deeper than just, um, I see here's the shortfall many services pages I see for new-ish doulas to the online space or birth professionals, the online space, their services page stops at the features. The features are this many prenatal sessions, this many hours of maybe childbirth education. If that's something you offer support during labor in two hours up to two hours postpartum, one postpartum visit, those are features that are included in the package. That's just, it's good, but it's only one piece. So a sales page is a journey that includes the features and other things. If you want an example of my favorite sales page to date, click on the online business school membership page, just to see what an example of what I'm talking about. Even if it's not something you're intending to join, just look at the sales page. That is a sales page.

So I've created this. And actually that's the first one that I didn't make by myself. I have made all of my sales pages until that one. And I brought myself up to the six-figure point in 2020 with my own sales pages that I built every single one of them at my computer. And if I can do it and I'm not super techie, hold on, I'm getting it interrupted. Hi buddy. What's up? Hold on. Okay, I'm back. So if I can do it, you can do it. And I know you can do it and I will make it very easy for you. So that is the selling course, and that is the four modules. Now, there are also various tutorials, workbooks, examples, samples, that kind of thing. Um, so that walks you through the CEO method, but you also get access to various other workshops that I have, um, created and taught.

And let me guide you through some of those. So one of them is my Instagram reels workshop. I taught this workshop a couple months ago and to a small group of birth professionals. And I basically edited the workshop and made it available in the membership. It's just kind of an extra bonus. I've also included a and it, it's very, very simple by the way. So the reels workshop, if you've never made a real, there are screenshots. I walk you through step by step, how to make a reel on Instagram. And it is not as hard as we're making it seem.

So what do you get in the membership outside of my courses? Let me remind you too, that the, what your investment is and the membership for an entire year is by far less than the value of all of these courses, like 70% off effectively, if you get all of them together in the membership, but outside of the courses, you get group coaching and that is wild valuable. So I have free month. We have group coaching. Prescheduled out, you put it all in your calendar and you come and join me for group small group coaching. It ends up being almost workshop lecture, and then Q and a style. Various topics always replaced. Always. I keep a rolling 12 months worth of replays available. So if you missed the live, you can submit your questions in advance. I answer them during the group coaching, and then you have access to the replay. Um, the replays are also uploaded into the portal. So it's easy to access.

You also have. And let me remind you too, that I'm a firm believer that all of these things, website, email lists, freebies, opt-ins lead generation. All of the things in online business are great. They are, they're fun. They're great. I like them, but they're not going to get you very far if you're not doing the energy and mindset work surely. And because of that, well, the way I teach the courses infuses a lot of energy work. But because of that, I also included my business expansion meditations, and I highly, highly, highly recommend taking time every single day to listen to some of these business expansion meditations, because that is going to go to the core, to work through the underlying stuff. If you're not doing those pieces, and all you're doing is watching these modules and putting together your sales page and putting together all those things. It's, it's almost like a right that you're not dealing with the things underneath. You've got to deal with the things underneath. You have to go to the core. Okay. A little bit off of that extra bonus. An extra bonus of being in the membership is that we have regular guest speakers that are pretty incredible. And I always save our guest speaker workshops in the portal. So that's just an extra bonus feature that you have access to. That's super fun.

And if you're wondering why 12 months, why one year, here's why, because life is going to happen. And we learned this. If you signed up for my free event, a couple of weeks ago, you realized that life occurred for many people because that's how my foes things came up. People had to travel. People were at birth, people were supporting clients in person. There was things happening. People didn't always have a chance to catch up on replays. People didn't have an opportunity to implement everything that they learned yet. So that it's this membership, sorry for the district. That's my Voxer. It's been clients. Hi. Yeah. So the membership is designed 12 month as 12 months to give you time to implement. So you watch a module, you go do the things, you learn. Some you go practice and do things, and then you post it. This is ideally what your journey looks like.

