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Interview Transcription
Morris: Welcome to CreateGrowProfit: Coaching Stories. I’m Morris from creategrowprofit.com and today my guest is James Allen who is not only my podcast mentor but he’s also an expert in creating courses. James, thank you so much for being here today. Where are you calling in from?
James: Yeah man first off thanks for having me, super pumped to officially be on the show really excited about this and I’m calling in from Petaluma California, it’s like an hour North of San Francisco the Bay Area.
Morris: Yeah so James, you were the one who pushed me, not pushed me but motivated me to do the podcast in the format that it is today. Before that, my podcast episodes were audio clips from some of my YouTube videos. If a YouTube video you know, I could turn it into an audio episode. Those were my podcast episodes. Then you came along and explained to me your strategy about podcasting so thank you for being a guest today and thank you for you know bringing the show alive. Tell us real quick about your podcast.
James: Yeah so my whole brand is profit your knowledge and we just help people take what they know and turn that into an online business. So whether you are really good at knitting or cooking or running an online business or marketing or anything like that as long as you have a skill that you can teach other people and you’re not getting paid for it, I will help you get paid for it. So put bringing it to life, putting it out there and being able to create passive or semi-passive income through like online courses which we’re going to dive into today.
Or it could be a membership site or just working fewer hours and charging more for what you’re worth you know like that’s been my whole thing, is being able to work fewer hours and increase our income. I’ve been obsessed with that from day one, like how can I work the fewest amount of hours and still continuously grow my income. That’s always been the goal. So that’s a huge thing of what I teach I’m sure I’ll tell you a bit more about my story but yeah my podcast is called The Profit Your Knowledge podcast so I just wanted to keep it all consistent Profit Your Knowledge.
Another potential name for the podcast and someone’s probably going to steal it if I say it but I’ll just say it anyway is Underground Experts and that’s kind of what I had with the show because the whole brand is like taking what you know what you’re good at or what you have experience in and turning that into a business. So I thought with the podcast like how cool would it be to share stories from real people who have taken their knowledge and turned it into a business even if it’s like not making millions of dollars per year though I do have guests that do those numbers on the show. Even like I had one woman on the show earlier on in the Profit Your Knowledge podcast, if you dig for it you can find it, but she was supporting her whole family, teaching people how to knit socks and she was selling online courses and like a little membership community.
But yeah teaching people how to knit socks, supporting her whole family, I’m like that is the coolest thing in the world. So someone could listen to that and think I love knitting socks and then they can get insights on how this person grew their business. So that they can get ideas on how they could potentially grow a business doing something similar and that’s kind of the goal of the show.
Morris: Man that reminds me of when I started in the blogging space like 10 years ago, blogging and affiliate marketing. I learned from a woman and her big success story in the blogging space was creating content around how to create your own bow ties for your daughters at home. And they had multiple six-figure businesses all about creating different bow ties. Reminds me of your knitting socks story.
James: Yeah I think it’s so cool like nowadays with the internet and everything. It’s not like, a lot of people think that this is like some wave that’s falling or it’s like crashing right now but it’s a wave that’s like building. It’s not even at the crest if you will or the peak of the wave, of just people being able to take what they know and package it into a digital product or a coaching program and teach other people how to do something that they know. I mean think about anything that you would want to pursue, the best way to shortcut your success is to learn from somebody else who is really efficient in it.
If you want to get good at lifting weights in the gym, you get a personal trainer. If you want to get good at cooking food like really well, you’ll watch videos or you’ll even buy a cookbook that teaches you recipes that somebody who’s really good at cooking put together for you. But what if you had somebody who was there with you teaching you step by step the entire process to achieve a certain result? Whether it’s like a sport like playing soccer or football or playing hockey, swimming like you know all these people are, I just think it’s like more prevalent now than ever where people are willing to invest in learning a skill of any kind whether that is cooking or knitting socks or tying bow ties for their daughter and they’re willing to pay you know a certain amount that makes sense to learn from someone who’s really good at it.
And that’s the whole market that we’re into right now. That people listening can totally join in on themselves and by the way if I say that and you’re like well my market’s saturated because like I want to teach relationships but there are so many relationship coaches, stop. That’s not the case. There’s plenty of room for you. I just had somebody on the podcast yesterday and they were actually a relationship coach and I talked about this and they literally just yesterday were like I haven’t had any problems with that because what we don’t realize is there’s so much demand for these different things and the way that you present information is different than anybody else so people need to hear it from you even if they’ve heard it over and over again.
