Learn about course creator success frameworks with Digital Course Academy creator Amy Porterfield in this episode of LMScast with Chris Badgett of LifterLMS. Amy shares her story of finding success by building online courses, and the process of creating the Digital Course Academy.
Amy is the creator of Digital Course Academy, where she and her team help course creators get their bearings and the tools they need to launch successful programs for their students.
At AmyPorterfield.com you can find her Ultimate Course Creation Starter Kit. Most of Amy’s students are beginners just starting out, so her guide goes through everything readers need to know to launch a successful starter course for their audience and the course business structures she has seen work well over time.
Cultivating consistent revenue for your business is important for long term scaling. Incorporating multiple courses in your business or blended learning with group coaching, a mastermind, or a physical product can be what you need to give students the results they are looking for, so those may be something to consider. Opening up a feedback loop with students is also key to creating valuable content, and using blended learning can help inform the passive courses you create.
Amy breaks down courses into three major categories:
- The starter course
- The spotlight course
- The signature course
The starter course is an introduction and jumping off point for students to get started in your field of expertise. The spotlight course is where you take a deep dive into one topic. And your signature course is the full transformation from start to finish. The differences between the three are the price point and the results you deliver at each level.
One example of a starter course would be a Facebook Influencer course that teaches you how to get started with Facebook for $97. Then you might have a spotlight course that takes you in-depth into one topic that is all about Facebook ads, and that course may be priced at around $500. Then you could have the signature course that is $2,000, and it teaches you everything you need to know to create a course and launch it.
One common issue course creators have is they dive into the technology too early. Less is more with the technology aspect of course building. By focusing on the results you deliver to students and putting the technology second to that, you can focus more on the core value rather than the extra functionality.
To learn more about Amy Porterfield and the Digital Course Academy be sure to check out AmyPorterfield.com. You can also find Amy’s podcast Online Marketing Made Easy at her site. Amy is active on Instagram as well. And be sure to also grab a copy of The Ultimate Course Creation Starter Kit.
At LifterLMS.com you can learn more about new developments and how you can use LifterLMS to build online courses and membership sites. Subscribe to our newsletter for updates, developments, and future episodes of LMScast. If you like this episode of LMScast, you can browse more episodes here. Thank you for joining us!
Episode Transcript
Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place if you’re a course creator looking to build more impact, income, and freedom. LMScast is the number one podcast for course creators just like you. I’m your guide, Chris Badgett. I’m the co-founder of the most powerful tool for building, selling, and protecting engaging online courses called LifterLMS. Enjoy the show.
Chris Badgett: Hello, and welcome back to another episode of LMScast. Today I’ve got a very special guest, Amy Porterfield. You can find here over at AmyPorterfield.com. She’s the creator of the Digital Course Academy. Did I say that right, Amy?
Amy Porterfield: Yeah, you did.
Chris Badgett: And you also have a podcast called Online Marketing Made Easy, which is an awesome show, and you’re all about course creation and online marketing, online business, becoming a better person in the process, designing the life you want. I’m really excited to get into it with you today, and thank you very much for coming.
Amy Porterfield: Thanks so much for being, or having me. I really appreciate it. I’m excited to jump into this topic. I don’t know if you can hear, but the minute we started this interview, my dog is barking, so it’s been one of those days, but again, thanks for having me.
Chris Badgett: Yeah, you bet. No problem at all. I have dogs and-
Amy Porterfield: Oh, good.
Chris Badgett: Before I became an online entrepreneur, I actually ran sled dogs in Alaska for a very long time.
Amy Porterfield: Oh, wow.
Chris Badgett: But dogs are everywhere and they always interrupt, so it’s-
Amy Porterfield: Always, no matter what.
Chris Badgett: It’s all good. I actually wanted to start with a story, I was watching your Digital Course Academy launch, and I noticed, I was getting psyched, I cleared my schedule to go to your webinar and Zoom failed on you.
Amy Porterfield: Oh, my gosh.
Chris Badgett: This is funny, I just wanted to ask you that, to tell that story and what you did, because I’m actually a power Zoom user, the Zoom company has contacted me before. I’m in the top 1% of users because I do all these podcasts, I run a remote software team, I’m always doing marketing webinars, stuff like that, so I use Zoom a lot. It has very rarely ever caused me any problems, and I saw that happen to you and like, “Wow, what kind of timing is that?” What happened?
