The Necessary Ingredients for A Course, Group or Leveraged Business Model

Are you ready to tune up the definition in your life and business using your unique human design blueprint? If you want to activate your business genius, build a life on your terms and spark more joy, abundance, and flow, then stay tuned. I firmly believe that if each one of us can embody and become who we are meant to be, the world will be a better place. I am your host, Jamie Palmer, and this is the HD Your Biz Podcast. Hello, hello, hello and welcome to the HDU Biz Podcast. I am your host, Jamie Palmer, and I am super excited to give you a taste of the catalyst experience today. Today I’m going to be sharing a recording from the private podcast of the HGU Biz Catalyst experience. This is a new, well, it’s not really new for those of you who’ve been around for a minute, that the HDU Biz program was the first program I launched when I started this iteration of my human design and business. However, the HDU Biz program, I continue to tweak and hone and make it the best possible experience for those who enter into it.

(01:40)
And today I’m going to give you a taste of what that’s like, and I’m giving you a taste of what that’s like because I also think one of the things that I’ve become aware of, so last year, last October, I launched what’s called the HD or Biz Catalyst Report. And essentially it is a report for you to leverage human design in your business and it’s tailored to your design and it’s essentially like a resource for you to print out and have at your desk and used for website copy and business offers and all these different aspects of your chart and yourself. It is part human design, it’s part human design and business, but it’s a resource. So I launched these back in October and I’ve written a couple of hundred of them since then. And if you’re interested in ordering one, you can check them out at human design your business.com.

(02:53)
And I’ve written a couple hundred of these by now and the, we asked some questions about what do you want more of? What do you want less of? What do you want your life to look like? So many of the people in the onboarding, a plethora, like an overwhelming amount of people, said that they wanted a course or some sort of leverage business model. And it got me to thinking, okay, all these people want a course or a leveraged business model. And simultaneously there was a lot of like, well, I don’t necessarily like to market or I don’t necessarily like to teach. And it got me thinking that why? Well, one, why does the online business industry sell us on the belief that the only way to scale our business or to build our business is to have have a course or have to have a group program?

(04:05)
Two, it got me to thinking that what most people want is a lifestyle business, a business that supports their lifestyle. So many people, and this is me too, so many people want to work 25, 30 hours a week, five hours a day, and then have time and space to live the life that they want to live. And while you absolutely can do that with a course or a leverage business, you can also do that working. And this is not like, I don’t want to go on a tangent about that. What I do want to say though is that I think there is a mismatch in the collective belief around what it takes and what’s necessary to actually build a course or leverage business model, particularly if you want to have one that’s $500,000 a year or a million dollars a year, what that actually takes and what you actually have to endure or grow through or go through in order to make that happen.

(05:25)
And so today, I’m going to share with you the ingredients necessary for a course business, and I’m going to share some examples of things that have happened with me with my clients, kind of like the mindset that you need in order to actually create the foundation for a course group or leveraged model, because I believe there is this massive expectation gap or expectation mismatch between what people think needs to happen versus what actually needs to happen. And so what I am doing today is sharing one of the podcasts from my Catalyst experience so that you can one benefit from that information, but two, experience a bit of content from the HD Biz Catalyst experience. And if you feel called, we’re also going to give you a taster, a teaser, a sampling of this three part business design series that I’m doing. Inside that, I’ll put the link in the show notes.

(06:48)
So if you want to sign up and get the other two parts of this, you can do so because we’re only sharing this one part publicly. So I’ll put that link in the show notes if you want to join me in either the Catalyst report, which you can get at HT human design your business.com, or if you want to join me in the Catalyst experience because the Catalyst experience, how do I want to talk about the Catalyst experience? The HD Biz Catalyst experience is the next iteration of my HD or biz program based on the feedback I’ve gotten from people in the last couple of iterations is they don’t necessarily want to listen to me drone on about all the different types, profiles, center circuitry and stuff that doesn’t apply to them. They also don’t really want to hear about different stuff that isn’t relevant to where they’re at based on the ethos of their year.

