Episode 158 transcript:

00:02 Hey everyone. Hello. Hello. Welcome. Make sure we are on and working. Yes, we are. All right, so let's get in. 00:15 Heads up. This is kind of an impromptu podcast recording today. I was gonna record the, and I had this idea last week about live streaming, the podcast recording. 00:27 So we're gonna test it out and see if it's fun and see if we like it and see if it works. 00:31 So this is gonna be a podcast episode but we'll have an opportunity to kind of chat back and forth for anybody who's here live. 00:40 So if and when you hop on, or if you're a replay, feel free to chime in, ask questions, and if I don't respond to your stuff right away or if you leave a comment and then I see it after the fact, then when I get through the material, right, like the, the way I usually podcast, then I will answer at the end. 01:01 And I won't use names. So if I remember correctly from the other day, there's not a way for me to tell people that I'm live. 01:17 Okay? I don't think so. Nope. What is this? Just checking some things. No, I don't think so. Okay. But let's just jump in. 01:28 So if you're here and you're hopping on, say hello, this is gonna be the podcast recording. I'll try to lose some space at the end. 01:36 If there's any q and a. If you have questions, feel free to add 'em to the comments. Again, I'll try to get to them after we wrap up. 01:42 So, what I wanna talk to you about today is a tip for your online course, specifically passive courses. And if you don't know what that is, that's fine. 01:50 We're gonna get into it and I'll explain to you what I mean by passive courses. So what I have found is that many of my clients, many of the students who take my digital courses, people who are in my community say things like, I wanna have a business like yours. 02:06 I wanna work online. I want pretty much most or all of my business to be virtual because I wanna be able to be home. 02:14 I wanna be able to be present with my family. I wanna be able to be with my kids. I wanna be able to work in pajamas sometimes, and to reduce the amount of outside of the home work that I'm doing. 02:27 So when I say your business being passive, or your course being passive, what I mean is that you're creating resources, whether it's a course or some other type of digital product for people to learn from you on their own time. 02:45 So you create it and then it's passive, meaning that's it. You're done, you've made it, and now you can offer it to people and sell it over and over and over for as long as you desire to. 02:57 So it's something that can Create passive income for you, which is not active, right? Active income would be like a postpartum delicious shift where you show up to the house, your your shift is 12 eight, let's say midnight to 8:00 AM That's active income. 03:14 You are actively working for your income versus recording a postpartum, let's say prep course that takes you, you know, two, three hours or however long it takes for you to record this course and create this digital product that you can turn around and sell as long as you want, right? 03:32 So that's what I mean by passive, just to make sure if anybody wasn't clear. And again, this is really like, so that you can continue helping your community when you have a lot of life going on. 03:44 I know the feeling, I have three young children. I have a nine year old, a six year old, a four year old, and there's this, I feel like there's this unspoken thing, or I hesitate to say lie, but there's this, it's like a trick. 03:57 That's what it is. It feels like a trick that they make you think that the first months of having that baby home are the hardest, and they are in a way. 04:05 They take a lot from you and they require a lot of your attention. However, it's not like this gig gets easier over the years. 04:14 It just requires a different kind of attention, right? And so you might find in the beginning that you wanna be home with your littles while they're really little, while they're babies. 04:23 You don't wanna put 'em in daycare. And I, I identify, I was like having panic attacks about daycare when I was pregnant with my first, and we were, well, when he was first born, I started to really panic. 04:35 And then as they get older, you might wanna be there for, there's soccer games and their basketball games or gymnastics and, you know, you don't wanna miss their concerts and winter concerts and so on. 04:45 And you just wanna be home and take care of yourself too, and not be working the way that our society is set up, where we're collectively working way more than many of us should be, and it's burning us out. 05:01 So a couple examples of passive items and experiences really that you can have in your business might be self-paced or on demand. 05:13 Workshops, classes, courses of which I have plenty of things like that, or other digital resources, right? So like an ebook is a passive, is a is an item that can create passive income for you. 05:26 It's a passive asset, A guide you might have, like the first time parents e guide that you sell. That's something that can create passive income for you. 05:37 You make it one time, you can offer it for as long as you want. Or checklists even in my business. 