This is episode number 131 of The Shine Show. Today's show is called The Five Phases of Growth Every Course Creator Goes Through, and I'm going to share with you a little bit of the different feelings and things you're going to spend your money on, and things that's going to happen in your business as you grow as an online course creator, but before we jump into the episode, here is a little message from me to you. Christmas has come early in The Shine community, because I want you to step into 2022, ready to take your online courses to new profits. Yes, I'm talking about your online course launches becoming so profitable, that it gives you that fat wallet freedom you crave. If you've already made $1,000 from your online courses, you've got 1,000 people in your audience and you're ready to invest $1,000 into ads, then you will feel right at home inside The Launch Lounge.

The Launch Lounge has been called the best community on the internet, not by me, by the students, and we do really have the best coaches and fricking amazing students and community members. You get all the support to get your Facebook ads up, to get your launch strategy right. We do business building, copywriting, money mindset. You name it, you need the thing to build the online course profitably and to scale it predictably, you will find it inside The Launch Lounge, and for only a few days, we are opening the doors. This Black Friday, which we've turned into early Christmas, you can join The Launch Lounge at the price it is at now because in 2022, the price goes up. You can join by going to shineandsucceed.com/launch.

I would love to see you inside The Launch Lounge. Go, now. Go now, go. Shineandsucceed.com/launch. Merry Christmas. Giving up your time and freedom to make money is so 2009.

Hi, I'm your host, Salome Schillack, and I help online course creators launch, grow and scale their businesses with Facebook and Instagram ads so that they can make more money and have an even bigger impact in the world. If you're ready to be inspired, to dream bigger, launch sooner, and grow your online business faster, then tune in because you are ready to shine, and this is The Shine Show. Hello, and welcome to this episode. We're going to talk about the five phases of growth every course creator goes through, and I'm going to tell you a little bit about my journey along the way. I hope you laugh in this episode because it is pretty funny. It's funny for me in hindsight, but I know when you're in it, it's not so funny, so if you are in any of these phases and I'm laughing, it's because I'm laughing at me.

I'm not laughing at you. I have a tremendous capacity for compassion. You can ask any of my students inside The Launch Lounge. They will tell you that, but I also, incredibly insanely stubborn, and so I will keep badgering you to move through any phase that you feel you're stuck in until you get out on the other end because I know if I can do it, so can you. Okay. Phase number one, phase number one is that phase where you discover there is such a thing as making money online.

When I discovered this, I was pregnant with my first child, and I was a pharmaceutical rep in Perth in Western Australia, spending about six to eight hours a day driving around in my car, and there was a radio ad that came on, and the radio ad talked about some women's conference of some kind in Adelaide, which is like the tiniest, little town like ... I don't know. Who lives in Adelaide? Anyway, so I heard about this conference there, and it was for women wanting to create online course businesses, and it's so funny that after that, I went on 700 other different tangents and different roots just to come back to the online courses thing, and the person who was ... One of the people who were the speakers at that original conference back in 2000 and, I think it was 2012, 2011 ...

My daughter was born in 2011, so that must have been 2011, was Denise Duffield-Thomas. If you don't know who she is, she has been an inspiration to me over the years because I feel like she's one of the OGs here in Australia, one of the few people who made it big in the online course industry in Australia. She's been an absolute trailblazer, and she is a huge inspiration. I was driving in my car and I heard about this, and I realized, "Hold on," when it does this record scratch, and you go, "Hang on, what? There are women out there selling whatever they know to other people, and they're actually making money, and this is a thing?"

I was just fascinated, and so I started researching it a little bit. Well, not a little bit. A lot, because one of the things that's almost characteristic of this first phase is this obsession. Like we just obsessively click on everything and go down these rabbit holes of today, the rabbit hole might be email marketing. Tomorrow, the rabbit hole will be webinars.

