Million Dollar Micro Business E-Book

Tina Tower

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 444

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Discover how to launch a profitable online course from scratch In Million Dollar Micro Business: How To Turn Your Expertise Into A Digital Online Course, entrepreneur and author Tina Tower delivers a new and smarter way to do business that avoids huge overheads and large capital investments. Fueled by recent innovations in technology and shifts in consumer behavior, the accomplished author shows you a new way to have a big impact with few resources. You'll learn how to create a digital course based on expertise you've gained through your life, business, academic work, and career. The book is a practical and tangible guide to getting started and offers a proven framework and case studies of people who have scaled courses into seven-figure ventures. This important book teaches you: * How to turn your passion and expertise into profit, using what you know to create a global, online course * Why bigger is not always better, and how less overhead and investment is often a good thing for a scalable business * An alternative to the 9-5 hustle and grind of a traditional workplace * Real-life case studies from people who have been on this journey before Perfect for entrepreneurs, seasoned professionals, educated experts, and anyone else interested in sharing their knowledge with the world around them, Million Dollar Micro Business is an indispensable guide to creating a lucrative online course from scratch.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

about the author

acknowledgements

introduction

Part I: How it begins

01 Start small

02 Personal branding

03 Time management

Overthinking

Finding time

04 Overcome your fear

SUCCESS STORY: James Wedmore —

Business By Design

Part II: Create that first idea

05 Get clear on your idea

Brainstorming

Validating your idea

Creating your vision

Values

Personal business goals

06 Set up your new business

Business name

Company name vs personal name

Registering your business name

Your business structure

Setting up your business banking and accounting software

Registering your domain name

Setting up Google Workspace for your emails

Setting up Dropbox

Protecting your IP

Budget

Note

07 Map out your signature course

Your course creation road map

Course delivery

Creating community

08 Develop your course content

Future options

Memberships

Coaching and consulting

Content creation

Resources to accompany your content

Recording your course

Avoiding the trap of perfectionism

Course video lengths

Equipment

09 Design your point of difference

10 Design your brand and what you stand for

Designing your logo

Curious experimenting

Landing page

Social media

11 Nail your first offer and program

Back yourself

Your magnetic offer framework

SUCCESS STORY: Kayse Morris —

The CEO Teacher

Part III: Launch it out into the world

12 Build your digital learning website

What you need on your website

Getting help to build your webpage

Writing your bio

Optimising for student success

13 Content marketing

Social media

Calls to action

Search engine optimisation (SEO)

Third-party media

Podcasting

Live speaking

Awards

Publishing

14 Build your list

List building

Freebies

15 Sell your services from a virtual stage

Running a webinar

Plan your webinar content

Communicate consistently

Be prepared

Make a waiting list

SUCCESS STORY: Tracy Harris —

Mums With Hustle

Part IV: Growth

16 The comparison trap

17 Embrace automation and software

18 Become a systems nerd

19 Your micro team

20 Outsourcing vs in-house team

Outsourcing do's and don'ts

The in-house advantage

21 Ditch the guilt

SUCCESS STORY: Clint Salter —

Dance Studio Owners Association

Part V: Welcome to the new world

22 Manage your money: cash flow vs profit

Cash flow is reality

Working with the cash flow pie

23 Say no to protect your energy

24 Design life your way

25 Where to from here?

SUCCESS STORY: Denise Duffield-Thomas —

Chillpreneur

resources

index

End User License Agreement

List of Illustrations

Chapter 5

Figure 1: Finding your course's sweet spot

Chapter 11

Figure 2: The path to that first million

Chapter 12

Figure 3: A Kajabi site map

Chapter 13

Figure 4: The Value Marketing Method

Chapter 22

Figure 5: My expenses cash flow pie

Guide

Cover Page

Table of Contents

Begin Reading

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million dollar micro business

How to turn your expertise into a digital online course

tina tower

First published in 2021 by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd42 McDougall St, Milton Qld 4064

Office also in Melbourne

© John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd 2021

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

ISBN: 978-0-730-39207-1

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (for example, a fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review), no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, communicated or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All inquiries should be made to the publisher at the address above.

