You're listening to Cubicle to CEO episode 281, the start of a new year is the perfect time to explore a new revenue stream for your business, especially one that produces residual income you can actually scale in this round up, you'll hear insights from five business owners, including myself, on how we productized our expertise and got paid to create our first digital course, in other words, pre selling an offer that doesn't exist yet, using the beta launch framework we teach in our paid to create challenge. I'll introduce each sound bite with the guest name and the original episode number, so you can dive deeper into the full interview. If you want to hear more, all the episodes are linked below in one bingeable Spotify playlist for convenience, and if you want me to handhold you through our proven three day paid to create process that has successfully launched over 2700 courses. Go to paid to create.com to enroll in our next live challenge. That's paid P, a, i, d to create.com to enroll in our next live challenge. Welcome to Cubicle, to CEO, the podcast where we ask successful founders and CEOs the business questions you can't google. I'm your host. Ellen Yin, every Monday, go behind the business in a case study style interview with a leading entrepreneur who shares one specific growth strategy they've tested in their own business, exactly how they implemented it and what the results and revenue were. You'll also hear financially transparent insights from my own journey bootstrapping our media company from a $300 freelance project into millions in revenue. You
example, one is from Claire Woodhouse episode 78 Claire shares her personal experience signing up for paid to create as a complete business newbie and finishing the challenge having sold out all 12 of her beta spots in just three days.
I had no idea what to do. I didn't know who my ideal client was. When you first brought up ideal client, I was like, what is an ideal client? I had no idea, right? So business newbie at its finest. I still am working on it. I have a long way to go. But yes, the page create challenge helped me so much, because in that challenge you, it's so simple, and you break it down so easily for the steps that you need to take, like the tangible things like, that's how I am. Give me a task and I will complete it. And that's exactly what your your challenge did, and it helped me so much. Just clarify, okay, you just gotta do this, this and this, and then once you find that, then you'll know that it can sell, and you'll know that people actually need it. Because a lot of people are saying, I'm scared, that no one's gonna buy it. I'm gonna make something, no one's gonna buy it. No one needs it. But through your process, it's so helpful to me to know, okay, I did all this research before I know who my ideal client is. I know who needs this and how it's going to be useful, how it's going to change their life. And I've talked to actual ladies, and they've told me what they want, and using that information to build my course helped me so much because I knew that ladies were, they were needing help in areas like how to read food labels. They were needing help in areas like, do I need to track my macros, like you were talking about all of that, and I go through all of that in my course. So I basically figured out everything they needed to do through your steps, and then put it into the course so that it could help them the best.
I love that, and I know you told me that you had two people who were sold on being your beta students before you even announced beta publicly, right, like they had already paid for their spot. And then within three days of announcing your beta using the IG story template that we include in the course, as well as announcing it on your feed and chatting with people in DMS, you had signed on an additional 10 founding students. Is that correct? So 12 total? Yes,
it was incredible. I was bombarded with so many responding to me, and I was like, oh my goodness, this is crazy. And what something that did shock me a little bit was it did take a little bit of time, because some ladies, once you tell them a little bit more information or the price, they're like, oh, I need to think about it. Blah, blah, blah. So I was waiting on a few ladies get back to me, but like, three days, that's it. And it was, it was crazy. It was so awesome.
Do Example Two
is from Amina. Amin episode 124 Amina talks through how she overcame the mental blocks that were holding her back from creating her first course. The result a sold out beta launch and $10,000 in new revenue generated just 30 days after completing our challenge. Page. Walk us through all the major blocks that were preventing you from creating your course.