Then, the rabbit hole is Instagram marketing, and then the rabbit hole becomes TikTok, and then the rabbit hole becomes YouTube, and then the rabbit hole becomes video series, and if you're in this phase, you know what I'm talking about, but also, it's like your ears are perked for people who talk about making money online, and you just see all these people with their Six Comma Clubs and making million dollars, even making $100,000, and it just seems completely outrageous to you. At this phase, your energy level is super high. You are excited. You've just discovered bread. Like you are just really excited, and when you start your business, like the social media should watch out because you are coming in hot, and you're posting three times a day.

You're emailing your list three times a day. You are just wherever you feel most comfortable because for some of us, it might be going live, and for others of us, it might be blogging, and for others of us, it might be podcasting, but you are just going in hot wherever you are putting your voice or your face. In this phase, you are learning heaps. You're learning heaps, and because you're a giver, you're also teaching other people in Facebook groups, so wherever you hang out in a Facebook group, where you're learning, you're probably also sharing what you have learnt, and so people might start looking to you for knowledge, and that can be frustrating because when you look at your bank account, you realize you're still broke. In fact, you are more than broke.

You're building up debt in this phase. You typically start bending your credit card a little bit more than you should. Being there, I racked up $40,000 in debt over three years, and I tell you, I spent most of it on online courses. I probably still spend maybe even more than $40,000 a year on online courses, but now I can afford it. I probably spend more than that if you count all the coaching that I pay for.

Okay. In that phase, you are consistently looking ... This is critical. In that phase, you're consistently looking for the one thing. You think there's just one thing that's going to be the secret. You think there's something wrong with you.

You think you're broken. You don't understand why others have figured this out, and you haven't yet, and this is especially hard for you if you are an overachiever. This was really, really, really difficult for me because I'm insanely competitive and I don't even try to do things that I'm not going to be good at, and I was really bad at this for the first three years. Really, really bad, so if you're there, I see you, I know you, I've been you. You'll be okay.

Here's what you need. You need to know that there's only two things you need in your business. You need an audience and you need an offer. You need an audience and you need an offer. The one thing that is your biggest focus is building your audience, because until you have an audience, you can't make them an offer, and unless you speak to your audience, you won't learn how to articulate your offer, and unless you have an audience and you make them an offer and they don't take you up on it, you won't know why, unless you ask them, and when you do ask them, you're going to learn some stuff, and then you're going to change your offer. While you work on changing your offer, you're going to build your audience a bit more, and then you're going to make the new offer, and you're going to get a result, and that result is going to tell you if you're on the right track or not yet on the right track, but you only need two things.

You need an offer and an audience, so build your audience, but here's the thing, you're going to choose one major piece of content. By that, I mean either a podcast or a blog, or a video blog. Big piece of content per week that can be batched, and you're going to choose one social media platform. Not five, not three, one. At the moment, depending on who your ideal customer is, but at the moment, for the majority of my students, that platform is Instagram, because really, if you think about it, Instagram is kind of five platforms in one, and there's just still no other way for us to really run ads that are as good as Facebook and Instagram ads, so we're kind of stuck with Zuckerberg for a bit.

We'll see what happens in the future, but for now, Mr. Zuckerberg is our friend, so I would recommend choose Instagram at this stage. I know it might be tempting to think you want to go on TikTok. I get it. I get it, and certainly, there are people who become superstars on there, and then it's very easy to then translate that from TikTok onto Instagram. Sure, I agree with that, but are you that unicorn, really?

Really, really? Okay. If you are that unicorn, you're allowed to go on TikTok, and then bring it over to Instagram so that you can run ads, because we're still figuring out TikTok ads. Okay. The other thing I want you to do at this phase one is save your money.

Stop buying all these tiny offers. Please don't buy tiny offers. Please don't buy $97 products. They don't teach you enough. They teach you a tactic, and what you need is a strategy.

You don't need a Band-Aid. You need a whole health routine, okay, so don't buy a Band-Aid when you need exercise and healthy food. Save your money and rather, invest in a larger course that teaches you a strategy. By that, I mean something like Amy Porterfield's Digital Course Academy is an example of that. James Wedmore's Business By Design is an example of that.

Jeff Walker's Product Launch Formula is an example of that. Stu McLaren's TRIBE is an example of that. They are courses that are more expensive that's going to get you an entire strategy that will help you build your business. Okay, we're moving on to phase number two. Phase number two is, holy cow, it's working exhaustion.

