The Power Of Multiple Courses with Shaa Wasmund
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One of the questions we're often asked her at Content sparks is “How many online courses do I need?”. As the answer is different for each of us, we invited UK-based entrepreneur Shaa Wasmund (MBE) to share the power of multiple courses. In this exclusive interview you will discover:
- Why there's no need for a flagship course when starting out
- The unconventional way to launch
- The Milk Method for Launching
- How much of a course is hands-on at certain price points
- How frequently you should be skinny launching
- What course platforms Shaa uses
- Why Shaa is building a bigger table and what the difference is between equity and equality
- Where you can find Shaa
[00:00:02.960] – Sharyn Sheldon
Hello, everybody, it's Sharyn Shelden here from Content Sparks with Sarah Arrow from Online Visibility Academy who you hopefully know, because she's been on with me a lot and Shaa Wasmund our special-special guest today
Introducing Shaa Wasmund
We only have a limited amount of time with Shaa. So if you have questions, post them in the comments. If we have time, we'll get to them. Otherwise, I am going to just jump in. Shaa, if you don't know her, is best selling author of Do Less, Get More and Stop Talking, Start Doing.
[00:00:41.170] – Sharyn Sheldon
She's also a successful entrepreneur, built a multi-million-pound business from her back garden. And I'm using UK language here even though I'm in the US
[00:00:56.810] – Shaa Wasmund
You can say back yard. I know what you mean.
[00:00:58.060] – Sharyn Sheldon
I'm married to a Brit, so I got the lingo. And now she is inspiring women, and men by the way, around the world to build a business, and live life on your terms.
[00:01:11.350] – Sharyn Sheldon
And she's a course creator, and that's on online courses and multiple online courses. So I'm just going to pass it over to you Shaa. And if you want to give a quick intro and talk about when your first course was and why you developed it, and then things like when or how you decided or how you knew when you needed to do a second course.
[00:01:37.220] – Shaa Wasmund
Absolutely.
[00:01:37.540] – Shaa Wasmund
OK, let's dive straight in. So this isn't my first rodeo.
[00:01:41.740] – Shaa Wasmund
So this is now my fourth multi-million dollar company that I've built. Now, I say that for context because actually I come into this business with a really strong business pedigree. And I want that to be really clear, because I think sometimes out in this Internet world of ours, it looks like we can have overnight successes.
[00:02:02.680] – Shaa Wasmund
We can go from zero to seven figures in three months if you just buy my course. And that is bull crap. It is not true. So I want to set the scene how I've been able to do what I've done. A fair bit of luck, a lot of hustle and grit and determination, but also some well-honed business skills. So let's make no mistake. Do I think that it's entirely possible for everybody to get to the same stage?
[00:02:26.740] – Shaa Wasmund
Yes, but you won't do it overnight. And the second thing that I want to really put out there from the beginning is let's be realistic.
[00:02:34.270] – Shaa Wasmund
I'm on a mission right now to talk about six figures, not seven. And I'm going to tell you why. And then we're going to go straight into the creation and how that impacts that.
[00:02:42.730] – Shaa Wasmund
What I see a lot of is all this talk that we should all be millionaires.
Everybody should be a millionaire.
[00:02:48.110] – Shaa Wasmund
Well, that sounds great, but should we unpack the reality of what that actually means? If you are on, let's say, thirty, forty or fifty thousand or even eighty thousand a year right now, to go from that to a million in twelve months or three months is nigh on impossible. And to get to seven you have to go through six first. So why don't we start to get really practical and realistic. First of all, let's learn how to make six figures in our business and then
Let's learn how to take six figures home and then we can learn how to keep six figures a year.
[00:03:25.990] – Shaa Wasmund
And only when you passed that point should you start focusing on growing to seven. Why? Because I've seen plenty of people get to seven, by the way, myself included. This is a big mistake. I make less money personally than I did when I was making half the amount. So there's no point in having this big vanity metric that we get to tell everybody about if actually we're not taking the money home into our own bank accounts and creating generational wealth for ourselves and our families.
[00:03:57.640] – Shaa Wasmund
I say all that because truthfully, the bedrock of creating, first of all, the six and then the seven figures in my business was one hundred percent courses.
And I want to talk to you through kind of the different spectrum of courses that we offer today.