Cover design by WileyFront Cover Image: © mhatzapa/ShutterstockMicrophone image: © Decorwithme/Shutterstock

DisclaimerThe material in this publication is of the nature of general comment only, and does not represent professional advice. It is not intended to provide specific guidance for particular circumstances and it should not be relied on as the basis for any decision to take action or not take action on any matter which it covers. Readers should obtain professional advice where appropriate, before making any such decision. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the author and publisher disclaim all responsibility and liability to any person, arising directly or indirectly from any person taking or not taking action based on the information in this publication.

This book is dedicated to my Empire Builders — the wonderful group of women who dare to dream bigger, who use their talents for good and who inspire me every day to be bolder.

about the author

Starting her first business at the age of 20, an enterprise that went from being a small suburban tutoring centre and educational toy store, to becoming a licence program and then a franchise. After five years of franchising Tina opened 35 Begin Bright centres across Australia that employed 120 staff.

After Begin Bright was acquired by an International education company in 2016, she started coaching other people on how to scale their service-based businesses. When Tina found herself repeating a lot of the same fundamentals again and again to people who were paying top dollar for private coaching, she decided to put the repetitive content into an online course. It went off!

To put location freedom to the test, Tina set off to travel the world for a year with her husband and two children, visiting 28 countries, and all while growing the online business in a couple of hours a day.

Since returning from travel her empire has continued to grow and it's been a revelation to her that this ‘little’ online business she runs from home, with just a couple of staff, makes far more money and has such a greater and wider impact than her franchise company ever did.

Tina has helped hundreds of people package their expertise into an online course and launch it to the world. Through her program, Her Empire Builder, she is on a mission to help 100 women build a $1 million a year business by 2025.

Tina is the author of two books, One Life: How To Have The Life of Your Dreams and Million Dollar Micro Business. Tina has won some cool awards like Telstra National Young Business Woman of the Year Award and Australian Business Champion and has been featured on the Today Show, in the Financial Review, on Sky Business and as a Business Woman to watch by The Huffington Post.

Tina lives with her family on a small farm on the Australian East Coast and from there, helps people to develop and grow their online digital business empires.

acknowledgements

Writing a book is literally the most mentally and emotionally challenging thing that I do. This is only the second time that I've done it and both times have been challenging in their own way. For me, it's the finality of it all! In online courses, I can always re-record if and when something changes, but a book, it's here to stay!

On that note, I want to first thank my family for dealing with the crazy two months before book deadline. That's when I start questioning EVERYTHING and I can be a little difficult to be around and have a conversation that doesn't, in some way, involve this beautiful book. When I told my husband I was writing Million Dollar Micro Business, his response was ‘Oh my gosh, why would you do that to yourself?’ Ha! Well, I do love a challenge, but more than anything, I want to help you to experience the level of success you're after and to design the life of your dreams. So Mat, thanks for doing all of the cooking and for taking care of me so that I could just write.

To my right-hand woman, Jarrah Wallace, how lucky I am to have you in my life! Jarrah is the one who helped to find the facts, pull together our Success Stories and organise my schedule so that I could devote my time to getting all of these many words on the page. There were also many speeches of encouragement and I am so grateful for having your gorgeous support in my corner, Jarrah.

You can guess by reading this book that I'm uber passionate about what I do. The most fun I've ever had in business has been this, right now. Building my program Her Empire Builder and seeing so many women package their expertise, step into their light and share their gifts with the world totally gets me all giddy. I want to thank my beautiful members who have trusted me to guide them and then done the work to elevate their success. You're all kinds of awesome and an inspiration to so many around you.

Thank you to Wiley for pulling this beauty together. In all honesty, most of the work is going to come once the book is sent to print, but I thank you for believing that I could write something worthy of printing and worldwide domination. You guys, when I said ‘I want this book to be this decade's The 4-hour Work Week’ they didn't even laugh at me. Not while I was on the zoom screen anyway ;) Thanks Lucy Raymond, Frankie Tarquinio and Chris Shorten for all of your handwork up to this point.

Thanks to Jem Bates for editing my words and making me sound more witty than I am. If you giggle in this book, chances are it's because Jem tweaked my words to make them funnier and smarter.

I wanted this book to be incredibly useful and not just theoretical. To add some personality and inspiration, I wanted to include some Success Stories from my favourite course creators. It was a little harder than I thought with gate keepers, but I eventually got there! Thank you so much to James Wedmore, Kayse Morris, Clint Salter, Tracy Harris and Denise Duffield-Thomas for so openly sharing your journey and for all of the fabulous work you inject into our world.

