Selling 5000 Enrollments to Groups Using LifterLMS With Student Confidence Coach Anita Van Rooyen

In this LMScast episode, student confidence coach Anita Van Rooyen describes how she used LifterLMS to target groups rather than individuals in order to effectively sell over 5,000 course enrollments.

By designing unique access plans for various institutions, Anita customized her services to better suit their unique requirements and financial constraints. Additionally, she monitored student participation and results using LifterLMS’s reporting features, which assisted her in improving her classes over time.

Her strategy demonstrates how coaches and educators may effectively reach a wider audience by leveraging technology in conjunction with a strong value offer.

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Episode Transcript

Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place if you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badget. I’m the co-founder of lifter LMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. State of the end, I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show.

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of LMS Cast. I’m joined by a special guest. Her name is Anita Vanian. She’s from Australia, she’s a student’s confidence coach. And she’s built a cool platform with lifter LMS. We’re gonna dig into her story as a coach, as someone who helps people and cares deeply about the people she’s helping.

But first, welcome to the show, Anita. Thank you so much for having me, Chris. I’m so excited to be here. Awesome. I love your excitement and your energy. I’ve seen it on social media where you’re pumped when things are going and it’s a lot. It gives me great joy to see that stuff. I. But tell us what is student confidence.com au all about?

Anita Van Rooyen: Yeah, so we help students and mostly international students to build confidence, wellbeing to then help providers, so universities, colleges student accommodation providers. To help their students to what we call stay, play, and pay. So there’s a lot of attrition rates in universities and colleges, so helping the providers support the students in their wellbeing so that they stay, hang around, getting engaged and involved in things, and then pay their fees, which is the important part.

Chris Badgett: So is it is it like the college and the schools that have international students, you’re helping them build the confidence of international students? 

Anita Van Rooyen: Yes. Yeah. So we, like our client is the university’s, the colleges and then the user is the students. 

Chris Badgett: So the students are in your courses? 

Anita Van Rooyen: Yes.

Chris Badgett: Awesome. What are some of the biggest challenges that those students have? I know I’ve traveled a lot around the world, like it’s really hard to be in another country, but tell us more. 

Anita Van Rooyen: Yeah, it’s super difficult and especially with students where, obviously English isn’t their first language and there’s a lot of cultural differences.

So a lot of students that may have even been quite confident when they were back home in their home country. Come to a whole nother country and start freaking out a little bit because there’s, they’ve got no certainty. There’s nothing that they have that is. Normal like they were back at home.

So even things like that we take for granted jumping on public transport or going to the supermarket or going to the movies or anything like that is a really different experience for them. And so they oftentimes, lose a lot of confidence in that that journey.

Chris Badgett: Is there a particular role at the university that, is that you reach out to, to provide the resource to, is it like a guidance counselor or a professor or like the admissions department? Who is it? 

Anita Van Rooyen: It is all of the above okay. Universities are notoriously siloed, so yeah, everybody kind of works in their own little bucket, so that’s hard, but also full of opportunities because it means that you can sell the same program into a number of different places.

For some universities it’s the wellbeing counselors. For some universities it’s also. Different faculties. For some universities it’s also like the admissions team and the student success team and the and. 

Chris Badgett: Tell us about, did you do this before, like in a kind of in-person format, or how did you, how did this niche develop for you?

Anita Van Rooyen: Yeah, look, it’s it’s really interesting. I started, I retrained about 10 years ago as a life coach focusing on confidence. I used to be the shyest person in the universe. Which I also find difficult to believe myself sometimes. But super shy retrained as in coaching and through that, wanted to have some online courses as a, an offering, a free offering to get people to go, oh yeah, okay.

She sounds like she knows what she’s talking about, to then take on my in-person, one-on-one coaching services, things like that. I started with Lifter, I think maybe eight years ago, something like that. I put my, yeah, I did my first course about that long ago. And I looked around all over the place to try and find, okay, I am not a tech person.

I need something that I can manage to do by myself as a new founder. No, no experience in the tech world at all. Looked at a lot of different platforms and found lifter and went, oh, I can actually do this. I don’t need to have technical expertise. I don’t need to build a platform myself. All that kind of thing.