Yeah, so I think, I think the biggest one was the course has to be created before I sell it, right? So I've got to record it. I've got to have the perfect camera, the perfect editing. And I'm, like, not, not a sort of techie person, so I had no idea where to start with that. You know, everything, all the content, had to be ready beforehand. And so in my mind, I was like, oh my god, this is going to take me, like, six months, maybe one year, but then at that point I'll think about how to actually sell it. So that was the biggest mindset block, and that was one thing that I really, was really just fascinating to me in the pay to create challenge, right? I mean, it's in the name paid to create when you actually kind of showed us how it's possible and how it makes so much more sense to put something out there without having created it, and then use the feedback from your students to create the content that you have. And that is so so powerful, because that's how you create really valuable content. Because you cannot possibly get in the head of someone else and know what it is that they want or need from you, until you speak to them, and until you see what it is they actually want and need from you. So that's what I did. Like every session, I'd have a rough idea of what I think my students want. I'd sort of run with that and produce the content, have it sort of relate to them live, get their feedback, change it up a little bit, you know. And then obviously that would impact the sessions in the future. So the next week session would be slightly different, depending on what they said to me in the week before. That was probably the biggest mindset block. The second one would probably be the fact that I had to have a big, big following on Instagram, or a big social media following, or a big audience. As I said at the time, I had about 2000 followers, and I just thought, like, who is going to buy from someone who has 2000 followers? Like, I'm a nobody, and at this point I had one to one coaching clients. So I did have some clients, but I just didn't think I could sell a course like a product and that to to more than, you know, a handful of people. And so in the challenge, when you showed us examples of loads of people who had done the challenge before, and they had, you know, maybe even just a few 100 followers, and they had sold out their course. That was really inspiring to me. And I just thought, you know what? I'm just going to give it a go. What's the worst thing that can happen? Is I might not get 15 students, I might get 10, or I might get five, but at least I'll have something to work with. And yeah, so I think those were probably the two biggest blocks, and the two things that just really opened my eyes to the right way to do this. When, when we did the challenge, during the challenge, you said something, and that really stuck with me, and I'm gonna totally misquote you now, but it was something along the lines of, if the first time you launch or sell something, it's perfect, then you've waited too long to sell it. You said something along those lines, and that, like, really, really stuck with me. It's really pushed me to just take action and put my course out there. So I think that's probably the most important piece of advice would be, just remember that you cannot know what works until you put it out there. And so the best way to learn is just to go for it. And like you said, you know, there's no such thing as perfection.
Example three is from Kaylin Dawley episode 75 looking for a scalable way to help people who can't afford your one on one services yet free. Lead Magnets aren't cutting it. Caitlin expanded her client base while bringing in revenue through her bootstrapped digital course she got paid to create instead. And you bring up a great point Caitlin, which is that your digital offering, this DIY course, is such a great intro offer to get people into your world of becoming your customer and client and getting to see those results and see that success working with you until they're ready to be able to afford your signature service, or you're done for you services and you can send them up that value ladder, which, over time, for those of you listening, is such a great way to extend the lifetime value of the customers and clients that you work with, because, as we all know, it is way more resource intensive, both from a time and money perspective, to go out and acquire new clients than to upsell your existing ones. So have you seen that you've been able to work with a lot more people because you now have this lower ticket offer? And have you seen anyone actually upsell into your service after taking the course?
Yeah, absolutely. Part of the reason that I wanted this course was because there's so many people that we really want to help and we just can't because they're not able to afford us, or we don't have the time, because people that are using our higher services are taking most of our time. And so this way I get to work with people without having to necessarily physically be there all the time. And then, yeah, a couple of the people are, like, existing clients that suddenly realize that they want more of our service. And, like, once you get into it, you realize how, how much you actually need it, and how it's the investment that's worth it. You know, sometimes it's hard to invest in your business because it feels like I don't have the money, but you're actually going. Make more money if you put that money in. And it's just so hard to kind of conceptualize that when you're in that stuck place, which is where we've been before. So I of course, it just feels so good to be able to give that, that opportunity to so many people. Now
that's amazing. And bootstrapping. I mean, you know Caitlin that I believe in that 1,000% I bootstrapped. My entire business. Never took out a loan, and I think it's so powerful, especially with the paid to create model, that you can bootstrap the creation the tools and the softwares that you use to create your course that's all paid for by your beta students, right? That cash injection that you get, Example four is from Linda ye episode 140 course, creation is a game of iteration, not perfection. That's why pre selling and not yet created course and having a beta cohort is the fastest way to collect data and improve your product. Get the details behind how Linda utilized her beta students feedback to improve her Chinese cooking course for the second cohort, you priced pan and cup diner at $297 how many beta students did you get? And then from there, what has been the path to acquire 34 students now total, or enroll 34 students that has resulted in your first $10,000 month?