Thank you to Kenny Reuter, Jonathon Cronstedt, Allie Fernando and everyone at Kajabi for what you've created and the support that you have provided throughout my course creating and the creation of this book. It's rare that a software company has such personality and customer connection and I love you for it.

Thank you to those who have taught me what I know, some of you I actually know, and some don't even know I exist. It's amazing the incredible people who have helped me through courses, podcasts and content that don't even realise their impact (it's also what I want you to remember when you're creating your content!). Thank you to Amy Porterfield, Jasmine Star, Colin Boyd, Brendon Burchard, Jill Stanton, Jenna Kutcher, Chalene Johnson, Aaron Mac and James Wedmore for all of your gifts to the world that have helped me to figure out and grow in this wonderful world of online digital products.

Above all else, I want to thank you. I wrote this book for you and if you're reading these words, you've picked it up and cracked open the cover. Thank you for taking a punt on this book and thank you for believing in yourself enough to entertain the idea that you can create your own Million Dollar Micro Business. It's totally yours for the taking and I'm cheering you on every step of the way.

introduction

That day I sat looking out at the blue ocean spread out before me, reflecting on my past 10 years in business and how much had changed. I was just a couple of months into a round-the-world trip with my family, and we were staying on the island of Ko Lanta in Thailand.

I was having my first proper go at this online course thing I had seen people try. With a background in franchising and a work ethic based on the creed ‘while they sleep, I work’, I didn't quite believe the hype. And yet, in business I am a curious experimenter. I want to know how things work and the levers to pull to get different results. For this new game, I was still figuring out what the levers actually were.

I had given myself 10 days to write, record and market my new eight-week online course. Of course, it was only possible because I didn't know what I didn't know. Now, having launched courses over and over again, I know the parts I was missing and how ‘amateur hour’ this first effort was.

But was it actually? In that 10 days in Thailand I had created and sold my course to 11 people. A small number? Yes. But 11 people had purchased a course for $997, or six monthly payments of $199. I knew I was offering spectacular value. I knew they would be able to take the lessons from it and earn back that money multiple times. I also knew that now I had created the course I could sell it many times over. See, putting together an online course is laborious, but once it's done it can be sold again and again and again.

That was when I knew that a million dollar micro business was actually possible. It was the moment I fell in love with this new way of doing business, and knew I would be sharing everything I had learned to help other highly skilled but overworked people to package their expertise and sell it at scale.

I am certain that you have acquired knowledge and skills that are practical and useful, and that you have your own unique spin on them that could help other people acquire the skills and knowledge you have. In this book I want to help you wrap that neatly with a bow into a simple online course so you too can have your moment of staring into space and thinking, ‘Holy guacamole, this actually works!’

The way we consume education, like the way we do business, is constantly changing and evolving. Recent technological advances have greatly facilitated the business of online education. Information on any topic you could possibly want to know about is at the tip of your fingers, courtesy of Google and YouTube, but it's often delivered in a disjointed, unmediated flood, like drinking from a fire hydrant. Professionally created online courses provide a linear learning experience that allows the client to define and seek out their desired transformation and access a complete start-to-finish, step-by-step guide. The goal of an online course is to guide a client from where they are to where they want to be in the simplest, most cost-effective and timely way.

I began my further education at university, where I studied Organisational Learning. At the end of my first year I was advised that I wasn't cut out for the corporate world (how right he was!), so I transferred to a degree in primary teaching. I love education. I love learning and teaching, and I knew I had found my calling. Though I have never taught in a classroom, I have been a teacher all my life.

In my second year of studying education I launched my first business, a toy store and tutoring centre on the main street of the suburb where I lived. It was a traditional business in every sense of the word. Business hours were 9 am to 5 pm six days a week and 10 am to 4 pm on Sunday. I employed 17 staff, bought stock from wholesale suppliers, included a mark-up that allowed us to stay competitive, and added value with our custom gift wrapping and branded bags. It was respectable, busy and stressful — all the things expected of a traditional, bricks-and-mortar retail- and service-based mixed business. Four years into it, my first child entered the world.

I went through what a lot of women go through when they have children, beginning with that moment when we realise that the life we had before is no longer going to work for us. I had to figure out how I could operate a business I absolutely loved, maintain my financial independence, satisfy the ambition that burned inside me and be the mum I always dreamed of being.

