What's your aspiration as a business owner? It's to generate multiple streams of revenue, some of which don't need you to trade time for dollars. It's a great dream, and I believe it should be a goal

I share the story of how I'm generating thousands of recurring dollars each month with just one sale. My goal is to never have to sell courses. I don't want to do that, but I want to impact as many people as possible with my course Your Greatest Work: Learning Design Course. I share how I do this personally, and why this could be a great business model for you too.

Because If your aspiration is passive income. You just need the right business model.

In this episode, learn

Passive income is totally possible in 2022. And I'd love to help you achieve it. But... you probably won't get a product ready and out to market quickly unless you have some help.

I offer strategy calls to help you determine your business model, hear your idea and help you plan next steps.

I also have a full day - done with you - strategy where you'll walk away with a learning plan, ready to take to your team for development. Book a Call

Download the Complete Productivity System Notion in Notion. Use code MERRY at checkout for extra 25% savings until Christmas 2021.

Realistically, creating a learning offer by yourself is hard

So do me a favour, and be less offended by your own inability.

Stop being offended with yourself when you can’t be a specialist! It’s ok to not know how to do something really well in your business. Since when do we have to be able to do everything perfectly? That’s a total lie.

Creating a course or learning event has so many hurdles and minefields to navigate. Working with a learning expert can get rid of some hurdles and risks. In this episode, I’m going to share several failures I had in my career and what I learned so I don’t repeat those mistakes. You can learn from them too… you’re welcome!

Take a deep breath, and let it go. Because if you’ve tried to create learning and it didn’t work. Or if you launched something and it flopped, or if you started creating a course and it never saw the light of day. Please know that you’re not alone!

This episode is about you learning from me --  my challenges, my failures, and why you should stop being offended by your own inability to create a learning product that’s amazing. Because friend, you probably haven’t developed the skill set yet. And should you really?

Contact the learning experts, work with us over December and January to get your learning product to market way sooner in 2022 than if you were to try and DIY it yourself

Subscribe to the podcast. Subscribe to the newsletter — we will be sharing special content only by email over the holidays.

How do you keep people accountable in your program? Not just accountable in attendance and completion, but accountable in doing the work, accountable in implementing.

And how do you deliver the right amount of content? Not too much that your learners are overwhelmed but too little that your learners aren't getting a valuable experience.

How do you find that sweet spot for your learning offer?

These are the questions that my guest Renée Warren has been pondering as she continues to refine her program, Sidelines to Headlines. Through her program, Renée teaches female entrepreneurs how they can effectively be a one-woman PR powerhouse that bolsters their visibility, credibility, and legitimacy in their industry.

But Renée's not the only one asking these questions. Figuring out what works for your learning program can be so difficult. That's why we're unpacking two important principles — small changes and consistency — that make a good learning program into a great learning program.

LIsten in while Renée and I discuss her program, I share some small adjustments and reframes to make her coaching calls even better (go ahead and steal these ideas for your own coaching calls) and we talk consistency in taking action.

About our guest

Renée Warren is an award-winning entrepreneur, inspirational speaker, author, and founder of We Wild Women, a platform that helps entrepreneurs start and scale their own businesses. She’s also the host of the celebrated podcast, Into the Wild.

Renée firmly believes that the best advice comes from someone who has successfully done it before. Her approach to coaching comes from over 22 years of experience as an entrepreneur and unapologetic risk-taker.

When she’s not coaching or podcasting, Renée can be found spending time with her family. She also enjoys working out, reading business books, and refining her drumming skills.

So you've got an idea for a course or training, should you get underway with a do-it-yourself learning product or should you hire a learning designer?

DIY learning products have their promises & their pitfalls. It's a topic I discussed at length in podcast episode #23. In short, DIY learning products often involve waaay more time & effort than you planned &/or DIY learning products just aren't as effective as you hoped.

