The key to scaling your expertise-based service business is transforming your assets into something you can replicate, and an online course (an e-course) is one way to do that. I had a conversation with Molly Kaiser, who has a decade of experience building, selling, and teaching others the secrets to a good ecourse. In this episode, you will

• Learn the ingredients to a good, profitable ecourse
• Understand the difference between a $19.95 and a $997 course, and how to price your own
• Hear about a quick, effective way to build the base you need to sell your course
• As a bonus: Molly will share some hard-learned “don’ts” about selling your business

Molly was super generous with her time and information in a space that I think many experts see as their next step in business. If you are considering your hourly-to-exit journey and want to make sure you are lining up your IP to make key transitions, contact me, and we can discuss how I can help.

Connect with Erin and find the resources mentioned in this episode at hourlytoexit.com/podcast.

Erin's LinkedIn Page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erinaustin/

Think Beyond IP YouTube Page: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVztXnDYnZ83oIb-EGX9IGA/videos

Music credit: Yes She Can by Tiny Music

A Team Dklutr production

Hello, ladies.

Welcome to the Hourly to Exit podcast.

Thank you so much for joining me today.

I am very excited for my guest, Molly Kaiser.

Welcome,

Molly.

Hello, super excited to be chatting with you today.

Well, I am very excited as well.

when I found out about your expertise.

You know, what I love about this podcast, frankly, and having experts

on it, is like I get free coaching,

I get to ask all my questions that I have about these topics, and

then I'm sure what my questions are, also my audience's questions.

So it works out perfectly.

So first, I would like to let you introduce.

Yeah.

Awesome.

So thanks again for having me.

Hello everyone.

my name's Molly and I'm from Wisconsin.

you can probably detect the accent, but I actually live in New Mexico

and my business journey, I actually started out as a photographer

and I was able to grow that from.

81 cents in my pocket to a multiple six figure studio.

And so other people started asking me how I did it.

And that turned into me doing, coaching and workshops and

things like that, which I loved.

But I found myself trading just even more of my time for money.

So I found out about online courses and I decided to take all that information.

Put it into my own online course and kind of the rest is history.

so it was very easy for me to fall in love with courses because I was able to gain

My time back and also help a lot of people and, grow my wealth at the same time.

so do

you still work, uh, do you now only do courses or do you do one-on-one work?

How do you work with your clients?

Who are your clients and how do you work?

With them?

Yeah.

Great question.

So my ideal client is a service provider, like a one-on-one freelancer.

I mean, I will work with men, but women are definitely like my ideal client.

just because, you know, I was a freelancer trading my time

for money with photography.

But to answer your question, yes, I.

100% do courses.

Now, courses have been my full-time income since and I did a little bit

of photography, but I have slowly transitioned out of it, because I

just really love courses and helping people now turn their knowledge

into their own online course

Now, I mean 20 15, 7 years ago, so things have changed

a lot technology-wise, I would imagine during that time in, terms

of being able to create, publish, distribute, monetize courses.

Yes.

I love this question.

I actually haven't been asked this one yet, but I think

this is a fantastic question.

yeah.

So back when I, started courses in like 2014, which, kind of shows you it'd

only took me really a year to make it my full-time, which was pretty cool.

back then I remember like I had to learn HTML to hand code sections of my website.

you know, I'm like the MySpace generation, so, I used to hand code like

I marketed on MySpace back in the day.

but yeah, so we had to like, hand code websites.

It was a lot of WordPress.

you know, I was using a software back then, which I think it still does exist

today, called Entreport, which is great, but it's just, it's very robust and.

There's just a lot more options now, and so I always love when

people come to me and they're like, oh, I wanna have an online course,

but I feel like I missed the boat.

I feel like, it's gonna be so much harder now.

And I actually feel and know because I've, started other courses along the way that

it's easier now because the technology.

Laughably easier , in my opinion.

and also people actually know what an online course is now.

Like back in the day, not only did I have to educate them about my

actual course topic and like why they would wanna purchase it, but

I also had to educate them on like, , what is a course how do I log in?

You know, these are things that people didn't really understand back then.

So, one other thing is if you want data to back up what I just said, if

you Google, the e-learning industry, it'll show you that, analysts

projected that the e-learning industry would hit, I believe it was like

105 billion by 2015, and it did.