The possibilities for scaling were sparse. Traditional businesses usually see two avenues for growth: work more hours or hire more staff. Neither option was very attractive to me. So I took the curriculum I had created for our tutoring centre and licensed it so other teachers could use it in their own tutoring centres. I then closed my beloved store so I could stay at home with my babies and grow a business around their sleep times. The combination of my love of learning and personal development and my ambition was never going to allow me to keep it slow and steady.

Now, at 37, I have identified a pattern: in everything I do, every plan I make, I seek to escalate, to realise its full potential, and I will help everyone I come into contact with to do the same.

After two years of licensing, I opened our first franchised tutoring centre. I finally experienced the scalability of business!

I imagined I would have franchisees open and operate the centres while I stayed home with my children, a win–win for everyone. But slow and steady was not a game I knew how to play. The business escalated, and in the following four years we opened more than 30 locations. I was working every moment I was awake. I loved the business and dreamed of achieving over 100 locations nationally and operating in multiple other countries around the world. We were already getting proposals for international expansion. On the outside the business looked textbook awesome!

Again, it was a respectable traditional business. When new acquaintances asked what I did, I would say I was the founder and franchisor of a tutoring franchise with 30 national locations (I was still under 30), and they would give me that slow nod with their mouth turned down that said ‘Hmmm, impressive’. But it wasn't impressive — it was a yucky way to live a life. The demands were sky high and the expenses even higher. Sure, we had revenue coming in and the business was profitable, but there was always some new improvement I needed to invest in, some giant expense that would swallow up the next allocation of what was supposed to be my financial reward for all the work and sacrifice. I was earning decent money, but I couldn't see how I was going to earn on the scale I wanted in my life without working myself into an early grave.

Although it broke my heart, in 2016 I decided to sell the company I had been building since I was 20, and dare to venture into the unknown — to explore who I wanted to be when I grew up.

Looking back, the six months after I sold my company was a hilarious comedy of errors. I've said that in business I'm a curious experimenter. I'm sure you've been there too, stuck at doing one thing for so long that you've actually forgotten what brings you joy in your work. Or you no longer recognise where your skills and natural gifts lie, because you've had to get good at doing so many other things in your role and now you don't know who you are or what it is you actually want to do with your life …

Sorry, I escalated that a little too quickly! In my case, I opened six new businesses in six months in the hope of discovering what I really wanted to do. Here's how that worked out.

Attempt #1: Shexy

I'm five feet tall, and it's really hard to find clothes made for short women with curves. So Shexy (short and sexy) was born. I sank $40 000 into development before discovering how many, many moving parts there were that would propel me right back into the hectic world of dramatic business before I could blink.

Attempt #2: Jay St

I created a line of jewellery on which inspirational words were engraved. Empowering, yes. Boring? Also, yes. I knocked up a Shopify site in a day, sold my first $5000 worth then sold the business.

Attempt #3: Nikhedonia Productions

This one was the most enjoyable. I was reading a book series to my kids one night and they said, ‘Gosh, Mum, I can just see this as a movie’. I had to agree it would make a fabulous movie! Totally Harry Potter meets Maleficent, with great messaging throughout. So the next day I contacted the author. A series of meetings and very big contracts later, I had purchased the film rights and set about finding someone to help me produce a movie series. I went to Los Angeles and had meetings with studio executives, and even found myself on a red carpet next to Charlize Theron at a premiere. After many exciting conversations that led exactly nowhere, I realised how very little I knew about the film industry. I simply wasn't willing to risk the next two years of my life on the pursuit of success that was so out of my control.

After that I went back to the drawing board. I read a heap of business books and listened to a lot of podcasts. I was doing some private coaching, as there were a lot of people with service-based businesses who were trying to scale as I had, and I could teach them how to do that. I loved the coaching side of things, so I thought that while I was searching for my next ‘real’ business I would put some effort into getting better at the coaching craft. I enrolled in a few programs. One of them included an online learning component that allowed me to advance at my own pace. Once I experienced this as a student, I knew I could introduce it into my own programs. All my past experience in business and education meant I was perfectly positioned to write the curriculum in a way that would help people to learn and also to market their knowledge and skills well. That's where the next three businesses came in! I still didn't know what was going to be my thing, so I wanted to test out a few options.