So — for good reason — you may find yourself hesitant to undertake a DIY learning product. But you may also find yourself hesitant to hire a learning designer to make your course. How do you know if you're ready for this?

In this episode, I outline four steps you need to take before hiring a learning designer. These points should help you know if you're ready to outsource the idea you have for a brand new learning product.

Need advice from a learning strategist? Schedule a free discovery call today with Manja Horner, Founder of Boost Learning Design today to talk about your dream project. The longer you wait, the longer it takes to get that new learning product to market.

Test your own capabilities as a learning designer by taking the Course Creator Quiz

Real talk: we've all seen Pinterest fails or recipe flops and nearly died of laughter. Why? Because DIY projects are often much harder than they look.

The same goes for learning products. Just like it's easy to scroll through Pinterest and be overly confident in your abilities, it's easy to look at a learning product and think 'I can totally do that.'

But the difference between a failed Pinterest tutorial and a flopped learning product is massive. If your DIY Pinterest project fails, you have an entertaining story and photo.

But if your DIY learning product flops, you have a product that doesn't actually help your learners.

I see this as the core problem with most learning products in the market (& on the internet) today. They're all DIY projects without expert advice — and it shows. Let's break this down: what's the issue, why does it matter, and what should you do to avoid it.

Need advice from a learning strategist? Schedule a free discovery call today with Manja Horner, Founder of Boost Learning Design today to talk about your dream project. The longer you wait, the longer it takes to get that new learning product to market.

Test your own capabilities as a learning designer by taking the Course Creator Quiz

Manja continues Season 2 of Your Greatest Work with a peer mastermind with Jennifer Van Barneveld Pe, owner of Team Strong Girls, and President of Strong Fitness Magazine.

Though Team Strong Girls offers multiple programs including the classic one-on-one coaching, and membership platform, they’ve grown to include a newly launched Strong Formula program for fitness coach development. The heart of Team Strong Girls’ success is their loyal & transformative community and coaches.

In this episode, Jennifer and Manja discuss fostering transformative communities, piloting new programs, assessment strategies, scaling your business, & more. Along the way, they highlight three components of fostering community: Community through coaching, questioning, common struggles & shared stories.

Tune in to the conversation between Jennifer & Manja for rich insights if you want to cultivate community and grow your coaching program well beyond your own capacity.

Manja continues Season 2 of Your Greatest Work with a peer mastermind with Alex Street, a coach for speakers, brand messaging, and stories.

Alex and Manja discuss how to build a membership that's engaging beyond Facebook and Zoom, an area of opportunity Alex is looking to explore.

Together, Manja and Alex unpack the two keys to creating an engaging membership that delivers relevant, high-quality content again and again and again.

They discuss the importance of mapping membership journeys and how to implement these journeys into the membership.

To complement the membership journey, Manja and Alex also discuss how to make video calls actually engaging — and why abandoning Zoom might not be such a bad idea!

Listen with your pen and notebook on hand, because you're going to grab absolute GOLD in this episode.

About Alex Street

Alex believes when you tell your story you change the world. As an actor, youth pastor, and public speaker for more than 20 years, he knows firsthand how powerful storytelling is when it comes to personal development, business strategy, and cultivating empathy in our world.

Now, with his Transformation Story Arc, Alex helps entrepreneurs create a clear message that connects with their audience and changes the world.

Alex has coached TEDx Speakers, bestselling authors, and 7-figure coaches to find the WHY rooted in their signature story. He has a Masters in Theological Studies, is a husband of 16 years, and dad to three Gen Z kids in Toronto, Ontario.

fearlessspeakersacademy.com

Manja continues Season 2 of Your Greatest Work with a peer mastermind with Leah Neaderthal, a sales coach for women business owners. Leah and Manja discuss actionable ways to scale your program, an area of opportunity Leah is currently drawn towards.