I mean how many times have you heard something and it finally just clicked for you because you heard it from Morris or from me or from whoever reading a book and you’re like nobody explained it to me quite like you did? That’s what your voice can do for other people so the market’s not saturated you just have to get out there and get started.
Morris: Yeah on that topic, what I also learned is that the people who buy courses or hire coaches or trainers very often, they don’t just buy one course or hire one coach so when we look at the market just because somebody bought one course on relationships that’s not how it works. They don’t buy one course and they’re like oh I bought one course, I’ll never buy a course again.
No, they buy multiple courses because they’re so into the topic. And I think that argument gets often overlooked in the saturated market. A saturated market means there’s a lot of demand like you said but the people who want that education, who want that knowledge, also want to learn from you.
James: Yeah and I mean a huge piece of it is like the more you can share your stories and your experience that’s going to resonate with different people. Because you know with demand you mentioned, where there is competition, there is demand. And people just need to hear information in different ways. It’s up to you like if you’re going to build a course let’s say, and you’re looking at your market and it’s very quote-unquote saturated, there’s a lot of people in this marketplace and you’re like how am I ever going to fit in?
Well, that’s where you have to do market research. It’s always the first thing I do with people anytime they want to build any sort of product, you have to figure out where is the demand. Where are people buying these programs and what’s missing for them what’s a gap that I can fill in here in the way that I teach or you know the approach? It’s funny because as we’re talking about this I literally have a new YouTube video that I was uploading right before I jumped on here and I cover all this stuff too. So my YouTube channel is a cool place that you can hang out and check out but I’m literally talking about the seven worst beginner online course mistakes to avoid.
Morris: Oh man we’re going to link to that below this episode.
James: Sure I can send it over to you but that is being in this like saturated market with competition demand. A great example that I share inside the video too is when you think about masterclass.com. masterclass.com, their unique twist is that they sell online courses on many different topics but what makes them different from every other platform out there is that you learn from celebrities, and like huge experts.
It’s not just like it’s one thing to be an expert and you have to showcase that and what you do especially us as like smaller people who aren’t Gordon Ramsey or Warren Buffett but that’s what makes Masterclass so successful into like millions and millions of dollars in sales. Why not learn investing from Warren Buffett the dude like he is the man or why not learn cooking from Gordon Ramsay or entrepreneurship from Richard Branson you know like that is Sir Richard Branson? Forgive me but that’s what makes them unique.
They saw that they’re like there’s a lot of courses on all these different things and people are buying courses but we have access to this one expert or like maybe they had access to like two or three celebrities or experts you know and now you can learn acting from like different like uh you can learn acting from like Samuel Jackson or stuff like that. So if you’re like I love Samuel Jackson and I would love and I love acting like why not learn from him about his acting style and how he approaches it and his story and everything you know?
So that’s something that makes them really unique and it takes work but it’s the work before the work of building the program and that’s another big mistake that people make when they’re building courses. They just like they just build something they’re like oh if I build it they will come and is the worst thing that we can do. You always have to put in the time to create or to find demand in the marketplace and how you can kind of add a unique twist to what you’re doing or what’s already out there. And you’ll be way more successful than anybody else.
Morris: You know not that you’re talking about masterclass, I just realized most of the masterclass ads that I get are for math courses. I don’t remember the name of the mathematician but it’s always the math course. I wonder what the YouTube algorithm thinks about me.
James: Yeah maybe you just like math I don’t know.
Morris: I don’t watch math videos. I don’t know why I get that’s just too funny.
James: That really interesting.
Morris: I want to highlight a couple of things about you James that you know I got to know you better over a year I guess now year and a half maybe.
James: Something like that yeah.
Morris: So you mentioned Underground Experts by the way did you buy that domain name yet?
James: No I just decided to stick with Profit Your Knowledge just because if you type in Profit Your Knowledge like my podcast comes up my website my YouTube channel and in terms of SEO and marketing I just keep it Profit Your Knowledge but Underground Experts is a really cool name. So somebody can take it that’s totally fine.
Morris: All right now I was just curious if you bought it you know just in case who knows in the future but the name is so fitting to you because you’re not hustling on social media. You don’t do that like you know posting reels every day and sharing your personal life and and all that and out social media outreach all of those things. That’s one very intriguing thing about you.