I call it holy cow, it's working exhaustion, again, because I've been there. When my business ... Back in 2017, I went back to my day job to pay off my $40,000 debt to take responsibility for the fact that I needed to contribute financially to my family, and also because I'd been at it for three years, and frankly, it wasn't working, but I had learnt a ton of skills, a load of skills, and so in 2017, I went back to my day job and decided to finally niche down, finally pick a thing that I'm going to be known for, pick a thing that I can do and that I can market myself as, and that's when it started working. Isn't it magic? It's like the riches is in the niches.

Yeah, just pick a thing and be that, so you got to know who you serve and how you serve them. Then, it starts working. At this stage, so this is ... I got in an airplane and flew to San Diego and went to Amy Porterfield's event that she was hosting for her B-School students, and when I got there ... I'd actually, during that year in Amy's community, already started picking up some clients to do Facebook ads for them, and when I went to her event at the event, I picked up four new clients, came home, quit my job, and the rest, as they say is history, but then, I entered phase two.

Beginning of 2018, I quit my job and I couldn't believe I get to be at home while my kids are at school all day and actually make money working for clients. I remember it was the most free I had felt in the longest time. I would, some afternoons take naps before I go and pick the kids up, and I would just feel so incredibly free when I know I don't have to work for a boss. I can literally go and take a nap, and nobody cares. It was amazing, but in this time, there were some fears that creeped in, and at that time, my biggest fear was that it would all go away. I wonder if you can associate with that if that has ever come up for you, if you're at the point where your business is starting to work, and you're so relieved that you've moved out of phase one where phase one is just marked by this absolute anxiety of, "What is this one secret thing that I need in order to make it work?," and then you move in.

You find out that it's not one thing, it's actually a whole bunch of things, and then you start making some money, and then the fear that it's going to go away kicks in, so you start going the extra mile for your clients and for your students. You start giving more than you can sustain to give. You are probably also a little bit broke because you're probably not charging enough. Hmm, I see you. I've been you.

At this phase, you can't really afford to outsource anything yet because you are using all the money coming into your business to pay for your life. You are real solopreneur. You are the person with the ups and the downs, and when the down starts hitting, you start hustling again, and then as soon as you sign up a new client or you get some students or you have a launch, you're okay again for a few months, and then the hustle starts all over again. You might even, at this stage, be a little bit obsessed with time management and productivity tools, and that's okay. I was there too, and I bought all the books and all the planners, and even all the Asanas, and I bought a very, very, very fancy productivity tool, kind of like monday and Asana.

It's called Wrike, and I had to get an extra credit card because it costs 5,000 Aussie Dollars, and I didn't have it, but I thought Wrike was going to be the solution to all of my organizational problems, and so I got an American Express credit card, I put the $5,000 on there, and oh, my word, did Wrike do our heads in. It is the worst program on the planet. It does not do any of the things that the sales guy, who was a very good sales guy, promised me it would do. It was horrible. Horrible.

I couldn't wait to get rid of it, so $5,000 mistake, but what I want to say is in this phase, it's normal to kind of feel like there's some external tools out there that's going to help you be more organized and be more productive. I'm sorry to tell you, but wherever you go, there you are. It is an internal job. It really, really is an internal job. Staying organized, planning things requires discipline.

There's no quick fix. There's no tool that's going to do it for you. You got to just put the work in. It's a discipline. It's really is just a boring, monotonous do what you said you're going to do when you committed to doing it and plan your week and plan your month and plan your quarter and plan your year.

It's really as dry as that. Okay. Now, at this phase, you are probably also very emotionally invested in your student's results, or in your list growth, and so you're focusing a little bit too much on things like unsubscribes or on things like refunds during launches, so I want you to know that you're free of that. You can stop thinking about unsubscribes, and you can stop thinking about refunds. You are going to get refunds requests, because people are weird.