Yeah. So when I did my beta, I did it at like 70% off, like really much lower, because nothing had been created yet. So the initial students paid $88 a piece. And I actually, like, went through after I did the beta, I actually changed the program a little bit more after kind of experiencing a personal epiphany, and then also interviewing some of my students. So when we built the course together, it was purely a cooking course, like Week One was simple food history about the 20s food like this is what the ingredients are. And then Week two is like setting up our kitchen. Week three was stocking our pantry. And then week four, we learned how to make five simple dishes with three bonus dishes for people who wanted to push themselves more. And I found that, like during the time when I was going through the beta with my students, I was having loads of fun. I was cooking all the time. I like, hosted three different like, Sitchin dinner parties for my friends in New York City. But then afterwards, I just went for like two months, and I didn't cook at all. And I felt actually really guilty, because I was like, Wait a minute. Like, I built this course promising that, like, you know, once you took it, you can just, like, make such food whenever, and have a lot of fun doing it, and then also looking at so I use Kajabi for my course, and you can track your students progress through the back end of Kajabi. So I saw that, like, a couple of my beta students had gone through the course with me from start to finish. But some of them, like, either hadn't even, like, really started completing modules, or, you know, they had started and got to, like, 12% and then just stopped. And so this was kind of at the point where, like, late, like at the end, like December of 2021, I sort of like, went back to the drawing board, and I was like, Okay, wait a minute. Like, what is going on? I no longer felt comfortable like selling the product when I felt like I wasn't walking the walk. And what I realized was, and after I, like, sent surveys to the students who hadn't completed the course, was that there was this initial level of excitement and learning this new thing for them, or relearning this thing that I really loved and cared about, Citroen food, and while they were in it, in the live experience that was very motivating. There was group accountability. And so the people who did show up live, including myself as the teacher, got a lot out of it, in that sense, but students who signed up for the beta but were like, oh, maybe I'll do this later. Or me who, like, after the beta, I got to this place where I had a mindset of, I don't have time to eat healthy, to cook, to take care of myself and and I just let it go. So basically, in January of this year, I went back and implemented some of the feedback that my students gave me, and what I realized as a result, that not only was I trying to teach people how to cook in panda cup diner, and honestly, like, my first beta student was myself, because, like, you know, like, the whole thing, like, started out because I was like, I'm gonna relearn how to make my family's dishes. And I thought the only thing standing in the way was my kitchen wasn't prepped Right. Like, I didn't have my own walk, like, I didn't have this giant patch of chili oil to, like, fall back to all the time. And then I realized that all of those things are really important and helpful and take hurdles away from cooking. But if I didn't have the kitchen systems or habits or mindset in place that made consistent cooking, regardless of cuisine, what I wanted to do and looked forward to doing, it wasn't going to happen. So kind of the second. Iteration of panda cup diner was adding modules and support systems for that. So basically, once I finished the second version of the program, and now there's a live option every month that I do teach live. And that's actually very beneficial for me, because, like, I'm like, oh, it's the third week we're making chili oil. Do I need to replenish my own chili oil? Is yes, and so I'll do it live. Like with my students. And I find that that that has been very energizing for me, and that has worked really well with this, like first official cohort of panda cub diners. So, so yeah, so now the full price is $297 and if people, like, pay in full at the webinar, it's 200 and like, 49 so they're able to, like, get two months off.
Amazing. And I love what you said about how there's something about showing up live, whether as a student or as an educator, that is just a very different energy, that extra layer of accountability. And I think that's honestly why the pre sell method works so well for creating a course is because you do have that accountability and responsibility to your founding students who have paid you for an unfinished course to actually show up for them and live teach them, and it basically removes all barriers of procrastination. Because unlike when you create a course on your own, right? You can't just push it off till next week. If you know that people are depending on you to show up and create the content live teach the content that they have paid you for. So I think that's an important element to call out. And you know another reason that we even host paid to create as a live challenge versus just as a recorded course. In fact, people sometimes will DM me saying, Hey, can I just buy the recordings from a past round? And I actually turn them away and I say, unfortunately, no, just because I don't think you're going to get the best experience and results out of that versus if you were able to show up live. So I love that you offer both options. I'm curious, though. So one thing you said is that you may pivot based on the feedback that you received from your audience, from your students, as well as just looking at the data in terms of course completion rates and whatnot. I'm sure there's people listening into this podcast who are also fellow course creators, fellow educators. I would love to know, like, what, what is a key question, or maybe a couple key questions that you actually asked your students that allowed you to receive the helpful feedback that you needed to implement those changes.