The other thing is your podcast and your expertise in creating courses. When I met you it became very obvious to me that these things are all connected but I think from the outside very few people make the connection between a podcast and an online course you know still all under the brand of Profit Your Knowledge.
You do all these things and from the outside, it looks defragmented but actually me, knowing your strategy, you have a very very very clear strategy on how these three elements work together ever green content no social media hustling no social media outreach, your podcast and course creation, how that all works together so you only work like 20 hours or less per week?
James: Yeah and that was actually a decision 20 hours a week. I always tell people because people are like how can I work fewer hours? How can I make more money in less time? And I always tell people that the fastest way to work fewer hours is just to work fewer hours. At one point I just decided, I think it would be so cool to work like 20 hours a week or less and make a six-figure business. And I just put it on my calendar, the actual work hours that made sense to me and I put it into four five-hour blocks and I just stick with it and I said okay my time is up you know I have to stop working now and it forced me to actually pay attention to what matters.
You know look at things and be like well if I’m going to work in my fixed time frame that I’m giving myself, that is a complete waste of time but this is something that actually moves the needle and makes me money. So I’m only going to focus on the things that actually make me money. Posting on social media every day, I did it for a long time because I thought that’s what you’re supposed to do. And I stopped doing it focused on other things that made more sense and actually that I knew made me more money. I made a lot more money in the same time frame.
So this is like the whole, it’s leveraging the Pareto Principle, the 80-20 Rule and Parkinson’s Law. Parkinson’s laws like if your professor gives you an assignment say yeah you have a month to do this or three months, you’re going to take the whole time. You’ll probably finish at the last minute like I do. If I’m in a class of any kind and if that Professor was like okay here’s your assignment it’s due by the end of the week. And it’s a ton of work you’re gonna be like oh my gosh and you’re somehow going to get it done because it has a due date and a fixed deadline.
So that’s what condensing your work hours will do for you. It forces you to really think differently and say no to certain things because if you want to hit your income goals, you have to say yes to the things that actually make you money. Okay, so I can even get more rigid and say I only have 10 hours. I haven’t quite made that jump just because I also like all the stuff that I do and I kind of like my flow with my schedule and everything but that’s how it can work.
So in terms of my business and how it works, I don’t do a lot of social media. I like focusing on YouTube because YouTube is an evergreen platform which means that the content lives on forever. Sure videos can flatten out and they’ll do really well and then they’ll stop but then it’s the opposite. Sometimes videos suck when you post it and then what six months later, all of a sudden it just shoots up to thousands of views and you’re.
Like what it doesn’t even make any sense but the bottom line is that it’s like investing and you’re putting in the time to focus on making good videos and those videos are constantly getting eyeballs and they’re not just getting eyeballs. Because a thousand views on YouTube, I think is way more valuable than a thousand TikTok views. Way more value because videos are longer. It’s more of a commitment for the viewer and it creates much warmer leads.
Can’t tell you how many times people book a call with me and they sit down and you know they find me through my YouTube channel or they buy a course and then they sit down and I finally get to meet them or talk to them. They’re like yeah I found you on YouTube, I watched a video and then I binge-watch like 10 of your videos. And I feel like I know you so I bought your program or I booked a call with you because I felt like I could trust you. Ad that’s the power of YouTube it’s like it’s building that relationship with your perfect audience if you’re making the right kind of content that’s desirable to them. And it’s helping them and then you’re offering a lead magnet.
So your lead magnet invites people onto your email list through your website and then the email list, you have is like a nurture sequence which I can go into deeper detail on in a second but it’s just kind of high level. That points people to a sales page where they can check out your product and then buy it. Or if it’s like an affiliate program they you can make offers to them because if you’re doing this through YouTube or you know it could be any content too but like people are learning from you, building a relationship and then they finally pick up your free thing, your lead magnet, whether it’s a video or a PDF guide or something like that and it solves a persistent problem, then the program that you have or the offer you have should be the obvious next step to that lead magnet.
So it doesn’t matter if you’re doing this on social media or YouTube or you’re running paid ads or you’re doing a podcast or a blog it’s just finding some platform where you can make content that you enjoy and it funnels people to your lead magnet because then once they get on the lead magnet, your system should take care of the rest. So while it could seem like it’s scattered. Everything has one goal which is to point people to my lead magnet and that’s why in my videos, I often make offers for my lead magnet. Like hey, I have a free master class or I have a free guide that’s going to help you with this.
