My Top 4 Tips for New Course Creators

My Top 4 Tips for New Course Creators

BY MICHELLE KNIGHT

This post contains affiliate links which means if you make a purchase through a link, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you!

If you are an entrepreneur or you're thinking about becoming an entrepreneur, you have probably recognized that there is a lot of money in creating courses. And aside from the money aspect of it, which is why a lot of people gravitate towards it, the focus that I really want to put your energy towards is the impact that you can have. 

If you are doing one-on-one services or consulting, you have a limited amount of people that you can work with at a time. And that's one of the reasons that I fell madly in love with creating courses.

It allows me to serve more people and to support more people without sacrificing my precious time, which you probably know is a huge value over here at Brandmerry and just for me as a human being as well. 

So I thought it would be kind of fun to do a blog that is all about my top tips for new course creators. 

Now, even if you're not new, maybe you already have a course, listen in because the information I'm going to share is going to save you tons of time, money, and energy in the long run. I really want to share this with you because as you know, streamlining and simplifying the process of running a business is so, so important and dear to me.

So these four tips are really designed to remove the overwhelm that you might be feeling on what is required to build out your course.

TIP #1: STREAMLINE YOUR PROCESS WITH AN ALL-IN-ONE PLATFORM

The first tip that I have for you is to make sure that you are not trying to piece it all together.

When you start out and look, I did it too, you want to bootstrap. I totally understand. I was the exact same way. And to be honest, I needed to. 

But, when you're creating a course and you have intentions of evergreening that course, meaning you want to be able to sell this at any time and somebody can sign up at any time and it's not reliant on you sending an email or processing a payment or something like that,  it is going to save you a lot of time and energy to have it all in one location.

In my business, I use a platform called Kajabi. Maybe you've heard me talk about it before, but Kajabi is an all-in-one platform for course creators. 

What this allowed me to do was create the sales page, checkout page, confirmation page, process the payments, send the emails, send weekly check-ins and automated emails, deliver the materials, drip it, releasing it live, etc...all in one area. 

When I first started my business and I was selling a group program and a few small courses, I was just piecing it all together and it became really messy and very confusing. If one thing didn't work, then I had to figure out what wasn't working and why it wasn't working and fix it. 

At the end of the day, I realized I was actually spending more money.

By piecing together a bunch of different options that varied in price, I was actually spending almost the same amount of money that I would spend to just invest in a platform like Kajabi. 

Not to mention, by switching to Kajabi, I also ended up saving myself a lot of time trying to build everything on different platforms. So I really recommend that everybody tries to find a platform that allows them to do all of those things. 

Now is every platform perfect? No, of course not. It never works out like that. And everybody has different desires. 

But I know for myself, when I was ultimately choosing Kajabi in the beginning, I wanted to have a way to stay in contact with my clients as well as to really streamline the onboarding process. 

Don't try to piece it all together. You're going to recognize that someone is going to have to go to a sales page and then the checkout page, and then you need to email them their login information, and then you need to email them important information, and then they need to log in and then you have to house all the materials right?

There are a lot of moving parts. And the more that you can streamline that, have that all in one platform, the better it is going to be for you in the long run. 

So, I recommend Kajabi to so many of my clients, and actually have a free trial for you. You can go to Brandmerry.com/kajabi to get started on the platform. In addition, I’m giving away a bonus when you ultimately commit to Kajabi which includes an entire mini-course on Launching.

Tip #2: TAKE CARE OF YOUR CUSTOMER WITH ONBOARDING

That whole process leads me to tip number two, taking care of your customer. 

I don't know about you, but I've signed up for courses before and I’m so excited and then I don't get an email or I don't get the information that I wanted, or I don't get taken to a confirmation page. 

Then I'm really confused about where I'm supposed to start and what I'm supposed to do. So one of my top tips for my clients is that you need to take care of your customers. 

Think about if you were going through that process. Think about if you saw a course was for sale and you built up the courage and strength, you pulled out your credit card and you put your credit card number in there, and then suddenly you felt completely lost.

How would you feel? It wouldn't feel very good and it's going to put a sour taste in your mouth. 

