#193: How to Expand Your Empire

Welcome back to another edition of the Course Creation Incubator podcast. I’m your host, Gina, Onativia out here to help you build up the online based business of your dreams. Whether it’s an online course, a live program, or something completely new, I’m here to guide you in crafting offerings that free up your time, expand your reach and amplify your impact.

Today, we’re talking about how to expand your empire. Now, some of you might be thinking, Gina, I don’t have an empire, right? I’m a solopreneur, I’m a coach, I’m consulting, I’m a small business owner. But let’s start thinking differently right now, because you do. You either have an empire or you have an empire in the making. Meaning a diversity of offerings.

I want you to think about how you can expand what you’ve been offering in terms of services or courses or programs were and talk about it today. And this is based on conversations I’ve been having with multiple consultants, small business owners, about how they can think differently and maybe even bigger about who they are or what they offer.

If you are a consultant right now, should you start thinking of yourself as more of an agency? That kind of jump. So we’re going to talk about what expanding into an empire might look like for you. And last episode, we talked about planning for the future. I hope you downloaded the new worksheet and you listened through my five step process to set yourself up for success in the New Year or over the next six months, or nine or 12 months.

And as part of that process, I asked you to identify where you’d like to innovate. And we’re going to take that a step further today and look at specific ways for you to diversify what you have to offer and really grow your business. So I mentioned earlier that this was prompted by a couple of conversations. One is a conversation I’ve had with a friend who is a FTE, a full time employee right now with a super cool sports niche like this guy is doing things with bikes that I haven’t even heard before, and he’s looking to really expand to become a consultant or maybe even open his own agency and then I’ve got another friend

over here who’s more tech minded and she’s been an awesome consultant forever, and now she’s looking to expand her services. So whatever that looks like for you, just let yourself daydream. I don’t let myself daydream a whole lot. I’m just not. I never doodled as a kid, but I’m starting to let myself daydream a little bit about what’s possible.

And I encourage you to do that too, as you listen to this episode. And before we dive in, this episode is brought to you by our Done for You services. My team and I work to help you create your course, your program, your life cohort. We specialize in launching with Joby our go to platform. It’s packed with tools to help you succeed and look super sophisticated as an expert.

I’ll link to our Done for You services in the show notes. Go ahead and book a call with me and we’ll chat what’s possible for you. And then I’ll also link to Hijabi so you can check that out in the show notes as well. Now let’s talk about expanding your empire or your burgeoning empire. Now, first, why does diversification matter?

I want you to adopt the mindset of a portfolio business owner. Think of your business like an investment portfolio, yo. Which thrives on variety. When you diversify your offerings, you’re not just spreading out risk. You’re opening up new revenue streams and reaching untapped audiences. So this is a concept I borrowed portfolio business from Amanda Goetze, who’s an influencer who talks about creating a portfolio business with multiple revenue streams, consulting, coaching services and products here at the Course Creation Boutique.

We do just that. We consult, we coach, we’re all for services and we also run courses like our six week accelerator. Ask yourself, what would your portfolio look like? What would align with your expertise and goals? And today, let’s explore some specific ways that you can expand your portfolio. First and foremost, of course, is to create an online course.

You knew I was going to start here, right? I still believe building an online course is one of the most powerful ways to package and monetize your expertise. I want you to expand your idea of what you can offer in terms of what you bring to the table. And I’d love to talk through some options what that might look like.

For example, you could have a starter course, a $97 course or lower that acts as an intro to your expertise and feeds into your coaching or your consulting. So if you are a financial advisor or a medical practitioner and you want people to get a taste of what it’s like to work with you or a coach or consultant, sometimes people just want to start with a lower price point before they go all in.

Before I put down thousands of dollars with you, or even hundreds of dollars, I might want to get a sense of what your content is like. How do you coach? What’s your approach? How is your content broken up? And there’s nothing better than that. Then a starter course and I’ll link to a episode I did. Why a starter course might be your best first course.

It’s a low rent way for you to try out courses also. And if you have existing content that you can repurpose, use it for a starter course or you could do a bigger program. Here’s another option, right? You could do live calls or offer additional support, or you could have your signature program as a prerequisite to working with you.

Like I had Robin Fertel on the podcast, who is a therapist who has a overcoming Love addiction course. You go through the course as you work with her. So in terms of having a course, it’s a game changer for saving you time and maximizing impact. It might be a great way for you to expand on the offerings. And by the way, you could offer a live course.