That's the challenge Leah Neaderthal is facing. Her program — SIGNED — teaches women business owners how to more effectively sell their products and services. The women in Leah's program experience immense growth in their confidence leading the sales process and land higher paying contracts from clients they actually want.

But part of this growth comes from Leah's one-on-one coaching with every student in the cohort.

As is, the program is phenomenal — it's effective, finishable, and gets results for students. Because of this success, Leah wants to reach more women.

Typically in solopreneur circles, we assume that there's a trade-off between high interactivity and high leaner volume. You can have a small program with interactive one-on-ones or you can have a larger fully automated program.

Three Tips to Boost Membership Engagement Over 50%

Manja continues Season 2 of Your Greatest Work with a peer mastermind with Dominic Sicotte of YouTubersINC. Dominic and Manja discuss three actionable ways to boost membership engagement, an area of opportunity Dominic is currently facing.

...

As entrepreneurs, even when there's a lot going well for you and your program, there's always an area bugging you. Something's not going quite as well as you want. For Dominic, that area is membership engagement. His engagement is way higher than the industry average, but he wants it to be even better!

How can you improve your membership engagement? How can you help your members to be completely engaged in their own success?

That's the question we're tackling today! Improving — and sustaining — membership engagement is a challenge for almost every course creator.

For Dominic, his membership community, YouTubersINC, helps entrepreneurs build their business empires on and around YouTube. His program offers the tools, strategies, and insights people need to succeed in front of the camera (the "YouTube" piece) and behind the scenes (the "INC" piece). Dominic wants to double membership engagement — after a conversation with Manja, here's how he's going to get there:

Are you facing a similar challenge of member engagement? How can you implement the strategies described here? Are you already doing any of these? If so, how can that be improved?

I can help you create amazing learning experiences that get results. For more information, book a discovery call. I’ll help you break through your plateau and boost your learning experiences, coaching programs, and course.

Are you a business owner looking for a community? Your Greatest Work Mastermind is having an open house. Apply to be part of this exclusive group.

I’d love to hear from you, connect on LinkedIn or Instagram.

Dominic Sicotte of YouTubersINC has 20 years of video, PR, and business experience. He's a family man and community-driven entrepreneur with a huge heart for young people, entrepreneurs, and mentorship.

Through conversations with global leaders and the credibility of personal industry, Your Greatest Work digs deeper into learning design in useful and applicable ways.

Stay tuned for coming episodes. Let's start the conversation about making your current work into your greatest work.

Apply Here for the next Open House Mastermind 

Contact us for a discovery call to learn more about how we can work together

Apply for a spotlight feature on Season 2 Podcast

Successful Courses Have These Three Things In Common

Manja continues Season 2 of Your Greatest Work with a discussion of course successes and ways you can implement these features of success in your own course.

...

What makes a course or program successful?

Think about a course you've participated in that worked for you. You sat down and started the program and just loved it. You felt like you were making progress and the experience was valuable.

What made this program so good? Can you recreate this?

From Manja's experience, successful courses have three things in common:

1. People start experiencing and trying right away

2. Less teaching and telling and more doing

3. Progress is tracked and shown to students

Structuring your course with these three keys is a much more successful way of encouraging people to make changes. How can you apply this to your course? Where can you get your learners trying and doing?

Listen and find out!

If you're not sure or struggling to implement these concepts, that's what I'm here for! I help all kinds of entrepreneurs with their courses through course audits, feedback, and learning design programs. If you're feeling stuck, check out some of our other content (on the blog, in the podcast, or on our social media channels) or contact me directly!

Together, let's make your program into something absolutely amazing and outstanding!

Through conversations with global leaders and the credibility of personal industry, Your Greatest Work digs deeper into learning design in useful and applicable ways.

Stay tuned for coming episodes. Let's start the conversation about making your current work into your greatest work.

Apply Here for the next Open House Mastermind (October 14 and 26, 2021)

Contact us for a discovery call to learn more about how we can work together

Apply for a spotlight feature on Season 2 Podcast