People have requested refunds for the weirdest reasons, and that's okay. That's okay, because not everyone gets it, and sometimes people make choices that you will never understand why, and that is okay, because the only person you can control is you and the only person whose peace you are in control of is your own, so just manage it in a way that gives you peace. What you need to do at this phase is you really need to start paying attention to your numbers. Mmm, really start thinking about your numbers. Start tagging people inside your CRM.

Now, you don't have to tag for every little click they clicked, but definitely tag for everything they opt in for. If they opt in for a lead magnet, you need to tag. If they opt in for a webinar, you need to tag. If they buy from you, you need to tag, so start paying attention to your numbers. Pay attention to your podcast downloads, your blog page visitors, your traffic numbers.

Know where your traffic is coming from and know whether people are converting or not, so pay attention to leads, pay attention to conversions. Those are the numbers you want to know. Double down on audience building, because once you get into this phase and things starts to work, the faster you can grow your audience, the faster this thing creates that snowball effect. Keep your eyes on the students that have success. Keep your eyes on your fans that love what you do because you're going to ignore the 10 students who give you positive feedback and the one student that misunderstood something or didn't use their manners when they complained about something.

That person's going to get stuck with you, and I don't want that for you because that's not healthy and it's not nice, and it's just not a nice place to be, so pay attention to the students who love you, who adore you, who's doing the work, who's showing up for the calls, who's learning, who's asking for feedback, who is helping other students. If you have students who help other students, then you are attracting the right people. That's fantastic. Okay, so that's the second phase. Now, the third phase, the third phase, I call the cleaning up and contractors phase.

At this phase, you have a funnel, and it works. When I say a funnel, I mean you have a fairly predictable way to generate leads and convert those leads, and your funnel could be as big as you sell a $3,000 course, and you launch it with a webinar twice a year, or it could be as small as a $27 thing with an upsell and a bump, which goes to another order bump, which goes to another order bump, and it's profitable and it's making you money, and that's okay. All right. At this phase, you start creating some systems around what you do, and you start building some SOPs, standard operating procedures. You start getting things out of your head, and you start hiring a VA, or a copywriter, or a tech person, or someone to help you.

Every time you hire someone, they kind of help you get a few more things out of your head and onto paper, and you start creating some kind of a predictable workflow in your business. It is likely that at this stage, you start cleaning up your website. It's funny how that goes in cycles because I remember so well, I hired my amazing friends, Zafira Rajan, who is just the best copywriter on the planet, and Zafira, hurry up and raise that baby so you can come back to work, please. She's so inconsiderate having children, and then not working. How dare she.

Anyway, so Zafira and I spent hours and hours and hours just talking about my ideal customer when I was in this phase, and I just loved, loved that journey of creating a new website that resonates with who I have at this stage, really come to get to know as my ideal customer, and it's so funny when I look at it now. I know we wrote that website, oh goodness, two years ago. It's definitely before COVID. Actually, we turned that website on in 2019. Yes, middle of 2019.

The website, the way it has been coming since 2019, and my business has radically changed since then. I mean, we don't even mention The Launch Lounge on there. I have a friend in a mastermind who told me the other day, "There's nothing about my students on my website," and I was like, "Yeah, dude, because I've been busy. I've been busy," so when I was in this phase three, I cleaned up the website for the customers I had then, and now, I'm in a different phase. I'm thinking, "Oh, the website needs to be cleaned up again," and that's okay because we go through different iterations, right, but this is in phase three, you're probably moving from solopreneur to entrepreneur, and this is where the machine is now bigger than just you.

The machine is turning into something where other people can actually bring their own flavor to. This is really nice because now, you start learning what your values are and you start learning who you like to work with and who you don't like to work with, and it's bigger than just they did their job. It's bigger than just, "Yeah, I like how they work because they're reliable." It's becomes bigger than that. Our number one value in my business is be engaged, and that means that we have each other's backs, we do what we say when we say we're going to do it, and we pay attention, and when everybody pays attention and is focused and does what they have to do when they said they have to do it, then that never drops the team, but I didn't know this when I hired the first few people who worked for me.