Yeah. So I think the first thing I would say is I actually got on calls with people like, I didn't send a general survey, which I like, I think I also asked questions through this chat group that we had. So my beta students and I were all in an Instagram like DM group. So that was for some immediate feedback, but I mostly asked people who didn't go through the entire program, like, if I could buy them a Starbucks coffee and just like, hop on a call for 30 minutes to talk about their experience. And I think, like, one of the most helpful questions, and not specifically related to cooking is like, what are some of the things that get in the way of getting started, right? So not even, like, why didn't you complete the program? I used to also be like a researcher in grad school, and I did a lot of qualitative interviews. And so like, one of the things is you almost never start a question with, why? Because, like, it comes off as kind of aggressive, even if you don't mean to be aggressive. But, like, I think instead asking them, you know, what are some of the things that get in the way, what are some of the hurdles that kept you from starting and then also kind of asking, you know, like, what were the reasons that you signed up for the program? Like, what are the things that you really wanted to get out of it, and then, how do you think we could get you there? Or, like, you know, what else could I offer? What other support could I offer to help you get there? What that would have been more helpful? So I think, like, those were the questions that really got me actionable steps. Because, like, you know, both like answers to what I can create the what right like answers to how I can create processes to support people, to, you know, like, complete the how. Or, as you know, if people are just like, you know, I didn't have time, or like, I feel like, why? Questions usually give you sort of more ambiguous answers. Or, you know, they'll say, like, I don't know. Or maybe they'll go down to like, Oh, it's my fault. Like, you know, I wasn't like, disciplined enough. And, like, that's not where you want to end the conversation ever. As an educator, if I was teaching preschool, like, I would never be like, oh, yeah, that it's your fault, Tommy, for not like, trying hard enough. That's the surface level answer that you need to dig a little bit deeper into.
Example five is from me. Ellen Yin on bonus episode 17, I share my own story of creating my first digital course in 2019 that went on to generate $676,000 I also walk. Through seven science, creating a course is the right next move for you. Here's the truth, your first iteration of your course will not be your last. If you've been waiting for everything to be perfect before you launch your course out in the world, you will be waiting for the rest of your life. Because, let's be honest, the perfect course doesn't exist as you receive data in the form of sales, completion rates, success stories, questions, feedback, etc, your program will naturally evolve and improve, but you can't make any data informed decisions if you don't have any data right, which can only be collected from putting your course out there. This is why I recommend selling a MVP that stands for minimum viable product, to allow you to enroll real paying students before you create any content for your course, and then by live teaching the course and getting your students feedback in real time, you'll get paid to create the beta version of your course. So this is exactly what I did in early 2019 and I got paid $2,364 to create my first online course with my 12 beta students who each paid me $197 so my time, my energy and my knowledge were compensated from the very beginning. Throughout the rest of 2019 that same program evolved and made an additional $12,835 before year end. Then in 2020 it made an additional $172,000 in my business, in 2021 that one product alone made $284,000 and finally, in 2022 it made another $200,000 plus before we retired it last summer to focus on building our media business. Even so, even after we retired it last summer and completely stopped selling it in early August. We've still been paid more than $5,000 in the first quarter of 2023 in residual payment plans that are finishing up this year. So just think about this for a moment. If I had let perfection hold me back from even starting with this online course, that imperfect version that I live taught over zoom to 12 beta students without any fancy tech, anything created up front, I would have missed out on more than $676,000 so far in my business from this one program alone. So the best part is, right, once you learn the pay to create method, it actually becomes a lifelong skill that you add to your toolkit, and you can utilize it to create cash flowing assets, aka digital products on demand whenever you want. Also, if you are really intrigued by this concept, but you're unsure if creating an online course is the right next move for you, here are seven easy ways to know it's time to say yes. Reason number one, you're maxed out on one on one clients. You're fully booked out. You do not have the capacity to take on more clients. Number two, you crave more time freedom in your schedule. Three, you answer the same questions over and over again in DMS, emails and in person. Reason number four, you're the go to person for fill in the blank, for whatever that may be in your network. Reason number five, you can talk about that said thing that you just said for hours with zero preparation, because you love it so much. Reason number six, you want scalable residual income. You'll notice, I carefully choose not to say the word passive, because I believe that's misleading. When it comes to online courses, of course, there is effort and time involved, just like any other stream of income in your business. The difference being that when you create an online course, it is something that you can create once, and it will continue to pay you for years to come. Reason number seven, your vision is to impact more people through your business, which can only really be done through something that is scalable and not totally dependent on your limited time and energy as a human being. If you check off any of these boxes, you are a great fit to join us inside. Are paid to create live challenge. You don't need to prepare or do anything other than sign up and show up with the knowledge already existing in your brain. I really mean that. Don't go creating a fancy funnel or thinking, oh, I need a website or a logo, or I need to, you know, grow my audience first, or I need money for ads. No, you don't need any of that, I promise you, if you just show up with the knowledge inside your brain, we'll guide you step by step on the rest. Hey, thanks for tuning in to our paid to create Roundup. I hope these stories inspired you to turn your existing knowledge into an online course. Go to paid to create.com to get. You guessed, it paid to create your first or next digital course. Again, the link is paid to create.com it'll also be below for you in the show notes.
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