[00:04:15.430] – Shaa Wasmund
So the first thing is we did get lucky. I'm not going to lie about this. We came into the marketplace at a point where I think that there wasn't as many courses out there as there is today. Never let that be an excuse for any of us. I don't think you can use that one to say, oh, well, Shaa said that there's more courses today. Yeah, there is. So that means that you need to be better than maybe you needed to be four years ago.
[00:04:42.820]
But guess what that means? That I need to be better than I was four years ago, too. So when we started out, we got into the market in a very unusual way.
We didn't launch with the flagship program, we launched through Groupon.
Groupon had just got into the course creation market.
[00:05:01.400] – Shaa Wasmund
Selling courses, and they said, well, through a mutual contact, they said, have you got any courses, around setting up a business?
[00:05:07.700]
And I said, no, but I'll go and create one. So I created a course and I think it took me about five days and I just did it on slides. I just sat here, recorded a course “30 days to start your business”. And Groupon sold it for the discounted it down to like twenty-nine dollars from one hundred ninety-seven dollars. But here's the thing. They sold thousands upon thousands of them.
[00:05:33.490] – Shaa Wasmund
They took 50 percent, we took 50 percent.
[00:05:36.070]
More importantly, we got a customer. The customer was ours to own and then nurture and market too.
[00:05:42.490]
So what I learned very quickly was that if you got somebody coming in on a low price course, you want to nurture them and move them up to what they want and need next.
[00:05:54.490] – Shaa Wasmund
So very quickly, we set about creating a couple of flagship programs.
[00:05:59.500] – Shaa Wasmund
And actually our number one, our best selling program is called Courses Made Simple That Sell and is actually teaching people like your audience how to create an online course that sells, because I saw a lot of people teaching how to create an online course, but they were kind of missing the element, teaching them how to actually sell the course.
[00:06:22.210] – Shaa Wasmund
And we can dive into that in a little bit.
And then we launched another flagship course, which was how to create a number one bestseller, because I've sold over two hundred fifty-thousand books in the UK. I've got a Sunday Times, which is like the equivalent of the New York Times bestseller, and I'm really passionate about writing books. I am published by Penguin, so I don't actually write books for lead generation. I actually really write them as a creative art form and get a message and to make an impact.
[00:06:52.600] – Shaa Wasmund
But I also understand what it takes to actually sell books so that they are impactful to your bottom line and your business. So we created a whole program and a whole course around that.
[00:07:03.070]
Now for me, the reason why you need more than one course and you need them at different price points is that you want to enable your audience and especially people who are new to you to be able to come in at a price point initially. Maybe that is really easy for them to say yes to.
[00:07:24.400] – Shaa Wasmund
And then as you nurture them and you warm them up, you can go deeper.
So maybe start off with something that's more general at a lower cost. And then as you work your way through the good old funnel, you then build a bigger program and maybe is more hands-on. So what we do now is we have smaller, completely self-study programs that people can buy online. I'm hands-off, it's all self-study.
[:07:51.640] – Shaa Wasmund
Then we have our higher-end two thousand dollar programs where it's a combination of six weeks of teaching plus implementation. So our sweet spot is around nine to 12 weeks. That's how we like to do things.
[00:08:06.440]
What we typically do is we run a course for nine weeks where we teach for two weeks, have an implementation week, teach for two weeks, and you repeat that all the way through to the end of the nine weeks. And then we keep the Facebook group open for a further three weeks so that we make sure no one's left behind.
[00:08:25.330]
And that's what we do at the premium end.
But there is a big gap between the forty-seven dollar and the two thousand dollars.
[00:08:34.150] – Shaa Wasmund
And that way what we get to do is we get to nurture people through our funnel in a way that feels right for them. But also it doesn't make me feel icky about selling stuff to people who aren't at the right place or the right time. And what I found is actually what happens is you get a really loyal audience because they appreciate the fact that you haven't just got this one single high ticket offer. And if people don't know you, it's a bit harder for them to just jump on in there with a two thousand dollar price point.
[00:09:06.340] – Shaa Wasmund
So make it easy for people to say yes to that's it.
[00:09:11.460] – Sharyn Sheldon
So how did you plan out all these different courses and decide which topics to do when at different levels?