So created some little videos. I look back and go, oh my God, they’re terrible. It didn’t matter. It was really important just to. Make that start point. And that was, as I said, I think about eight years ago. And look, it’s been this kind of a, as in business, it’s this up and down ebb and flow of am I doing the right thing?

Am I selling the right thing? All that kind of stuff. So I still do in-person programs and workshops with universities with Covid. Then we went to live. Online in where I live in Melbourne, we had very long lockdowns, insanely long. So everything got transferred to, live by Zoom and that kind of thing.

And I also still had prerecorded content as well and always through lifter. 

Chris Badgett: Did you start with international students or were you in love with the confidence kind of mindset, coaching niche? 

Anita Van Rooyen: Yeah. Look, I started working with dancers and performers. 

Chris Badgett: Okay. 

Anita Van Rooyen: I used, yeah, I used to do a lot of Latin dancing and I could see that there was a really big.

Space, a really big gap there between Stu, people that would come and learn how to dance, and then those that would go take the next step and do social dancing, and then those that would perform and all of those confidence challenges that sort of came around with that. So started working with dancers and performers.

Realized I didn’t love it. I loved the confidence in building the professional and personal development for people but didn’t love working with dancers. And I think it was they wanted to be shiny on stage for three minutes, four minutes. And if their, like rest of their life was went to the dogs, that didn’t matter.

I wanted people to have a great life, not just a great sort of four minutes. So finished working with them and had another moment of, I don’t know who I’m working with, and like I meditate most mornings, and in one of my meditations I literally ask myself, who, like, why did you start this in the first place?

Why did you go down this path of wanting to do this? And. Answer came back straight away. You wanna help people with life skills. And to this day, I still don’t know how I went from that meditation to coming into this office, typing into my computer, student accommodation near me, getting on the phone and saying who looks after the wellbeing and resilience of your students?

They said, no one. And I went that’s what I do. I had no idea what I was doing, but that’s what I do. ’cause I could tell that there was a whole lot of stuff that was relatable from, performing to performing in exams, for example. And there was a lot of correlation there and transferable knowledge.

And that’s how I started. I knew a total of zero people in. International education and in universities. So started from an absolute standing start. Wow. Yeah. That’s amazing. That’s amazing. And finding your niche is often a windy road, so it makes you so windy, and curl in the loop for loops and all kinds of things.

Chris Badgett: I love that insight too, I’m not a great dancer, but like I understand there’s that moment you have to perform and it’s a slice of life. But if you can do your thing for like the whole slice of life, it just has more impact in a way. Not that dancing confidence isn’t important. That’s really cool insight.

Yeah. And I’m glad that meditation brought that to you. 

Anita Van Rooyen: Oh, it was. It was the best meditation I think I’ve ever done. 

Chris Badgett: Just in this subject matter expertise, just for anybody who may be struggling with confidence, what are some of the core things that you unlock and help people figure out and find their way?

Anita Van Rooyen: Yeah, I think, look I’ve also worked with a lot of entrepreneurs in my work career, and what I noticed is that. Belief, self-belief, the beliefs you have about who you are, what the world is, all that kind of thing. So much impacts either in a positive or negative way, whether you proceed, whether you move forward in life, whether you move forward with your idea, with your course, with whatever it may be.

And so like I’m a coach, I have a coach, and we work on beliefs. A lot about, what are the beliefs that I have and are they helping me? Are they serving me? And I now do that with the students that I work with as well. So take them through exercises around identifying those beliefs that are not useful.

Oftentimes it’s stuff that we, even as adults, we inherit from our parents and we just keep a hold of them and don’t ever. Really explore what they’re doing. And so helping people explore what those beliefs are that hold them back and allowing them if they choose to make a decision to dump them if they want to or if they keep them knowing what the impact of that is and then deciding on what the beliefs are that they want for themselves and becomes a really powerful space of.

Becoming the boss of yourself. And I think for a lot of us, we have, there’s a really, it’s really easy to start, go, oh, my parents, or oh, my boss, or, oh my this or my that. And starting to take that ownership of your life and your results and your non results becomes. It’s scary thing because when you are responsible for things, then it can become really scary, but it’s also fantastically empowering when you have those results and you know that it’s on you as well.