(07:50)
And then they wanted to be able to have more accessibility to my brain. So in this H two B, the Catalyst experience, I created what I am calling an individualized, custom and transformative experience, and I really believe that the future of business is individualized. And so what I have done inside this program is we or I, my team and I, we give clients a private podcast feed with all of their human design elements. Then we have kind of the group podcast feed and on that group podcast feed, depending upon the ethos of your year and the kind of business that you want to run, we also give you content specific to you. We also have the Synergy Chatbot chat agent, which is trained on my 14 iterations of HD or biz, my BDHD program, my ideal client program, all of my books, two of which that have not been released gate strength stuff.

(09:08)
And ultimately this is a large learning language model. It’s built solely from my content. It’s safe, it’s HIPAA compliant, it is not on the chat GPT servers, and it’s built with ethics and integrity in mind, but also so that you have access basically to my brain and knowledge of human design and business at your fingertips. And her name is Synergy. She gets to know you, she gets to support you, and she’s amazing. The feedback, the people who are using that already are blown away. And then we also have a q and a. So we have a q and a where you can submit questions and their timestamps, so you can just listen to what applies to you, and there’s a whole plethora of stuff, but this program was built so that it can meet people where they are to help them to get to where they want to be and really learn to build a regenerative business by design.

(10:08)
And so that is just context for what you’re about to hear the podcast you’re about to hear. I hope this supports you. If you want to grab the other two episodes, I will put a link so you can grab the teaser sampler catalyst experience, and I’d love to hear what you think. And as always, thank you so much for being here for listening. And without further ado, here are the ingredients for a course business or group and leverage model. Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the HG or Biz Catalyst Experience podcast. I am your host, Jamie Palmer, and today we are continuing with the Transition Tour Straddle season business model series. In our last episode, we or I talked about navigating a little season and really what it takes to move through that kind of foundation building stage in your business. And today I really want to talk about the necessary ingredients for a course, a group or a leverage business model, which based on the Catalyst report onboarding forms I’ve gone through, the vast majority of you are interested in building some sort of business that has a leverage model.

(12:09)
So one of the things that I noticed in reading all of those onboarding forms for the Catalyst reports, not those of you who are committed in the catalyst experience per se, but there was a a large amount of people who wanted to have a leveraged business model, a seven figure business and work 20 hours a week. And I think that’s absolutely possible, and we have to kind of endure that straddle season, that pivot, that transition tour that I talked about. And there’s some caveats to that. But the point that I’m trying to get at is that if you want to do a leverage model, if you want to run a course, you want to run a group program, I think one of the things that we have to understand is that I believe the vast majority of the online course gurus who sell you on how to make a course set you up for failure.

(13:23)
What I want to do is actually talk to you about the necessary ingredients in order to actually make a sustainable regenerative course business. So the first thing that I want to remind you of is don’t do like I did and try to make three new programs at one time. So when I transitioned out of my agency and into my human design for business business, I made the HD Your Biz Beta program, and then I was tweaking and honing that, and that was a 12 week course originally. Then I made the HD Wild Human Design Certification and Training, and that was a one year program. And then I made the Business Design with Human design program, which was another 12 week course. And then I made a whole new iteration of H Year bs. So I spent three years making content every single day in some form or another.

(14:23)
And really, that’s not how you want to do it. So take it from my third line. You want to get and focus on one course, one program, your signature thing that you want to be known for. Okay? And one of the most important things to remember is when we run a program, I want you to think about running that program as almost like it’s a baby or an infant. And ultimately when we come to running a course, running a group, I think a lot of times people think, oh, I’m going to run this course and then I’m going to run this other one and I’m going to run this other one and I’m going to run this other one. Whereas if you look at some of the most successful online course creators, they have a course, a signature course that they are known for. And so I often would contend they also don’t start it by running it at the price that they ultimately want to end up at.

(15:25)
And then lastly, it’s like I have to also focus on getting consistent enrollments. I think a lot of times people try to make more courses and offers to hit their financial numbers. In reality, when we truly think about a course or a leverage model, a course or a group program, we actually have to instead of thinking like, I’m going to do this one and then I’m going to do a different one and a different one, we want to actually take that one and nurture it. And so several things that we want to keep in mind, so don’t do like I did and try to make three or four new programs. Instead, pick one course, pick one signature offering and commit to it. Because when we think about building a business, I think in this day and age, I don’t know what has happened, but we’ve gotten to this place where we don’t treat our offers and our courses and our group programs like assets.