[00:09:22.890] – Shaa Wasmund
Well, for me, it was based around the things that I knew I was exceptional and I was really passionate about. And I had a lot of experience. So best selling books made a huge amount of sense. And by the time we designed our flagship program ‘courses made simple that sell', we actually sold over twelve thousand courses. So we had done about three and a half million pounds worth of revenue. So probably about four and a half million dollars in revenue just from courses at that point.
[00:09:55.440] – Shaa Wasmund
So we really knew what it took not just to create the course, but to create one that would sell as well. And so so what we really talk about with our students now is that and this might not translate, Sharyn. So I'm going to get you to to to kind of do the translation piece here for me.
[00:10:13.110] – Shaa Wasmund
OK, so everybody's talking about launches and some people love them and some people hate them. I love a lot. I absolutely love a lot. And I particularly love what I call a full-fat launch. If you take milk. Right. This is how I based on I should have trademarked this. Right. So we have a skimmed or skinny launch and then we have a semi-skimmed, I think you'd call a nought percent, two percent and full fat.
[00:10:40.200] – Shaa Wasmund
So we call it a skinny launch, a semi-skimmed launch and a full-fat launch. A skinny launch is when you go in at a lower price point and you're not trying to get your first seven-figure launch. What you're trying to do is get a program out of the gate, or course, out there that's self-study.
[00:10:57.330] – Shaa Wasmund
And you put it out on social media. And if you've got an email that's only a few hundred people on it, that's a skinny launch, right? You don't necessarily have Facebook ads behind it. You just you want to put something out there. And if you get 10, 20, 30 people to sign up at forty seven dollars, that's cool because it's a skinny launch and you just want to get that out there.
By the way, as you grow your business, you should be doing a skinny launch every single month.
[00:11:22.150]
Right. So we're starting to bake that in because what happens is your audience gets used to buying things from you, even at a lower price point.
[00:11:30.360]
Then in the middle comes, I think what most people do, which is the semi-skimmed launch and the semi-skimmed launch, is where you're building up your audience. You might do a Facebook challenge beforehand, build your audience up. You then might do some Facebook ads, might have a bit of budget for that. And then you've got maybe you've got your own Facebook group as well as your challenge group and maybe you've got an email list and maybe you've got a couple of thousand people on it.
[00:11:55.380] – Shaa Wasmund
And so you're doing a combination of all these different activities.
That is what I call a semi-skimmed launch. And if you're doing those kinds of launches, you're really hoping to make upwards of fifty thousand per launch
[00:12:08.370] – Shaa Wasmund
And then we go for my favorite, which is the full-fat launch.
[00:12:12.330]
And that is the kind of thing that a good friend of mine, Stu McLaren, who you might have heard of, runs a program called Tribe.
[00:12:19.560]
And we've been good family friends for many years. And we always partner with Stu. So we go all in and by all in. I mean, we don't just, it's not an affiliate. Yes, we do earn commission from it, but it's a real partnership, and what that means is we create all our own assets, we write all our own copy, even though we've got swipe files and everything else. Stu comes and does a dedicated webinar and workshop with us for our audience.
[00:12:46.070] – Shaa Wasmund
We don't just send them to his sales page… I'm not really a big fan of just drive in traffic to other people's products and programs unless I've been part of that myself or I know people personally.
[00:12:57.150] – Shaa Wasmund
A full-fat launch is where I treat it as if it were my launch.
And we go all out, we take all the banners on my Facebook group and my pages. We run, you know, we spend ten thousand dollars on ads. We have multiple workshops and webinars and we go all in.
[00:13:14.330] – Shaa Wasmund
And I say this because I want people to realize that you can do a skinny launch in the next five days if you wanted to. And you could plan to do a full-fat launch with partners in six months time. There's no one size fits all solution. But what I know for sure is if you have more than one course, you have more than one option.
[00:13:35.300] – Shaa Wasmund
And to me, running your own business, the biggest reason I find for most people who want to run their own business is they want choice and they want freedom.
Freedom and choice are two sides of the same coin.
[00:13:47.780] – Sharyn Sheldon
Yeah, absolutely. So full fat. Now everybody wants a glass of milk. And for Americans full fat, whole milk, same thing. Yeah.
[00:14:04.550] – Shaa Wasmund
I think in American lingo, by the way, I was born in California, so I've just lost the accent. It would be nought percent, two percent and whole milk is that right?
[00:14:14.630] – Sharyn Sheldon
Yeah.