Attempt #4: The Tutoring Institute

This was aimed at helping tutors to grow their tutoring businesses. It was obviously something I knew a lot about, but once I had launched and met with my first few clients I realised that the prospect of doing nothing but talk about tutoring centres over and over again for the next 10 years made me want to retreat into a corner and cry. (Note: Just because you're good at something doesn't mean that's the thing you should be doing. Always go with what sets your heart on fire! Life is too short to stick at something that makes you want to stick skewers into your eyeballs.)

Attempt #5: The Happy Life

I love happiness. When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I secretly believed I would grow up and become a motivational speaker! Personal development sets my soul on fire. As I've got older and more worldly wise and worn down by life's demands, I have come to experience more doubts about the idea, even while recognising how much we need it. Positive psychology is something that most of us don't spend nearly enough time on, yet it can greatly enhance our quality of life.

I ran a few in-person happiness workshops, made some gorgeous workbooks and sold the first few people into my program, before recognising that this business was not going to be the winner. While I love happiness and exploring all the things that help create it, I'm a businesswoman who found herself constantly telling people that to be happy they had to start their own business and get out of that job they hate. I love helping people to grow their business and make lots of money and do good things in the world and have more fun. In this I am way too biased to be a happiness guru.

Attempt #6: Scale Up

Ladies and gentlemen, meet our winner. The business that started this online course journey for me. Scale Up was basically what I was doing with business coaching already, but moved from one-on-one coaching to group coaching to many models.

If you've ever hired a private business coach, you know they don't come cheap. This is because their time is their most valuable finite resource. Also, they're usually very experienced, qualified and successful, and you're paying to tap into that knowledge base. But, as I know from my own early experience, you can't always afford a top coach when you're just starting out. Group coaching is a fabulous way both for you as a coach to scale, and also for clients to gain access that they wouldn't otherwise be able to obtain.

Scale Up was initially based on membership. I ran a masterclass each week and a group Q&A session. Private sessions could be added on request.

Through running Scale Up, I found that most of my clients were looking for a way to leverage the knowledge they had in their service-based businesses to be able to help other people and also to create an additional revenue stream. They wanted to be able to create a program like the one they were doing with me, but for their own industry niche. I'm a big believer in giving people what they want. There's an Australian saying: ‘Don't push shit uphill’. Running online programs is all about following the path of least resistance by giving people what they want. If your clients are constantly asking you for something, you may want to think about giving it to them.

Now the business had complete location freedom, Mat and I decided to leave everything we knew and travel around the world for a year, sharing some incredible experiences with our kids while they were still young. We visited 28 countries over the following nine months. It was the best year of my life. I could fill a whole book on our adventures, but that's not why you're here. You're here because you know you have a course inside you. You know you've built up some precious skills and knowledge that you can share with the world. And I'm here to show you how.

When I sat there gazing out at the beautiful blue water off that Thai island, I could not believe that I had just made over $10k in 10 days, with barely any expenses, from doing something so easy and so much fun. To make a $10k profit in a traditional business is hard work. And every $10k thereafter compounds that hard work. In an online course business, you do the hard work once, then get paid for it over and over again. I'm unashamed to say that I love earning a lot of money and intend to earn a lot more, because I know what I can do with it. I have seen the impact your money can have.

On our trip I met a girl in Kenya called Annet. She is a remarkable young woman, and although she comes from a poor subsistence village she has very real dreams of becoming a doctor. When I first met Annet and spoke with her teachers and her family, we knew that the only thing that would hold her back was access to education. We made an arrangement to cover her school tuition to a boarding school so she could learn in a safe environment and have her meals and uniforms provided so she could focus on her studies. I promised her that as long as she maintained an A average I would continue to pay for her education all the way until she became a qualified doctor. That was two years ago, and seeing the success that Annet has experienced and how much she is contributing to her local community, we are now granting 16 more scholarships to other girls in the surrounding areas. That's what drives me.

The day I launched my first online course, I took the time to think about what had happened, comparing it with my previous 10 years in business, then looking ahead at future possibilities. It was the biggest revelation of my life. You can do this, I realised. I want this for you too so you can create your own financial independence, help people with your knowledge and make a positive impact in the world.

A million dollar business sounds great, but I've learned on my business journey that not all businesses are created equal. Most people focus on top-line revenue, the total cash money a business generates in a year. In my own businesses, and my coaching career, I have seen many profit-and-loss statements and far too many businesses that may be making a million dollars in revenue, but it's costing them that much or more to run the business. I've seen business owners express pride in their profits, only to admit that when they divide it by the number of hours they work, they're getting around $12 an hour! People were impressed by my franchise company, even though most of the time I earned no more than $50 000 a year — minimum wage.