Amy Porterfield: Okay, it was the craziest thing. When I launched any kind of digital course, I do multiple live webinars. So, this was our very first live webinar of the launch, it was a 10:00 a.m. primetime, thousands of people were signed up for this webinar, and I was ready to go. So, what happened was about 10 minutes before I sit in this very seat, I’m ready to go, I’ve got a team member, Chloe, helping me where you can’t see her outside of the camera, and she was all ready, and she said, “Something’s wrong.”
Amy Porterfield: We thought we were doing something wrong, like I have a pretty fancy studio here and so we’re thinking we’re clicking something wrong, or we have an internet problem. But fast forward to what happened, Zoom had a full power outage. Like, the entire Zoom site for everybody was down. To make matters worse, it was so dramatic, you went to their website and there was huge red writing across the top, whatever it said, something like, “Holy cow, we’re down” is what I pretty much interpreted it to be.
Amy Porterfield: So, we had no Zoom and that’s never happened. Zoom has been always reliable to us, but I think I blacked out for a minute. Like, this is my biggest launch ever, the biggest course I’ve ever created, and I almost couldn’t breathe for a minute. Luckily, I always tell my students, “Don’t do your webinars alone.” I always have a sidekick, and Chloe my integrator, kicked it into gear, literally changed the technology around and we went live on a webpage. It still went up, we still converted well, but I literally don’t remember some of that moment.
Chris Badgett: Yeah, that’s wild. I felt for you when I saw that happen, and I did get to watch the replay when it came through, so I got to see it, it was fantastic. You mentioned something I wanted to ask about, which was the integrator. I’m assuming that’s from the entrepreneur system? What’s it called? Traction or?
Amy Porterfield: Yeah, EOS, the book.
Chris Badgett: EOS, yeah.
Amy Porterfield: Rocket Fuel and the book Traction. In our business, we subscribe to the EOS operating system.
Chris Badgett: Does it work for you? Do you love it?
Amy Porterfield: So good. We’ve been at it for about six months consistently now. I act as the visionary and then Chloe is my integrator, and then from there, we have directors and managers, and we have a small team. It’s about six full time and a bunch of contractors. It’s growing rapidly because we’ve had an amazing year so far, but I love it because I can stay high level, I can stay strategic, and my goal is content creation and relationship building. So, strategy, content creation, relationship building.
Amy Porterfield: Once I stepped into that role and stopped getting my hands in everything, it really has made a huge difference in how I love my business more, how I really enjoy the content creation at a whole other level, and Chloe loves it ’cause I get out of her way. Chloe, I mean pretty much runs the backend of my business as an integrator. She is the one who it’s my vision, she makes it happen.
Amy Porterfield: Her role is also to say no to me because I’ve got all of these ideas, no to me if it’s not on plan for that quarter’s goal. I hate that part, but that’s how a visionary and an integrator work. She’s always needing to say no so she can get the work done.
Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. How’d you find a good integrator?
Amy Porterfield: Such a great question. Chloe started out as a project manager. I didn’t even know what an integrator was about four years ago when she started, but I was looking for somebody that had project management skills and had some of that experience. So, we just put a job description together, but my secret is I’m always asking all my peers.
Amy Porterfield: so, although we use Indeed and put things out online and tell my community about positions we’re hiring for, some of the best positions came as referrals to me, so I put it out to my community, I said, “Here’s the job description.” That’s the key. You can’t just tell your friends you’re looking for somebody. Show them the job description, let them know who you’re looking for, and I have a friend that worked at Deepak Chopra, which is in Carlsbad, where I live, and she said, “I’ve got someone that’s fantastic.”
Amy Porterfield: I didn’t know Chloe was going to turn out to be my integrator, I didn’t know she was going to fill such a huge role, but I trusted her more and more and saw how amazing she was, and so I eased her into that role, and now she owns it like a boss.
Chris Badgett: That is awesome. That’s so good to hear, and I think a lot of entrepreneurs and visionary types can benefit by exploring that. It’s also a good match for the integrator.
Amy Porterfield: So true.