And now they're projecting by, I believe it's twenty twenty four,

three hundred and twenty 5 billion.

And it just keeps skyrocketing.

Like companies are even hiring people like me or anyone that has a course to come

into their company and teach the course.

Like there's just so many levels of opportunity now.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I like to say that I was ahead of my time.

I mean, before we started recording, I mentioned my, misadventures

with, LinkedIn Live today and that I am a tech, Luddite and.

it was easily, I mean, you know, 10 years ago or something where I had, would have

ideas for things that I wanted to do online, but it was just so complicated.

Like, I mean, for me it was like, forget about it.

Yeah.

and so now I'm very excited that technology is caught up to my.

abilities, I think is the way I, I love it.

. . So, we're gonna talk about courses, course creation, So, tell me, does

everyone have a course in them?

I love this question.

yes.

I wholeheartedly like this is kind of the thing that people tell me is my

thing, is like helping someone kind of extract like what their course idea is.

Mm-hmm.

. And we do actually have like a freebie that will help you with that.

If you go to our website, it's profitable courses.com.

but I'll talk about it here regardless.

Yep.

Mm-hmm.

yeah, so everyone has a profitable course idea inside of them, and your

profitable course idea can actually be any idea, but you have to just position

it in a way that will make it profitable.

So I'll kind of break that down if you want me to.

Yeah, that would be great.

Yes.

Okay, cool.

So, How I found my first profitable course idea is, like I said, I was running my

photography studio and you'd think it would've been pretty easy for someone

to look and be like, oh, well duh, she should have a course on photography.

You know?

But for some reason, I think sometimes even when the course

idea is so close to us, sometimes we still don't necessarily see it.

So, like for me, at the time, I heard about courses.

And I knew I could just transition like my workshop and that into a course, but I

thought, well, maybe that's not the idea.

Maybe I should do this idea or that idea.

And so I decided to come up with a bunch of different ideas before I chose the

one, which is what I recommend you to do.

So what I did was I looked at past.

things that I have accomplished, past things with my story.

Like what are things that I've personally overcome?

So, what I looked at in the past was way back in the day, I had like a

very successful babysitting business.

I was like, well, maybe I could teach like parents how to help their kids

be like, successful babysitters.

I'm like, okay, that's an idea.

and then I looked at my passions.

I'm like, okay, well I really like hiking, so maybe I could help women.

that wanna get into hiking, but just don't know where to start.

Like I could help them, hike their first trail or something like that.

I really like painting.

Maybe I could help someone, go from never having painted before to

like painting something they would be proud to hang on their wall.

So I basically just went down all these ideas based on my, passions, my

knowledge, like past experiences, and everyone has that past experience.

in them, you know?

And the cool thing is for example, you don't have to be, say, a

gardening expert featured on homes and gardens to teach someone how to

start their very first home garden.

I always tell my students, you know, you really only need to know like 10%

more than who you're teaching, and . Another analogy I like to use is when

I was in college, . I did drop out, but when I was in college, , I took

this business class and my business professor, he was like telling us how

to have a great business and I couldn't help but like giggle inside because

he had never had a business before.

And for me it's like I would rather learn from someone who has 10% more experience

than me, than just a piece of paper.

Now, nothing wrong with getting a college degree, but like I would

rather learn from someone that.

paper or not the experience, you know?

and so like I said, just look back at your past history.

What have you accomplished?

What have you helped other people with?

What are you passionate about?

And then come up with a bunch of different ideas and then look at which

one's gonna be the most fun, the most profitable, the easiest, and then choose

the one course idea to start with.

Now, does any of this change when you are a B2B service provider?

So your current

clients are all corporations or other businesses?

how do we look at course creation differently versus the b2c?

kind of courses.

Yeah.

Interesting.

my photography course was b2b, so I helped other photography businesses.

Mm-hmm.

and then I did have at one point, like a low carb course, so that was b2c.

And I'm thinking

in my head right now, like I can't really think of any differences.

Are you thinking in terms of.

Legal or like something else

. Erin Austin: Well, yeah.

Well, uh, you're definitely the expert on that.

That's not,

I don't think anyone in my audience is a lawyer.

I will say that . But, um, but yeah, just if they're thinking

about instead of thinking about passions, maybe, you know, more focus

or like how to market it.