Chris Badgett: What’s an example positive belief that you use? Like just going a little meta, as a course creator, as a coach. Then what’s an example of a negative belief you had to discard to be effective and create the impact you want to create? 

Anita Van Rooyen: I’m gonna go the other way around ’cause I always like to finish on a positive.

Okay. So the one that I needed to dump, which was deeply entrenched in me for whatever reason, was the belief that I’m not good enough and. I’m not good enough to speak in front of people. I’m not good enough to record myself. And ‘m not good enough to, for people to pay me to do stuff. I’m not good enough to have friends.

I’m like, it just was this pervasive and invasive and insidious kind of thing that was taking up a lot of space in my life. So moving through that, and I had to do that a number of different levels in life. And then. Shifting that one out. And I think shifting it up to, oh, literally like I’m not kind like the opposite.

I am worthy. I am worthy of having nice things and I am worthy of having results and I am worthy of all these things and I have put in the hard work and I’m worthy then of receiving the results from that. That was, that’s I think, been the. Biggest Chunkiest one. Yeah, lots of other stuff, but that’s been the most impactful.

Chris Badgett: Speaking of beliefs, it sounds like eight years ago there was a moment where you had a belief like, I need to get a website. I need to take control of my online presence or whatever. How did you get into WordPress and like having a website that you could drive? 

Anita Van Rooyen: I literally knew that I needed to have something that was.

Non-techie friendly that had support built into it that was a low or no cost entry point so that I could. Test stuff out and see if this was actually even a thing or not. At one point I will let you know that I swayed I swayed from the fold and went and tried out another one. Am I allowed to say which one it was?

Learn. Is it Learn Dash, okay. Yep. And oh my God, like it’s so complicated, so overwhelming, so complex. And I just went I put some time and energy into it and then went, this is like lifter. Let me just go back to Lifter. Let me just go back to Lifter. ’cause it’s simple. Simple is good. In my world. I don’t need things to be over complicated.

There is that ability to add and modify and all the different add-on bits. And it’s on a, on that platform where other developers have come in and been able to create bits and pieces that you can add onto it. So it’s so totally customizable. The support that I have got from the team has always been super on point and.

I love that. ’cause as a, an individual, like I now have a guy that helps me with a couple of little techie bits that I just, I know that, needs to happen. But for the most part, like I still upload all the videos. I create all the stuff on the platform and. And it’s easy. And that’s what I love.

’cause easy is good in tech world. And yeah, and it’s just, it has literally been like an eight year journey. A little swim off to the left for a moment with Learn Dash and then come back and I don’t regret it for a single second. 

Chris Badgett: Do you remember how you first found lifter LMS or discovered what you wanted to do with your, for your LMS aspect of your website?

Anita Van Rooyen: I look, I remember, I think like most people, jumping on Google and going what’s a good learning system? I didn’t even know. What to call it like that? It was an LMSI just was like, how do you make course, how do you make a course? Look through a couple of different sort of, review sites and, and they’d have 10 different options and reading through them and having a bit of a look.

And it did become quite the job to work out which one but the name lifter kept coming up. And it kept coming up and it kept coming up. As, recommended. And the more then I looked into it and I think also what I really loved was that space of being able to try it out for free.

Yeah. As a micro micro business with zero budget not even really a beer budget on a like zero budget. I wanted to have something that I could try out just the base, see how usable it was, see what it could do. And I love that about Lifter and how you guys. Work things and how you guys make your business.

Because supporting entrepreneurs at that really early stage when you have no money, but you’ve got energy and you’ve got all that kind of stuff and you just want it to happen. Having that space where you can try things out and have a go and. It still looks really professional without having to pay huge, like monthly fees and all kinds of stuff like that.

I love the intention behind that of wanting to help others, wanting to help entrepreneur entrepreneurs to start up and be successful. And so that was really what got me over the line is the sense that you are in it with us. That made me just okay, these guys get it. And that was just that, that sold me.

And so I love that. Like I’ve, checked out some other stuff over time but always come back to Lifter for its simplicity for the way that you run your business. And I love it. 

Chris Badgett: I appreciate that. We do feel strongly about that in the sense of no course creator left behind.