A traditional business entails hefty running costs, such as staff, rent, equipment and stock. A digital business's running costs can be reduced to little more than a couple of pieces of software. A healthy profit margin for a traditional business will be around 20 per cent, and that percentage doesn't increase all that much as the business grows. In a digital business, profit may begin at around 40 to 60 per cent and as revenue grows so does the profit margin, because the running costs don't grow alongside the business. It's scalable and leveraged — and, my friends, it's beautiful.

A micro business is usually defined as a business that operates on a very small scale with no more than two employees. Earlier I spoke of people's responses when I said I ran a national franchise. Well, the look on people's faces when you explain you have a digital business offering online courses and memberships is very different. The public perception is often still that it's a little side-hustle run from the kitchen table. Let people assume what they want; all that matters is what's important to you.

If you want to run an impressive-looking traditional business that costs you a bucketload to run and gives you stress and pressure in spades, absolutely go for it. The challenge is fabulous and it can teach you so much that will be valuable later. But if it's more important to you to have a business that can make a massive impact on other people's lives as well as giving you a big financial reward and complete location freedom, then a million dollar micro business could be the next adventure for you.

One of my favourite business quotes is ‘Revenue is for vanity, profit is for sanity’. I would rather run a million dollar business that makes me $400k a year than a $5 million business making $500k to $1 million a year. It's simpler and a whole lot more achievable to aim for both a great business and a great life. Business owners used to dismiss this as ‘too good to be true’; now it's just a different way of running a more leveraged business. Today's technology allows us to do so much more with so much less. Business owners are told constantly that to get ahead they must ‘hustle' and work harder than everyone else. But there's a different way of doing things that I didn't truly understand until I launched that course in Thailand. Running a million dollar micro business certainly takes work, but it's very focused and leveraged, so the business can scale while the business owner retains their freedom.

I want to take a moment here to acknowledge that running a digital business still takes work. It won't work unless you work. More often than I'd like, I meet people who regard online courses as ‘passive income’. By definition, passive income is the product of a set-and-forget investment that more or less effortlessly generates an ongoing profit. Online courses are not passive income, and hearing people sell them as such makes me mad. They also aren't easy. Simple, but not easy.

There's a process to follow to package your expertise into an online program and get your digital business up and running, but, like anything worthwhile, it's going to take much conscious, calculated effort, and you'll need to do things you've never done before. Business is a mind game, and when we approach something for the first time it's often our mental blocks we need to overcome rather than any technical or mechanical challenges. But I've got some great tools that will help you over that pesky hurdle.

Even 10 years ago a digital information business was a relatively complex, and expensive, endeavour. I had a website built for my franchise company less than 10 years ago. I had to get it custom built because the technology to be able to do the things I wanted to do simply wasn't available to us. It was a $50 000 investment. A year after it was built it was already out of date and we needed new software. Now technology can deliver the most wonderful array of options, enabling you to have your idea up and running literally in a day.

I launched my first online program at the beginning of 2018, which isn't that long ago, but even then not everyone was open to learning online. Since then I have witnessed the shift from up close, especially the acceleration through 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic locked down the world. That brought about not only a broader acceptance of online learning, but also a massive increase in people packaging their skills and expertise into online programs, and customers searching for new things to learn.

There is certainly still a place for traditional educational institutions, but more often now we want to learn something specific to further our life goals, rather than to obtain that precious, overpriced piece of paper at the end of a traditional educational course.

Whether you want to learn how to grow a backyard organic vegetable garden or how to write code for computer programs, you can find a specific course online that will deliver exactly what you need. As consumers, we want quick, easy and economical solutions so we can get on with it. We don't want to sit through an hour-long lecture to glean five minutes of gold; we no longer have the patience to sit through irrelevant content. We are in an age of short attention spans and a world that screams for our attention at every turn. Education has changed to cater for this consumer demand.

Launching an online course business can be a daunting challenge. I wrote this book both as a practical guide to the whole demanding, exhilarating journey and to try to allay the sense of overwhelm that may be holding you back from going for it. You may choose to work through each chapter, implementing each step as you go, but I recommend you do a full power read first, then, with a clearer understanding of the whole process, come back to put into action each step sequentially as you build up your momentum for the big launch.