When I hired the first few people, I was just so desperate to get some hands to do some stuff, that I kind of hired people, expecting them to do one thing, and then turned out, they do something completely different, but I was kind of like, "Okay. Well, that's all right. I like you doing that. I didn't know I need to do that, but let's do that," and then they do it really well, and then I kind of start relying on it, but then, I still have the original need that wasn't fulfilled, and so then, I hire someone else. It's a weird, funny place to be when you start hiring people, but at this phase, what you need to focus on is focus on automating your lead generation.

This really is when you are no longer fiddling with lead magnets. You know which lead magnets leads into your course and you just put your ads on and leave them, and don't look at them, and don't turn them on and off and on and off and on and off. You just turn them on and you leave them, and you let them run in peace, and you don't fiddle with it, and you don't have 100 lead magnets, you just have maybe two or three. You're also going to focus on profit, and you're going to start saving your profit at this phase. You have to start saving profit.

You have to start saving money in your business as soon as you start hiring people, because you hire people and you pay them salaries, and then one day, your best customer pulls out and you end up not being able to pay yourself because you have to pay salaries, or you hire a team and you have a really nice team of three or four people, and it's all a bit hand-to-the-mouth still, and then COVID happens, and you're a little bit screwed, unless you have some savings in place. If I did not have savings in place when COVID hit, I would've had to let my team go very quickly, and I am so grateful that I had some savings put away, that I was able to be upfront with them and say, "Look, I can pay you guys three months. If all our clients disappear today, I can still pay you guys for three months. If you want to go find another job, I won't blame you, but if you will hang around with me for three months, let's see if we're still at three months a month from now, and if we still have three months worth of money a month from now, then let's see if we have three months worth of money two months from now." Every month, we just keep working to keep that three months there, to know that we have three months.

It's just incredible how amazing things worked out, but a year later, instead of four people, I know, I have 11 people on my team, and I can safely say I can pay salaries for more than three months because I've put away the savings. Okay, that's phase three. It's the cleaning up and contractors phase. Phase four is what I call the profitable scaler. The profitable scaler is definitely making more than six figures, right?

The profitable scaler is you've got it figured out. You look back at younger you, who was in phase one, and you want to hug that person, and you want to go back and tell that person, "It's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. You're going to be fine. You're going to be just fine," so when you reach the level of being the profitable scaler, you have two to three predictable funnels in place, or two to three revenue streams, so maybe you have an online course, and then you have a backend membership, and maybe you have a mastermind of some kind.

Your list growth is fully automated. You don't think about list building. List building is not even a thing that takes up space in your brain. All you think about is nurturing that list, making sure you are optimizing your numbers as much as possible, so in other words, you're looking at your email open rates going, "Can we get these open rates higher? Can we get these click rates higher?"

"Can we get these conversion rates higher?" You're hiring employees. You're no longer looking for contractors to come and just help you out a little bit. You're no longer looking for people who work by the hour. You're actually hiring people and paying them a fixed amount every month.

Whether they're employees or contractors, they work for you and they're part of your team, and they buy into your vision, and they buy into the dream, and they show up and live your values, and you can hold them accountable. At this phase, you know your numbers and you know you're looking for ways to make your lead generation, your conversion and your ascension model, or your retention rate higher, so you are optimizing things. You're no longer wondering what your numbers, or you know your numbers, and you're just looking for ways to make it better. At this phase, you need to build your business culture and start to remove yourself from the day-to-day runnings and remove yourself from actually blocking the team from doing their based work, because if you hire the right people, they're going to do a way better job than you can at whatever it is that you think only you can do. Uh-uh (negative), you can't.

You hire the right people. You pay them well, and you let them do their thing. At this stage, you're also going to let your community start to speak for themselves and create their own identity, and this really, like this is just, I'm just coming into that place where this is unfolding for me inside The Launch Lounge, and even in A-Lister a little bit as well, but in The Launch Lounge, I can really say that the community is taking on this life of their own. Like they're kind of becoming this thing that's completely outside of me, and I know this sounds weird when I say it's outside of me, because obviously it's outside of me, but it's not. It's not centered around me anymore.