One of the best things that you can do truly for your business and for the longevity of your clients sticking around and referring their friends, is to take care of them from the very beginning and make sure that they feel super supported. 

So when you are designing your course, so many people focus on just the course, and we're going to talk about that. But I also want you to think about that onboarding process because it is so important. 

I would argue that making sure that your onboarding process is clear and has a step-by-step process, will save you money because you're going to have fewer people asking for a refund,  feeling confused, ending up in your inbox, or just not knowing what to do overall. 

So when it comes to the onboarding process, here's a very simple step-by-step that I recommend.

STEP ONE: THE CHECKOUT PAGE

Let's assume they go to your checkout page or a sales page. They're on your sales page learning more about your program. They click a button that takes them to the checkout page, whether you have a pay-in-full or a payment plan. One of the things that I love to include on a checkout page is a video. 

Now I host the entire thing inside of Kajabi as I've mentioned before, so I can upload a video saying, "Hi, I'm so glad that you're here. Here's what happens next."

I'm taking away some of those fears that my ideal customer and potential client is experiencing like, "If I put my credit card number and what happens? Where do I go? What happens next?" 

So I create a video that's me on camera sharing the step-by-step of signing up. I also love to recap on the checkout page exactly what they get and share some testimonials as well.

STEP TWO: CONFIRMATION PAGE

So they go to the checkout page, put in their card information, agree to your terms and policies, then what happens? 

You take them to a confirmation page. Please don't skip this step. It's very important. 

After they’ve signed up it's important to put their fears at ease. Trust me they are thinking, "Oh my gosh, I just put my credit card number and now what happens?" 

This is why I love to create confirmation pages for my courses that are typically just me on video. I think that's such a great way to build trust and build a relationship with your audience by saying, "Congratulations, you're in. You did it. Here's what happens next."

I also like to type out any information that they might be getting in their inbox, let them know their login information is on its way, let them know that they're going to get an email with this, this, this and this. 

I'm really just focused on guiding them through the process, holding their hand and making them feel really supported every single step of the way.

STEP THREE: DELIVER THEIR EMAILS

The next step is to deliver all the info they need to get started. 

I love to deliver one email that contains their login information and another email that has more of the logistical pieces. 

• Where do they log in? 

• Do you have a community or a Facebook group where you're supporting them? 

• Are there calls that they need to put into their calendar? 

• How do they ask questions? What does that look like? 

You can outline all of that inside of the email.

And, of course, I like to take it a step further, and you can totally steal this from me if you want, and actually say, "This is the first thing I want you to do. And the second and the third and the fourth," so that it's very clear and we can remove some of that overwhelm.

STEP FOUR: LOG IN

Then comes the final step of the onboarding process, and that's getting them to log in to where your course is. 

When they log into your course, I love to have a welcome video there as well. In fact, inside of my programs, we have a start here section, which gives a walkthrough of the membership site.

It has a checklist if necessary and it tells them where they can get support and answers some more questions, encourages them to get started and tells them exactly where to start to get the best results. 

It's really about holding your client's hand through the entire process, making sure that they feel supported and you've removed the overwhelm. 

So my second tip is to put your time and your energy into creating a really streamlined onboarding process. And again, if you're using an all-in-one platform like Kajabi, you can do all.

TIP #3: KEEP IT SIMPLE 

Don't try to be fancy. 

When it comes to building out your course, I talk to so many entrepreneurs every single day. 

They're like, "Well, I really want to launch a course but I want to wait because I need a backdrop. And I want to be able to hire a graphic designer for my workbooks. And I want to have a nice camera," and so on. 

I’ve got to be honest - that is just keeping you from putting your content out there. And by delaying putting your content out there, you're actually delaying sales and the overall growth of your program.

I highly recommend that you are not fancy when you put your course out there the first time. 

Many of my first courses didn't even have video, they were just workbooks, and I just created the workbooks in Pages on my Mac computer. 

You do not have to have a fancy graphic designer helping you with your workbooks in the beginning. Go into Canva, choose a template and change it with your colors and some photos and truly make it your own. 