(16:29)
I want you to start to think about your course or your group or whatever it is that you want to do a one to many of as an asset in your business. This is not something we’re going to run once and throw away. And I think that’s really important from a mindset perspective to have in place. When we enter into committing to these sort of things, I think people kind of haphazardly commit to doing a course, a group or whatever, and then they’re like, I have to charge X price because if I don’t, it won’t be worth it for me. And then when they don’t get the enrollments that they want, they become really frustrated. So let’s continue to talk about the necessary ingredients. One of the things that’s really important whenever you’re doing a course, and I’m going to just use course for the rest of this, but think about this as the signature offering is what you want to be known for.

(17:31)
We want to make sure when you’re moving through this process of developing a course and a leverage offer, that you’re making decisions with speed. And I know for some of us emotional beings that that might be difficult, but ultimately when you aren’t making decisions with a relative cadence or pace, you lose momentum. And also waffling. Waffling is a big thing here that I know can be a total momentum killer when you’re trying to build something. And I know for me personally as an emotional being, if I am waffling, it’s a no. And I’ve done a lot of deconditioning around my solar plexus, but from my experience, when I hear emotional clients waffle as a side tip, it often means a no. The other thing that we have to remember is when you are trying to do a leverage model, for many of us, in order to create a leverage model, we have to go through a straddle season or a transition tour like I talked about on the last episode.

(18:47)
And when we do that, we have to create time and in order to create time, it comes at a cost. It comes at a cost of actual time or having to choose between doing something on the weekends or working on the thing. And that’s only for a period of time. So I really want to stress that, okay, that’s only for a period of time. During my straddle season, I declined family parties, I got up early, I gave up tv. I just leveraged as much as my time as I possibly could in order to actually create. The other thing that I talked a lot about in the previous episode is that straddle season length and that sacred time. So I’m not going to hammer that home again, but I’m going to remind you here that when you are in this transition period, you can either make that time longer or shorter based on how focused that you are.

(19:51)
Okay, so what does that mean? I am a huge believer, and you can grab my business ecosystem Builders planner on the learning platform, learn jamie l palmer.com. There’s a free one. One of the things that I am a huge proponent of doing is actually writing down what I’m going to do before I sit down and do it. And one of my clients, my client’s favorite thing that I always do is my quarterly and yearly planning. And one of the things that I do as part of that, my business Ecosystem Builders planner, which you can grab, is to actually break the things down preemptively into those 90 to two hour minute chunks. And I’m a huge believer, so think about it as like, okay, I have to create a course. It’s really daunting to be like, okay, I sat down to create a course. So we have to then sit and break it down.

(20:58)
We have to be like, okay, here’s the outline for the course, and then I have the outline for the course. I have to break that course outline down into modules, and then I have to take those modules and what are my deliverables? Maybe you’re doing a textbook deliverable, maybe you’re doing a PowerPoint, maybe you’re reading a script, but you have to actually sit down and break it down. And I’m a huge believer of like, and this is my 17 62, 16 and nine. I’m a big believer of you want to break it down in your planning for the course. And so that way when you have this secret time, you’re just grabbing the task off of your to-do list. And I was a big fan of writing it on a sticky note and put it on my laptop the night before so that I could just sit down and go.

(21:56)
And so when we think about, okay, here’s what I need to do, I need to just sit there and do the thing. So that sacred time, like we talked about in that straddle season where you’re still doing your one-to-one work, but you’re also doing your coursework or you’re moving from one business model to a different business model, you’re actually moving something forward because ultimately, I think a lot of times people have this time, but they don’t actually leverage that time. And I really want you to lean into the fact that not all tasks are created equal. And I think it’s also important to remind you again, that when we’re building a foundation like this, when we’re building a course or a leverage model or a group program, this is a season of business where you are building a foundation for the next 10 years of your business.