Like we’re trying to help as much as we possibly can. And I 

Anita Van Rooyen: think that comes through in everything that I’ve seen and everything. I. Even when I’ve been on the free not paid, you a thing for a number of years, then you guys have still supported, you’ve still, like when I’ve sent support requests, you’ve still rep replied to them, you’re still giving me good advice, all that kind of thing.

And that makes your business really sticky. I appreciate that. I’m glad to hear all that. Is there any like specific features in the product that you really love or use a lot as an example? 

Look, I don’t use quizzes but I have now got, I’m gonna sound really like a bit of a wally, but I’ve got like a tech stack now, which I feel fancy saying.

’cause I use Lifter. I’ve now I use bunny.net for storage. Yeah. And Presto player. Yeah, to have the overlays and some fancy kind of fun things like that for the students. It took me, it did take me a hot minute to work out how to make all of that kind of work together, but now it is and it’s just, it’s fantastic.

It’s, I don’t know, what do I love about it? I think the ease. That’s, I know there’s not really a specific feature that I use so much, but the ease of being able to create content, create courses, just make stuff happen without the need for a developer. I was literally had a meeting with a lady the other day that I’ve known for a couple of years, and she went down the path of creating a whole platform.

Herself. I’m like, from scratch. Like, why would you do that? Why would you do that? She told me that she spent well over a hundred thousand, she thinks is probably closer to 200,000 on developers, on the on all sorts of stuff. And I’m like, girl, what are you thinking? There’s so much out there. And I told her about Lifter.

I tell everybody about Lifter. I couldn’t believe that she’d spent that much money on a platform when there are these amazing platforms out there that have got support built into them, all that kind of stuff. So yeah, I’m a, I feel like I’m now super fangirling on you, but I’m just, I love what you do and I’m so grateful.

Chris Badgett: We appreciate it. I’m glad it’s working out for you. And you mentioned like. Selling to groups? Are you using the groups add-on? Are you, tell us about what you’re doing from the groups aspect, because a lot of course, creators are going one-to-one, but it sounds like you’re going one to many. So what are you doing there?

Anita Van Rooyen: Yeah, look, I started one-to-one and realized that was a really hard slog. Even tried, I think I went on to Coursera. For a moment, put a couple of courses up on there. And again, you just, you don’t have control over stuff. So decided that within the university and higher education space that I.

Rather than students having to pay for things, the universities and colleges can pay. They’ve got budget for these kind of programs. So the groups add on that I bought has been incredibly useful. I now make a different group for each different provider and then within that, even each different semester.

Because then I can do reporting on this provider, these students in this semester and it just works. I use that combined with the membership area. So create different memberships that then the groups have access to whatever level membership that they purchase. So that has proven to be really successful.

We’ve now sold, I think 5,000 registrations. One, yeah. I’m, I’ve made it intentionally really cost effective. So like the base, like what we call the base kind of platform is $2 per student. When bought in bulk I’ve now got like a minimum amount that people need to pay. So even if they’ve got a hundred students, there’s a minimum sort of spend required because of the setup and.

$2 a student is super, super cheap, right? Then I’ve got other content that I’ve added on in collaboration with some other entrepreneurs as well. Small business owners who are experts in different areas. One in job seeking, one in financial literacy, another one in for like Asian students.

Do you need to have an English name? Because. There’s all of these different things that international students really need. So having that space of being able to collaborate with other other content producers as well, and put their content on my platform, and then we have a profit sharing arrangement, it’s win.

And I love that. 

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Are there any other tools you mentioned in your tech stack that you love, like you mentioned presto player bunny.net. Like what do you use for hosting, what do you use to manage your email list? Any other plugins you use, what theme do you use? That kind of thing. 

Anita Van Rooyen: I would love to be able to tell you what plug what theme we use.

I can’t exactly remember because my. Tech guy put that on there. When at the moment we are not using the, what’s the one you’ve got iPilot? Yeah. We’re not using that at the moment because I just recently bought the Infinity bundle. Okay. So going through all that different stuff because because I set the platform up to be for group sales.

It’s like almost now working backwards to make things accessible for individuals as well. Okay. We’re just about to do the, like a stripe add in that’s part of the bundle. And some other different things. We’ve also got the advanced videos. We use that as well to make sure that students aren’t just going complete.

