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338: Why I Spent $10k To Create A Free Online Course

As clinicians and entrepreneurs, we are always looking to use our skills more creatively and expand our offerings and services. We recently released the STC Online Course Creator Kit, which is a 7-day free email course. In today’s session, I want to share the framework and strategies we used and explain why we are giving them away for free. Curious? Join us!

Our Featured Guest

Daniel Bustamante

Daniel Bustamante is an entrepreneur who helps content creators build high-converting sales funnels. He is the Head of Ops and Automation at Ship 30 for 30, a cohort-based writing course that teaches the fundamentals of online writing. Daniel and I met on Twitter, and he is the one I turned to for this online course project. We explore how an email course differs from a traditional email opt-in, how to visualize the purpose of the course and give you a behind-the-scenes look at the creative process. We also highlight the tech used in the course creation, along with why I take the unpopular approach that it’s better to give our best stuff away for free. 

You’ll Learn:

  • How an email course functions as a hybrid of an opt-in and a course to deliver a lead magnet
  • How an email course uses an automated drip sequence
  • When it makes sense to create an email course
  • How an email course helps you build an email list and generate leads
  • How Daniel uses a “boats and islands” metaphor to illustrate the power of lead magnets (What are your “boats and islands”?)
  • How Daniel began the process to build STC’s free email course as a precursor to the STC Mastermind
  • How to avoid a common trap for course creators and realize that what you are selling are outcomes
  • Highlights of the tech tools we used in building our email course: Kartra, Survey Monkey, and Calendly
  • The #1 mistake people make in creating free email courses
  • How the email course is a logical, sequential roadmap
  • What the numbers are showing about the success of the STC course: almost 300 subscribers, 52% opt-in rate, and 67% open rate

Resources:

Daniel on Twitter

Daniel's Free Email Course (5 Proven Marketing Frameworks To Help You Sell More Digital Products On Autopilot)

We'd LOVE To Partner With You!


 Want to launch your online course?

Please check out our free 7-Day Course Creator Starter Kit For Therapists: https://sellingthecouch.com/coursekit

 Looking to launch a successful podcast?

Please check out our free "Using Podcasting To Grow Your Business" workshop for therapists:

https://sellingthecouch.com/podcastingworkshop

Mentioned in this episode:

Thrizer

Thrizer is a payment platform designed for private pay therapists, built to help clients automatically tap into their out-of-network benefits and save on therapy upfront. Thrizer can help instantly verify clients’ out-of-network benefits ahead of a client’s first session, so they get the transparency upfront on their out-of-pocket costs. When therapists charge their clients via Thrizer, an out-of-network claim is automatically submitted for them, so no need to deal with superbills. Best part? After meeting their deductible, clients have the option to just pay their co-insurance portion for sessions while Thrizer floats the rest of the therapist’s fee and waits for reimbursement on the client’s behalf, helping clients afford therapy upfront. Please visit sellingthecouch.com/thrizerand enter the promo code “STC” and receive waived fees for your first $2500 in charges.

We'd LOVE To Partner With You!

➡️ Want to launch your online course? Please check out our free 7-Day Course Creator Starter Kit For Therapists: https://sellingthecouch.com/coursekit  ➡️ Looking to launch a successful podcast? Please check out our free "Using Podcasting To Grow Your Business" workshop for therapists: https://sellingthecouch.com/podcastingworkshop

About the Podcast

Show artwork for Selling the Couch
Selling the Couch
Impact + Income Beyond The Therapy Room

About your host

Profile picture for Melvin Varghese, PhD

Melvin Varghese, PhD

Hi. I'm Melvin. I'm a psychologist, girl dad, and online creator living in Philadelphia, PA.

In 2014, I began to think about how to use our therapist skillset in different realms besides clinical work (e.g., podcasting, consulting, online course creation, writing, etc).

This allows us to serve others on larger scales while diversifying our income beyond 1 to 1 work.

I make podcasts and videos about business, tech, productivity, and lessons I'm learning from becoming the CEO of a lean, mean 5 person 100% remote team (we're not really mean..it just rhymed =P).