[00:14:15.110]
Zero percent or fat-free fat for me to get there is one percent and there's two percent.
[00:14:23.720] – Sharyn Sheldon
So now you're going to need a new type of launch
[00:14:28.040]
Nought percent. two percent and Whole Foods, whole milk or cream. That's what we're going to do.
[00:14:36.410] – Sarah Arrow
OK, you like me, you like flavored milk like a strawberry milk or banana milk.
[00:14:42.380] – Shaa Wasmund
Too complicated, just get off my street.
[00:14:44.510] – Sharyn Sheldon
It's a lot of different launch types. Now, let's keep it simple.
[00:14:47.390] – Shaa Wasmund
We're going to stick to three because I do think there are three types. This is super easy. Let's just get something out there. There's the middle one, which is what I think most people do for themselves, and that maybe they do it three or four times a year.
[00:14:57.920] – Shaa Wasmund
And then there's the absolutely great big all guns blazing.
Let's go out there and do a multi seven-figure launch.
[00:15:06.570] – Sharyn Sheldon
How often do you do those?
[00:15:08.780] – Shaa Wasmund
So I would like to say we I don't think anyone in the UK yet can say, yet, I've got one planned, has done a sub with a multi six-figure launch many, many, many times over. The truth is, the scale from a multi six-figure to a seven-figure typically takes big partners because it's a numbers game. Right. So Stu McLaren just did an eight million dollar launch. And I don't know how many partners he had.
[00:15:35.630] – Shaa Wasmund
He had a lot. And I know that we were in his top ten in the leaderboard.
[00:15:40.100]
And given that you have people like Russell Brunson and Amy Porterfield and all the big guns who were partners, but I think that where we punch well above our weight is my relationship with Stu.
[00:15:52.670] – Shaa Wasmund
You can see it in the camaraderie and the lives and with my audience. I think you just feel it because I think it's just really obvious that this is a yes, a very, very open this is a commercial partnership. If you guys buy through me, I'm going to get a commission for it. But I'm also going to give you a ton of really cool bonuses, which because of my relationship with him meant I got Stu to do a live training just for my audience.
[00:16:14.540] – Shaa Wasmund
So those things are really valuable.
Right? So I do probably I do a two percent launch three times a year and I do skinny launches another four times a year and then I do the big full-fat launch launches do once a year.
[00:16:31.040] – Sharyn Sheldon
And are you doing some of them where you're relaunching courses as well?
[00:16:38.240] – Shaa Wasmund
Yeah, that's program ‘courses made simple that sell'.
We launch that every year as we do the book course and then we are now starting to partner up to do a December launch as well with partners. So I'm really looking forward to that. And that is planning on being my seven figure launch.
[00:16:57.890] – Sharyn Sheldon
Yeah. Which one is that? What was the title?
[00:17:01.100] – Shaa Wasmund
So this one is a new program and it relates a lot to what I was saying about I've got, as we say in the UK, a bee in my bonnet about people. I just I'm a big believer, especially with everything that's been going on.
[00:17:14.840] – Shaa Wasmund
I want to level the playing field.
I want to build a bigger table for everyone, not just a select few. And I think in order to do that, we have to get back to reality. We need to learn because I believe everybody can do this to build a six-figure business and then we can scale from that. So we've created a program called Six Figure Freedom – Your Path to Financial Empowerment, because ultimately, once you are financially empowered, you get to make better choices and interestingly what I see with most people that we work with is that they have really figured out what some right business model for them.
[00:17:51.340] – Shaa Wasmund
So should I do courses or should I do membership's or should I do coaching programs? Or maybe I want to do all of them all at once. And I want to take it right back, say, OK, let's create a roadmap that's going to get all of you to six figures in a way that's right for you. So not a cookie-cutter.
[00:18:06.500] – Shaa Wasmund
Not everyone has to do everything but say, right, if you want to do courses, this is what it looks like. And we go through a whole series of training on how they can figure out what is the best path for that based on what they really enjoy doing, who their audience is.
[00:18:22.000] – Shaa Wasmund
Right. And also, as you well know, like overtime, you add stuff in, but you've got to have a foundation. What's your foundational piece going to be? for me? My foundational piece was online courses. And then on top of that, I put membership and then on top of that, I put a mastermind. Other people might do it the other way around. Right.
