If you've met me or engaged with me recently you will know that for the past few years I have been on a mission to help entrepreneurs, freelancers and side-hustlers start their businesses on a budget. I do a proper eye-roll when people tell me that it "takes money to make money" and that the reason that they haven't launched is because they are "waiting to save some money" or "waiting until I can setup a website" or "waiting until I figure out what my business idea is" or just waiting for {enter excuse here}. And that's why I have been working hard over the past few months to get my two courses penned and packaged.
But, I have a confession to make...
I have a confession to make (even though this is probably my worst kept secret). Even though I am a marketer/web-developer/social media manager, academic material developer, build online courseware for academics (etc. etc) AND lecture at undergrad level on subjects like Marketing Innovation, Marketing Management, Business Model Development, Contract Negotiation and others, I made some HUGE mistakes when approaching building my courses for commercial purposes... Don't get me wrong, I could probably speak about instructional design and creating activities to ensure student engagement at the drop of a hat, but building a course with the objective of monetising it (smartly) was something that I have read about, but have not managed to pull off successfully. Enter Martha. Business Strategist extraordinaire. I have been working through Martha's courses since before lockdown. My husband jokes that I need a T-shirt with the slogan "What Would Martha Do" most days because I have been rather outspoken about the value I have received from these workshops.
But why would I want a course?
If you've heard my story you might know that I have been on a mission to diversify income streams since before the pandemic hit. Our family was badly affected when we got sick during the third-wave, where I discovered with a shock that I did not have a plan for my business when I was not in it. I was the product, I knew the lessons we've learnt and the how-tos and the methodologies, but I also held the relationships in most of our engagements at that time.
Yes, we had policies and procedures and work instructions and help desks with extensive Knowledge Base entries to assist junior staff members, but I quickly realised that team members and clients often still needed me to take charge of a project or sort out an issue or come up with a creative solution to a UX problem... Something that I did not have the bandwidth to deal with at the time, because my main ambition was to get back into bed. (You can read the full backstory here). But at that time Martha arrived on my feed and provided a smart solution that could essentially replace "me" in a lot of the scenarios mentioned above. Simply and very eloquently she outlined approaches and solutions to get the knowledge out of my head and into a system that can scale and essentially serve more people than I was able to do on a project by project basis. I had my answer. Yes, you are probably thinking the answer was obvious, but life was happening and I did not allow myself the opportunity to step back and look at opportunities to change a suffering business model, but I was also juggling doing "all the things".
But I don't have an idea for a course...
Not a problem! Most of us felt the same way. I stared at a blank screen for ages and could not develop a solid idea that I felt had not been done before. Most of the entrepreneurs that work with Martha come in without knowing what they will create, then have the light bulb moment and off go through the workshop and completely design an entire signature program. The excitement and enthusiasm is infectious when someone that came in with nothing builds out their whole empire from their heart and KNOW they can make it happen. Solid gold.
What does this workshop cover?
In this course you will:
- Decide what to do your first course on (or your next course, because you'll have this workshop for life, and can always go back to it to get clear on every course moving forward).
- Then we move into what to NAME your course. This is actually EXTREMELY IMPORTANT!
- After that you will learn many ways to get people excited about your course over and over again (people need to see something 7-15 times before making a buying decision, don't sleep on this one).
- We will go through exactly how to lead up to launching your course.
- You will also learn to sell without selling (no one likes to look like a skeezy salesperson, amiright?)
But don't take my word for it. Just browse through all the testimonials to see what others have said about Martha's courses!