When it comes to filming, so many people get hung up on the fact that they have to work with a professional videographer, or they have to have perfect lighting or a perfect backdrop.

That is absolutely not required, I still don’t do that in my course and it has served over 300 people. Remember, it's about delivering value. That is what people pay for. You can use your Quicktime or Loom on your computer to record, or just on your phone. 

One of our favorite tools to use in course creation is Loom. Loom is an online program that you can use to record videos, store them in the cloud, and organize them. They're just a great place to do a screen share, the camera only, whatever.

Honestly, if we're talking like bare-bones, you need something to record on, which could be a computer, a phone, or a camera if you have it. 

You need some sort of light, which could be your ceiling light. You could even position yourself in front of a window or purchase a cheap ring light and tripod online and make a workbook in Canva and that's it.

One of the things that I see holding course creators back is that they wait to put their materials out there because they want them to be perfect or professional. But the biggest thing that I've learned as a course creator is that you will modify and change as more and more people work through your program. 

The best way to create a course that over-delivers, is super valuable, and is profitable for your business, is constantly making small adjustments. So if you're waiting to put the course out there until it's perfect, then you're not going to be able to make those adjustments and move forward with your progress. 

The best thing that you can do is get your content organized, put it out there and then ask for feedback and make those adjustments as you go.

I keep mentioning Kajabi obviously because that's the platform that we use over here at Brandmerry, but inside Kajabi, I can upload my workbooks effortlessly. 

I can upload my videos natively without having to use Youtube or Vimeo. If I want, I can upload an audio file. 

You can choose to deliver your content in so many different forms making it really easy for your audience to access those materials on their desktop or on their mobile phone because you can download an app to use with the membership portal as well. 

Keep it simple. Don't try and be super fancy with it because you're going to change and adjust as you go. That is the art of creating an amazing digital product.

TIP #4: GET PAID TO CREATE YOUR COURSE

We are coming in hot with tip number four and this is one of my favorite things to teach. 

One of the coolest things that you can do is get paid to create your course. I mean when someone told me this when I first started my business I was sold within like five seconds.

Now I'm not talking about a beta program. Some people really love that and if that works for you, that's amazing, but I’ve found using the term “beta” gives you a little permission to not do a full launch or get paid. 

I'm talking about actual cash in hand to then create the course. 

Let me give you an example of this. One of the first courses that I created was called Brand New Adventure. I now have a branding course called You! Branded. You! Branded came from putting Brand New Adventure out there, getting paid for it, adjusting it over the course of a year, and then really packaging it into what I ultimately wanted to create, and adjusting the name and some of the marketing.

But when I first sold Brand New Adventure all I had was an outline for my modules, the onboarding process was done so I could accept payment and email my clients and I had a sales page, and that was it.

I sold Brand New Adventure, in fact, it was a $7,000 launch, my biggest at the time, and every week over five weeks, I would create the new module. I would drip a new module and video training on Monday and then I would support students inside the Facebook Group. I got paid to create the course and the program. 

So if you've got an audience, even if it's a small audience, you can sell the course or the program before it's even created. 

Similar to a membership site. If you want to host a membership site. We're talking about courses here, but platforms like Kajabi work for membership sites as well.

Brandmerry Academy, my membership community that teaches marketing, is hosted on Kajabi as well. 

When I first sold that program, I didn't have all of the monthly trainings created. I created them as I went throughout the year with my Founding Members giving feedback on what they needed most. 

This is a really smart business move because a lot of entrepreneurs will spend months and months and months creating a course, creating a program and then attempting to sell it and finding out that people don't actually want it. 

You get to test your marketing, you get to test your messaging, and then you get to actually create it for someone specifically, get feedback, adjust it, and then evergreen it down the line if that's something that you choose to do. So it's such a fun strategy, get paid to create.

CONCLUSION

Those are my four tips for course creators and I highly, highly recommend you take them and you run with them. I wish someone would have told me these four things in the very beginning. 

It would have saved me a lot of time and energy. 

Speaking of saving time and energy, I clearly talked about Kajabi a lot. I don't recommend anything that I don't use and I don't believe in, and they truly are, in my opinion, one of the leaders in course creation because of the amount of time and energy and tech headaches that they will save you through the streamlined process. 