(22:55)
It’s a period of time. This is not a place where you will live for forever in that creation space. This is also why, what’s ironic is that I find that many of these people who tell you to create offer after offer after offer, they want you to stay in a cycle of stuck, even though they don’t necessarily follow that same model. If you come into my world, yes, I have workshops and I am creating new workshops constantly, but my primary offers have stayed the same. I have HD or biz, and it’s always kind of like I keep massaging it and then I have HD wild and I keep massaging it, and I have business design with human design, and I keep massaging it. And then I have the ideal client and I keep massaging. That’s not to say I don’t do workshops or other things, but my primary offers the core and the foundation of my business remains the same.

(23:56)
And so my role, my job is to continue to then improve those experiences for people. And so I think a lot of times people go into these courses sort of willy-nilly and they aren’t truly committed to doing that thing for the next five to 10 years. And I want you to really think about if I’m going to build this leveraged offer, this course, this group program, this is something I want to commit to for the next 10 years. This is the thing that I want to be known for. I have a framework process synthesis that is going to differentiate me from the competition. And that first iteration we run it, we really want to understand that that’s that transition period, that’s that transition tour that I talked about. And in order to do that, in that transition tour, there’s usually two things that need to happen.

(24:57)
And we talked about this. We have to actually build the thing, which is what we’re talking about today, and then we actually still have to manage the old business. So when we think about building the new thing, I am a huge fan of embracing lowest common denominator thinking. And what do I mean by that? So most of us, when we create a course, we’re creating a course because we have a process, a system from doing something. And that’s the ideal way to actually go about creating a course. We’ve got a process, we’ve got a system. We are getting really great results for our one-to-one clients, even when they come from different places. And once we have that, we then want to go, okay, how am I going to codify this? And when we codify it, when we turn it into that leveraged offer, we really want to think about what are the requirements that I have to deliver? And when we think about that, we often get distracted with these fun, beautiful things. It’s really easy to get distracted by, Ooh, let me put a chat agent in on the first iteration. Probably not a good idea, right? Because it’s a lot of work to build out one of those. But instead it’s like, what are all those elements that I need to put in that is going to get the outcome that I want for my client? What’s that transformation promise? How am I rendering them better off by their time with?

(26:45)
And so when we think about this, this is where I talk about what’s the lowest common denominator to put the course together in a beta form and what needs to go in the idea parking lot. And I literally think about this constantly when I think about any sort of beta program that I offer. So what is that essential? Because the other thing you have to keep in mind when you create a course, you’re holding space for a group. And in a group, people don’t always feel as safe to tell you all the things. So I would contend this is where you really need to put your experienced expertise hat on to address those things that are going on in their brain. I always say it’s like that, but Jane or Ja, how did you know what I was thinking? Those are the things that also have to kind of go in to that foundational run of the beta program or when you’re running it for the first time, put in extras and I’ll talk about that in a minute.

(28:00)
Okay, so when we think about that, what’s that minimum viable product to get the client the outcome that you want? Or as I like to say, that transformation promise. The other thing that you want to think about, and again, I said this before, but I’m going to say it again, I think it’s really important to consider. I only want you to commit to building one of these leverage offers if you want to do it longterm. Because ultimately when you build a course or a group program, typically the first iteration is not necessarily what the end product ends up being. And so ultimately along the way, you’ll have to iterate, and as you iterate, you add more resources, you add more assets, you have different, you’re meeting different learners with how they learn in different ways. You add more things in that support the overarching transformation promise. And ultimately, so when you run it your fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh or 15th time, you have this amazing program that if somebody is a visual learner or a kinesthetic learner or an auditory learner, you’re meeting them in all these different ways.

(29:20)
I think another, and actually I’m going to share a quick story here. I had a client that I worked for and she primarily, her primary business was training teachers. And when she wanted to launch a program where she basically did a business to style thing rather than doing her training teacher’s thing that she had been doing, and one of the things that happened when she transitioned to that is that along the way, she took for granted the teacher’s knowledge. And that’s really important, and that is why I say to you, when you do a beta, I want that beta to be a no-brainer, and ultimately I also want you to have done one-to-ones, because ultimately those one-to-ones, that one-to-one work is going to give you the things that you’re going to need the head trash that inevitably comes up as it always does for people.