[00:18:42.430] – Shaa Wasmund
But it is finding out what is the right path for you
[00:18:45.100] – Shaa Wasmund
And that for me is really important that we take away all the fluff and the Photoshop and we get down to the real how are we going to do this? Right. What is the right business model for you, Sharyn? What's the right business model for you, Sarah? What's the right business model for me? OK, so that at the end of the program, everyone has a very clear roadmap for themselves of what they need to do to get to those six figures.
[00:19:10.300] – Shaa Wasmund
And I do genuinely believe that with passion, determination and execution, every single person can get to six figures, without a doubt
Because the difference between getting to six and seven, aside from things I've already mentioned, is you need to scale. Right. You can get to six figures by just coaching, but to get to seven, you need to have digital programs and courses and you need to have a team. But as you in the process of scaling, one of the things I'm going to teach you is let's focus on the profit.
[00:19:42.550] – Shaa Wasmund
How much are you taking home? Because before you guys start scaling, like I did, learn from my mistakes. I grew the business multi seven figures and I was taking less money home into my own pocket. What nonsense. Like that is craziness.
[00:19:56.470] – Shaa Wasmund
So let's learn how we how do we grow our businesses incrementally so that as we are growing the top line revenue, we're also keeping an eye on our overheads. And actually we're growing the top line in our own bank account, too,
[00:20:11.710] – Sharyn Sheldon
And keeping an eye on the cash flow.
[00:20:14.410]
And every team member, when you add a team member, they have to actually be creating more value, unless your whole your goal is to also free up more of your time.
[00:20:27.880] – Shaa Wasmund
Yeah, Definitely true, because that's a trade-off. Right. And so that has to be one of the questions that you ask yourself. Now, for me, one of the reasons I love online courses so much is because what you create is passive.
[00:20:40.690] – Shaa Wasmund
It's what I call semi-passive income.
Right. I'm not a massive believer in the whole passive income terminology because I think it can be completely misconstrued.
[00:20:49.960]
And this is a very practical Brit in me, passive income means you have to actively invest time and money to create an asset. And then that asset, whether it's just like a property. Right. Just like if you have an apartment that you rent out that is relatively passive income. But hey, guys, you know that when the washing machine stops working and something else happens is not that passive. You have to get involved. It's just nowhere near as active as having a job, let's say, is semi-passive income.
[00:21:23.380] – Shaa Wasmund
But you have to create that asset. And an online course is an asset. Right? So you invest time and effort and money and you create an asset in an online course.
[00:21:31.930]
And once you've done that, you can repeat it and you keep making money. But that effort that you put in can be once and done.
[00:21:42.010] – Shaa Wasmund
I mean, you will update it, of course, but you don't need to update it every six months. Don't need to update every I probably say update it every two years. And yes, you need to put some more input into your teaching live. If you're going to have, you know, a five hundred dollars or less program, it's entirely possible to make that all self-study so that you are completely hands off. So from a business model perspective, from with my financial how the profit margin, on courses, is so much greater than pretty much anything else in your business is going to be.
[00:22:14.650] – Sharyn Sheldon
Yeah, it's interesting that you talked about doing the low end, right. The very the entry-level stuff like you did with Groupon. Then you've got that midsize like the four ninety-seven which you said could be self-study. Obviously, the two thousand dollar, pound ones are much more involvement on your end
[00:22:37.670] – Sharyn Sheldon
So how do you make that decision of just how much to get involved?
Because a lot of times now the real differential, the real differentiating factor between a successful course is how much you get involved yourself, how much support you're giving.
[00:22:54.380] – Shaa Wasmund
Yeah. So I think it depends on who you are. Right. And how big your audience is at the beginning when you haven't got an audience. Yeah. Maybe you are like the one in a million who's got such epic branding you can put some Facebook that's out there and maybe you've got, I don't know, some just incredible backstory and some incredible experience before you started to do this, which means that when somebody who doesn't know you coming from a cold audience lands on your sales page, they're like, wow, OK, I don't need to know anything else.
[00:23:24.620]
I'm just buying this now.
[00:23:28.100] – Shaa Wasmund
Truthfully.. the rest of us need a bit more work than that.
Right. We need to grow our audiences because we need to build trust with people. And the way you build your trust isn't by making your courses completely self-study. However, at less than one hundred dollar price point, people do not expect you to be involved.