Like by the way if you want to learn more about this check out my free guide. In my podcast, I’ll make those offers usually I’ll do kind of what you were mentioning like I already put time into making a good YouTube video so I’ll just upload the audio to my podcast as a quote-unquote solo episode. And then the rest is me talking with my guests who are on the show. But yeah everything is pretty much just funneling to my courses and coaching and that’s kind of like a quick overview of how everything works.
Morris: And when you encouraged me to start my podcast, why did you encourage me for this particular format that I’m doing now with your help?
James: So I’ve been podcasting for a very long time and I basically realized that I had my ideal audience on my podcast and I was like What if I could just like build a relationship with them and then you know if I can help them and it makes sense then I’ll offer to help them. And I just wasn’t offering to help them.
Morris: Just to clarify that, because you said one word different, right? You said you already have your ideal audience on your podcast and so your ideal audience were your guests right? That was the Insight.
James: It’s the audience and the guest but like I’m learning from people cuz I think it’s so cool for me to share stories of people who’ve actually made money with this but when they made money with it, a lot of times like they’ve made money through private coaching that’s usually how it is even if they’re full-time or even like doing 10 grand plus per month. They don’t have any sort of like course or what I like to call a scalable asset like a membership community or anything like that.
And they’re like yeah you know I’m just like working a ton if this is like after the interview. And I’m like oh okay well like what’s your goal? They’re like I’d love to just like work fewer hours and you know have something where it can make money without my direct coaching. I’m like have you thought about making like a course or a membership community or something like that and they’re like oh you know I’ve kind of thought about it but it’s just like I don’t know it’s a lot it’s overwhelming. It’s kind of daunting to me. I’m like well it doesn’t have to be like and I can explain a story of how it was daunting for a client of mine you know and then I helped them get through that and they’re like oh maybe there is an opportunity here.
And then I offer just to sit on a call because if I can help you and I’m talking to you, I’m going to offer to help you. It’s like I’m not just going to be like all right that sucks you know see you later like that’s messed up you know. So I want to really help people and I think that you know I mean the podcast it is strategic but because I think about people when I’m bringing on guests. I’m very intentional about who I bring on the show like if there’s potential there where I could help them it’s just the fastest way to build rapport with people is through a real conversation. That’s kind of that 80-20 thing it’s like the cold DMs.
I was like what if someone’s on the show like we’re building this relationship so fast in like 30 minutes because we’re talking about something we’re both interested in? And after that, they open up so much more and faster and I can showcase my expertise in the conversation with them. And how many times if I cold message you and say hey do you want to jump on a discovery call with me, you’d be like first off I don’t know who you are. Second off like no. I don’t want you to sell stuff to me if I message you and I’m like hey do you want to come on to a podcast about something that you’re interested in, you’d be like yeah that sounds super fun.
And I think that fun is like the big word that I’m always thinking about because I just in so many areas of my life when I can just have fun with something and that’s like creating your course, that’s doing podcasts, that’s making content, that’s coaching your clients, that’s writing copy like anything when you can just have more fun with. It shows in the work that you’re doing and I remember taking, I took like a $2,000 copyrighting course and he literally said that of like when you have fun with your copy, it shows in your copy and people are like this is fun copy know it’s fun to read this. So I think that is like a huge piece in the whole I guess the brand of Profit Your Knowledge that I really try and portray. I hope that answers your question. I feel like I kind of rambled on.
Morris: No no this was great and I realized something else about your podcast, James and that is if you, for example, you’re interested in a topic say you’re interested in you know YouTube then you invite YouTube experts on your show so you’re inviting people that you genuinely want to learn from and you’re having fun learning from them and talking about it.
James: Yeah well it’s also great too because like I’ve landed a lot of big or like decently sized of speaking gigs. I had pretty experts on the show like Bob Burg who co-wrote The Go-Giver. He was on my show and like Bob Burg has been an idol of mine for so long and then he was on my podcast. When I found that out, I was like he’s literally on the podcast it was him and Jeff West who’s another phenomenal sales trainer and just really good storyteller.