Or are you thinking like maybe how it's different to market it?

Is that correct?

Like the way for them to think about like what ideas like

instead of being about their passions, maybe it's more and like the student

focus, like what do my clients need that I can bundle in a way and teach.

Okay.

Totally get it.

Yes.

Thank you for clarifying.

So yeah, with any course idea, you always want to.

, and that's what I said earlier, I was like, you can do any idea, but

in order for it to be profitable, it's about how you position it.

So whether it's B2B or b2c, you always wanna position it with the result in mind.

So for example, my course is called Profitable Courses.

So very short name and it's like, You know, the result, the

result is you're gonna leave with a profitable course, right?

Mm-hmm.

. And so, I always have my students come up with their promised statements,

which basically I'll just share an example instead of saying,

like, I am a bookkeeper, or instead of saying, I have a course for bookkeeping.

Okay, that's pretty vague.

Maybe you could put that on Skillshare and charge like 19 bucks worth, right?

But if you change that statement to say something like, Well, I help, lawyer

business owners who sell contracts online for other online business owners

how to better do their bookkeeping, to raise their profit margins.

Now it's so specific with the result that you could charge, you know, 9 97 plus.

so a great question.

I whether it's B2B or b2c, I think it's no different.

But either way, you have to make sure that you are clear on.

The promise and the results because people aren't gonna buy, they're not gonna be

like, wow, she has 13 modules, , right?

People wanna buy knowing like I can get the results.

She's promising as quickly and painlessly as possible.

Like someone would rather take a.

Like if I'm gonna teach you the same thing, they'd rather learn it

in three modules than 13 modules.

So,

oh, that is so true.

I'll say, I mean, I have looked at online course I'm sure everybody has

an online course, experie and Bad and, maybe several of both and I will say

I am allergic now to like, Dozens.

I'm like, I'm like, Nope, I'm out.

Like there's just no way I will do.

Cause I've never once completed one.

Right.

you go through that and you, you learn that lesson and

Yeah.

People, people want, they wanna pay for the win.

They wanna pay for the result.

They don't wanna pay for like the work they're gonna have to do.

Exactly.

I don't remember who that's, that's crazy, isn't it?

Like

Yeah.

I unfortunately can't remember the person who said the quote, so feel free to.

share it with me, , whoever's listening to this but someone once

said like, you wanna sell them the vacation and not the plane flight.

Like you wanna sell them, you know, the results mm-hmm.

and not like the work.

It's gonna mm-hmm.

, you know, they wanna do as little work as possible to get the results.

So,

oh, that's, I like that.

Sell this

. That's perfect.

Yeah.

So, well you mentioned pricing, let's go there.

So we do see, Was it Skillshare for 19 bucks versus your own for 9 97?

Like

What is the difference between those two

courses?

Oh, I love this.

Okay.

I know I'm saying that about every question, but you're a

good interviewer, so great job.

So with Skillshare, people a lot of times can say like, well, why

can't I just learn it on Google?

Or Why can't I just go YouTuber, Skillshare, or whatever.

and the thing is that people will pay, like I said, for the result.

They'll pay for how quickly and painlessly also, how much like

support they're getting and how well organized the course is.

. I could be very wrong here, but I personally have never had a friend say to

me like, oh my God, I just took this $19 course from, you know, whatever website.

There's a ton of websites that host like low priced courses, you know, and

they're like, it changed my business.

I made six figures.

and again, it could happen.

I've personally never experienced that.

I've also never personally had someone say to me like, I watched this YouTube video.

Now I have a seven figure business like

Okay.

difference is that again, people will pay for the results.

So for example, like we have students in our course, you know,

making tens of thousands of dollars within just a couple months.

And, you know, we've worked really hard to take our system that works

for us and put it into the course.

So it's like tried and true.

and it also is taught every, video is like eight minutes or less.

And people will pay for that.

They pay for.

The organization of it, because on YouTube I do teach a lot of course tips,

but it's not laid out like a course.

Like you can't just watch.

I mean, there's hundreds of videos, right?

and it would be harder to.

Put it all together, like I obviously wanna share with my audience, like tips

and show them, you know, that if they put into play what I'm sharing, it will

help them so that they can trust me and hopefully want to take my full course.

but yeah, I mean the main difference, like I said, is just with the lower

price courses, typically it's like a bunch of stuff kind of thrown in and

it's not laid out like a roadmap to get you the result that they're promising.