You join. You determine either by yourself or with my support, where you should get started. You jump in, you watch some modules. You do take some action in your business. Maybe you go back and watch another module. Go take some more action. You get stuck. You're like, Ooh, I have a question though. And this is something I don't remember her covering in the video, or I just have a question in general, I'm going to post it in the peer support community and get support. And next week on the live Q and a coaching, I'm going to talk to her life and get some questions answered. And then life might happen for a few days or a few weeks, um, you know, good or bad, you know, you might have your kid's birthday. And we go all out on birthday. You know, we start at 6:00 AM with balloons.

And like, we walk in the room and saying, and we've usually got like cupcakes for breakfast and stuff. And you know, there's a birthday party. And like, we just, so life is going to happen for good, bad, whatever. You have a full year to implement and take action. And you get me in your corner the whole year, because these things don't happen overnight. You know, I have had rapid expansion in my business in a short amount of time, but it did not happen overnight. And I didn't build any of this overnight. I did a little bit here, a little bit there, and I broke things into actionable steps, things that I knew I could take on. If the mountain felt too big. If I told you that within six weeks, you'd have this entire thing done for yourself, I would be lying to you and doing you a disservice because that's not true.

It's just not. You might watch all the modules. In fact, some people join and binge watch all the modules right away, but it will take time to test and implement and try things differently. And I recommend going back and watching some of the modules again at a later time, because things land differently. It's that concept of, have you ever read a book and really enjoyed it? And then like a few years later, you're like, I want to read the book again. You go back and read the book again. And it feels almost like a new book because you're different. You are different. Now you're available to receive the information differently today than you were the first time you read it. And the same thing applies to watching modules of courses. That's why I love it being on demand. I love the replays. You can watch it as many times as you need to, and it's going to land differently each time.

The idea being one year from now, after you've been in the membership and entire year, your business looks completely different. The way you approach business feels very different expansive. That's the goal. The goal is not to be in the same place in a year. The goal is not even to be in the same place to Marsha. I want to wake up tomorrow, a different person. That's my goal. Every day. I'm a new person. And you too, if you want to, I mean, obviously a lot of things are the same, right? Like, you know, but the goal isn't to stay the same it's to grow. One of my mentors tells the way she says it. And I really like this is our natural state is expansion. So expand what the world experience your magic.

Okay. So wrapping up, my goal for you is to build, to help you build your dream business, whatever that looks like, your sustainable built business, meaning not you trading your time for dollars and feeling like you have to work 60, 70 hours a week driving to, and from all of these places. But to build it the way you want taking just the amount of in-person work that you desire and the amount of virtual work that you desire and the amount of passive business, passive income that you desire, meaning you trading no time for dollars, like you're selling digital things and making money in your sleep. To the extent that you desire, helping the exact people that you are here to help in the way that only you can. That is my goal for you. And if I get to be part of your journey, then like that is just the biggest honor to me. If I've, you know, earned that level of trust from you.

So I hope I did my job. I hope I explained to the best of my ability, everything you need to know about the online business school membership, so that you can make the decision that's right for you. And how would you know my advice to people who ask me if this is the right time for them? I don't ever say yes, this is the right time, because blank, blank, blank. That's not a blanket statement that that's fair. That's not a fair thing. And I don't believe that. I believe you'll know when the right time is for you. And my advice to people who ask that kind of question is to close your eyes, put your hand over your heart and really listen in and feel into, does this feel right for me? Does this feel like the next right step and you'll know. And if you have any questions about what's included or what the features are or any of the above, you can either shoot me an email.

Nichole@nicholejoy.com or send me a DM on Instagram, Facebook messenger. I don't always, it's hard for me to check it on my phone, so I don't love that, but I prefer Instagram DM, or send me an email and ask anything you need the answer to. We are wrapping up closing enrollment, the doors close on Sunday, October 17th at midnight. So that will be the last day you can get in until late January and everybody who's coming in this round. I'm so excited to help you set yourself up for the fourth quarter and really get your 2022 planned out for success. All right. My loves, I hope you enjoyed this episode and I'll see you soon.