How to build a seven figure online courses business

In just over two years I've made more than $3 million dollars from my online courses - it seriously blows my mind every day 🤯⁠

I've gone from trading time for money working 1:1 with clients to building a life of time, location and financial freedom by creating and selling online courses.⁠

I'm not special - I have just found a business model that really works and I've worked hard to understand how to perfect that business model.

In this post I will share the framework I have used to build my online courses business.

Here’s the outline of that framework:

1️⃣ Choose your topic⁠
2️⃣ Build your community⁠
3️⃣ Create your course outline⁠
4️⃣ Pre-sell your course⁠
5️⃣ Create your course⁠
6️⃣ Launch your course⁠
7️⃣ Automate your funnel⁠
8️⃣ Collect your student stories⁠

Let’s look at each of these steps in more detail below…

1: Choose your topic

Here’s how:

The best online courses will sit at the cross section of:

• what you’re interested in/what you love (you need to be interested in your topic or you’ll hate what you’re doing!)

• what you’re good at (you have a skill in this area that you are able to teach others - you can’t be a beginner yourself)

• what there is a need for in the market (there needs to be a market of people who have a problem in this area that needs to be solved).

Think of this as a venn diagram where your profitable course topic idea sits at the intersection of these three things.

But also ask yourself the questions below. This will help guide you on what you can create your course about.

• What have you learned by experience?

• What do you know more about than other people?

• What are you passionate about?

• What do you read/learn about in your spare time?

• Is there are market for the topic?

• Can that market pay - do they actually have money?

2: Build your community

Here’s how:

• Pick a platform you enjoy consuming and creating on - e.g. Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Podcast, YouTube etc.

• Start teaching daily on that platform and share everything you know about your chosen topic

• Be consistent and try lots of things - this part can take time

• By the way: you don't need a huge community to create a profitable online courses business. When I first launched my online courses my community was still quite small.
  
  

3: Create your course outline

Here’s how:

• While you are starting to grow your community it's time to think about your online course

• Create an outline of your course by breaking the process of going from A to Z in specific steps (these will become your course modules + lessons later on)

• Make sure your steps cover everything your ideal person needs to make their transformation

• I like to use post-it notes to do this and move topic ideas around and get a good order going for the steps in my course. You can also use a kanban board for this as well - e.g. inside Notion, Trello or Asana.

4: Pre-sell your course

Here’s how:

• Never create a full course until you know you have paying customers

• Start telling your community about your course and see how they react

• Get them to contact you if they are interested

• If people are expressing interest then it's time to set a launch date, get a sales page up and start taking pre-payments for your course

• If not - you may need to think of a different topic

5: Create your course

Here’s how:

• Once you start getting sales it's time to start creating your course

• The coming period will be a lot of work but there is nothing like paying clients to help you get your butt in gear and get your course created :)

• To create your course you'll need to create slides, film your lessons, edit your videos, creating your supporting worksheets and get it up on your hosting platform

6: Launch your course

Here’s how:

• The launch date is here and it's time to welcome your first students :)

• These are your early adopters so you want to look after them and create the best possible experience you can

• Add in special events, surprises and bonuses for this first group and over deliver on everything you have promised them

7: Automate your funnel

Here’s how:

• Once your course is fully built out and you've run your first round it's time to build out your automated sales funnel

• This is where you build an automated webinar (with built in scarcity) and an email sequence that works on autopilot in the background

• Turn on your funnel and watch the sales start coming in :)

8: Collect your student stories

Here’s how:

• Start collecting stories of your students' successes

• These stories are what you will use to show your course/system works

• Storytelling and social proof sells - so build a system for collecting your testimonials and stories

• Remember: the key to great testimonials is building an amazing online course that gets people transformational results :)

An online courses business is your path away from 1:1 client work and towards a life of time, location and financial freedom.

Do you want help launching an online course?

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Courses and Templates for Designers and Architects

DO YOU WANT TO….

• Improve your professionalism?

• Find more clients?

• Bring in more revenue?

• Create better systems and processes?

Then check out my business courses and templates for designers and architects.

These courses and templates leave you with work done - not just a long list of things you need to do next. We have a really strong focus on taking action and getting things created that improve your business.

Enjoy the rest of your day!

Clare x

Dr Clare Le Roy

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