Chris Badgett: I was checking out your website, I love your website, AmyPorterfield.com. The design’s great, the navigation’s clean, as a marketing person I can see the flows of the top of the funnel and what you offer and how you … There’s a lot I really like about your website. Before I developed software, I ran a website agency, and you’ve done a fantastic job here.
Amy Porterfield: Well, thank you. That’s a huge compliment, and I feel like you’ve had nine lives.
Chris Badgett: I have.
Amy Porterfield: You’ve done a lot.
Chris Badgett: I was selfishly asking ’cause I need an integrator, ’cause I’m all over the place a little bit.
Amy Porterfield: It’s such a perfect role. Oh, for the record, I did a podcast about having an integrator, and I’m almost positive there’s a job description that we included with that podcast episode, so use that just to get started.
Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. I was on your website and one of the things that got me from on your webinar registration, was I’m a lifelong learner, course creation, training based membership sites, online communities, coaching programs. This is my bread and butter, and it is a subject matter that I’m infinitely fascinated by.
Chris Badgett: I’ve downloaded your Ultimate Course Creation Starter Kit which is on your website. Can we touch on some of the things in there?
Amy Porterfield: Yeah, let’s do it.
Chris Badgett: So, in terms of the types of courses, you had some really clear thinking around different course types. I have something similar that I talk about, there’s a behavior change course, there’s a learner process course, there’s something really dangerous that a lot of people make called a resource course, which is like a giant library thing, and then there’s this case study course where we’re learning by deconstructing others.
Chris Badgett: It’s a framework that I sometimes use to help people figure out get into some of the instructional design thinking, but then I saw your framework which is totally different than what I just described. Could you describe it for us and get into it? And also, I think you mentioned some price points that go with the different types of possible ranges.
Amy Porterfield: Right, right. Isn’t it funny, though, how you’ve got your framework and it works for you, and you create success with that, and I’ve got mine and it works for me? I love that there’s enough room for all of us, especially those of us who take this really seriously and we study it and we make sure it works for our students. I love that.
Amy Porterfield: A lot of my students are beginners to the core, they’re just starting out, just starting to build their email list and they really want to have a digital course business. What I mean by that is the bulk of your revenue is coming from your digital courses, whether it be live launches, evergreen, or a mixture of both, which is what I have.
Amy Porterfield: You might have other things in your business like a mastermind, a group coaching, a physical product even, but the bulk of your revenue comes from your digital course, so that you always have that consistent revenue. You’re not worrying about where the next dollar’s going to come from. What I do is I teach my students how to create a digital course business and you can do that with one course, or two, or three, but I always say, “Let’s just stay with one to get started and make sure it’s a success.”
Amy Porterfield: With that, I tell my students that there’s three ways you could go. You could have a starter course, which is like that one on one type course, dipping your toe in the water kind of thing. Then, next up is the spotlight course where you’re taking a deep dive into one topic. I’ll give you examples of each in a moment.
Amy Porterfield: Then, you’ve got your signature course where I say it’s the whole shebang. It’s full transformation from start to finish, and everything in between. With each of those, there is definitely a price difference. When you’re starting with a starter course, my very first starter course was called FB Influence, way back when. I’ve been at this a long time. It was a $97 course, just to get you started with Facebook marketing.
Amy Porterfield: Now, saying it’s a startup course, a spotlight course, or a signature course, it doesn’t have anything to do with how many modules, how many lessons, how many PDFs or cheat sheets. It’s more about the results that you’re promising, and the transformation. At FB Influence I was saying, “You’re going to get started with Facebook, how to get your Facebook page up, dabbling a little with Facebook ads, but not a lot. Just to get started.” That was 97 bucks.
Amy Porterfield: Then, the spotlight course is where you usually take one topic that you might talk about in let’s say a starter course, but you dive deeper. What I did is I had a starter course and my students said, “We love this, but the next thing we want is tell us all about Facebook ads. That’s where we think we need to go next.” I listened to my community and I created something called FB Ads Insider, where I took a deep dive into just Facebook ads.
Amy Porterfield: That, with the spotlight course, you can charge more because the results were going to be bigger. I was going to help them grow their email list faster, sell more, so that was around $500. You could go definitely up with the spotlight. Now, a signature course is where you are going for full transformation and you’re saying, “Okay, we’re going to start at point A, I’m going to take you step-by-step through everything you need to get to your desired outcome which is typically a big transformation.”