05:44 Examples of what that looks like on the pregnancy side of my business, I have the pregnancy library, and right now it's free. 05:51 And that includes like cheat sheets and a birth plan and a bunch of other types of passive digital resources. I also have have passive on demand online birth classes, one for first timers and another version for people who are planning a vback on the entrepreneur side of my business, I have a whole collection and suite of online business courses that are all self-paced, mostly at this point, self-paced on demand. 06:23 And there's a full course menu if you wanna see like what that looks like and how I organize them and what, how I've set that up in my business. 06:30 There'll be a link in the show notes when this episode comes out that you can check out the course menu. 06:37 And for those of you watching this via Facebook, I can drop the link in the comments after we wrap up just so you can get a feel for like, what it looks like to have a suite of courses. 06:49 And here's the thing that I learned about passive courses, and this is after over 200 people have purchased my courses, that actually doesn't even include my birth classes. 07:00 I forgot. So I don't remember how many people have bought my online birth class at this point, but it's a couple hundred at least or more. 07:07 I don't, I actually don't remember, but over 200 birth professionals that have bought my digital courses. And then there's another 120 plus at this point, I would count the mastermind private clients, I'd say probably pushing 150 ish, maybe close to 200 people that have been in my membership or in some other type of private container or small group container with me that had access to my courses. 07:32 So what I learned after having all of these people go through my digital courses is that a lot of people will purchase a digital course. 07:45 Only a percentage of them will actually watch it. So yeah, little bit of tough love here. And now I do believe that you don't have to watch every single minute of every single module of every course that you purchase to get what you need out of it. 08:01 I do trust you to lead yourself. I trust you to know what modules you need, what parts you need to watch, and when is your correct timing. 08:11 So it's, it's kind of like there are people who will pick up a book and flip to a certain chapter and start there and not start, you know, there's different types of people, right? 08:20 So some people read cover to cover, and I guess this relates more to like non-fiction because I feel like fiction and stories, you kind of need to start the beginning I guess. 08:30 But non-fiction, there are people who don't read cover to cover. They flip through and pick up chapters here and there. 08:34 And same with courses. And that's entirely okay. Again, I trust you to lead yourself and know what you need and when you need it. 08:42 And yet, still as a heart centered entrepreneur, I don't want you to just buy my courses. Like my goal in my business is not to sell as many courses as I can and have, you know, like sales are great, money's great, I love money and I appreciate money and all of the experiences that I get to have with more resources, but that's not what really lights me up in the business. 09:07 What really lights me up is witnessing you not just watch some of the modules, but apply some of what you've learned and take action. 09:21 So you're not gonna build a six figure online business by just collecting digital courses. It's just not gonna happen. Like you can buy no matter how discounted and deeply discounted during Black Friday and Cyber Monday and end of year specials and new year specials. 09:35 And if the course is worth $2,000 and you get it for $50, it doesn't matter if you're not actually doing anything with the exchange and the information and the activation that you're experiencing or that you can experience by implementing and taking action, it doesn't really help anybody if you're not taking action and moving with the material that you're learning, right? 10:04 We want to help our people. I wanna help you take action with what you're learning from me. I actually feel like my job in this respect of my business, and this part is twofold. 10:17 One, to help you expand the way that you think about your business and online business and other topics, right? Parenthood, motherhood being an entrepreneur, being a person, and having an experience. 10:29 And then two, to help you take action. You it, it is part of this, right? And if you apply that to your business, what that might look like is how frustrating it might be to have a group of people taking, let's say you teach childbirth education and to have a group of people taking your childbirth ed class and just kind of showing up. 10:53 They bought a seat. They might come to some classes, they might even come to the whole class, but they don't actually apply what you're learning. 11:03 And it's tricky, right? Because it's not your birth. You gotta stay out of it. Just like it's not my business. 11:09 I gotta stay outta your business and I trust you. And at the same time so badly. I'm sure that if you, if you could clone yourself and you could make it to all their births and continue to guide them, that's the fulfilling part. 11:23 It's almost like, you know how a lot of the pregnant community collectively feels like they're still stuck at the registry phase, right? 11:35 This is like surface level discussion that they're still thinking like, we're gonna put all this time and energy and effort into creating this baby registry. 