(30:30)
You are going to need to address that head trash head on in a group. And so that’s a part of that minimum viable product is being able to address that head trash. The other thing, when we think about pricing a first launch group or beta, all too often I see people way overpriced their first group or first program, and then what happens is is they sell none or worse, they sell one and they have to deliver this whole program to one person at this $1,500 price. This was something that actually happened. I had a client that I consulted with and I said to her, I was like, this is too expensive for the first running of this. I think that you should put it at 3 97 instead of $1,500. She sold one. And she was like, oh. But her mindset was that if I don’t sell it at $1,500, I’m only getting paid $50 an hour for each hour in the program.

(31:35)
And I said to her, I was like, look, but you’re not just going to run this once. So you have to think about it as the first time you run a program, particularly a beta, you are not going to be profitable. Do not intend to make a profit. Do not set the expectation, I’m going to make money on this first iteration, go in it with a mindset that I’m going to get paid sometimes a small amount to create this. The first time. If I think about the HD or biz beta program, I had 67 people at $197. So that was 13,197. Let me do that math one more time.

(32:25)
That was 13, $13,199. So I made a good amount of money because I sold a whole bunch of them, but my goal with that program was five, and then 10 was a stretch goal. So let’s just even use the stretch goal bath because I base this on the data, and that’s the other thing, and we’ll talk about that in a minute. I base this on the data. So I, based on the data that I had about the amount of people in my social media, my email list, and the people who I knew would refer or share, I assumed I would get 10 people at 1 97, and that was $1,970. So I was fully prepared to go into my first beta running of this course of the HDU Bs course for $1,970. That’s not a lot of money, but all I wanted to do was get paid to write that content.

(33:23)
But the reality is, every time you run the course after it, you make more and more and more profit from it. So to me, when we think about creating a course, I don’t want you to go in it with the expectation that I’m going to be wildly profitable on this first run. I just want to get paid to create it. How much or how little that is is going to be dependent upon my audience. So the first time you run it, the goal is to collect as much data as possible so that you can make it better for the next running. And ultimately, when you run a beta, you want to price it so that it’s a no-brainer for people to join. And ultimately you want to overdeliver. Okay? When I ran the HD or biz beta program, we had a 12 week course, we had two separate q and as.

(34:22)
I did a written report for people, and then I did a 30 minute call all for $197. And I will tell you the amount of data that I received and the amount of experience that I gained was tremendous. I still thank myself in the past. I still thank past Jamie for all of the things that she did did back then because it was a lot of work, and so much of my business is built upon the foundation of what I did back then. So I want you to think about in that beta, how can you still stay connected to the people? Because again, one of the things that I see all the time is people, when they run a course, they make these presumptions. They make the presumption that people are going to feel comfortable and raise their hand asking questions in a group. They would one to one, and most people aren’t.

(35:24)
And that is why when you think about running a group or a course, you really have to address any of that head trash that might come up as a result of doing the work, because ultimately, you often see this in the form of losing people along the way. If you’ve ever run a course or a group or your course or group isn’t as successful as you had hoped, I’ve had clients, they run a program and they literally lose everyone halfway through. That’s because there’s head trash going on, and that head trash is not being preemptively addressed by you along the way. And so ultimately it’s like what resources do you need to include and address to actually make sure you’re keeping people engaged along the way? That first time I ran that program, and still to this day, if I don’t hear from certain clients, particularly in my HD wild program for a period of time, I will be like, Hey, what’s going on?

(36:24)
Just wanted to check in on you and see how things are going because I do this. Clients also will now inform me, Hey, I just want to let you know I got some things going on this, whatever, and I won’t be around, or I’ll be out of class for a few weeks. And that is because I’m constantly trying to check in with my people. So in that first HD or biz beta running, if I didn’t see somebody for a week in class, I would literally send them a message, be like, Hey, everything. And sometimes they’d have some trigger from something that I taught in the class about their design or about their business. And because of this one, I had almost 87% engagement rate throughout the entirety of that beta running. But also it gave me so much feedback on how to make it better for the next running.