And also, once you really do a course well, you'll start to get a lot

of testimonials and that will also really help you, with the pricing.

So to answer your question about pricing, I recommend that my students

price anywhere between 2 97 and 1997.

And the reason I do that, the reason I chose that range is because,

first of all, I've done a lot of courses, , and I've tested it.

And if you go lower than 2 97, Eventually, if you wanna scale,

it becomes very hard to do so your profit margins are just too small.

Mm-hmm.

, unless you have some massive organic following.

Mm-hmm.

, which you don't have to have by the way.

and then if you go above 1997, that typically will involve you

doing high ticket sales and having a sales team to take those calls.

So 2 97 and 1997 is really that sweet spot where you can sell.

One to many and have a webinar and automate it, which everyone

wants the automated passive income, which is incredible.

and then when it comes down to choosing the price between those ranges, you

really will base it based on the result.

So, for example, if you have a course where you're gonna help someone make

X amount of dollars and x amount of time, like let's say, Your course is

set up to make someone, 9 97 in a month.

Okay, so now that you know the range

is 2 97 to 1997, I would recommend that you just pick the price in

between that based on the result that your course is getting.

So the result can be, money made, time saved, stress saved, any of those things.

And then you would just base it based on that.

And then you can mark it saying, you're gonna get this result in this amount

of time, and then that way they know that they'll be willing to pay that.

Got it.

That makes a ton of sense.

I love that.

All right, so creating a course, pricing a course, arguably the easy part.

Building the audience to sell it to.

I think a lot of people struggle with.

And so what I've heard about courses is that you need to

have, like, it's a volume play.

You need to have a really big audience in order to create a course.

Otherwise, you know, it doesn't make sense.

So is this true?

How big of an audience do you need?

What do you need?

I love that.

Yeah.

So you don't actually really need that big of an audience, whether

you have an audience or not.

I still have all of my students build an audience of buyers

separately, and all you need is 200.

So you can grow those from scratch or you can like move them from.

another social platform that you already have.

Mm-hmm.

. And just by having those 200, you know, I've used this method over and over.

I call this my profitable course kickstart method, but just from those

200, I was able to generate $17,000 in enrollments in 30 days with no ads.

And countless amounts of my students have done way more than that.

I've had students do $36,000 in 30 days.

So, and that's just with A few hundred people.

Mm-hmm.

, it's more about the quality than the quantity of people.

Okay.

How do you know?

So let's say like I just hang out on LinkedIn and I have

an email newsletter list.

Like how do I know what the quality.

Yeah, LinkedIn is perfect.

So if you don't already have a following mm-hmm.

, I recommend you start with a group.

It can be a Facebook group or a LinkedIn group.

Mm-hmm.

. And if you do already have a following, you can use that platform or you can

move those people into your group.

Tell me more.

So for example, let's say you already, or like,

tell me about your following.

Maybe I can just sort of workshop you through it.

Yeah, so, on LinkedIn I have, I guess around 2000 followers.

I haven't looked at connections.

I guess

I can look at that too, but

Do you have a LinkedIn group?

No, but I have a business page that doesn't really do anything.

So it was just Erin Austin, and.

there are groups that I'm a member of, but it's not, you know, LinkedIn

isn't really much like Facebook, like the groups, there's not a lot

of activity happening in the group.

They're pretty Okay.

Dead zones.

Yeah.

Okay.

So if you don't already have a Facebook group, then I would

recommend starting one, and I know everyone's like, , Facebook's

dead, blah, blah, blah, not dead.

and I'm not saying you're gonna go on there forever.

Mm-hmm.

, this is just gonna be your platform to grow those 200 quickly

to start making money quickly.

Mm-hmm.

. And then you're gonna move to more of like a long-term platform.

So it could be YouTube, Instagram slash TikTok, LinkedIn,

you know, whatever that is.

Mm-hmm.

. But, in order to do the kickstart and like get those sales really quickly.

Mm-hmm.

, like I said, whether you have a following or not.

You're gonna start that group and you're going to get people into it, so, , if

you already have a following, it's easy because you can promote, you know?

to tell people to go into the group.