’cause we have that. With some students who were like, who were given an incentive to watch the videos by their provider and just went ding. So added on the advanced videos. So yeah, and now as I said, working backwards to make the courses available to.

Individuals. So students that are like home, say home stay students or students who are homeschooling, where it’s an individual family that can then purchase this to get access to communication skills and stress management and confidence skills and those kind of things that are on the platform.

Chris Badgett: Are you mostly focused on Australia or is this branching outside of. Oz 

Anita Van Rooyen: the great thing because it’s an online prerecorded on demand, all of those things with and now, ’cause there’s certificates, we call it micro microcredentials ’cause that’s what universities love to hear. It is universal. So we’ve started in Australia because that’s where I am.

And obviously now looking at. Other countries where there is, English speakers. We’ve also, through bunny.net, have put on captions in a number of different languages, including Chinese Hindi and Spanish. So there’s all these kind of bonus, extra things that the providers get that make it super global.

Chris Badgett: Yeah. That’s awesome. Yeah, I noticed. I know. It’s 

Anita Van Rooyen: very exciting. 

Chris Badgett: I, it’s a big issue. That’s why I love when people find international student confidence is a niche, but even where I live in Maine, my daughter goes to a private school. There’s a lot of international students, and I’m thinking about like how important the student confidence thing is.

It’s, yeah it’s very important. 

Anita Van Rooyen: And it’s really it’s really interesting because like I’m in this niche of international students, but really it’s the same for domestic students around the world as well. A lot of them are struggling with, mental health challenges, confidence challenges, all kinds of things like that as well.

So I’m hoping that also we can expand into domestic students, high school students and build lives. 

Chris Badgett: It’s a big issue. Yeah. And just to double click on that a little bit we’re of a different generation, you and I, but like maybe shed some insight on confidence issues that younger generations may have these days that are a little different from the world we came from.

What’s changed or what’s emergent these days? 

Anita Van Rooyen: I think the biggest one is this horrible, terrible disease I call comparisonitis. Social media and stuff. Social media, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That comparison between, the perfection of filters on screen and what people see in themselves.

And, that comes from comparing the brightest, shiniest outside of other people to the darkest horriblest, idea of yourself and going, oh, they’re so amazing and their life is fantastic and they’re doing all these things and I’m just me. So I think that one is the biggest challenge.

Chris Badgett: I can only imagine because I came from a world, pre-internet and my comparison set was like, whatever, 5,200 people, not 2 million, a billion, two, 2 billion. It’s, that’s so different. 

Anita Van Rooyen: Yeah. Yeah. 

Chris Badgett: For a developing mind and Oh, 

Anita Van Rooyen: absolutely. Absolutely. And look, I think the other one that we have, I have to talk about is the impact of Covid and lockdowns.

And, we’re seeing now I was talking to a couple of university providers and they were saying that I. This year for students and that’s domestic and international, that this year has been the worst for mental health and behavioral challenges. And I just, with my human behavior hat on went, okay, so let’s go back.

So these students that are in a university now, first year we’re in year eight. When Lockdowns first happened, where is the biggest amount of behavioral challenges in school is year eight students, year eight and year nine. And again, from that human behavior perspective, when trauma happens, which Covid was a form of trauma development, shuts down.

So for those students who were okay, COVID is actually great, they’re doing pretty well. For those that really struggled during lockdowns without seeing their friends and being at school and all that kind of thing, this is a trauma. And so their like adult development prog progress shuts down.

So there is these really huge challenges and it’s only gonna get worse ’cause. There’s still a whole lot of students that are going through, getting older in school, but their development level, social development, emotional development level is shut down. So I think there’s a lot of stuff to, to come.

Chris Badgett: That makes sense. Tell us a little bit about your team. I believe you have other coaches as well, and you have a tech person, so an education entrepreneur, they do as much as they can, but then they start, it seems many times they start, filling in team members and, building a business of a community of folks to help.

What does your team set look like? 

Anita Van Rooyen: Look, they’re all part-timers or casual, so like I don’t have a massive team around me. I am still very bootstrappy cashflow conscious, all that kind of thing. Yeah. My tech guy is a guy that I literally. Call when I need to send him an email and say, Hey, this is going wrong.