If you’re interested in giving Kajabi a try, you can go to Brandmerry.com/kajabi and test it out.

When you wrap up your trial and become a paying member of the platform you’ll get a special bonus from me. This is only available to community members who use my custom link above.

Inside of this bonus is an entire training on hosting and selling on webinars authentically. 

Might I add, not like sleazy, but like truly authentic, valuable webinars that convert. Hosting challenges, if you want to host a live video challenge to sell your course or sell your program as well as an entire training that I call Launchpad, which is all the step-by-steps of launching your course. 

Kajabi will support you in creating your course, there are a ton of materials out there, but then you've got to know how to market it and launch it.

So sign up at Brandmerry.com/kajabi and sign up through that link, then you will be gifted my entire bonus bundle to support you in marketing and selling your brand new course after your trial.

Check out Brandmerry.com/kajabi for more info.

Watch the full video below!

P.S. Have you tuned in to The Beautiful Climb podcast? I release new episodes every other Friday on topics around productivity, motherhood, habits, goals and going after the life of your dreams! Check out past episodes and be sure to subscribe at thebeautifulclimb.com

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- FREE GIFTS YOU'LL LOVE -

DISCOVER YOUR BRAND STORY IN UNDER 5 MINUTES

START HERE ↠

LEARN HOW TO WRITE AN ‘ABOUT ME’ PAGE THAT CONVERTS

START HERE ↠

MAP OUT 30 DAYS OF CONTENT IN UNDER AN HOUR

START HERE ↠

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- READ THE LATEST POSTS -

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MEET MICHELLE

Hey there, I'm Michelle Knight and I an online branding and marketing consultant for female entrepreneurs.

I believe in the power of storytelling and using that superpower to brand and market yourself online...oh and to set yourself free.

I'm obsessed with living a life of freedom, so much so, that my family and I now travel full-time while running my business from the road.

This blog serves as a home base for all things branding, marketing, content creation and more.

5 Must-Have Business Tools for Operations

5 Must-Have Business Tools for Operations

BY MICHELLE KNIGHT

This post contains affiliate links which means if you make a purchase through a link, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you!

One of the top questions that I get asked daily in my business is, "What did I use to do that? What do I use to run this? How do I do that?" 

Everybody wants to know what tools I'm using, and I get it because there are a lot of options out there.

Today, I wanted to share those tools with you, but I wanted to share them with you in a way that is a little bit more streamlined, because we've all seen the blog posts that have 35 Business Tools, and we're like, "I don't even know what to do with all this information." 

So, we're going to kick off a series that is going to share some of my top tools in business, but we're going to break it up into specific categories.

Today, I want to share with you five of the tools that I use in my business for operations. Think tools used for the day-to-day, working with my customers, handling payments, tasks inside of my business.

And before we get into it you should know I’ve tried so many tools in my business, like way too many to count. So, I’m hoping my need for in-depth research helps you streamline your process a bit and saves you valuable time. 

So let's get into it.

MUST-HAVE BUSINESS TOOL #1: Kajabi

Now, tool number one should not come as a surprise to many of you if you have read some of my previous blogs. 

The top tool I recommend tends to be Kajabi. You might know that I have a membership site called Brandmerry Academy. I also have a course that I've been selling for almost two years now called You! Branded. I also have group programs, special bonuses and deliver free content to my community and all of it is housed inside of Kajabi.

I love Kajabi because it truly is an all-in-one platform that was designed for course creators, but as you can tell, allows for a lot of different things.

Kajabi can have your website and your blog, to handle your checkout pages, your sales pages, to upload your course content, to email your subscribers, to email your clients, to have landing pages. There are so many options inside of Kajabi. 

Over here at Brandmerry, we specifically use it for paying clients. 

For my program Brandmerry Academy, or You! Branded, my clients will check out on Kajabi, they'll get access to the membership site in Kajabi, they will get emails from me and updates from me all inside of Kajabi. 

It makes my life easier as an all-in-one platform to onboard and update my existing clients from one simple platform.