If you don't already have a following, it's still easy, but here's what you're

gonna do, . So what you do is you start the group and you name it based

on a community that your ideal client would want to be part of, because

that's the big thing, like mm-hmm.

, people don't just wanna join a group that's like, come by my thing.

It's not how groups work.

, right?

People wanna be part of a community of other people like them trying to, get

the same result that they want to get.

And so if you have friends on Facebook, You can look through that list and

say like, okay, well which of these people do I think are ideal clients?

And invite them to your group.

Otherwise you can go into other groups, start adding value, you know, connecting,

networking, making friends with people.

You can friend them.

Mm-hmm.

and then invite them into your group.

And once you get to 50, which you should be able to do in

just like one to two days.

Mm-hmm.

, um, once you get to 50, is that one five or 50?

55, 0, 50.

Ok, thanks.

Yep.

So once you get to 50, you.

Can do what I call a group grow.

Mm-hmm.

. So what that is is where you do like a giveaway.

So you can choose a prize, whether it's like a one-on-one

with you or something else.

And basically you'll say like, Hey, you know, invite your

friends and make sure you specify that they're your ideal client.

And whoever invites the most people wins the prize and

then your group will explode.

. Erin Austin: Hmm.

How interesting.

that's all I did to get to 200 . Yeah.

Couple times.

Yeah.

That's interesting because Facebook, I mean, I have my

own private, Facebook, profile.

I don't have a business one there.

And when I am in Facebook groups, I do have some that are business based, but

they're on Facebook like, you know, a podcast or something that I follow.

They have a Facebook group.

and so yeah, so even though I don't hang out there for business,

I guess we all kind of have yeah, some kind of footprint off

Facebook.

I'm sorry, yeah, because unfortunately LinkedIn.

Groups and it's just not where they put their focus.

really, it's about the human and, creating your kind of personal brand.

I think that's what they call it actually, you know, your personal brand there.

so yeah, you probably would that group idea probably need to be done somewhere

else other than, than on LinkedIn?

I get

it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I've had students do it on both with success, but I definitely.

, Facebook is easier and then you can pivot somewhere else.

. Mm-hmm.

. Erin Austin: Mm-hmm.

. So you've

had clients who've successfully made LinkedIn groups and.

use the rapid growth strategy on

LinkedIn.

Yeah, they just use the exact same strategy there as well.

And I've been testing the same, like, not the group group, but I've been

testing the same scripts and strategies for the groups on Instagram and TikTok.

And although they do work.

, those platforms just take longer to grow.

And that's why like if you don't already have an audience of buyers

for your course, Facebook groups is still the fastest way to just get

that initial following of buyers and then you can go somewhere else

that's more long, long-term play.

so if you are someone that has in your head like, well, I hate Facebook,

Well then just like utilize it to your advantage until it's gone.

You know what I mean?

Like Right, you know, so, and there's still 2 billion active users

a month on it, which is, insane.

A crap ton of people.

. Erin Austin: So now,

now what percentage of your audience will buy your course?

I mean, on average, like what

are the,

Hmm.

Great.

okay, so I have this in my course, so hopefully I.

just saying it from recollection here, but I believe it's five to 10% of

the group will purchase and I give my students like scripts and everything.

Basically what they do is once they've grown the group, I have these scripts

that they post called interest posts, that will get people raising their

hand, being like, oh, I'm interested, I want more information on this.

Like, you're never gonna cold message people.

I would never recommend that.

Right.

people are just gonna essentially like send an emoji raise their hand, so to.

And then you're gonna be able to have a conversation with them and see if

they're a good fit just through the dms.

So you don't have to, do sales calls, nothing like that.

And don't even have to build your email list yet.

I do teach how to build the email list, but we do things in steps and waves

so that you start making money faster.

Gotcha.

So are you nurturing them inside the group then?

Like how are.

Keeping them in the group.

I'm sorry, say that again?

Are you nurturing them in the group?

Oh,

absolutely.

So, I always recommend that you come up with like five different types

of categories of nurture things.

You know, it can be like educational, it can be quotes, it can be engagement

posts, you know, whatever it is.

and then I use a tool called Smarter Cue to automate everything.

So it actually evergreens all of your content.

It's not like Buffer where you just schedule it once and then

it goes out and it's gone.