[00:23:44.670]
So I think that there is a mix and you bring people through at forty-seven dollars or ninety-seven dollars and then you nurture them into what the next stage with you is.
[00:23:56.420]
So how do I make this decision for me is I love a launch, I love teaching live, I love events
It's my happy place. Some people hate it.
[00:24:13.940] – Shaa Wasmund
So some people would much rather really perfect their SEO, their Facebook ads, their conversion metrics and have a funnel in place that was just selling more and more. Forty-seven. Ninety-seven two ninety seven and four ninety seven programs because they don't want to teach live, they don't enjoy it or they don't have the time or they just don't want to create the time or whatever their reasons are. So that's, that's a path for them. But it takes a different skill set.
[00:24:45.890]
You've got to get really good at Facebook ads really good at conversions and maybe throw in an evergreen webinar, which is where you sell the course from.
[00:24:55.880] – Shaa Wasmund
For me, I love a launch. I love a live. I'm happy teaching live.
[00:25:02.480]
So I tend to really think to myself, I'll do probably…
[00:25:09.750]
One or two big live teachings.
Yeah, definitely no more than two and the rest of a self-study evergreen under five hundred dollars.
[00:25:19.580] – Sharyn Sheldon
And you still believe in Facebook ads?
[00:25:23.120] – Shaa Wasmund
I do. Yeah, I do. Right now, they've been working fantastically well for me. That doesn't mean you know, it's a dark art.
[00:25:32.390]
And I call it sometimes we throw money at it. We absolutely sweet F-A back. And other times we put money in and we're very skeptical.
[00:25:40.700]
And then all of a sudden wow, that was the last 20 times our investment fantastic, and we fall back in love with Facebook.
[00:25:46.790] – Shaa Wasmund
Again, that I think is part of a mix.
Right. I think it's part of a mix. I think you I don't think you can ever discount it, but I think that nothing beats growing your own email list and your own audience.
[00:6:02.720] – Sharyn Sheldon
Oh, yeah, I love email.
[00:26:04.220]
I actually I want to make sure that we get a couple of questions, and because I know your time our time is already running out. So Sandy asked what sort of courses you're talking about. So I assume you're talking about when we talk about the Evergreen One with self-study.
[00:26:22.040] – Shaa Wasmund
All of my courses are based on videos and they're all based on videos and slides. So I use a Mac, so I record over Keynote and I upload that into we use both Thinkific and Kajabi depends on what we use it for. So yeah.
[00:26:42.800] – Sharyn Sheldon
And have you ever tried using YouTube ads?
[00:26:46.220] – Shaa Wasmund
No I haven't and I really want to. So in September, we're going to try them for one of our evergreen courses because I have a feeling they would be good. Yeah, it's definitely something that I want to do
[00:26:58.400] – Sharyn Sheldon
and then we're going to have to have you back on to share it.
[00:27:00.730] – Shaa Wasmund
Yeah, it's always good to share somebody who has never done it and unpack their journey and see what happened, right?
[00:27:0.930] – Sharyn Sheldon
Yeah, absolutely.
[00:27:10.020]
For brand new, because people come on and they view all the different things that they're already experts and you have no idea what they're talking about.
[00:27:17.810] – Sharyn Sheldon
Yeah, it's very helpful for people. I think we answered this. You've got Thinkific and Kajabi. Yeah.
[00:27:27.410] – Shaa Wasmund
So the reason I don't post them on my own website is that I think that there are such brilliant learning management platforms out there who do nothing but focus on making their platform better every day. And there's nothing that I could do that would do that. And also just the ease of use of Thinkific and Kajabi they're both super, super simple and I mean, I'm a big WordPress fan in terms of my website.
And we run my membership, the six figure club, we run the membership through our website, but we don't want our courses through there.
[00:28:03.780] Sharyn Sheldon
Yeah, I totally agree with that. I would not add another thing onto my WordPress site. There's enough going on and too many problems that can happen. I use Teachable myself, which is like Thinkific,
[00:28:15.950] – Shaa Wasmund
Which I think has just been bought by Hotmart.
[00:28:18.510] – Sharyn Sheldon
Yeah, it's just been bought.
[00:28:19.530] – Sharyn Sheldon
So they're investing more money into things.