Yes, I'm the face of it. Yes, I'm the leader of it. Yes, I bring everything together. Yes, I determine the code and the culture and the values and what happens there, but I'm just the creator. I'm not the maintainer.

I'm the creator. The sustainability, the sustainers of the culture are the people, and they bring their own flavor, and they bring it way better than I can ever bring it, and it really is a privilege to start seeing your community really take on a life of its own. It's beautiful. Beautiful. All right, phase five.

Phase five. Phase five is when you start stepping out. I'm not quite there yet. I think I'm in phase four now, but I can definitely see phase five when I look at my mentors, when I look at someone like Amy Porterfield. I mean, you guys hear about her a lot. When I look at Stu McLaren, when I look at someone like James Schramko, when I look at ...

Let me think who else. Yeah, that's about the good examples I can quickly come up. Jeff Walker, he stepped out a long time ago, but he's still doing his launches, but yeah, there's a stepping out that happens, and that is okay and that is good. It's good. It has to happen.

At this stage, you have systems in place and the right people who are managing the systems, and so they don't need you anymore because the systems are created, the culture is established, they're managing the systems, and they maintain the culture. Your content process is megabatched and produced. There's no more hustling to get a podcast episode or a blog post or anything out, and you can almost create it in your sleep because you've been doing it for so long, and it's kind of just reiterations of the same stuff. Your audience grows naturally through other people, including affiliates, and also student endorsements, so you're probably not even running list building ads anymore because your promotions build your list big enough, and because you have a variety of revenue streams and they're probably all going on and off at different phases, some of them might be on evergreen, your audience building is just taken care of. Then, you really see the ripple effects of the difference that you make in this world, which is a fantastic place to be.

In this phase, you're finding new ways to invest your money in other revenue streams that are based in different markets so that you can minimize risk. I know this phase is typically probably not something you would hear a lot of people talk about on their podcasts because it is a phase where ... It's not sexy to say you're going to step out of your business one day. For some of us, it might even be something that you think you can't even go there. You won't even give yourself permission to go there, but I want to talk about it because I see Amy Porterfield, I see Brooke Castillo do it.

I see how people who have made, let's say in our industry, who have made $10 million, I see them starting to step out. What I see them do, and I think COVID has also accelerated this, what I see them do is invest in other forms of revenue that are not more online courses, so buying properties, buying investments, buying other businesses, buying local businesses, buying e-commerce businesses, starting to diversify their revenue streams because if you think about you when you're 50, 60, 70, 90, 120 years old, you are going to want to not have all your eggs in one basket, and I think if COVID has taught us anything, it is this, not to have our eggs in one basket. If you can be an entrepreneur and you can make it to this phase five, where your money just starts to work for you and you can invest your money in other people's businesses and in other areas where it minimizes risk, then you set yourself up for success. Okay. Well, that is all I have for you today.

I hope you guys have a lovely, lovely week, and hang around because I got something to tell you about The Launch Lounge. Christmas has come early in The Shine community because I want you to step into 2022, ready to take your online courses to new profits. Yes, I'm talking about your online course launches becoming so profitable, that it gives you that fat wallet freedom you crave. If you've already made $1,000 from your online courses, you've got 1,000 people in your audience and you're ready to invest $1,000 into ads, then you will feel right at home inside The Launch Lounge. The Launch Lounge has been called the best community on the internet, not by me, by the students, and we do really have the best coaches and fricking amazing students and community members.

You get all the support to get your Facebook ads up, to get your launch strategy right. We do business building, copywriting, money mindset. You name it, you need the thing to build the online course profitably and to scale it predictably, you will find it inside The Launch Lounge, and for only a few days, we are opening the doors. This Black Friday, which we've turned into early Christmas, you can join The Launch Lounge at the price it is at now because in 2022, the price goes up. You can join by going to shineandsucceed.com/launch. I would love to see you inside The Launch Lounge.

Go, now. Go now, go. shineandsucceed.com/launch. Merry Christmas. Thank you so much for listening. If you had fun, please come back next week and remember to hit that subscribe button so you never miss a thing.