Amy Porterfield: So, for example, Digital Course Academy is a signature course. It’s $2000, it tells you everything you need to create a course and to launch it. So my promise is you can launch a digital course with success. Maybe not your first time out, everyone has some challenges along the way and we talk about that and troubleshoot that, but if you stick with it, you can get success with launching your digital course. Those are the three courses, and with each one, you can charge more definitely.
Chris Badgett: Yeah, that’s a beautiful framework. You’ve mentioned that especially first timers have some challenges, and I see a lot of rabbit hole … This is a problem I’m also obsessed with. There’s just all these rabbit holes that people can go down and get stuck or not do as well as they could have, or failure to even launch at all, or finish the course. What are some of the common ones that you see and some ideas on how to course correct?
Amy Porterfield: I love that you said rabbit holes, because you and I are very much alike in the sense that I’m always talking about stay away from those entrepreneurial rabbit holes, the things that we think are important, but in the end, they’re not. One is the name of your course. I personally don’t think that’s something that you should spend weeks or months deciding on. I say give yourself maybe one week max, play around with it, get some feedback and be done with it.
Amy Porterfield: That’s one area that I think is really important to not go down that entrepreneurial rabbit hole. Another one is just the technology in general. My students really get hung up on the technology, and I don’t blame them. I know that I’m not a techie kind of girl at all, I know that that feels overwhelming, and I always tell my students, “You sure as heck didn’t get taught this in school or college or anything like that” and sometimes it feels like a foreign language when you’re not used to working within these different softwares and applications.
Amy Porterfield: But I always say less is more with the technology, and let’s just find a solution that can do most of the things you want. I remind them, nothing is perfect, and at least get started with something. So, a lot of the times my students want to rip their hair out and go crazy because they can’t figure out one piece of technology. I think they just get in their head too much and then allow way too much time to figure it out. Do you have that challenge with technology with your students?
Chris Badgett: 100%. I mean, there’s the hardware, the software, the marketing technology. There’s just a lot of tech. But you don’t necessarily need a lot of tech to validate your idea or whatever. I mean, that’s one idea that I think’s important in our community.
Amy Porterfield: Yes. So true.
Chris Badgett: Technology rabbit hole, which course should I make? Like you said, the title. Or, even do you have any tips on if you’re working with an expert, they have the subject matter expertise, but let’s say they’re light on teaching or coaching skills, and therefore they’re light on curriculum design, how do you help that type of person create the content? Or, reverse engineer the result.
Amy Porterfield: Yes. One of the things is when my students have the skillset and the knowledge, which most of them do, and they’re coming to the table with an idea, if they’re never taught it or they don’t have those coaching skills yet, I first of all say, “Let’s just start with the starter course.” You can’t go wrong with the starter course, and you learn so much about yourself as a teacher, as a content creator, and you learn so much about your students.
Amy Porterfield: You can quickly move onto the next step if you pay attention once that starter course gets out there, and there’s money to be made. Yeah, you have to sell a lot more, but you can definitely, if you stick with it, and turn it onto evergreen, you can make some good money with the starter course. Here’s the thing, if they are challenged with the curriculum, I do have inside Digital Course Academy, a full week of creating an outline.
Amy Porterfield: Now, that is one area where I let them go down a rabbit hole for just a week and I say, “Let’s just focus on the outline.” Because once the outline’s done, you’re off to the races. But until you know the flow, until you know what you’re going to include in each model, what the lessons look like, what the PDFs are going to look like, you’re always going to be confused and not sure if you’ve got the right layout for your course. So, I take ’em through a brainstorm, and a pruning, and a research section, so we go through an entire phase process through a week, in order to get the perfect outline, and perfect, I don’t even mean perfect.
Amy Porterfield: Just as good as you can get it, and then we’re done. So, I do take ’em through a process, ’cause a lot of my students, they know their stuff but they’ve never taught it, and to me, the flow of how you teach something is everything. It’s so important. So, that’s how we do it inside the course.
Chris Badgett: That is awesome. I have a question for you in your course creation journey and looking at your website, you mentioned I think your course journey started with FB Influence. Is that right?
