#175: How to Package Your Expertise

Welcome back to another edition of the Course Creation Incubator podcast. This is Gina Onativia. Your host, your bulldog, your cheerleader, as always here, taking excited about building up your digital programs and creating the online course based business of your dreams. Now it’s a perfect time. Before I go any further to say thank you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for allowing me to rant Week to week. Thank you for reaching out and letting me know when something has struck you in a great way or not so great way. And I love hearing from you. So thank you for listening. If I haven’t heard from you, please reach out to me on LinkedIn or Instagram. And if you’re interested in a strategy session as we start the new year off, please reach out hello@coursecreationboutique.com  or if you’d like to get coaching on a podcast episode, an upcoming episode, please reach out as well. You can email me. I would love to hear from you. I did a planning episode last week. If you haven’t listened to a yet, please go back and check it out. 15 minutes of planning for your next six months to see where you want to take your business. And I think this time of year is a great time to just evaluate all things right. Your business, your relationships, your health, what’s working and what’s not. And I mentioned in that episode that we’ve been looking at the podcast and saying, okay, is this working or different aspects of the podcast working everything from me doing the scripts? Actually, while I was scripting this episode, I was thinking, I think I could streamline this a little bit, or when I’m doing my guest episodes, I feel like I can improve the process and get some leverage from our writer Kathleen. So this is a great time of year to do that because I don’t know about you, but a lot of times I’m working in the business, right? I’m in the weeds and not taking that time away to think about, okay, how can I improve this process and this systems? And you’re just in the daily churn. This is a great time to take a step back, a critical view of what you’re doing, because sometimes you want to stop doing something and I’ve talked about this in a previous episode, Start, stop, Innovate. So the stop question is a really great one. Even though you’ve put time and energy and love into something, it doesn’t mean you need to continue it for your business. For example, I talked about I’ve had a mastermind just talking to one of my clients about this the other day. I loved having my mastermind, but after two and a half years it was really time to take a break.

I was a little burnt out on it. I was attracting a different sort of lead and a different sort of person after a little while and I thought, okay, this is a great I had a great run right two and a half years time to switch things up. And that gave me space to introduce my live six week accelerator, which is now self-paced. So every time you stopped doing something, you could start doing something right. Every time you stop doing something, you innovate somewhere else. You can introduce different opt ins. Okay. This year I decided to innovate with some marketing packages. Next year we’re thinking of going bigger on YouTube or investing more in Google ads, which do work well for us.

So I’ve got to decide where I’m going to stop doing in order to give myself space to do these other things or to grow these other areas. So whatever that looks like for you, is there something you’ve been grinding at that hasn’t really been getting your results? Maybe you’re afraid to step away from it, you’re afraid to stop.

Maybe it’s something you’re partnering with, right? And you’re afraid to tell your partner or you’re afraid to maybe share this with your team that’s been helping you. While it’s still might be in your best interest to stop. And if people really care about you, they’ll support you. Well, that’s just a quick continuation of last episode. I want to make sure you’re doing that 15-minute planning process. If you haven’t done it, go back and listen to that episode. This episode was inspired by my friend Colleen Houck, who actually has been on the podcast talking about strategic planning, a link to her episode in the show notes. I don’t know about you, but I can’t get enough planning episodes. I was just listening for one with the guys who do HubSpot and Zapier, those guys who do marketing for them. I’m obsessed. I want to know how everyone strategically plans so I can pick and choose based on what everyone else is doing and then make it my own. So I was just pitching and catching with Colleen and she was really inspiring me to look at my clients in a new way because I said I was really doubling down on those who are burnt out on one to one’s ready to offer something else.

And I thought we could talk about today how to ditch the one to ones and really package up your expertise in a great way. And I’ve been talking to a lot of people who are sick of the 1 to 1 or they’re burnt out or they’re ready for something else, or they know they’ve got enough expertise to make that transition. And I talked about this way back in episode 29 how to bridge the gap between being a consultant or a coach and then become a course creator and how to take working one on one to working for many and say a self-paced course. If you haven’t listened to that episode, a link to it in the show notes, that’s a great one.

I go through the myths of why sometimes people feel like they can’t go from consultant to course creator and give you some tips of how you can make that transition. And by the way, when I say you become a course creator, it doesn’t mean a static digital course, right? There’s so many different ways for us to put out courses or digital programs. These days. Could be a mastermind like I put out. There was definitely a huge digital component of that. It could be a self-paced and a live component course. It could be a group coaching program. It’s just the idea that you’re going beyond the one to ones and you’re ready for something more for your business, you’re ready for that next step.

How do you get there? How do you learn to package up your knowledge in a way that really makes sense? And I want to talk about that briefly because a lot of you are in that mode right now thinking about what does my business need for the future? What do I need to change up? Well, I’m hoping you’re in this mode. And if you’re not, let me get you in this mode right now. Going back to our stop conversation, If you’re stopping something, maybe trading an offer, starting something new, you’re ready for something new. You’re ready to build something that really shows off your expertise. So I’m going to talk about four elements when it comes to ditching the one to ones and packaging up your expertise in a different way. So first element as always, is the problem that you’re solving for, right? This is nothing new. So you guys, you guys are marketers. If you’re listening right now, I don’t care what level of marketers you are. If you’re listening to this, you are a marketer, you’re solving that problem, you’re filling that hole, right? Whether it’s weight loss or helping somebody take the next steps to avoid heart disease or alleviating stress or building up resilience.