At the end of each chapter, and throughout chapter 6, the action steps make it nice and easy to check what tasks you need to have completed before progressing to the next stage. Follow these tangible steps and I guarantee you'll get results. But I don't want this to be just another ‘how to’ book, so I've folded in some of my own story and experience. To supercharge the inspiration, I've included interviews I conducted on Zoom at the end of 2020 with some outstandingly successful course creators. These role models have been mentors to me as I've progressed on my own online course journey. As you read their stories, you'll soon notice that, rather than following a single, standardised program, each of these remarkable course creators has a different way of doing things. One of the great things about designing your own business is that you get to do it your way, the way that best works for you.

I'm a systems girl and love to use good frameworks to make life easier. You, dear reader, can freely access all the beautiful digital resources to support each part of the book at milliondollarmicrobusiness.com. Lastly, a word on terms: You'll find that course participants are variously described as students, clients, customers, even members. I use these terms more or less interchangeably. Given that most people I work with are super-qualified professionals, referring to them (accurately enough) as students often sounds wrong. Once they have signed up for a course, I generally think of them as clients.

I recommend you read this book from cover to cover for an overview then use it as a practical handbook, so that by the last page you're well on your way to your first million dollars in online course sales.

I believe everyone has a skill they can package into an online course. You have skills and expertise that other people will want to access for themselves. In sharing your knowledge and skills, teaching others in short, easily digestible lessons, you will embrace the new way of doing business as an online digital course creator and educator. Now let's dive in and I'll show you how.

Part IHow it begins

01Start small

Often it's not coming up with an idea for your first digital course product that's the challenge; it's choosing just one. People I work with constantly tell me about all the different, sometimes overlapping courses they're going to create. I've shared my first steps already, so you know I started three completely different businesses while trying to discover what I really wanted to do. But I gained traction only when I finally picked just one, starting small and allowing it to grow and evolve.

You've picked up this book, which means you're already interested in online courses and have probably been looking around at them. Maybe you've listened to some podcasts and heard some success stories too. My goal with this book is to persuade you that it's possible to create a million dollar business based on your existing expertise and to show you how to put it all together, ready to launch it out into the world. But I don't want to give you a bum steer. I don't want you to think that when you go live with your gorgeous new website the dollars will come rolling in so thick and fast you won't be able to count them.

Overnight success is possible, but my gosh it's rare. What a digital business does is it allows you to scale and leverage, and it absolutely accelerates your success, enabling you to reach your goals way faster than anything you'll see in a traditional business.

I was talking to someone who runs a course teaching people how to do gorgeous hand lettering. She put everything together in under a month, launched it out into the world … and got 23 people to buy her product. She was devastated. She'd wanted 100 people for her first course launch. Where that particular goal came from I don't know, but let me tell you, 23 clients for a brand-new online business is something to happy dance about. Once you've started, you can take that experience and build on it.

A digital business gains traction and compounds fast. When you first launch, people who don't buy will at least know about you. Thanks to social media, word spreads rapidly, so, from your first year's performance, if you maintain consistency and keep showing up and adding value for your audience, you'll continue to grow month on month.

If you're looking at how to begin, my advice is to start with what you know. Ask friends and family, ‘What do you think I'm best at?’ If you're going with what you already know, your credibility in that area is probably already established.

So start small. Your business, like the chapters that follow, won't stay small for long!

02Personal branding

What follows may trigger some resistance, because if you’ve never put yourself out into the world before in a big way, man oh man it can be scary! Building a digital business through content marketing and a personal brand is the most effective way to accelerate your growth and reach your goals faster.

‘Online’ can prompt the misconception that the transaction isn't as personal as shopping in a traditional bricks-and-mortar business. Actually it's more personal. In order to buy from you, your prospective client needs to:

know you

like you

trust you.

You will be able to achieve this so much faster if you step forward and own your expertise rather than hiding behind a brand name. If you never want to show your face and be the one talking about your business, then I suggest creating an online course may not be for you. You may create the most valuable product that the world absolutely needs, but if no one ever sees it, you've totally wasted your time. The way for your products to be seen is for you to be seen. It's time to step into the light.