In the next few posts, I’m going to share more about how I use Kajabi specifically to host my courses and scale my revenue.

If you want to try Kajabi and give it a spin, you can go to brandmerry.com/kajabi for a 14-day trial and to check it out, see if you like it for yourself. 

One of the goals as a business owner is to have recurring clients, and so many of my clients will go from You! Branded into the Academy and then maybe work with me inside of Roadmap to Freedom. 

So they get to keep all of their awesome materials in one location, and it makes it a valuable and organized membership portal for Brandmerry clients, which I love. 

So tool #1 is Kajabi and it’s what we use over here for housing all of our membership and paid content, and communicating with our paying clients.

MUST-HAVE BUSINESS TOLL #2: HoneyBook

The second tool that I love to use in my business is called HoneyBook. 

While Kajabi is what I love to use for my clients inside of my courses, membership and group programs, I love to use HoneyBook to use with my private clients. 

There are a lot of different ways that you can use HoneyBook in business. Many of my clients are photographers and/ or graphic designers and love HoneyBook because when they’re working with a 1:1 client and there is a lot of back and forth. 

First, you’ve got the contract, then invoices, email communication, maybe proposals, proofs, etc and you want a way to keep that in one place for the client.

This is what HoneyBook provides.

At Brandmerry we use HoneyBook to create automated workflows and templates to streamline the entire onboarding process for my high-level one-on-one clients. 

These clients start with applying for a one-on-one coaching spot, which is a form that we embed from Honeybook.

Then we have email correspondence back and forth to answer any questions about the timeline, support and pricing. All of this is housed in HoneyBook and can be easily read and responded to there, but also connects directly to my Gmail as well.

Then the potential client moves to paying the invoice, receiving and signing their contract and making sure additional onboarding emails for their folder, scheduling their calls, etc are all handled within HoneyBook.

We saved all those emails as templates inside of HoneyBook, which helps us automate so much of that process and also saves us tons of time. I also love how it tracks where someone might be inside of the onboarding process so we can check in with anyone who might not have responded or whose contract is up for renewal.

Also, many of my clients love the segmenting options HoneyBook provides. 

For instance, let’s say you are a photographer and you have an inquiry form on your website. Someone can check different boxes, based on what they're interested in (i.e. wedding, engagement, newborn, etc…), and then go into different workflows with templated emails. 

If you want to test drive HoneyBook you can use my link for a special discount and trial, depending on the package you choose.

MUST-HAVE BUSINESS TOOL #3: Squarespace

One of the top questions I get is “Where is your website, Michelle?” 

And you might have just guessed it but my website is on Squarespace. 

So as I mentioned before, you can have your website on Kajabi, but in the beginning, I wasn’t so savvy and tried to piece everything together.

So my website's been on Squarespace since day one and I wouldn't trade it for anything. I absolutely love Squarespace because it allows me to customize and design things without having all of the tech knowledge. 

Over the years I’ve taught myself how to code and make modifications because I had a little bit of that past knowledge in my toolbox, but many of my clients don't have that, and they're not really keen on designing everything themselves, so Squarespace makes it super easy.

In addition to the ease of designing your website in Squarespace, I’m also a big fan of their Analytics and SEO (Search Engine Optimization). 

Inside Squarespace, you have all of your analytics so that you can see your numbers. You can see what pages people are viewing, you can see where people are coming from, and you are set up for strong SEO on the platform as well. 

You might know that I teach Search Engine Optimization inside of the Academy, and that's because I have used SEO to rank my website on page one for multiple keywords, if not the first spot on page one. 

That's all done in Squarespace. 
Many people think you need WordPress to do it and that’s just not true.

It's super easy to make sure that your page title and your page description, your keywords, and your alt text is all set up to support you in doing just that.

Squarespace is one of my favorite websites to recommend to my clients, so if you're just starting out and you're not necessarily ready to host courses and things like that, and you don't want to invest in Kajabi out of the gate, then Squarespace is a great option to start out. 

Or if you're like me and you just want to pay for the best of the best, you just keep both of them because it's just easier that way. 