(37:21)
Okay, next, we really want to think about selling your first or your second or your third or fourth group course. Most people grossly underestimate how robust a sales page needs to be in order to sell on autopilot. When I first did the H two biz beta program, I literally had sales calls for $197 product. And I would contend even, or especially in this day and age, it’s harder and harder to sell from solely a sales page. People have gone, I call it nose blind or offer blind to pressurize selling, or as I like to say, nervous system activation selling. And so most people don’t realize what needs to happen on a sales page in order to get people to buy.

(38:19)
And most people don’t have the experience, especially if you’re doing a beta, most people don’t have the experience to actually create that sales page. They create more of an order form. And ultimately, when you create an order form, you might get people who already know you by or who already trust you, but ultimately, you probably don’t get the numbers that you expect that you’ll get. So if you want your offer to sell on autopilot, you need to make sure you have a fully developed sales page that takes that client on a journey. And ultimately, in a beta, we don’t always have enough information to do that based on where the client is. We often don’t have testimonials. The testimonials we have are often one-to-one. And so you may want to, in selling your course, offer an open house offer to let people sample a part of the program.

(39:32)
You might want to have sales conversations because ultimately that information you get and those questions that people ask you in those experiences are things that you need to include on the page in order to get them to buy. I think the other thing that you have to remember, and this is a whole nother podcast episode, but you want to keep marketing while you’re also creating, okay? Because oftentimes people go through this whole process. I actually had a client the other day who was saying this. A lot of times people go through this whole process of creating all this stuff and then they go to launch it and they don’t have an audience to launch to. And ultimately, that’s where you have to balance creating and marketing, because in order to hit the numbers that you want to hit for your launch, your beta launch, you need to actually have people to launch too, or an audience to launch to.

(40:33)
And I’ll add, I’ll make a note to myself here to talk about marketing on a future marketing and traffic on a future episode. But the point is, if you want to sell on autopilot, you have to gain trust in your marketing, and then you actually have to be able to drive traffic to that page, and that page has to take them on the journey and get them to see that you are the person who can help them go from where they are to where they want to be. And most of the time, from my experience in reviewing sales pages for clients, particularly in a beta offer, the page is not developed enough. So just keep that in mind. And I would contend in this day and age with the way certain things are selling or not selling, it becomes even more crucial to have individualized custom to your page.

(41:34)
The other thing I want to encourage you to think about is optimal pricing. So whenever I make a beta offer, I think about what is the price now and then the ultimate price that I want to get to. So I think about that ultimate price out gate out of the gate, and then what are the resources and the sales page and the marketing and all the other elements that I need to include in order to get there. And we have to remember, so for example, the Catalyst experience. So in the founding members that is being sold for $888, my ultimate goal pricing for the catalyst experience is $3,000. Okay? So I’m not going to start by selling it at $3,000. I’m going to continue to develop, I’m going to slowly increase that price over time, number one, as I increase the resources and all of the other aspects of the program.

(42:44)
Same thing for the HDUB program. I started off by selling that for $197, and the goal was always to sell that for around $2,000 for the 16 week experience. But I didn’t go from 1 97 to 2000, I went from 1 97 to 3 97 to 4 97 to 8 97. And I think some of the things that happen along the way when you do that, you might not actually get more enrollments as you increase the price, but you may make the same amount of money. And ultimately as you’re increasing the price, you often want to increase the resources or the delivery methods. I actually think that that’s really what’s most important is those delivery methods. But you’ll also notice as you increase the price, you probably have to tweak and hone and change the sales page. So you really want to consider when you build a course, what’s that optimal price in mind out of the gate over time, because I’m committed to building this thing as an asset in my business.

(43:49)
And ultimately, you’re going to build those resources over time from the pitfalls, the client feedback, the drop off rate. And ultimately with each launch you do, you’re adding one more resource, you’re adding one more deliverable, you’re adding one more customization. And then lastly, and this is an important thing to keep in mind, and I think it’s important thing to keep in mind, I think by design, we’re not all here to teach, okay? We’re not all here to coach. We’re not all here to do strategy. I would really encourage you to lean into whether or not you actually love to teach and create. Because if you are going to do a course business and you’re going to do a course business either via launching, so open cart, close cart, or Evergreen, where you’re creating content consistently over time, sort of how I do it and keeping that enrollment open, but it’s evergreen.