Right.

You make buckets of content that recycle over and over to Evergreen all the posts

in your group, which is pretty cool.

Hmm.

I've never heard of that one before.

Okay.

So I'll look at that.

All right.

Well that is very helpful because it makes it sound doable, which honestly it

has never seemed doable to me.

Oh, good.

I'm so glad to hear that.

Thank yes.

So what trends are you seeing in the course space?

Ooh, good one.

Let's think about this.

Well, I do think that.

Although technology is easier, there obviously are more people doing courses,

which is not necessarily a bad thing, like I said, it more people are now

educated about courses, but I think that it does mean that the average person

probably has taken a course and whether they had a good experience or not, like

I said, you know, you need to make sure your course gets them a result quickly.

Isn't cumbersome, inflated, you know what I mean?

Because people will look at that.

Mm-hmm.

, they're not just looking at, oh, it's a course, I'm gonna buy it.

They're looking at the result they're gonna get, you know?

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Definitely.

I think we all have a responsibility in some ways to rehabilitate.

Some of the bad name that some courses have, you know,

some of the old one currently.

Um,

yeah, I'm trying to think of other trends.

I would say as far as building a following, I would not

sleep on TikTok like mm-hmm.

, TikTok is so easy to grow on, in my opinion.

And you can kind of create a funnel to move people from TikTok to Instagram

and then kind of sell on there.

Mm-hmm.

as your long term.

Mm-hmm.

yeah.

Have you seen any trends as someone who's, you know, purchased courses?

? Erin Austin: Yeah, just that

Just the things that you discussed that people have

become very savvy about, courses.

and they're using, you know, more discernment when they're buying and

their time is super precious and they definitely, they definitely less is more.

That's definitely been my,

yeah.

I would also say too, Having payment options is good, especially, you know,

a lot of people are saying we're in a recession or going into a recession.

and, you know, I'm not like an analyst of that, but , right.

Um, I would say give people options, you know, because maybe they want

to pivot from their job or they've lost their job or whatever it is.

Whoever your ideal customer is, Maybe they want options, you

know, so paying full payment plan.

but then PayPal credit is a great one or some kind of Hmm.

Option like that.

And the reason I like PayPal credit is because it gives your

customers six months interest free.

Oh, okay.

Because I don't necessarily, love the idea of like, know, I know that

my course, if my student does it will get them making money in way

more than like before six months

Right.

So I feel comfortable recommending that, you know, I don't wanna see my students

going into debt and hurting, you know?

Right.

but I would say trending wise, I do see a lot of people offering, PayPal,

credit, things like that, and just giving your consumer like option so

they could choose what works best for.

That's great.

I like that

too.

So this is the Hourly to Exit podcast.

You know, we talk about building a scalable and saleable business, and so

part of that is having exclusivity in our business through our intellectual

property or through our positioning, as well as decoupling our founder.

Income from their time creating a business that is independent from the owner.

And so when we look at courses and course creation, how does

that fit into that hourly to exit

journey?

Okay.

Yeah.

So how does someone transition from their job to a course?

Well, how about, we look at courses?

Do they help us separate our time from our income?

Mm-hmm.

, does it help us scale, bring, leveraging our businesses and create assets?

All of the

above.

, yes.

leading

the witness.

Yes.

. Molly Keyser: But yeah, so, you

I loved it and it was great, but I just couldn't picture myself.

trading my time for money forever.

I couldn't picture myself as like a 60 year old lady, with like a 20

pound camera around my head, like climbing a ladder to get the shot.

Like, I just couldn't picture that.

Although, like, obviously I, I could do that . But, yeah, so for me it

was more about like time freedom.

You know, I wanted to be able to have the.

I wanted to be able to have the choice of like what I do with

my time and not be tied to that.

So not only like the growing old vision, keep in mind I

was like 20 when I had that.

So obviously sixties, not old . But for me it was more like, I would

have, shoots that would get booked like a year in advance.

And so I would kind of be like tied into a contract and that kind of

gave me anxiety of like, well, I'm not really in control of my time.

And I think a lot of freelancers can probably relate to that.

Or people with nine to fives.

Mm-hmm.

. So for me it was the white space on the calendar, , and also the scalability.

it would've been extremely hard for me to reach seven figures as a photographer.