But I got to build a relationship with them and then I was like yeah if you guys know anybody else who’d be a good guest or if you know anyone who has a cool podcast, I’d love to hop on to something like that because that gets me in front of a bigger audience. That is like-minded and that is my audience because if they know someone or they have a podcast that has my target audience and there are 5,000 listens to every single episode or something like that then I show up as an expert on the podcast like I get that traffic and guess what?
On that episode, I’m going to promote my lead magnet which invites people over to my system, my backend system where they can figure out about my coaching or my courses or affiliates, you know and stuff like that and that’s how it’s just really like having this beautiful ecosystem and I just prefer to leverage podcasting and YouTube content to funnel that system in.
Morris: And to wrap up the topic of podcasting and you know talking a bit more about online courses, I want to share one more thing about your podcast strategy I think it still is one of your free master classes if I’m not mistaken and that is you actually post once per month on social media and fill up your podcast and even get clients from it right? Is that Master Class still available?
James: I do yeah actually you know I have a training where I went like it’s like a 20-minute training but I went pretty deep into the whole strategy so I can send that over to you.
Morris: All right yeah I’ll link to that. So you taught that to me, I did it and it worked. My podcast was filled up for the entire month.
James: It’s legit.
Morris: Without sharing too much but like if someone’s interested in podcasting and you’re not sure how to you know fill up your podcast and you think it’s a lot of work, not the way James does it, it’s literally one post per month on so on Facebook.
James: Yeah well yeah because like think about how you build a coaching business. It’s through conversations like that’s how you do it at least initially. I think eventually we should create some sort of scalable asset like an online course because that can make money for you even when you go on vacation as long as you’re funneling people to it. Whether it’s through ads or whatever it is, YouTube content, your podcasts you know you have things that are always working for you in the background and it’s crazy how many people don’t have that which is where I want to help people and that’s where I do help people.
They don’t have any sort of scalability in their business or tech involved in their business to that extent where they can make money and like go on and not work and still make money while they’re gone. And that’s where having a scalable asset is. But in terms of getting the ball rolling like it’s a great strategy doing a podcast because again, the way you build a coaching business is through conversations. Podcasts are literally built for conversations you know.
If you do a guest interview so it’s like you’re just building this relationship and getting to know people so much faster and also showcasing them. But there’s a lot of strategy that goes into it and that’s what I do cover in this training so.
Morris: Thanks! I’ll link to that below this episode so talking about courses and creating a scalable asset, James who should not create a course?
James: I think people who are just thinking that a course is going to be like a get-rich-quick thing like oh I’ll just make a course and then I’ll make all this money. That can happen if you have put the time into building a good audience or you’re really freaking good at paid ads and you can you know funnel people over. But paid ads take a lot of strategies. I’m not saying they don’t work you know. I think that we can build really good businesses without running paid ads but a lot of people think they’re like oh I’ll just throw some money at paid ads and just like slap up this course and I’ll just make all this money.
It’s like no, that’s not how it works. Maybe back in the day when paid ads were like brand new that’s where you’d have those crazy stories where people putting $1 in and getting like 12 back or $ seven back you know for every dollar they put in. Now, it takes way more strategy because ads are just so normal. So I think that’s like a big red flag to me and like just thinking that oh I’ll just make this course because it’s just going to make me a ton of money and I could just half-ass it and kind of slap it together.
Programs you should put a lot of like energy and time into it, granted there are ways to release it faster and make money faster than I’ve learned over the years which I’m happy to share. But yeah I think those are the types of people I don’t think should make courses like you should get into this for the right reason to make a program that’s really going to help people and be smart with how you build it. Because like in the end, whether it’s a coaching program or an online course or any kind of product or even content that you produce, you should always be thinking about your audience and putting them first. And I think the people who are trying just focus on money should not make online courses.
Morris: If it’s just for passive income right? Because I see that a lot with the eBooks online course creation right? It’s like the goal is not to help people, the goal is how to create passive income the fastest and it should be vice versa. The passive income is a symptom of mastering this tool and helping people first that’s what I get from you.
James: Oh yeah and I mean it’s totally fine to like want passive income and you should also. Yeah it should be like a secondary because the way that you’re going to create that passive income is first and foremost really creating something that’s really valuable for your audience and when you do that, more people are going to buy it. Therefore you are going to get the benefit of passive income.
So it’s like a universal principle of give and when you give naturally you receive. It’s the law of reciprocity you know and so when you put your audience first, you build something really valuable for them, you understand what’s valuable for them through good market research, that’s how you’re going to make that passive income. So put your audience first.