Amy Porterfield: Uh-huh (affirmative).
Chris Badgett: And now we’re on a signature program, Digital Course Academy. And your podcast is … Am I correct in assuming that you started with online marketing and now you’ve just really lasered in on courses? Can you talk about that niche process of moving around online marketing, and really [inaudible 00:18:01] a laser on courses, how that happened?
Amy Porterfield: Yeah, I love this question because my … FB Influence was my first successful digital course, but I did have some social media courses in the very beginning that just were not successful. I didn’t know how to create a course at the time and I sure as heck didn’t know how to launch it with webinars. I had a few failed attempts at the beginning, but when I started to teach Facebook more, I really do listen to my audience and they gravitated toward me around that topic.
Amy Porterfield: I started with Facebook and that’s when I had the first success with my course. What happened was I listened to my audience and they wanted the Facebook ads course, and then I paid attention even more and they really wanted a full Facebook marketing plan. So, I created that, as a signature course, it was called the Facebook Marketing Profit Lab, and I did that for a while.
Amy Porterfield: Then as I, this is something so great for all of you course creators, I became better in my area of expertise. My students said, “Okay, we want Facebook, but what about the other areas of online marketing?” The Facebook Marketing Profit Lab morphed into just The Profit Lab. I started to add some more elements of online marketing in my signature course.
Amy Porterfield: Once that was done, I marketed it a few different times, and then I decided where I really excel is how to create courses and how to do webinars. I knew that I was ready to step into that. I had to pay attention to what I did really well, and what people were asking me about. I started to get tons of questions about, “How did you create this course? How do you do these webinars?” I’ve used webinars from day one, even in my corporate job I used webinars.
Amy Porterfield: So I perfected that and as I got better, my classes got better, and more specific. That’s when I decided, “Okay, I’m going to zero in on list building, course creation, and webinars to launch them.” I do believe that when you’re known for something, people know when to go to you. So, I am not multi passionate. I believe that the way you make good money online is you become known for something, in terms of your expertise. So, I would guess that most people when you hear Amy Porterfield, you know think of course creation.
Amy Porterfield: Where quite honestly, 10 years ago you would say either I don’t know who she is, or you’d say Facebook marketing. So, just know you can pivot, that’s the beauty of having an online business, you can pivot as long as you’re strategic about it and you don’t chase the squirrels or the shiny objects, just because it feels good. It’s not about instant gratification, it’s about being strategic.
Chris Badgett: Yeah, that’s awesome. Just to confirm, when I first heard of you, I remember thinking of you as a Facebook person, and then it evolved into the courses.
Amy Porterfield: Good.
Chris Badgett: You’ve mentioned webinars. One of the other rabbit holes I see people get hung up on is the marketing or the launching of the course. If you were to describe a really simple funnel, or just strategy on how do we, just a basic marketing funnel for a course creator, what would the key elements be?
Amy Porterfield: I love this question. I am all about simplicity. I’ve created over eight digital courses at this point, over $12 million just in digital course revenue. So, I tell you that not to brag, but to say I’ve had one way of launching those digital courses in a very simple funnel. What I do is one, I pay close attention to the prelaunch runway. Leading up to any launch, before I ever advertise my webinars, so for the record, I market with webinars.
Amy Porterfield: But before I ever get there, I’m creating content around the topic that I’m going to sell as a digital course. About six weeks before I launched, I’m talking more about course creation, more about the fears of launching, more about what it takes to get started. So, I’m really leading up to that, and I think the time you spend when you’re not launching is the most important success factor in what will happen during your launch. So, always be list building, always be showing up, and getting consistent with your email marketing, before you launch, incredibly important.
Amy Porterfield: About six weeks in, I have a lot of content around what I’m going to be selling and then I don’t mention the course. Well, I might hint at it, but I don’t sell at all, and then we open the webinar registration, about a week before the webinars. Now, my secret is I do multiple live webinars. Back in the day I did one or two. The next time I did four or five, and I saw way difference, a huge difference in revenue.