Can you help me fix it? Or Can you upgrade this or can you do that? So yeah, and the other coaches are also people that I call on as need. Still a teeny tiny business. 

Chris Badgett: Yeah. Tell us a little bit more just about the impact of your platform. Is that you’ve helped like about 5,000 plus students, which is amazing.

What are some of the success stories or just impact you’re seeing from your work that brings you motivation to keep going and doing this project? 

Anita Van Rooyen: I think. Like in the within the course, I have an area after each lesson that’s what’s the, use the usefulness of this piece of content like for each lesson and.

I wanna make sure that the content remains relevant as time changes. And what we’re finding is that students consistently rate the content really useful to them. It’s short bits of content, five to 10 minutes long maximum because short attention spans so that’s been really. Great.

And then also at the end of each kind of course there is a space there that’s open for free text of what’s been the biggest learning, what have you loved, what’s been the biggest takeaway for you and the students. Then I. Not all of them, but we’ll oftentimes put in some content around how they now feel more confident to talk to other students, or they feel more confident to start engaging with the next door neighbor, that they’ve been living next to for five years and have never spoken to and now.

If they’re talking to them or it’s helped them to feel more more confident to want to volunteer in the community and those kind of things. Other students have said that they now feel that they can contribute in class, whereas before they were sitting there, they might know the answer, but they wouldn’t add to the conversation in class.

And now they’re. Putting their hand up and wanting to contribute and those kind of things and those stories of a student that’s now moving forward in their life more easily. They’ve got themself, the job, all that kind of thing. That’s the reason I get outta bed. 

Chris Badgett: Yeah. That’s amazing.

Anita Van Rooyen: Yeah. 

Chris Badgett: In terms of courses or instructional design, curriculum design, is it like one main course or you have a bunch of different courses and you mentioned using memberships and groups as well, but what’s your like kind of framework for the architecture of the program? 

Anita Van Rooyen: Yep. So there is the kind of what we call the base platform is three mini micro-credential.

Courses. One is communication skills, one is stress management, and the other one is around building confidence in life. Then there’s the, there’s add on. So universities have to buy the base platform and then they can add on other modules as well. So they can add on a module called I just need a Job, which is to help students.

Get a job. ’cause they, we hear this all the time. Oh, I just need a job. So we called it, I just need a job. And then there’s financial literacy as well because it’s another really big challenge for students. And then that third one of, do I need an English name? Because that’s what students ask. So the providers can just by the base platform or they can then choose to add on any of those modules that they choose.

And that’s just an extra kind of couple of dollars. Per module. But then that goes across the board to their students. So the way we’ve set it up is that with each new intake of students, so whether it’s semester or trimester that the universities work on that, they report back to us and say, this is how many students we’ve got coming in this semester.

Invoice us for this many people. 

Chris Badgett: Wow. That’s very cool. And you’re a very talented copywriter. I know because the, it’s all about feedback loops. So if this, you keep hearing, I need a job, I need a product named, I need a, 

Anita Van Rooyen: I just need a job. Yeah. And it’s using, it’s like, it’s literally using the language that the students use and that creates.

Then that stickiness with them. The other thing that we’ve done also is with a number of the add-on courses, especially with the one I just need a job because that’s a very popular one with students, is to then cross reference other content that I’ve got on that base platform. So when we’re talking about I just need a job.

Okay, when you’re going for an interview, you may also need these confident skills. So have a look at these lessons and put hyperlinks into there, into the other content so that there is that double space of getting in results because the universities wanna see that students are using it, how they’re using it.

That kind of reporting. So having those courses cross-reference each other a bit means that then there’s more likelihood that students will go and have a look at other content that they may not necessarily look at. 

Chris Badgett: Wow, that’s amazing. What, how long does it take you as an example to make the module, I need a job?

Like when you realized there was a need for that, what was the process and timeline for, okay, we’re gonna add this Add-on mini course. 

Anita Van Rooyen: Yep. So that was one that I did with a career coach. So some of that was, we literally did a Zoom meeting that we recorded together. She. Planned out a bit of a a broad script, and we went through that.