I think one of my favorite things that I learned about Squarespace early on is that I didn't have to pay somebody to make updates to my website. I could do it myself. And there's something really empowering about doing that as a business owner, especially when you're starting out.

MUST-HAVE BUSINESS TOOL #4: Acuity Scheduling

There is a lot of scheduling that happens over here at Brandmerry. 

We've got client scheduling, bonus sessions, all kinds of different things that need to work with my personal schedule, so having a central scheduling platform is amazing. 

At Brandmerry, we use Acuity Scheduling, and one of the reasons that I love Acuity is because it allows me to set up tons of automation on the backend. 

You guys are probably picking up on this, but I love a good automation. 

It’s important to have automations in place to stay in contact with people who have booked with you and make sure that your time slot is on their calendar and they've got the information that they need for your call. So I love that Acuity allows me to set email templates to send important links for our Zoom room, to link a form that I want them to fill out before their session, or even send post-session automations as well.

I can send it all through Acuity to make sure my clients have everything they need.

Inside Acuity, you also can set your availability. So if someone goes to schedule a call, they aren't accidentally going to book on a day that I'm hanging out with my kiddo or I'm running errands or just want to take the day off.

Having a scheduler set up is essential if you want to have clear time boundaries in your business.

And some additional perks of Acuity are that you can collect payments and have submission forms and questionnaires.

So, for scheduling over here, we love Acuity.

MUST-HAVE BUSINESS TOOL #5: Zoom

That leads us to tool number five. 

I feel like everyone, and their mom, and their grandma, knows this platform now because of 2020…
...and that's Zoom. 

I've been using Zoom since the very beginning of my business, back in 2016 and have used it for my coaching calls, workshops, webinars, recording podcasts and more.

While I have a feeling you might already be using this platform, if you’re not and you’re having conversations with people, coaching calls, hosting webinars and want to record the thing then Zoom is a great choice.

CONCLUSION

So there you have it. 

Those are the five tools that I love to use in my business that help with Operations. Go ahead and try some of them out, many of the links above offer discounts or free trials because they are affiliate links.

Hopefully, this helps you make some decisions and get started with streamlining and automating the operations side of your business.

Stay tuned for future posts on the series around productivity and marketing tools.

Watch the full video below!

P.S. Have you tuned in to The Beautiful Climb podcast? I release new episodes every other Friday on topics around productivity, motherhood, habits, goals and going after the life of your dreams! Check out past episodes and be sure to subscribe at thebeautifulclimb.com

---

- FREE GIFTS YOU'LL LOVE -

DISCOVER YOUR BRAND STORY IN UNDER 5 MINUTES

START HERE ↠

LEARN HOW TO WRITE AN ‘ABOUT ME’ PAGE THAT CONVERTS

START HERE ↠

MAP OUT 30 DAYS OF CONTENT IN UNDER AN HOUR

START HERE ↠

---

- READ THE LATEST POSTS -

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MEET MICHELLE

Hey there, I'm Michelle Knight and I an online branding and marketing consultant for female entrepreneurs.

I believe in the power of storytelling and using that superpower to brand and market yourself online...oh and to set yourself free.

I'm obsessed with living a life of freedom, so much so, that my family and I now travel full-time while running my business from the road.

This blog serves as a home base for all things branding, marketing, content creation and more.

My Favorite Course Creation Platform

My Favorite Course Creation Platform

The online business model is growing every single day and more and more entrepreneurs are looking for ways to share their expertise with more individuals. Creating courses and membership sites are an excellent way to do just that, but where do you start. My favorite platform is Kajabi for its simplicity and ability to do so much more than just host a course.

Who kajabi is for

Kajabi is truly for everyone and it you’re just starting out I couldn’t recommend it more. I really wish I had known about Kajabi in the beginning of my business because of everything that is included. Not only are you able to host your courses directly on the platform, but it also includes email marketing, payment processing, sales pages, blogging, landing pages and more.

If you’re ready to get into course creation now, Kajabi is an excellent choice because of its ease of use. Within about an hour you can have the backend of your course set up and ready to go. If you’re not tech savvy it’s an amazing alternative to hiring help and if you love tech, like me, there are tons of features to customize as needed.