11:42 When the truth is, what you probably wanna do with them is go way deeper. Like the registry is part of it and having things on hand at home is important, and it's part of it. 11:50 I'm not discounting that, but going deeper, that's the juice and that's where my tip comes in. So my tip for you, for your digital courses, specifically for passive courses, if you really want to juice them up and make them make you feel even better, it's for your community, but it's for you too. 12:09 Our businesses are supposed to be symbiotic like that, that, you know, you get to experience the joy as well. So what you're doing is not just serving, serving, serving people, serving the community, serving, it needs to light you up too. 12:24 And my hunch is that the collective birth professional world may not feel lit up helping people pick out cribs. It's like, okay, yes, let's pick a crib, but then can we talk about your birth? 12:38 Can we talk about, you know, what you really wanna experience on that day? Can I help you create that experience? 12:43 What are the things, how can I guide you? How can I support you in whatever respect, right? So here's the tip. 12:50 I started this back in March of 2020 and I loved it. And I feel like the people who experienced this with me, and if you're one of them, I'd love to hear from you. 13:00 I feel like they really loved it too. Play, you can play with this, it's not required, but play with what if you added a bonus live session for your students? 13:13 So example what that looks like in my business, I offer bonus q and as sometimes for people who purchase certain courses, right? 13:22 So like in March of 2020 when people were taking things digital really quickly and I had a rush of people purchasing course creation for doulas, and it was wildly helpful for a lot of people, I felt like, how can I continue to support people who are buying the course? 13:39 We can talk logistics of the course. And that's what that bundle does. And it gives you like a full curriculum that if you wanted to teach childbirth ed, there's a six hour teachable curriculum in that bundle. 13:50 But I wanted to go deeper. I wanted to go beyond the baby registry conversation. I wanted to go deeper than how do I set up a microphone or where, how do I start logistically with putting a course together? 14:01 Or how do I create a curriculum? Let's say Childr ed is not your thing. How do I create a curriculum? 14:07 I wanted to go deeper and I wanted to apply it to their business. I wanted to, they're like, well, I don't teach childbirth ed, or I teach childbirth ed and I feel like I wanna teach other things. 14:16 I wanted to be able to help them talk through some of those things, give you ideas on the types of courses that you might be able to teach, how you can structure them, how you can price them, where they fit into your overall business. 14:27 I wanted to go deeper and apply it to your unique business. So in the beginning I did q and as, that will bonus pop up q and as. 14:36 And people who had, who had purchased various courses could come to the q and a and ask me questions. It was kind of like in office hours. 14:43 And that's another way you can title it if you'd like, like a bonus office hours come and ask me questions, whether you've watched complete course or not, you can come on, this is just included for you as a course member. 14:54 And now this week, as of the week that this episode would be coming out, so December 8th I believe I have a bonus strategy session. 15:02 So anybody who has purchased my courses will be able to come December 8th in the morning, I'm sending out the Zoom link and you can come and meet me on Zoom and you can ask me your questions about whatever it is that you're learning from me in any of my various courses. 15:17 I have a collection of different online business courses for heart centered entrepreneurs. And if you wanna go deeper and apply it, that's a great opportunity to, to do so and to be in my energy and a more private container without necessarily having hired me. 15:33 Now, there's a couple things I love about this and I'm gonna be very transparent with you. So like I mentioned before, one, it helps you, it helps us and allows us to go deeper into the conversation. 15:45 I don't wanna talk about your baby registry if I'm your do, like not, not at great length, right? Like how long can we possibly talk about swings? 15:54 It's just, it's not that exciting to me. But I want to go deeper. And then on your business side, when you've purchased or taken any of my business courses, I wanna talk more deeply about your business, your custom unique business. 16:08 Cuz not all doula businesses are the same. Not all both professional businesses are the same. Not all healers or yoga instructors or essential oil folks and health and wellness, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. 16:20 They're all very different and unique and I want to help you map out and strategize yours. So these calls are a great opportunity to go deeper and customize. 16:31 I also like the opportunity to connect with my people, and that gives me the opportunity. So that's number two is I get to connect deeper. 16:37 Number three, and this is really important for you as a business owner, I have found in the past. Let's, let's introduce through my business first and then I'll talk it through your business. 16:49 So through my business, I like the opportunity of doing something like this because it allows people to see what it's like to work with me in a more private container. 