Morris: So if that’s a big red flag, then how can somebody self-analyze and discover the green flags? How can they figure out okay now is the right time for me to create a course?
James: I think it’s the right time for you to create a course when you’ve been doing a bit of private coaching with people. Because a lot of people can be really proficient in something but teaching it is a whole different ball game. They’re like I’m really good at this thing but being able to teach people that is a challenge for me. This is very common that I’ve learned through my market research. I think it’s a good time to create a course when you have been coaching people privately. You’ve been teaching people in some way like private personally you know one-on-one or in a group setting and you have a bit of a system.
And you can see patterns of like I know that most people deal with this thing and they want to achieve this thing. Point A point Z and you can see the step-by-step process to help someone do that. That’s when I think it’s a good time to build a course. A lot of people they’ll come to me and they’re like oh I want to build a course and it’s like we could you know. But I always recommend it’s smarter to work with people privately because then you can create a process that you know is pretty repeatable and you don’t have to work with like 300 people or even a hundred people. It can be literally like three or five people that you’ve helped get a certain result and you’re like okay I have a bit of a process and I’ve repeated it with a handful of people. Totally fine. Now, it’s time to build a program.
Morris: And you can even help people for free right? It doesn’t mean you have to be a six-figure coach already. Even if you’ve just helped a few people, I think what you highlighted there was really important. You start to see patterns like you’re helping a few people and you notice, wait a second I’m repeating myself. There’s a pattern here and once you’ve identified that, that’s a really good sign that it’s time to create a course. That’s what I’m getting here from you.
James: Well yeah because like being in a conversation with someone like you and me right now you hear things that I say and you’re like oh well you said that so that kind of stirred up something else in my mind. Or if we were on a coaching call and I mentioned something you can be like hold on let’s push back, let’s you know go back and kind of you mentioned this thing so let’s explore that a little bit. There’s an even flow factor to it whereas a course, it’s rigid.
You watch this module and hopefully everything I say in it, is going to be what you need because it’s totally different for you to coach somebody through it versus them just kind of going through a preset process . So the more you know your program material and that’s why coaching people through it is really good because then you know what to say. Because you’ve said it multiple times with people and you’ve seen the pattern and how you teach it so then when you record your video or your audio or whatever it is you know that like this is what resonates with people.
Because I know I’ve actually coached them through the process instead of you just making a course and then people don’t get results from it because you didn’t really coach anyone through it you know. So it’s just a smarter way to build them.
Morris: Yeah that’s a really big piece. You’ve explained to someone personally and you saw their reaction from the person as opposed to just you being convinced that this is the right way of teaching it. How often does somebody tell you no this course that I want to create is exactly what they want but they’ve never taught that system to someone?
Like You know it’s situation I’m describing because I find myself in this conversation quite often where someone hasn’t taught that system to someone yet but at the same time, based on other experiences, their research or just other life experiences or professional experiences, they’re convinced that the course is ready to be built. How often do you observe that they were wrong in that analysis?
James: I have people come to me in situations like that and no matter what, I always have people do customer research or market research first thing. I mean I have people come to me and they’re like I already have a program built but it’s not selling. I’m like oh okay for sure. So I still have them do customer research because customer research is great not just for knowing what kind of program we should build or like what to add into the program but it’s really good for knowing what to say in your marketing materials. Like your emails or what kind of lead magnet you should build or what to say in your sales copy.
So it’s a kind of a red flag for me if someone’s like this is the program I’d be like okay hold on. Just because other people have built these programs and you think that they’ve been successful with it or even if you know they’ve been successful with it, it doesn’t matter. We should still do the work of doing our own research you know. So I say, always do customer research because it’s funny every time I tell people that their homework for the week is to have conversations, go do some research and they come back to me the next week they’re like dude I learned so much from my audience. Like wow, it’s like yeah that’s why you do customer research you know. I’m not just saying this stuff.
Morris: So that’s your customer research suggestion, to talk to people on calls one-on-one?
James: I think it’s not the only way but I think it’s the best way because kind of what we’re doing here you know it’s like that even and flow. Somebody can say something and then you say well what do you mean by that? How do you feel when you say that or when this happens how does that make you feel? And you really get into the mind of the person because you can dig so much deeper on an actual call. What I mean Reddit threads, Quora you know these different forums, that’s what it’s called. Forums are great but YouTube comments are great too like people say I’m feeling like I’m just so lost when it comes to blank.
