Close your eyes and take yourself back to August 2020. We were about 5 months into the pandemic with not a clear end in sight, and many had transitioned to working from home who had never worked from home, much less led a team from home.
As a freelancer, the pandemic wasn’t too different for me, as I had worked from home since 2004. What was new was that my family was now all home…that is probably another blog post for another day. What was also new is that now all my clients were now working from home too. And let’s be honest, some were slaying it, and well, others, not so much.
I kept seeing social media ads for this masterclass for Creating Digital Courses with Amy Porterfield and I was intrigued. I knew my clients, and the world really, needed help with leading virtual meetings. They needed help with the technology but also needed help facilitating the virtual meetings themselves. Some of the meetings I attended were downright painful to attend. They needed help connecting their team members, creating collaborative virtual teams, leading dynamic meetings, and the best practices when it came to leading a virtual team. I knew that I could share my expertise and years of experience in this area. I had been leading a virtual team and facilitating virtual meetings for 16 years. I wanted to help others and make their worlds easier.
In September 2020, I signed up for Amy Porterfield’s Masterclass for Creating Digital Courses and honestly, I was a bit skeptical. I am an instructional designer, at the time with 24 years of experience. I knew how to create content, create online courses, would this even be worth my time?
I quickly learned, yes it was worth my time and my money. I took her Digital Course Academy and learned so much! Here are just a few highlights:
- Identifying my ideal client.
- Nurturing and building my email list.
- Narrowing down my topic based on my ideal client’s pain points.
- Creating my course using her methodology (the post-it notes method).
- Creating my sales page.
- Crafting my masterclass webinar to promote my class.
I was so interested to see how a “non-instructional designer” would approach content creation. I chose to really “trust the process” and follow her methodologies to a tee.
I not only followed her methodologies, but I also actually completed my course, Virtual Meeting Academy. In my first launch in January 2021, I generated just under $6000 in revenue, and I helped people take their virtual meetings from dull to dynamite. Since then, I have continued to relaunch that course and create two new courses, a 5-day challenge, and a new membership for learning and development professionals.
One thing I didn’t expect from taking this course was the new relationships and friendships I gained. I had a fabulous accountability pod and learned so much from each of them. We took the class together, strategized, and shared ideas together. In addition, I learned a tremendous amount collaborating in our online Facebook support group.
Amy Porterfield is a brilliant entrepreneur, author, and leader in this space. She offers so much free value to anyone who wants to grow their email list, create a digital course, or heck, even create their own little empire in their niche. Most recently, she published Two Weeks Notice.
Over the next few months, I will be sharing some of her resources with you that I hope will provide you with as much value as they did for me. If you want to get to know her a little bit, check out her website.