You could do it live over six weeks, 12 weeks. You could offer a hybrid where you’re teaching some of it live. Some of it is static. There’s a lot of different ways. Don’t feel like you’re pigeonholed. I see this all the time. There is no one size fits all when it comes to course creation. Another way you can expand your empire is to, of course, test the waters with a live cohort.

If you’re not ready to go out there with a fully polished course, a live cohort can be an awesome way to start. You deliver the content live, you gather feedback and refine it for a future evergreen offering. And I recently did an episode on Life Cohorts, a link to that in the show notes. If you have an engaged audience or even past buyers, this is a great way to validate your content while earning revenue.

And it’s also low risk because you’re going out to people who know you, who know what you’re about, know what an awesome expert you are. So that might be a really good option for you to create something in the next six months. Another option for you would be being an affiliate. That would be a way to expand your empire.

So instead of you packaging up your expertise in a live cohort or putting together, say, a starter course, you promote somebody else’s course or program that’s already structured, that’s already set up, and they have a living, breathing affiliate program and then you get a commission on each sale that you make. So I love this. If there’s an expertise that your audience has been asking for and you don’t necessarily want to teach about it, but you want to offer them the opportunity to learn more.

This is a great idea for you to generate some revenue partner. Test the waters of an affiliate partnership and see what’s possible. So I have a friend who’s a consultant and she knows enough about Facebook to be dangerous, but her audience was asking about Facebook and media ads, so she went in on an affiliate program to start selling this meta ad program.

I mean, I’m just talking out loud. I’ve been talking about LinkedIn and LinkedIn ads on this podcast. I could see myself doing something as an affiliate for a linked ads LinkedIn ads program. This is not something I’m necessarily going to teach or go out there in a bigger way. It doesn’t compete with what I’m putting out there, but it is an added value to my existing audience.

So that’s why that synergy in terms of being an affiliate might work. Another idea is to just partner with somebody on your own course like I’ve been talking about. I’m going to partner with Megan O’Leary on our sales copywriting course. That’s another idea. So that takes all of the ownership and the responsibility off of you. It’s kind of a fun thing to do if you have the right partner.

So let’s another idea. Another way to expand your Empire Group coaching programs. This idea is awesome if you thrive on live interactions and instead of a one on one model, you could try offering group coaching sessions for, say, 6 to 12 weeks. This allows you to, of course, help more people at once while creating a sense of community with your audience that we’re all craving for right now.

By the way, you could do a paid community with some group coaching, depending, or you could say community plus coaching and then offer it up as a package with that. And then maybe they get six weeks of community and they get coaching every other week as part of a group. Maybe you do hot seats. What are your people asking for?

What do they really need? Like, if they’re saying, Hey, I want to, I want to do coaching with you and you’re trying to move away from the 1 to 1, maybe you do a little bit of group coaching. You would test the waters on that. Or maybe you’ve been thinking about launching a membership. This can be a really great way for you to build recurring revenue.

For example, you could create a monthly coaching club or a mastermind group. You can keep the content fresh and exclusive to keep members engaged. This I love. If you have people coming to you saying, Hey, I’d love to have you in my inbox or in my ear or watch you every month. And they want that reinforcement. They want that community month to month.

A membership might be a really great idea for you. Okay. One last idea. And by the way, this is just riffing on a few different ideas. You can do a combo of these. You’re going to come up with your own ideas. Hopefully listening to me right now is a certification course. So if you have a proven system and especially if people are stealing your system, you know you’ve got something that works.

When people are taking your content and they’re teaching it to others, it might be time for you to build a certification course. You’re putting your expertise out there for others to learn and then facilitate themselves. So like a facilitator or a train, the trainer model, we’re also doing that as part of our Done for You services. We’re starting to build more certification programs.

All right. So what do you think you might want to build? What excites you? What aligns with your expertise and what do your people really need? Because there’s a lot of different options to package up your expertise, as you can imagine. So don’t be afraid to bring some variety to your offerings and your expertise and put yourself out there in a different or bigger way.

Start small. Test your ideas Experiment. The goal is to diversify in a way that feels authentic and sustainable for you. And remember, you don’t have to do it all at once. Just start with one piece. Like I said in that planning episode, you’re going to start with one thing to innovate. Test it out. Let it grow. And if you want help, think about our Done for You services.

You can email me at Hello at course Creation Boutique E-Comm or you can go to course creation boutiques slash course. Love to work together to help you bring your ideas to life. All right. Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss one episode or workshop. And until next time, go create be you and be brilliant and get it done.