242 - From Website Developer to Course Creator

On today's episode of the podcast I interview website development entrepreneur Brenda Cadman about how she pivoted her business into a course model for additional income.

After 22 years of running a website development company, Brenda is retiring that business this year to be 100% all-in on teaching all things Canva. 

Brenda joined Amy Porterfield's Digital Course Academy (DCA) in Fall of 2019 her plan had been to create a web development course. Brenda used Canva as one of her design tools regularly and as she got involved in the DCA Facebook group, she found herself regularly answering questions about Canva until people started asking if that's what her course was going to be about and she decided to pivot. 

Brenda advises that you have to get your ego out of it. You have to listen to what it is that people want instead of what you think they want so that you can provide it. Even when you think you have total clarity around what it is you want to do, it's important to have flexibility around it to create around feedback to sell what people need. It's important to get validation from your audience so you can create the course around these needs. Brenda shares that the validation she received also helped her craft her sales page messaging around what it was people were asking for in the course. 

When creating her first course, Brenda created a robust starter course. Deciding between a starter,  spotlight and signature course can be a difficult decision for first-time course creators. Braden's advice is that it doesn't actually matter, meaning that the parameters of how much content is in the course matters in order to prevent scope creep in your own course, but you can offer one-off spotlight courses to address specific pain points of your audience. 

Courses gave Brenda the freedom of time that she did not have with her web development business. Eventually Brenda got to the mental bandwidth where she could not do both and decided to go the course route, one she does not recommend for everyone. Moving into courses full-time requires having savings and being comfortable making the transition from full-time work to solely focusing on courses, a transition that took Brenda over two years. If you think you're going to get to your business goals in six months, add a buffer for 12 months.

You need to have a track record that what you are teaching is going to work for the people you are serving. An ideal time to create a course is when you get tired of answering the same question over and over. Creating a course takes work.

To learn more about creating a course, check out Amy Porterfield's Course Confident: A 5-Day LIVE Bootcamp to Nail Your Digital Course Topic, Attract Your Audience, and Show Up with Confidence Online.

Inside this private community, Amy will be going live to help you cement the foundations of your own digital course.

Including: 

  1. What you might teach

  2. What you’d be able to charge (based on examples across TONS of industries)

  3. How to structure your course content

  4. How to grow an audience NOW that’s ready to enroll when you’re ready to launch

And I’ll be there too, helping you and sharing my own insights every step of the way.

 

ALLLLL of that for $47. ( Are you kidding me?! )

Click here to join.

 

Get in Touch with Our Guest

Brenda Cadman
Check out Brenda's Canva Resource group at HowToUseCanva.com

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