Amy Porterfield: I usually open the cart from 10-14 days and I’ll do four to six live webinars throughout that time. I open registration about a week before my first live webinar, and then I do live webinars. Once the live webinar is over, each webinar is followed up with a post-webinar promo sequence, email marketing. I have specific emails that go out all the way to cart close. On cart close, I send three emails out.
Amy Porterfield: That was a huge game changer for me, as well. I used to send two, the day I sent three we almost doubled our revenue on the final day of the launch. It’s simple, just real fast, it’s a lot of growing our email list six weeks before we launch with the right audience, inviting everybody through Facebook ads and my entire email list to the webinars, doing the live webinars, following up with email marketing. That is essentially my funnel, and we have done that for many, many years. I always say, just keep it simple. There’s no need for a lot of bells and whistles.
Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. I have a question about getting it done. One of the things, I’d noticed a similarity, I spend a lot of time in … Basically I built a cabin in my backyard, this is my home office, and my house is like 100 feet over there. I have some young kids and my dogs go crazy, but I’ve created this-
Amy Porterfield: So cool.
Chris Badgett: … work environment where I just step in and I’m ready to roll. You’re in a great looking studio for creating content. Can you tell us, and actually I discovered by accident, I just started on Twitter, as I was building this cabin and sharing it, and then as I would go to some conferences and things, people asked me more about my home office in the backyard than my business. It became part of the brand, and I realized that, I mean it was important to me, but it’s important to a lot of people, the workspace, especially if you work from home. How did your studio come into being?
Amy Porterfield: Such a great question. So, I had the studio, it’s in my house, it’s a small room in my house. I’ve had it for about two years now, and before that, I would do a lot of video, but I would have to make sure I found some good lighting with a window on me, so I had some good lighting, or we all know what it looks like to have a stack of books, to put some kind of light at the top and hope that it works, and all of that.
Amy Porterfield: I did get to a point that I’m like, “I am so sick of trying to make this work at the last minute.” So I thought, “I really want a studio where I can sit down, press a button and go live.” ‘Cause I knew I would do it more consistently if that was the case. I have two people in my community, David Foster, and Luria, and I say her last name wrong every time, so I’m not even going to-
Chris Badgett: The Live Streaming people.
Amy Porterfield: What’s that?
Chris Badgett: They’re the Live Streaming people, that’s who you’re talking about?
Amy Porterfield: Yes LiveStreamingPros.com. I’m so glad you said that, so I didn’t have to say her last name. LiveStreamingPros.com, they’re dear friends of mine, and I hired them to come to my house and build out the studio. Now, I will say it was very expensive, and I would never suggest this to my students that are just starting out, but it is something to aspire to.
Amy Porterfield: It’s funny, ’cause you and I know, I had a full on tech glitch before getting on here, because I was trying to do something I had never done before, but typically, and I promise you this, I come in here, I have this, let me just show you, I’ve got this little clicker here, I click a button and I go live.
Amy Porterfield: It has changed everything for me. Now, I’ll tell you, I’ve got some ring lights on me, I’ve got a mic up there, and this backdrop is from Home Depot. It’s reclaimed wood that my husband, Hobie, put together. So, that part’s not fancy at all, but good lighting and just clicking a button changed everything for me and I was more consistent when that happened.
Amy Porterfield: But you can always set up something way more simpler, but if you can find a place in your home to do so, I do highly recommend it. ‘Cause I’m guessing you’d agree, it just makes life easier.
Chris Badgett: Yeah, definitely. Can you share any other just productivity tips? I mean, you have eight courses you said, you’ve written books, you’re on 300 podcast episodes I think, or maybe more, I don’t know.
Amy Porterfield: Getting close.
Chris Badgett: I find there’s not much middle ground. People are usually really productive or they’re having issues with productivity. Like, what’s your secret sauce?
Amy Porterfield: So, one of the things is that truly everything helps when you have a little bit of help. I don’t think there’s a badge of honor in doing it all on your own, so if someone says, “I’m a one-man” or, “I’m a one-woman show,” I think, “Well, imagine what you could do if you got a little help.” It always starts with I say five hours a week with a VA, so that’s how you ease into it, but I think building up your team, even if it’s small, helps immensely.