For the ones that I did myself, I literally just went, okay, in communication skills, what are the things that students would need? And each of those lessons is each of those courses is 14 lessons so that you could do it in. Over two weeks if you did one at one every day. And it was literally started off as a brain dump of this is the questions that students would ask about.

Okay, if I was looking to build my communication skills, what is it that I would need? So some of it was based on what I know students want. And then other parts of it was what I know that students need. Because they are not always the same thing. Yeah. And it’s one of those challenges ’cause a lot of providers, a lot of universities say, oh yeah, we’ll ask the students, you know exactly what they want and we’ll give them what they want.

I’m like, sure. I also need to give them what they need that they don’t know. That they don’t know that they need. So having that insight means that then we can give them both of those sides of the coin. And for me, when I’m creating content I love to wing it. Probably shouldn’t say that, but I love to win it.

It’s art and 

Chris Badgett: science, right? There’s art too. 

Anita Van Rooyen: Totally. Totally. So I will have a couple of dot points of the things that I absolutely wanna cover. And I’ve got some examples and some stories and stuff that I weave into it, but I don’t have a script. I don’t work that way very well. I love free balling it, and just seeing.

Where it goes and then edit it as need be. But I’ve found having that intention of making them really short, really sharp, having a review point at the end to cover off. Okay. These are the main things that we looked at has been really helpful. And it’s meant that I haven’t needed to go into like overwhelm of, oh my God, this is all so much.

I have to have everything scripted and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Although what I can say, I look back and the first couple of courses that I created were very scripted. Very scripted. And I didn’t put my face on the camera. I had slides because I was, it was a slideshow and I was, ’cause I was still really in that space of.

I’m not very confident. I’m a confidence coach, but I’m still not very confident in this level of stuff. And so I, it was a slideshow with a voice record behind it, and there was nothing wrong with that. I look back now and think, oh, that’s a bit lame. But I pulled that out. I had a provider a couple of years ago who was like, oh, do you have something that’s really short?

I said, oh, actually I’ve got this program that I created, eight years ago, whatever. And the students still got value out of it, so I was like, you know what, like we don’t have to have perfect content. It doesn’t have to be super polished. The lighting doesn’t have to be perfect. The microphone doesn’t have to be perfect.

Nothing has to be perfect if you go in and deliver some stuff with passion and enthusiasm about any topic. Then that gets received really well. 

Chris Badgett: You mentioned one of the qualities I see in people that are successful with these types of projects, which is consistent and perfect action and continuous improvement.

Anita Van Rooyen: Yeah. 

Chris Badgett: And you’ve great, given some great advice there. Is there any other advice you’ve been at this for eight years for somebody, sometimes it’s slow in the beginning or it’s hard to get started. Any other tips around. Just keeping moving on and, finding your way. 

Anita Van Rooyen: I think the biggest tip is get out of your own way.

Chris Badgett: Yeah. 

Anita Van Rooyen: Our mindset is so powerful. It’s the one thing that will stop us more certainly than anything else. At all. If your mindset is in that space of whatever happens, I’ll just keep going, then it doesn’t matter if the technology doesn’t work or if the microphone doesn’t work properly or anything doesn’t happen.

If you don’t get sales immediately, when you put more work into your mindset and yourself than any other thing, everything else works out for you. 

Chris Badgett: This is a popular question. It is around like getting students, or in your case, like getting providers ’cause you’re selling to groups mostly. You got some sales initially, but what is your, what powers your marketing engine?

How do you think about growth and like getting new sales? 

Anita Van Rooyen: Yeah, that’s always the challenge is, the world domination ever growing expansion. And look, I’m probably one of the worst people to ask ’cause I am the least business person I know. And run a lot by the seat of my pants rather than a lot of planned things.

But like I put content out regularly. I 

Chris Badgett: what type of content? Like videos or blog posts or what newsletter? 

Anita Van Rooyen: I use Link. I use LinkedIn a lot. 

Chris Badgett: Okay. 

Anita Van Rooyen: Because all of the people that I’m wanting to connect with are all on LinkedIn emails, I found that LinkedIn has been more. Useful than emails even than bulk emails because emails, when you’re talking to the vice chancellor of a university or a dean or something like that, they oftentimes have their gatekeeper, and so your emails don’t necessarily get through.