(44:59)
So that requires kind of consistent content creation. If you want to build a course or a group, you have to one, love to teach and hold space in a group form. And you also have to love to create because you and you alone are really the one that’s responsible for the creation of what’s delivered in that container. And ultimately, in order to bring people into that container, you also have to market consistently because when you launch something, let’s pretend you’re doing an open cart closed cart. If you launch something and you don’t market to your audience for six months, and then you launch again, you won’t have a big enough or enough new people in the audience to get the numbers that you want for that next launch. And so if you’re doing a course or a group business, you really do have to be committed to marketing consistently.

(45:58)
And if you don’t love teaching, if you don’t love holding space in a group, if you don’t love to create on a regular basis, I would encourage you to explore other leverage business models because there are loads of other business models that don’t require this high level of consistency. And I think a lot of times people love the idea of a group or a course, but the execution of it ultimately leaves them feeling really depleted because they end up having to do things that they don’t necessarily love to do. And for me, I love to create, I love to write. I love to make beautiful assets that we can leverage inside of the groups. I love to record these podcasts. So I would really think about what do you love to do? Because that also, when you think about a course or a leveraged business, it requires relative consistency.

(47:13)
However, the good news is, is that once you kind of get it off the ground, once you get through that beta, you build your audience, you can really pair back on the number of hours you work depending upon your goal. So if your goal is to build a $200,000 or $500,000 dollars business, you don’t necessarily have to be grinding away 40, 60, 80 hours a week, right? You can really build your life around running this course. And if I think about it myself, I could pair back on my workshops, my HD wild program and all of those other things, and pour my soul effort into the catalyst report and the catalyst experience and that whole ecosystem, and that be the only thing that I focus on. And I could make a very good living for myself based solely on focusing on just those two products. I have a big vision for my business in my life, so that’s why I don’t do that. But I want you to think about what do you truly want for your life? When you think about this, if you truly want to be able to work, say 20 to 30 hours a week and make good money and not have to necessarily be constantly launching or whatever, this can be a very good model if you love to create and teach. I have a projector client, she’s a fellow three five.

(48:56)
She runs a course, she runs two courses, but essentially she works 25 hours a week, two and a half days a week, and that’s it. And she makes, I think $750,000 a year. But she shows up, she does her podcast, she does her deliverables, and she makes sure that her team has assets, macro content to then post on social media, but she loves to do those things. And so I really want to encourage you to think about how you love to work with people as part of this, because it is going to, I don’t want to sugarcoat it for you. It is going to take time to hit your goals and rely solely on a course business. I think we have this, I think a lot of times we create our own suffering because we have this expectation of what it’s going to look like to have a course business and how easy it’s going to be and this amazing life that we’re going to have because we’re doing this. But the reality is there’s this mismatch expectation. There’s this reality of what it actually takes to get there. And I think most of the time people give up or they abandon ship midway through because they weren’t informed of the reality that it takes to get on the other side of what they’re hoping to do. And so I hope that from listening to this, you can walk away with a better understanding of you.

(50:46)
What are the necessary ingredients to get a course or a group off the ground, number one. And number two, I hope that you have a better understanding of the reality versus the Instagram expectations. And then I think lastly, the only other thing that I’ll say is I highly recommend that you make sure that you have the audience you need to match your goals. So I’ll put a resource in here. It’s called the Reality Check, and I’ll talk more about that in coming episodes. But it’s a resource for you to kind of see if your expectations about how many people you could get into your course match the reality of the audience size that you have. And I find that to be really, really helpful. Not to say that magic can’t happen, but I think a lot of times when we think about moving into these offerings and launching these offerings, there’s a mismatch expectation. It’s like, I have a thousand people on my list, so I should be able to get a hundred people into my program. And most of the time, that’s not reality. So we have to also make sure we have that reality check in place. So I hope this was helpful to you. Thank you so much for tuning in, and we’ll continue this series next week where we talk about business models that aren’t courses. So thank you so much for tuning in, and we’ll talk to you all soon.