Now, that’s a lot of medical topics there, but I could have said business, right? Helping someone build their website or figure out their customer journey or figure out the security or how to avoid a data breach. And here’s another great problem Safety or feeling safe. Think it was about a year ago. I had a couple reach out to me about women’s self-defense, specifically corporate. So maybe women leaving late at night from their corporate building corp, corporate office parks and, you know, being afraid and just having enough moves to be able to defend themselves if, God forbid, something happened. So I thought this was a super juicy problem. And if they had a specific niche, how powerful could that be? So you’re starting with that problem, the problem that you’re seeing again and again, it won’t go away. It’s persistent, right? And people are raising their hand and asking, can I have that one on one with you? Because they’re starting with that pain. So remember, it’s got to be urgent. So maybe from a business side, it’s someone who’s plateaued for the last five years, right? So that’s the only urgent to me. You want to figure that out?

You want to figure out what’s that urgent pain point that just won’t go away. Element two is Who do you really want to serve? So is it the same audience that you’re serving with your one two ones? I’m working on a program that helps folks with diabetes and pre-diabetes. Right now. It’s going to be a super powerful course and her audience is going to be very similar to her existing practice, who she works with. So her core audience is going to be similar to her 1 to 1 audience, but that might not be the case for you. So you want to think through who do you really want to serve? Who do you really want to attract in terms of your course? Then the third, and this is probably the biggest question what works best for your business? This is a business initiative. This is an income producing asset for you, whatever it becomes. Workshop Digital Course Group Coaching video series to lead gen, whatever it is you want to leverage your time, your expertise, your approach, your content in a way that really fulfills you and helps your business. And this goes back to where do you want to take your business in the next six months to a year, Go back and do that exercise.

And in that exercise I talk about your passion path that helps you define the offer or the package for your next six months. You want to leave those one two ones behind, but you also want to get leverage on your own expertise. So think about that. What do you really get help with in terms of whatever your outcome is? So if you want your time back, if you want a different kind of lifestyle, if you want different kinds of relationships, so what do you need to do in order to get that? Then the fourth element is what does it look like? So here are a few questions that you can ask in terms of what is the delivery of the structure, right? So do you want to work closely with, say, 20 or fewer students? Like, do you want more of a boutique or do you want to attract a bigger group? Do you love working with clients or students face to face, or would you rather put out the information and not include access to you? Would you rather do that self-paced?

Do you still want to test the waters in terms of your audience or your message? Or maybe you want to build your list and see what kind of response you get to your offer? So all of these are great questions to ask to help you figure out, okay, how do I want to deliver on this? Then? I know I want to leverage my expertise and my content, but how do I want to deliver that?

So, for example, you could have a starter course, maybe five videos that someone watches and then comes to your practice. Maybe you don’t want entirely to ditch the one two ones you want to set people up with a foundation of knowledge before they get to you. So I would consider that a quick start kit to get them started. And I haven’t talked about Robin, our Love addiction course, very powerful expert. So she did her Overcoming Love Addiction program because she was so booked out. She’s a therapist now. She has a signature course, but she’s been selling it for years. I talked about her back in that episode 29. The great thing is when she does open up a spot, if people want to see her, they have a foundation of her system and how she teaches you and how she’s going to work through her therapy session with you.

So that’s the fourth step is really thinking about, okay, what is it that really serves me? You could do some live calls first, then you package, you do a course as well. I really want you thinking about the leverage that you’re going to get from whatever this digital program becomes, because a lot of times sometimes I’ll talk to experts who say, I don’t want to do the one to ones nearly as much anymore. I want to charge a premium. Then they put out this great self-paced course and they do this really robust bonus package with one two ones because they feel like they need to do that and then they’re not getting the leverage that they really want. So I really want you to think through this fourth step and pick a structure that supports your outcome, supports what you want to get. As we wrap this up, I really want you to think of ways, different ways to package up your knowledge and all link to a classic episode I did about what online course structure might be right for you when you’re thinking about your next great offer as you’re moving away from your one to ones. All right. Hopefully this was helpful.

Leave me a review if I made any kind of impact on you. Thank you again for letting me serve you. Leave me a dream. If you have any questions about courses or digital strategy next week, we are in for a treat. I’ve been talking about today about being a consultant and moving to be a successful course creator. I have the successful course creators on next week from Wingspan Performance. My friends Kathy and Ivan are coming by to talk about their very successful three launches with their Wingspan Performance Academy. So many great Ahas. I can’t wait for you guys to listen. Please stay tuned for that next week. Please make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss one episode until next week. Go create, be you and be brilliant and get it done.