Hello and welcome to episode number 66 of This Shine Show. And today, I'm going to give you a sneak peek into Amy Porterfield's Digital Course Academy. I'm going to lift the lid for you a little bit and tell you what my favorite parts of DCA is. And in the meantime, if you love the show, I would love to ask you to please go and give us a review and rate the show because that way more people can find us and can love us just as much. I really appreciate you being here with me, I appreciate you listening, and I would really be very grateful if you would give us a review and a ratings on iTunes. Enjoy the episode.

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.

When I was about seven or eight years old, I started taking classical piano lessons and the guy that I had these lessons from, gosh, it feels to me like he was 870 years old. And he had this tiny little room at my primary school that had wooden walls, and so the wood would kind of creek as the sun set and the wood started cooling off. It would creak. And he used to write notes for me in pencil, in my little notebook. And I will never forget the sound of that pencil squeaking on the papers as he was writing notes for me in this little journal, I suppose, of course critiquing my ability to play whatever music I was playing. And then I would go home and give my mum the journal, and then she would be reading all of his critiques, and then I have a week to practice that.

But it gets worse. He also, poor guy, at one stage had a serious heart condition. And so he got a pacemaker, and this is I'm talking like, I'm giving away my age, but this is like the late eighties, mid eighties. So I would be sitting in this quiet wooden box, playing some classical piece, some Beethoven at age seven, what seven year old needs to play classical music? I'm sorry, but just saying. And he would have the pacemaker, and then he would have the Metronome, and then the wood would squeak, and then he would write with his squeaky pencil. And it got to a point where a few years into it, I just couldn't do it anymore. And I said to my mom, "I don't want to play the piano anymore. I want to quit." And so she didn't want to fight with me, she thought I knew best what I want to do, and so she pulled me out. And I regret that to this day. So I've always had this desire to go back and learn how to play the piano again. So guess what I have been doing in isolation and quarantine?

I picked up my iPad and found an app called Simply Piano and downloaded it, and because we had so much time in the house, alone, all to ourselves as a family, I started playing again and my kids joined in, and we've all started playing again. And this little app on my iPad teaches me something small and then it gives me a few songs that I can play with my new skills. And then it teaches me something small, and then it gives me a few songs, or it adds a little bit more to the song I've already learned. And today, I mean, how long are we, in five months in, I'm playing better than I ever did as a kid, and I enjoy it so much. It is such a great stress relief for me, to sit down behind the piano and just start playing. And some days I would start and hours would go by before I kind of look up and realize, "Oh, I have forgot that my kids need to eat." And I just love it. And I can play all of my favorite musicals.

And right now I'm working on the music from La La Land. I love it. Now, that amazing feeling I get is the same feeling I got when I enrolled in Amy Porterfield's Digital Course Academy. And today on the podcast, I want to give you a sneak peek into some of my favorite parts of the 2019 release, and I know for sure that the 2020 release is going to be even better. So the first thing that I really, really love about Amy's Digital Course Academy is right off the bat, she gives you a project plan. Now, you got to love a girl who gives you the big picture and then breaks that big picture down into a spreadsheet-like document with a box you can check for every single thing you need to do. I mean, it can not be any easier. You have the big picture, so you can wrap your head around everything that's going to happen, and then you have check boxes to go, "Yes, I've done this." Or "No, I haven't done this."

So every piece of content, every piece of marketing material, it's all mapped out in one simple to understand document. And I call it the anti-overwhelm document. It is the document that you reach for when you start feeling like you're choking. When you start feeling like there's an elephant sitting on your chest, or in my head, when I get overwhelmed, everything starts to swim. I feel like everything that I have to do is just swimming around in my head and I can't pin it down. And so what I start doing then is I just start being busy, but I don't actually accomplish anything. So this is the anti-overwhelm document and it makes getting started, mapping out your course, building your promotion, building your audience, getting in front of people, making an offer, and making money. It starts making that super easy. It's also very useful if you are a seasoned launcher, because every time I read through it, I pick up on something new that I probably skipped over the last time, or didn't have time to complete the last time.

So there's always something you can add to your launch. And you find that when you go to the project plan, and you get the whole big picture, but also every single checkbox for every single thing you can do. The second thing that I really, really love about Digital Course Academy and that I want to give you a little look at is the sticky note strategy for creating and outlining your course content. It is so easy. I want you to imagine your entire office, or your bedroom, or the kids playroom, or the kitchen, whatever it is that you're using these days as an office, I want you to imagine that entire room is filled with sticky notes, every color sticky note on the planet. And if you're a stationery girl like me and you have an addiction to stationery, then that wouldn't be hard to imagine. But I want you to think about sticky notes covering your walls all the way to the ceiling, and every piece of information that you have inside your head is written down on one sticky note.

So every single thing you can think about ever about your topic is written down on a sticky note. Now imagine Mary Poppins and she comes flying into that room, out of the sky with her umbrella and her suitcase, and she starts waving around her umbrella and it perfectly starts to organize the sticky notes into categories. And then it turns those categories into modules. And those modules turn into lessons. And those lessons turn into key points people need to take away. And at the end of this exercise, you have magically outlined your entire course perfectly. And it only takes one afternoon. You see, Amy makes it so easy to put together your course content. And she shows you how to teach people so that they feel confident when they learn, and that means they come back to you for more courses and they join your mastermind and they become your affiliates. And they rave about you to their friends and you make money, and you make more money, and you make more money.