Camille asked – one course equals asset, two courses equals passive income?
[00:28:28.160] – Shaa Wasmund
Well, I would say one course equals passive income, but it equals semi-passive income. Right, because you have the course in the first step.
[00:28:36.350]
But I would say one course is passive income and two courses is multiple passive income. Right. So I think that you want to think of it really like you should have… And I think you need at least three, at least three, maybe four courses. I don't think you have to have like twenty. But I think you also need to not just look at the number of courses you have, but look at how do they work with each other?
[00:29:02.840]
Are they completely different? And also how do they work in your funnel?
[00:29:07.040]
Is one of the courses at a much lower price point to help people come through the funnel?
Is one of them completely hands off and self study is one of the higher premium course and hands-on like really think about how does that work for you and your business model.
[00:29:21.320] – Sharyn Sheldon
Yeah, yeah. Makes sense. The questions are coming in fast and furious. Let's see what we have here.
What do you recommend to start off when you have nobody on your email list?
[00:29:34.510] – Shaa Wasmund
All right.
[00:29:34.760]
Hey, Sophie I would recommend. Sophie you tell me what you do, but this is what I would recommend. Start one. The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, and the other best time is right now. So you need to start building an email list and there are tons of things you can do. I'm sure you've got some kind of social media presence you could think about a challenge to do. You create a landing page and…
[00:29:57.200]
People have to sign up to do the challenge through the landing page.
[00:29:59.600] – Shaa Wasmund
You take the email addresses from there and you start to build your email that you could create a checklist and download a video series.
[00:30:07.920]
There are so many cool things that you could do. I call them ethical bribes. Other people call them lead magnets. That's why I call it an ethical bribe because I think it's ethical. But really, I'm bribing you, right?
[00:30:18.140]
I'll explain – Hey Sophie. If I give you this really cool thing that I know you want, can I have your email address in return? So an unethical bribe is when you create a pile of shite and just try to get people's email addresses for no value whatsoever. And I see that happening all day. So don't do that. Not that you would go create something really cool and you're better off in one asset. That's amazing than trying to do twenty-five different things and just build your email list up slowly.
[00:30:47.600] – Shaa Wasmund
And remember that even though your email list might be small, it can be mighty because the smaller the list, the higher the conversions, because the more these people open your emails and therefore the more conversions you're going to get. So. So don't think that you have to have an email list of like ten thousand people before you start making money. You don't you can start with about one hundred. One hundred is a good price to stop and you could get one hundred Sophie in the next two weeks.
[00:31:17.330] – Sharyn Sheldon
Yeah, definitely. And Sophie said she loves it.
[00:31:23.540] – Sharyn Sheldon
I know we're out of time. I want to be aware of your time. Can we do one more question if we can?
[00:31:27.980] – Sharyn Sheldon
OK, so Sammy said, do you include learning activities, homework in your evergreen courses? And do you drip the content, which is really two different things.
[00:31:38.000] – Shaa Wasmund
Great question, Sammy. So, yes, I do include learning activities even on my twenty-nine dollar Groupon products.
[00:31:46.200]
I tell you why.
[00:31:47.270]
Because I want people to go, oh my gosh, if that's what I get for buying a course through Groupon, what would happen if I actually invested in her premium products?
[00:31:59.030] – Shaa Wasmund
So for me, people question me, they said, oh my God, I can't believe that you're going to sell your courses on Groupon. Is that not going to devalue your brand? like hello?
[00:32:10.580] – Shaa Wasmund
I'm getting about twenty thousand dollars a month in passive revenue because I don't have to do anything. And that also means that I'm getting about twenty thousand new people on my email list every month. Oh, and Groupon is roughly I think it's like a six hundred and fifty million dollar company. So I reckon my brands are OK. But thanks for checking in on me.
[00:32:32.360] – Shaa Wasmund
And for me it was like the opposite.
[00:32:34.760] – Shaa Wasmund
I was like, no, because if you create a great brand experience at a low price all you're going to do is make people want your high priced stuff because they're going to think, wow, she cares enough at this price point, how is she going to love me at a more expensive price point. That's how I feel about it. And it might be evergreen. I don't drip the content in my evergreen. I deliver everything in one go.
[00:33:03.410] – Sharyn Sheldon
A lot of people want something right away. They want everything.