And for all my new business owners, I can’t recommend this platform enough. As I mentioned, if I knew of Kajabi in the beginning I would have created my website, email and everything else on the platform for simplicity purposes. While it might seem like an investment during the early stages it’s one of the best investments you’ll make.

My favorite ways to use kajabi as a course creator

Kajabi is the one stop shop to successfully launch and scale an online business. Here is just a small list of what features they offer for your online business:

• Website builder

• Online Course builder

• Membership site builder

• Landing page builder

• Funnel Builder

• Automations (when, then, if sequencing)

• CRM functionality

• Email Marketing

• Webinars

• Quizzes & Surveys

• Payment processing

• Affiliate management 

Personally, I love having everything I need to build, launch and scale a course in one spot. It allows me to better communicate with my clients and keep track of progress as well. 

With their added features around video watch time, we’re also able to keep track of when people are falling of videos so we can better structure our content.

How kajabi can save you money

When we start our businesses we’re trying our freaking best to bootstrap our businesses. Even three years in, I’m super conscious of how much of my profits are paying for tools to run my business. When starting you definitely need an email platform, landing pages, website and payment processor. This doesn’t even include running courses and housing your content. 

Overall I’ve found that Kajabi saves so many of my clients money because they can cancel all their individual subscriptions and just focus on one platform.

With all-in-one tools you can create a landing page to grow your email list, build an introduction email funnel to nurture your list, send weekly broadcasts before your and during your launch, create the sales page for your course, collect payment and house all materials (audio, video and workbooks) for your course. It makes it easier than ever to not just sell your course, but market it as well.

You can join Kajabi today and get a FREE 28-day trial only available through this link.

P.S. If you join during the Black Friday special I’m hosting, you’ll receive my Task Management Toolkit training completely free, just for testing it out.

If you continue with a Kajabi membership after the first 28-days, you’ll also get a bonus 1:1 Strategy Session with me to map out your course, funnel or website.

Join here.

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3 Mistakes to Avoid When Starting Your Business

3 Mistakes to Avoid When Starting Your Business

May 16, 2019

Prefer to watch, instead of read? I’ve got you boo. Scroll down to watch a quick 5 minute video!

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I made a lot of mistakes, I mean I think it’s part of the game, but my goal - to help you avoid some of the worst.

In fact, today on the blog I’m sharing 3 mistakes that I’ve made so you can hopefully avoid them (or at the very least stop doing them now) in your own business.

I’ve been in business 3 years so one mistake a year right? WRONG! And if we’re being honest most of them happened the first 8 months of business.

So without further ado, let’s dive in.

1. BUILDING MY FIRST WEBSITE

It’s like the entrepreneur plague! You want to be official so you spend so much time building a website no one is going to find. Seriously, no one will know it exists and no one will just stumble on it in the beginning.

Unless you are trained in SEO and implementing on your new website the odds of people finding you via search is super slim.
Entrepreneurs spend all their time and money in the beginning building a business when they should be spending it on social media to build a community - which is FREE btw!

If I were starting over I’d spend 8 months building a following on social media (just one), talk to people, discover my voice and then build my website!

2. NOT NICHING DOWN

Major facepalm on this one. No joke I use to call myself a Freedom Coach - what does that even mean? I was trying to be too much in the beginning and struggled to effectively attract and communicate with anyone.

When I finally got specific in focusing on branding and even more specifically around storytelling everything became more clear.

If I were starting over I’d take time to REALLY think of what gap and market I wanted to fill in the online space. And I’d keep going deeper and deeper until I could clearly communicate what I do! This right here can be the difference between your first client and the struggle bus.

Want help with this? Grab my free niche guide here.

3. BRANDING DONE WRONG

In the beginning, I was so lost. I did it ass backward and dove right into researching other brands in my industry and deciding on the aesthetics. Do you know what happened?

I spent 8 months building and then scrapped it all! It in no way reflected my message or story and therefore freaking sucked.

If I were starting over I’d define my niche, learn more about my audience (social media), tap into my story, define my messaging AND THEN choose my visuals.