Amy Porterfield: But also finding your system, so I talked about Traction, and Rocket Fuel. I think the EOS system is amazing, but there might be another system that you love, but you’ve got to adopt that, and have everybody on your team subscribe to it. So, one of the ways we eased into this, ’cause we haven’t always had the EOS system, is that we use Asana. So, A-s-a-n-a, Asana, it’s a project management tool, and we use Slack.
Amy Porterfield: We have very specific rules on the team that no action items go into Slack, our communication tool, and anything that’s getting done is inside of Asana, assigned to somebody, with a due date. If someone puts an action item in Asana, my integrator Chloe will say, in Slack, “Can you move that over to Asana?” You have to be a stickler in terms of this is our process and this is what we’re doing.
Amy Porterfield: I made a huge mistake a few years ago where my team was using Asana and me and my big ego, I don’t know what I was thinking, I wasn’t. I wasn’t showing up in Asana regularly, I never checked it, I just thought my team will do that. It will never happen. If you are the owner of your business, you have to lead by example, and that’s something that I’ve learned the hard way. But a project management tool is a must and some standing operating principles.
Amy Porterfield: This is how we run this business, even if it’s a one page, it’s so incredibly important. If it’s not scheduled, it will never, ever happen. So, these are some rules we live by on the team.
Chris Badgett: That’s great. Thanks for sharing that. How long did it take to create your recent Digital Course Academy signature program? Is that a high price point, $2000 program?
Amy Porterfield: Yep.
Chris Badgett: What’s the timeline from the idea that, “Okay, I’m going to do this” to the launch day?
Amy Porterfield: So, I think we had the idea in September and we launched it in January. So, it was way intense. I tell my students at least 60 days to create a course. Another 30 days to put together your launch material. I like for them to give themselves at least 90 days.
Amy Porterfield: For me, though, I was combining two programs. I had Courses That Convert, how to create a course, and a totally different program, Webinars That Convert, how to create a webinar and sell your course. What was happening was my students who bought Courses That Convert would say when they bought it, “So, are you going to tell us how to sell this?” Because quite honestly having a course and not knowing how to sell it is worthless.
Amy Porterfield: So I realized I’m doing a disservice by separating the programs, so I took two programs, retired both, and both were making at least $50,000 each a month in evergreen, so they were successful, but I retired both of them and then months later came out with one course. I got to use a little bit of the content from each of the courses, but I created everything from scratch.
Amy Porterfield: I’ll tell you one more thing, in Digital Course Academy, I deliver the content like this. So, direct to camera, in a studio that was similar to this, and I had a professional film crew come in and I used a teleprompter, I had scripts, it was intense. And then I did some audio and slides, teaching the core content. That was the first time out of eight courses, that I was direct to camera for every single lesson.
Amy Porterfield: Before that, where I had made millions with my digital courses, it was my audio and slides. So, I tell my students that because you do not have to have something fancy, you do not need to be on camera the whole time to have a successful digital course. I think it’s nice to show up on camera throughout the course, but you do not need to do it for every single lesson. It took me eight courses to get there, and I think you can ease into it.
Chris Badgett: Yeah, that’s great. The video rabbit hole, that’s another one. It takes a while.
Amy Porterfield: So true.
Chris Badgett: For you that is listening or watching this, check out Amy’s The Ultimate Course Creation Starter Kit. When I saw that, I’m like, “I’ve got to get here on the podcast.” Thank you for coming on the show. Your podcast is also a great listen, and you can find Amy at AmyPorterfield.com. Is there anything else you want to tell the listener of where to explore your world and find out more?
Amy Porterfield: I do a lot on Instagram, so if you want to just come into my world, I’m just Amy Porterfield on Instagram. But I also want to say thanks for having me. I don’t get to talk to a lot of people who are also course creation experts like you are, so it’s a real fun conversation because we get each other. So, thanks so much for having me.
Chris Badgett: Yeah, well thanks for coming. We’ll have to do it again sometime.
Amy Porterfield: Definitely. Talk soon.
Chris Badgett: And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMScast. I’m your guide, Chris Badgett. I hope you enjoyed the show. This show was brought to you by LifterLMS, the number one tool for creating, selling, and protecting engaging online courses. To help you get more revenue, freedom, and impact in your life, head on over to LifterLMS.com, and get the best gear for your course creator journey. Let’s build the most engaging results getting courses on the internet.