Even if you're not quite sure of what your course should be about, the strategy alone will get you out of the loop in your head that you keep going through over and over and over, and help you identify the exact problem you solve in a way that only you can solve it. So if you need help getting the content out of your head and into a course that you can actually sell, then you will love the sticky note strategy just as much as I do. It really has made my life so much easier.

The third little sneak peek I want to give you is about creating high-converting webinars. Now, unfortunately, sometimes in the agency, we run webinar ads for clients, and then the webinars don't convert like we know that they can. And often the client looks at the ads and they want to know why the ads didn't work, and then when we run the data, we can see that everything worked except the webinar. And when this happens, I want to say to that client, "Just go to Amy's Digital Course Academy and follow exactly what she teaches you in module five, and you'll have a high-converting webinar in no time." Of course not all of them has Amy's Digital Course Academy program so I end up piecing it together for them, trying to help them see how to build a profitable webinar. I want you to really hear me on this. Amy's recipe for a webinar works like crazy. If you follow what she teaches inside Digital Course Academy, it converts.

I have been studying, and I know I sound like a complete geek, but I am, webinars. And I have taken Russell Brunson's webinar courses, I've taken Frank Kearn's, I've taken David Siteman Garland's, and a few other people you probably haven't heard of because their webinars didn't really convert. And although I'm really sad to admit this to you, I often record other people's webinars and watch them on Friday nights when my husband has gone out with the boys. So yeah, my Friday nights are super exciting. Webinars are my jam and the way that Amy teaches webinars makes it so simple. You don't need any fancy take things. You can literally apply what she teaches and go live on Facebook or record a screen capture video that doesn't even have to have your face on it. Amy gives you the best recipe to make your people want to shout, "Just tell me where to put my credit card details already," at the end of your webinar.

If you've ever felt frustrated, not knowing what works, and what doesn't, when it comes to selling your courses, or perhaps you've run some webinars before and didn't quite get the results you wanted, then Digital Course Academy is the right place for you. The last little sneak peek I want to share with you is about the community. Now, when you're a kid and you go to your favorite auntie, or your grandma, or maybe a friend's house, and when you get there, you just feel the love all around you, and you feel like you've come home. If you can imagine someone like that and how you used to feel about that person when you were a child, where you just know, you're home, you're safe, you'll be looked after. That's how I feel inside Amy's communities. These people are my absolute ride or dies on the other side of what can be an incredibly lonely journey. I've told you before many times about my sisterhood of women I've become close to thanks to the amazing community Amy has built. And I want you to know that you don't need to feel alone in this journey, at all.

Over the weekend, I was attending Stu McLaren's TRIBE live event and he did an amazing job taking a live event and putting it on Zoom. But we ended up being in rooms together, 100 people in a room. And so you can imagine the chat box moves quite fast. And I started chatting with someone in there who told me she's just at the beginning of this journey and she feels incredibly alone. She doesn't know if there are any other women like her doing this. And it just broke my heart because I felt exactly the same way when I was just starting from my children's playroom, trying to build a business from behind my computer screen, when none of the other moms at school even understood what I did and I wasn't making any money, and I felt like a complete fraud. And I felt like I was holding onto a dream that was never going to come true.

But that was only until I got on that airplane, and went to San Diego and met all these incredible people and hung out with them and got to know them. And for the first time I felt that I am not alone, I am by no means unique. It's just because it happens on the other side of a screen that you don't find those people so you need this community. And I want you to know that you don't need to feel alone in this journey at all. I promise you, there are thousands of other women doing what you are doing, struggling with the same thing you're struggling with right now. And there are many women who have felt the way you do when you want to give up. There are many women who are piecing it together while the rising their children, some of them are single parents, some of them with a house full of kids. And others are doing this while they're undergoing chemo.

No matter what your unique challenges are, there's someone in this community who will be there for you, who will cheer you on, and who will give you the answer to that silly take thing you just cannot figure out. The family's waiting for you to welcome you. I've been in this community since 2015 and bore my husband and my children, I think that's probably the longest relationship I've had with almost anyone else, except maybe my mother. I don't want you to feel alone one more day. Your Digital Course Academy family is waiting for you. We're waiting to tell you you're welcome and to tell you that you have the support you need. Now, I wish I had a sneak peek into what my life would be like when I was sitting in that music teacher's room, hating every minute of trying to play Beethoven over the pacemaker and the pencil noises.

If I knew that I would fall in love with musicals and study musical theater and be on stage and sing and dance and perform, maybe I would have stayed in that course, or maybe I would have found someone else to teach me, or even just told my parents how I felt instead of just giving up. And so, as you've listened to me share about my journey with Amy Porterfield and with her Digital Course Academy program, and her wonderful community, I wonder if you're also seeing what becomes possible for you when you have an online course that is thriving, when you get to make a difference in people's lives every single day, when you get to create freedom in how you spend your time, and get to have all the options and the opportunities you've dreamed of, because you make good money doing something you love at a time that is convenient to you. Whatever it is for you, I would be honored if you let me guide you in this journey to that place.

Tomorrow, Amy releases her sneak peek inside the brand new 2020 Digital Course Academy, and you are invited to come take a look inside the course with me. Just go to shineandsucceed.com/sneakpeek, that's spelled S-N-E-A-K-P-E-E-K, for those of you who wondered, and you'll get access to part of the program so that you can see how absolutely amazing this course really is. I want to invite you to join me. Let's build your course out of what 2020 has thrown our way. I will see you inside the free sneak peek. DM me on Insta, or send me an email at salome@shineandsucceed and let me know when you've signed up to get the sneak peek so that we can chat like old girlfriends sharing a bottle of Prosecco. I'll see you next week. Bye.

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