I did this btw - months later and as a result, I’ve not had to redo my brand in 3 years, just elevate it as I grow as a person! Now I teach other entrepreneurs how to do the same.

Want to learn more about my journey and sign up for my Netflix-style masterclass where I’m sharing a complete Roadmap of the steps I took? You can watch this video on your time here.

Please share your biggest takeaways from this blog post and how you’re going to implement this information in your own business!

P.S. Are we connected on Instagram? No? Well lady what’s happening here we’ve got to fix that. Come hang out with me on my favorite social media platform. Follow for inspiration and send me a DM to know we’re connected.

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MEET MICHELLE

Hey there, I'm Michelle Knight and I an online branding and marketing consultant for female entrepreneurs.

I believe in the power of storytelling and using that superpower to brand and market yourself online...oh and to set yourself free.

I'm obsessed with living a life of freedom, so much so, that my family and I now travel full-time while running my business from the road.

This blog serves as a home base for all things branding, marketing, content creation and more.

How to Create Better Brand Messaging

How to Create Better Brand Messaging

May 9, 2019

PREFER TO WATCH, INSTEAD OF READ? I’VE GOT YOU BOO. SCROLL DOWN TO WATCH A QUICK 4 minute video!

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Brand messaging is one of the most crucial parts of a profitable brand and business. If you want to make money you need to clearly communicate with your audience.

In today’s blog, I’m sharing How to Create Better Brand Messaging and the 3 C’s you can’t live without.

Brand Messaging is one of the most important things you will do for your business. If you’re messaging is falling flat every single strategy, marketing tactic or advertising dollar you throw at it won’t help.

Today on the blog I’m sharing How to Create Better Brand Messaging and more specifically the 3 C’s you can’t live without if you want to create messaging that not only magnetizes, but also converts.

1. CONSISTENCY

This is one of the most important things that you have to have with your Messaging. If your messaging is not consistent you're going to break trust with your audience.

This means that you need to have a unified message for your brand - I call this core brand messaging and it's one of the things that I teach in my program Roadmap to Freedom but I'm gonna give you a little sneak peek.

Core brand messages are 10 to 15 messages that stand true for your brand as a whole not every single program, not just the things that you offer, but for your entire brand.

When you can create a unified blend of messages for your brand that allows you to have consistent messaging on every platform, including your website, your about me, your freebies, your Instagram profile, etc… it’s going to create consistency with your audience and it's going to build trust.

2. CONNECTION

What you are saying has to connect with your audience so one of the things that you need to know and one of the crucial parts of messaging is understanding who you're speaking to. Sometimes we create messages because we're like “Man that sounds good” and we forget about our audience.

• What does your audience need to hear?  

• What do you know about your audience that can make your messaging even better?

You always have to focus on the connection  - is the connection there with your audience?

To identify this you need to know what they're struggling with, what they desire and what's standing in their way.

This will allow you to create messaging that hits all of those touch points and will create a deeper connection with your audience.

3. CLARITY

You need to clearly state the benefit for your audience. Again ideal client work is one of the most important things that you can do for your brand as it affects every single thing that you create but it plays such a big role in your messaging and marketing.

When you're creating these messages, yes you're sharing what it is you do, yes you're sharing your story, but if you can't clearly state the benefit of those things in a way that has your audience going “Yes I need that, I want that, sign me up!” then you're going to miss the mark.

It’s so important that you have clarity around what your message or what your product or service ultimately provides.

Making sure your audience can see how that benefits them is essential for strong messaging.

You can be putting a ton of content out there on social media, you can be putting a lot of money towards advertising, but if your messaging isn't strong it's not going to work in your favor.

Messaging is one of the coolest parts about branding and one of the things I absolutely love about teaching.

If you want to hear more about messaging, which is actually only one part of my process then be sure to sign up for my free masterclass at brandmerry.com/brandmasterclass.

Please share your biggest takeaways from this blog post and how you’re going to implement this information in your own business!

P.S. Are we connected on Instagram? No? Well lady what’s happening here we’ve got to fix that. Come hang out with me on my favorite social media platform. Follow for inspiration and send me a DM to know we’re connected.

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