With what I would see all the time with customer research was like I really want to create an online course but it just feels like such a daunting task to me and the word daunting comes up so much. So what do I do? I look at the YouTube comment and I highlight that and I add it to a little spreadsheet or to a Google doc so I can keep track of those exact words and phrases of pain that people are saying. Or dreams that they have you know or reasons why they haven’t done it yet. That’s where it’s great. So I think always doing customer research is awesome through YouTube comments, etc or blog comments or even podcast reviews or even testimonials or if you’re in a paid group, that’s been a great one.
Like I’m in a group of someone who sells something similar. Let’s say like a course about how to build a course or an online business and there’s a comment section, people are literally sharing their frustrations and pain points in that and the creator doesn’t always get to them. So I can take what they’re saying and just take note of it, of exactly what they’re saying. Then I have that in my arsenal for when I’m writing copy or building out my course material but personal conversations are the best. Because even if somebody says like I feel so lost like I really want to build this course but I feel so lost and it seems like such a daunting task, I can ask them like what is it about it that makes it feel so daunting to you and now if in real conversation, I can dig deeper than just what the YouTube comment or Reddit thread said. So that’s why I think it’s way more powerful if you can get those people on calls by far the best way.
Morris: That is really really powerful James like basically you’re preparing the questions you want to ask on the calls through the research, through all these platforms as you just mentioned but then still going on the calls asking those questions and digging deeper.
James: Yeah when you do this, I mean if anybody’s ever read a sales page or listened to somebody talk that’s an expert on something and they’re like I feel like this person’s in my head, it’s because they’ve done research. They’ve had so many conversations with people or they’ve read the comments you know and all that kind of stuff to where they know exactly the words and phrases. Because as you were talking with people even if you talk with like five people, you’re going to realize that they’re saying a lot of the same things in the same way like the daunting task like it seems so daunting to me to build an online course.
And that’s a huge objection people have but if I teach them you know the strategy of creatingan an MVP or a minimum viable product instead of building this massive course, it doesn’t feel so daunting and then they’re put to rest and they’re like oh wow actually I do feel like that’s possible for me now. That’s how you get inside the mind of people. It’s by really digging down to like what’s the real reason that you’re feeling this way until you’re really clear on that. And it takes practice to do that but that’s that’s the idea.
Morris: To slowly come to an end here with this episode James, thank you so much for sharing all of that, I have two questions to wrap this up. One thing I know about you is that you recommend and on the topic of right creating an online course is so daunting you recommend creating the minimum viable course and then start selling that, is that correct?
James: Yeah because you like why put so much time into building some huge program and I’m speaking from experience here by the way. I built like six online courses that didn’t make me any money. I put literally a year and a half worth of work and didn’t see any sales of building online courses and funnels and all that kind of stuff. It was a good experimental phase of my life but then you know I finally made a course where I did all this customer research and even still I made this huge program and then put it out there. And I was making sales which is great but if I could restart now and what I teach my students is like make it a very simple program and price it like to 50 to $200 depending on what the program is.
But like I say you know 50 to 100 bucks, something like pretty easy for most people and just like start making sales with that or get into the hands of people. I have a client right now and he has a couple of like little mentees that he’s working with and I was like just give them the course like. Record the first module of this or you first like five lessons and then give it to them and get their feedback on it on the way it’s presented. What they would like to see more of so they can see the whole program. Because like in the end what people want is a transformation that’s why we buy things. That’s why we buy you know we hire a plumber because we want our toilet fixed. I want to be able to use my toilet you know or use my shower. That’s why we pay for the plumber, we don’t pay for the plumber because I just feel like paying some plumber.
Morris: Or because he has the best wrench or whatever.
James: Yeah it’s like I don’t care dude just get the job done because what I want is the thing. I want the result or the outcome that I’m looking for and that’s like the goal of your course. So when you do the research and you figure out what is the outcome that the majority of people want? Everybody’s going to be a little different you know it’s a little like a golden unicorn or whatever but what’s the general transformation that people really are saying they want? And the common trends or patterns you’re seeing and when you’re like this is pretty much everything that everybody wants, then you build a small program related to that, that gets them that transformation.