16:57 If they've been considering like, do I wanna hire her as one on one, a private support person, mentor coach, or do I wanna join a private coaching or a live program or something deeper, something more than a passive course. 17:10 This is a great opportunity for people to experience private, have that pri more private experience, right? It's a small group, but they, it's a private, like not open to the public. 17:24 Now, what that looks like for your business is what I've seen in a lot of the way the traditional doula business model is, is there's not a whole lot of low priced items. 17:35 Generally in doula businesses. You might have an online course or some type of childbirth ed class, and then you have a birth support package, let's say. 17:46 But there's not a whole lot in between. So the jump and when people, people hire a doula, for example, a birth doula, ideally they're hiring you early in the pregnancy, they might not have had a whole lot of interaction with you. 17:59 So it's a huge jump to go from a consult to a thousand, 2000, $5,000 of a doula bus, of a doula contract. 18:10 If let's say you're in New York City, that's a big jump. And so where you can create opportunities for people to go deeper with you, I like the pass of courses and my tip about having a bonus live some type of deeper session is that it does, that it allows people to purchase something in between going from a consult to a private package at an in between price that's like, let me start here. 18:40 I take your class and I'm like, yeah, you're my person. Then it also allows them to experience you in a more live, intimate, private ish container and they can get a better feel for your energy and see if you're somebody that they trust and that they feel safe going deeper and making a big investment with. 18:58 And even if you're offering virtual doula support packages, even more so because you might be working in California and your client might be in Florida, which is great and fine and all of the things, but meeting somebody online and building trust with them is even more nuanced. 19:17 Let's say it that way. It's even more nuanced than meeting a potential doula in person that you might wanna hire to be at your birth. 19:23 Because when you're meeting in person, you can feel people's energy in person when you're meeting somebody online, if we're being very honest, which I am here, there are some interesting folks in the online space, there are some interesting folks in the birth space. 19:41 I think we can all agree on that. And you're probably nodding like, yeah, true. So think about that from a consumer's perspective. 19:48 It's a little risky business to get out there and hire somebody virtually. We want people to hire us for their most intimate experience and they haven't seen us in the flesh. 20:02 It's doable and it's powerful and it's important and it's helpful. I potent and I like to make it feel more aligned and better for them too, because I want them to know me. 20:17 I want them to trust me. I don't want people coming into my space to question, am I gonna like her? 20:22 Am I gonna feel comfortable? Am I gonna feel confident telling her things? Am I gonna feel safe sharing, da da da When people hire me, even when I was doing birthy things, whether I'm doing birthy things or I'm mentorship in your business and coaching in your business. 20:36 When somebody invests with me and hires me, that is a sacred experience. I take it very seriously and I want them to know exactly what they're getting themselves into before we work together. 20:48 I don't want anything about how I work and how I engage and who I am to be a surprise. And I have built a platform that I believe people trust me because they have gotten to know me. 21:01 I am consistent and not meaning. Like I show up every single day. I'm consistent in the fact that five plus years in the game, I'm still here, I'm showing up and I don't believe I have people running around on the interweb saying that I'm an awful person and da da da. 21:18 Like, I believe it's important to do right by people. And I have built that over time. And so I think that's important for you to remember when you want to build a virtual business, whether it's birth support or anything else, these are intimate experiences and providing opportunities for people to get to know you so that both of you feel good about it, right? 21:40 Because you can get to know people quite well when you're on those like bonus q and a style sessions. I've, I've met some of my favorite people in the whole world on sessions like that. 21:50 And it's good for both of you to go deeper. So I hope this has been super helpful and I'd love to hear how it lands. 21:59 If you're watching this on Facebook Live, you can add your comments, ask questions, whatever it is that you'd like to do, I am open and available for that. 22:05 If you are listening to as a podcast, did it land DM me, send me an an email and tell me like, how are you going to be implementing this? 22:15 What are you gonna be adding to your passive stuff? You don't have to do it every week, every month. Let's, you could do it quarterly. 22:22 You could do a quarterly popup, you could do monthly. Really, you're in charge. You are in charge. Here's your full permission to make decisions as you see fit and do it as you see fit. 22:35 All right friends, I hope you've enjoyed and I will talk to you soon. See you later.