LinkedIn is more of a personal thing. It’s on your phone. People are looking at it on like weird o’clock, like Sunday night at 8:00 PM. I will get people except my LinkedIn requests, because the end of the weekend they’re sitting watching TV or something and they’ll have a bit of a scroll and go, oh yeah, I’ll add her.

And so you know that you’re getting to directly to some decision makers. What’s also been really useful for us is. Going and putting ourselves out there for a number of different awards and things like that. So we’ve won a couple of innovation awards and student Services awards, and we just were listed recently in an Australian Government Department of Education, best Practice Guide for International Student Wellbeing.

So that gives us some of that gravitas of. Okay, we’ve been recognized by somebody else rather than you just beating on your own chest saying how wonderful you are. There’s people outside of that have said, yeah, okay, you’re doing some cool stuff. And, which is great ’cause the stuff that I do is a little off center, right?

It’s a little, it’s a little, Mindy and it’s experiential and all kinds of things like that. It is a bit left of center and that means that sometimes it’s seen as a bit fluffy. I always get student testimonials when I’m doing things. Use those a lot because the student voice is really important.

The biggest thing that I learned in my business, which I only learned a couple of years ago, was. That when I am selling to universities and colleges, rather than telling a story about student wellbeing, which is what I do, and student confidence, it’s what is it that the university, the person who’s buying it, what is it that they need?

So I think we started, I started off saying about how we work with providers to help them. Helps students to stay, play, and pay because retention, engagement and completionis their number one driver. That’s their 

Chris Badgett: metrics. 

Anita Van Rooyen: That’s the metric that they have. Yeah. Yeah. And it took me ages to work that out.

And I ended up getting advice from another guy who works in this space and he said, Anita, like all your website is talking about is wellbeing and wellbeing, and what they care about is. Student retention, engagement, and completion. How you do that, they don’t care. There’s some legal requirements that they have to have some stuff, but retention, engagement, completion, that’s what they care about.

So make everything related to that and that has super helped me with getting more sales. 

Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. You say you’re not that salesy, businessy marketing, but you’re like a brilliant copywriter. I’m reading the headline on your homepage and it’s helping your students to stay, pay and repay or stay play and repay.

And 

Anita Van Rooyen: repay. Yeah. And that’s 

Chris Badgett: yeah. That’s brilliant. That’s. Talking to the buyer directly and their  term. Yeah. And how you do that. You have your secret sauce and your method. 

Anita Van Rooyen: Yeah. And it’s, it’s, that’s through innovative wellbeing, confidence, progress, blah, blah, blah, blah. But this is what you want.

This is what we deliver. 

Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. 

Anita Van Rooyen: Yeah. 

Chris Badgett: Results based learning. Anita, this has been an awesome conversation. Thank you for being a shining light. I’m so happy you’ve been around for eight years and, I think what makes me the most excited is the, the students you’re helping with their confidence.

That’s such a impact and a positive ripple you put out into the world. So good on you for doing that. And keep up the amazing work. That’s Anita Van Ruen. She’s a student confidence.com au. Any final words for those out there listening in terms of building their confidence or getting out there and teaching online?

Anita Van Rooyen: Give it a crack. I think the biggest thing that, the one that was the hardest learning for me was get out of your own way. Do more work on yourself than on your business because it repays thousands of times over and connect with other like-minded businesses, entrepreneurs. It’s the reason why I have.

Come back to Lifter any time that I’ve gone, oh, let me just check that out. I’ve always come back to Lifter. ’cause it’s really, I love it. I love it. And I think that, I do feel, it does feel like you’re in, that you’re in the, you’re in it with us. You’re in the trenches with us. And creating a group of people around you.

Collaboration is the new black. 

Chris Badgett: Awesome. Anita, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Go check out student confidence.com au and Anita, thanks again for coming and we’ll have to do this again down the road in a couple years and see the more impact you’ve created in the world. 

Anita Van Rooyen: I’d love to. Thanks so much, Chris.

Chris Badgett: And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMS Cast. Did you enjoy that episode? Tell your friends and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode. And I’ve got a gift for you [email protected] slash gift. Go to lifter lms.com/gift. Keep learning. Keep taking action, and I’ll see you. In the next episode.