People think that more content equals a better course. It doesn’t not necessarily. What it makes a good course is the most streamlined way possible to get them from point A to point B. That’s all they care about so if I can get you the result you’re looking for in 10 steps or 10 lessons versus 50, you’re only going to thank me for it because I was able to make it make sense in a smaller amount of time. So that’s why you start small and you build it based some what real people are saying they need help with and you’re like okay these are the steps you would need to take. Only the meat and potatoes and then from there as you get people into the program at a smaller price point, that’s when you start to get feedback from them.
And you test things and then you say what else would you like and they’re like I’d love to see more like SEO. I was really hoping that you would show me how you set up like a YouTube Studio or your content Studio or like what’s the best equipment to use you. Like oh cool yeah I’ll make a lesson on that, that makes total sense. And then you make a lesson on that and then you’ll kind of organize everything and it’s kind of that build-as-you-go approach but that’s how you’re going to make a really good program where people actually finish it.
We did this with one of my clients constantly and she had like 90% course completion rates because every single piece of it, yes every single piece of it was built on what people really wanted and needed and the length of the lessons you know they’re really short lessons but that worked for her audience because we did all the research ahead of time.
Morris: Yeah 90% completion rate, that is crazy like even yeah even in free great free stuff doesn’t usually get such a high completion rate. The other quick question is what’s the easiest platform? Like someone who’s never created a course they’re listening to this they’re like okay I’m ready to create my course, what’s the easiest platform to build it? To build their minimum viable course?
James: I would recommend, I mean the one that I use is Kajabi I’m not going to say that you should use Kajabi. I think it’s great but it does more than just create courses. It’s like your entire business like your website your email marketing all your Landing Pages, your blog, your course, your membership sites like automation it does everything so it’s more expensive it’s like 150 to 200 bucks per month. Or like you know two grand for the year or something like that so it’s an investment but it’s well worth it. I mean Kajabi pays me to use their program at this point because I’m an affiliate for them as well.
But if you’re just looking for like a really good course platform for just hosting a course, I would recommend Thinkific. Thinkific is really short or it’s a really like low investment point. I think it’s like 30 bucks a month. They used to have a free plan but I don’t know if they do anymore. I was trying to find it the other day. If they still do like try and type in Thinkific free plan but you would get like one course with unlimited students and I was like that is in Bonkers yeah I think they stopped doing it though. Yeah because I tried to find it the other day and I couldn’t find the free one but like the lowest option was still like 30 bucks or 20 bucks or something like that per month.
So I’d say thinkific could be like the best like entry level getting started platform to use use but if you want something more robust that is really easy to use in terms of uploading your program and selling and marketing and all that stuff, I recommend Kajabi. It’s my favorite. It’s what I recommend everyone and you can get by the way on that if you want to check it out. You can get a 30-day free trial of Kajabi through my affiliate link so it does not extra money that you have to pay or anything it’s just a small percentage comes over to me to support me. If you make your investment you get a 30-day free trial.
If you use my link, I also give you a whole course I created that shows you how to set up your business and marketing funnel and all that with copy templates all that kind of stuff, behind the scenes of my business. It’s a course you get with that it’s called the Kajabi Kickstart course and then you also get a one-on-one country call with me so you can get that by going to profityourknowledge.com/kajabi.
Morris: And they get that by signing up for the 30-day free trial with Kajabi through your link?
James: Yep you get the course and then you can also book a call through the course and I remind you a ton of where you can book the call.
Morris: That’s an irresistible offer. If you don’t know where to host your course, try it Kajabi and you get a coaching call with James and you get his course on how to set it all up inside Kajabi. That’s awesome James! I’ll I’ll be sure to link to that as well.
So anyone listening to this all the way to the end whether you’re thinking about launching your own podcast and you need a mentor like I did with, contact James. If you want to create your course and you want James’ help, contact him as well. If you want to do both reach out to James, where should they go, James? Where should I send them to?
James: Well we’re going to have a couple of links down below but I mean if you just type in Profit Your Knowledge into Google, I’ll pop up. You can find my YouTube channel, you can find my podcast, and my website as well but I think we’re going to make sure that we get like the Kajabi link down there and we’ll also get like a little podcast training as well down in the show notes.
Morris: All right, Profit Your Knowledge James Allen. James, thank you so much for making this an extra in-depth episode and also for all the stuff that you’re helping me with.
James: Yeah man absolutely thanks for having me.
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