It's been done, but statistically it's very a low stat.

Mm-hmm.

and.

know, I think it only took me three or four years.

I had, my first year I made $200,000 with my first course, and then it

just pretty much doubled from there.

And so, let's see.

Yeah, it took me between three and four years to hit seven figures.

and most of those years we had 80% profit margin with our course.

So not only was it like I got my time back, it was scalable.

Like the profit merchants were incredible.

Yeah.

I mean, that's why I'm just such an advocate for courses

and I love them so much.

I wanna be able to sleep in.

every morning, like I never set an alarm and I wanna be able to choose

like what I do when I do it and really be passionate about what I do.

I could go on forever, but that's kind of the gist.

That's great job for courses I've.

so

this is, a very meta podcast where, I talk to women about building

businesses that they can sell someday.

I am a woman who's building a business that I hope to sell someday.

Yeah.

You are a woman with an expertise-based business.

Are you planning to sell your business

someday?

Ah, good question.

Hmm, , how much time do we have lunch?

? So I talked about my photography course and I don't actually

have that course anymore.

I did it for like seven years.

And long, long story short, when Covid hit, I knew that I would essentially

need to redo pretty much everything because we employed all 100% women.

aside from my husband and.

when Covid hit, you know, people lost their daycare, they lost their nannies.

Like we had a lot of employees, you know, they couldn't work for us anymore.

And the photographers weren't able to take shoots because of covid, all these things.

Mm-hmm.

and over those years I have actually always wanted to teach courses, so

I just chose personally to pivot.

100% full-time into.

My course now profitable courses, but a lot of people have asked me, you

know, why didn't you sell that company

So for me, first of all, it was never my plan, so therefore it was not planned.

. Yeah.

So, you know, it's hard to sell a company if that's not like your plan from day one.

I think that that's really smart that you're already talking about that.

So number one, We didn't really have a plan in place for that.

number two, I was the face of the company.

And in order to sell your company, you do really need to be able

to transition out of that.

Mm-hmm.

and I could do a whole episode on that.

But, number three, you need to have a buyer.

And my course was specifically to help photographers transition

into bir photography, which is like the niches of niche.

Ah.

and most of the people in the photography industry that

purchase other businesses are men.

And I did reach out to them, but, they even said, they're like,

I'm not interested in boudoir.

Like, I don't understand it.

Like, so you need to have all these components, you know, you

need to have sellable business.

And first, and also like if your employees don't have daycare, they

don't have chocolate, they leave.

Then if you don't have the employees that run the company, then you

don't have a company anymore.

, right?

So I think that's great that you talk about that with people

right away because you really need to have that exit strategy.

Yes.

So for this company, I am mean more strategic about it, but I don't

actually have a plan to sell it.

Like This is my baby.

Like the thing I've been wanting to do forever, , and I love it so much

and like I just see myself doing this.

Mm-hmm.

for the rest of time.

. Erin Austin: Well, I

like to say it's fine for your business to be your baby, but like

real babies, we raise them to grow up and be independent sometime.

That's good.

That is a win.

That's not

a.

So, yeah, just

Oh, absolutely.

I think it's just a decision, you know?

Yeah.

Like especially if it's a personal brand, you have to decide Like

are you gonna remove yourself as the face of the company, you know?

Yes.

But I absolutely agree with you a hundred percent.

Awesome,

. Erin Austin: Well, this

So as we wrap up, first of all, you mention.

a freebie earlier.

So tell us about that and then let us know where we can find you.

Okay?

Yeah.

If you go to profitable courses.com, we do have a freebie to help

you find Your course, your profitable course idea, your niche.

I do also have a class if you prefer to take like an on-demand workshop.

I teach you how to find the profitable course idea, also how to create your

curriculum for the course and also how to, start profiting from it in 30 days.

And that's profitable courses.com/class.

Awesome.

And you're on all.

Socials

socials?

Yeah, I would say I'm mostly on, I mean, my Facebook group has,

in just a couple years, we have over like 6,500 people in it.

it's one-on-one to passive income , so you could check that out.

And then I will, I do spend a lot of my time on, Instagram as well.

And that's at Molly m Kaiser.

Awesome.

Well, thank you again.

It has been wonderful to be here.

Thank you for sharing your wisdom with us and again, thank

you so much.