We all feel like we're not good enough in some way. Everyone is unique, but having hang-ups is far from unique. So rather than let it stop you, embrace what makes you uniquely you. This shift in perception can sometimes take time. I know that when I first became a franchisor I had an idea in my head of what a professional woman looked like and decided that was the image I should project. So I marched into Portmans womenswear store and bought a suit and some terribly uncomfortable high heels and practised being more ‘professional’. Thankfully, gone are the days when we needed to ‘look the part’. That was the old way of doing business. You're now more likely to find the wannabes in designer clothes and the successful ones in jeans and a t-shirt.

A few years ago, after a long day of speaking on stage, I went to the end-of-conference social event to chat with the participants, but soon had to excuse myself and go home. I wasn't overtired or feeling unwell; the problem was my feet were killing me! Trying to look the part meant suffering excruciating pain. I would never show up for an event in flat shoes because I thought it looked disrespectful, and I didn't want the organiser to think I didn't care enough to ‘dress up’. But that night I vowed that henceforth I would always wear clothes I was comfortable in. Now I wear an array of gorgeous flat shoes that I can literally bounce around the stage in and have standing conversations for as long as I like! Embracing who you are and what clothes you're comfortable in will always help you perform better. You may love high heels — all power to you (and your feet). Just go with what's right for you.

The clothes we wear do matter. As a projection of ourselves, they affect how people perceive us when they make that initial snap judgement. We may as well let people judge us on who we really are, because we're going to be judged anyway. I love colourful clothes and wearable art. I'm sure some people will see me and think I look like a ridiculous walking rainbow, but others will think how wonderfully colourful and happy I look. Attract (or polarise) your audience by showing up as you really are. You'll be much happier for it, because your clients will be people who are attracted to the same vibe.

Having a personal brand doesn't mean having no privacy. This is one of the most common objections I hear. When we think of personal brands, we may think of Instagram influencers flooding the world with selfies and model poses. By ‘personal brand’, I mean showing up as yourself, allowing the world to see the massive value you offer, and not dimming your light.

Decide now, as you embark on building your personal brand, what parts of your life you're happy to share and what parts you'd prefer to keep private. What works for someone else might not work for you. It's up to you to decide how much of yourself you want the world to see. Back in 2016 I had to deal with a cyber stalker. The experience totally shifted my relationship with the internet, social media and how much of my life I shared. I am very open and will share pretty much everything about my business and happily answer anyone's questions. I make myself readily available online to talk about business and some of my hobbies. I have two children but they're rarely in my social media. You won't find a tour of the inside of my house, or where I'm on holiday until I've left the location, and you'll very rarely see me sharing my experiences with friends or family. My social media is for business and I am very purposeful about that. People buy my expertise, and they need to know I have credibility in that area before they do, but at no point in our transaction do they buy me. Building a personal brand does not mean you need to show your personal life. It means you can decide which parts you're happy to share so your clients can get to know you, leaving everything else for your wonderful private life.

For example, I show all around my office; my dog frequents my account because she's always at my feet; I share what I'm working on and what roadblocks I come up against so I can also share how I overcome them. I share my goals and sorrows where they relate to business, but not the rest of my life. Your clients don't care about that. They care about how you can fix the problem they're trying to solve and how equipped you are to do that.

I've talked about the merits of starting small and starting with one thing. This is easier not only for you but for others too. If family, friends and colleagues want to recommend you, you want to make it as easy as possible for them to do so. This means understanding exactly what it is you do and who you do it for, so you need to communicate clearly and explicitly who you serve and what you stand for.

When people speak about you when you're not in the room, what will they say? The personal brand you've crafted and projected — that's what will do the talking for you.

03Time management

Perhaps the seed to start your own online course was planted long ago, or maybe it's a new idea. Either way most likely you're not someone with a surfeit of time and no idea how to use it.

‘I'd love to do this. I just don't have the time’ is the number one objection I hear. In reality, you have time for everything that's most important to you. We're all time poor because we humans always want to do more than the time we have available, so we find ourselves in this perpetual cycle of disappointment, running faster and faster as we try to do everything, yet our goals keep eluding us.

To master time you need to spend it doing the things that bring you the most joy and the most money, and either outsource, automate or simply eliminate the rest. I talk a lot about this in my book One Life: How to Have the Life of Your Dreams, where I recommend a structure to time audit your life. Many of us fall into the trap of spending far too much time on the things that don't matter and not enough time on the things that do.