In today's online course success story in our Bright Sparks case study series, we meet Barbara Jemmott. Barb is the founder of Your Entrepreneurial Spirit Training Academy and a successful business coach. She works with female entrepreneurs and business professionals to build and implement the systems and strategies that grow their audience and income online. And a big part of her business involves online courses!
Over to you Barb…
Living just outside Toronto, Ontario, Canada for most of my adult life, I’m originally a British expat hailing from Robin Hood country in Nottingham, England. Since coming to Canada I remember a particular event that put me on the path to helping people find their way/learn what they need to make their lives and jobs easier: We were living in Alberta when the oil market went bust and we needed to relocate back to Ontario to find work. Well, I needed to update my resume and looked for a service to get this done. The asking price made my mouth fall open (I only needed a couple of really small changes…) so I decided to rent a word processing machine to do it myself.
The shortest rental was a month so by that time I learned all about the app, the machinery, etc and when a couple of people had the same need I took to helping them navigate something that came easily to me.
That lead to a new career direction and the rest is my corporate history. This time period taught me/us to be self-reliant and that became a core value for our family. I really enjoy bringing knowledge in key areas to people and businesses and seeing them blossom is huge for me.
Who is your target audience that you serve?Â
I serve female business owners to communicate with their people wherever they are in the buyer journey so the business can grow their bottom line through communication and service.
How do you serve your audience? What do you do, or what kind of business do you run?Â
I have two areas in my business: Business strategist, specializing in the areas of course creation and design, and online course release, that supports business development for my target market.
What problem or issue were you trying to solve by using courses?
The problem I try to solve when delivering courses is to clear the roadblocks between the business and their customers through practical and results driven learning experiences, using language everyone can understand.
How did that problem affect your business and/or your life?
Lol, having to run all over to find relatable and practical information I could apply to my own business.
What other solutions did you look at or try?
Endless networking and gurus that often left me exhausted, confused and poorer!
What made you choose to buy your course(s) from Content Sparks?
Content Sparks content is well developed, uses instructional design principles so well, and speaks to my own core values around how I support my clients. It’s the best fit I’ve found.
Which course(s) did you buy?
Lol, it would be easier to list what I didn’t buy!
What did you love most about the course(s) you purchased?
Check out Barb's favorite course here on how to Create Your Business Growth Plan >>
How do you customise your courses from Content Sparks?Â
How did you use course(s) in your business?
I use the content in my coaching practice, for webinar offerings, and of course, for course development.
Once I started to seriously use content from Content Sparks, my coaching results really took off (I increased the number of coaching clients 200% over 18months), raising my prices twice in that time. Coaching areas with the most impact for clients’ business are social media/blogging and the customer journey. Since moving into publishing courses, I’m seeing steady growth in the business growth offering I’m focused on and growing. I’m happy to move from group coaching to online courses. I know it’s doable!
How has teaching courses impacted your life?
Well, this is something I’ve been doing for years, so it’s central to what I do and drives my business.
What are your plans next? Where do you see your business going?
I’ll move into course design, course creation and marketing on the one hand. There’s a great need there. Also, my overarching goal for years has been to build a business learning catalogue that makes sense to my clients. Content Sparks and it’s content will help me do that.
What have you learned from working with Content Sparks and our content?
The available support and access to valuable content I can trust is key. I’d like to make sure I model that.
What would you say to someone facing the same challenges that you did?
Great question! I think it might be that thinking one course is going to be your road to riches isn’t realistic and you can do a lot of work for little return if you don’t place it in the proper context.
Why use Content Sparks?
How can people learn more about you? Where should we send them?
You can find me at my website:
Your Entrepreneurial Spirit and my course website Y.E.S Centre Learning
or on social media:
facebook.com/growentrepreneurialspirit
Create Your Business Growth Plan
With Create Your Business Growth Plan, you’ll get everything you need to LEARN, TEACH, and ATTRACT students to your own program, where you'll show them how to identify exactly what they need to do to grow their business to new heights.
I was really inspired by Barb when we interviewed her. Simple things like having a system to transform the content, and how much time is saved when you do this.. Welll, they make all the difference!
The time saving alone was incredible!
Excellent interview…learned a lot on to to maximize Content Sparks!
Thanks, Camille. Barb is definitely an inspiration!