Oh, here's an interesting question as well. So Cynthia said, English is not my first language. I'm still getting confident record videos to my courses because of my accent. The question is, what can I do to increase the chance of a written self-study course? No video to get more acceptance. How can I make it engaging in this format?
[00:33:27.320] – Shaa Wasmund
OK, so Cynthia, I think you're going to both love me and hate me for my answer. Right? Are you ready? First thing is, I don't think you should do that.
[00:33:36.170] – Shaa Wasmund
I think that you should create some great slides. You don't have to be video to camera like this. Right. I think it's an added bonus. But if you really hate doing that, just create some really lovely branded slides and you can talk over the slides. But here's the thing, Cynthia, what I think is the most important thing is that you embrace you, because there are plenty of people around this world who have accents and who don't look or sound like us.
[00:34:05.630] – Shaa Wasmund
And one of the things is my biggest passion has been a real driver for me since covid and George Floyd. Everything that's been happening the last few months is to really start to create equity, not just equality, because equality and equity are not quite the same things. And actually having an accent plays a part of that as well.
[00:34:24.890] – Shaa Wasmund
So if anyone is feeling the way they look, the way they sound, where they come from, their gender, their sexuality, whatever is going to hold them back, I think you need to really say, you know, I'm not going to swear, but you're going to have to say to yourself eff that I'm going to do it anyway, because if we are going to change the landscape.
[00:34:46.510] – Shaa Wasmund
We have to be part of changing the landscape, right?
So we need to make sure that we all show up in all our wonderful different ways, that we look at all our wonderful different ways that we say and actually truthfully Cynthia, Yeah, I think it's pretty boring when everybody looks and sounds the same. So I truly believe that I've got things to learn from everyone.
[00:35:06.670] – Shaa Wasmund
And I don't think you should even begin to let your accent play a part in this.
[00:35:13.060] – Shaa Wasmund
The only the only thing I would say is if people actually can't understand you now, that's a different thing altogether, which might mean that you have to start focusing on creating courses in your native tongue for your native audience and don't go automatically say, oh, no, but my country too small.
[00:35:31.600]
Here's the thing. The UK is a tiny, tiny, tiny country, tiny.
[00:35:36.670] – Shaa Wasmund
I'm pretty sure that wherever you come from, your country is bigger than mine and I still manage to do seven figures from my backyard.
[00:35:42.490]
You can do it,
[00:35:46.050] – Sharyn Sheldon
but none of us have accents at all. No, absolutely not.
[00:35:51.160]
And just one thing Pinky has agreed, we all need to encompass this in our business.
[00:35:55.090] – Shaa Wasmund
So I if it's hugely, hugely important to me, it has been for many, many years. And at my I think the last four months have taught me one thing. And I think I'm a creative activist who happens to be very good at business like I have, that I've won awards for business.
[00:36:12.940] – Shaa Wasmund
I have an award from the Queen for business.
[00:36:15.130]
But really what my driving passion is, is to create social mobility for everybody.
[00:36:21.460] – Shaa Wasmund
That is what lights me up and another reason why I love online courses, because actually to be able to create social mobility an online course is one of the easiest, most cost-effective ways of being able to do it.
[00:36:36.910] – Sharyn Sheldon
And so long as you have an Internet connection, which is not always the case and a computer, then you can do it.
[00:36:45.430] – Shaa Wasmund
If you're real hard hustler. You go to a local library, you use their computer and you use their Internet and you do it anyway, like literally if you want it, there is no excuse.
[00:36:56.160] – Sharyn Sheldon
Absolutely.
[00:36:56.800] – Sarah Arrow
Absolutely.
[00:36:58.570] – Sharyn Sheldon
I should wrap up. This has been really, really terrific. I love it. Do you have any last words or Sarah, dare I ask you if you have any questions,
[00:37:11.340] – Sarah Arrow
I would recommend you pop over to your local Groupon
Type Shaa Wasmund and have a look and see Shaa's courses there and then choose one that you like. And I did say this would be pitch-free and it would be pure content the do these things as research. Have a look at Shaa's course. See which one you think you can get the most value from. Go and do it. Look at the experience of going through Groupon and redeeming look at how to become a Groupon partner.
Look at the value in the program and then reverse engineer it and see how you can do this in your business.
[00:38:00.020] – Shaa Wasmund
And I have a really weird name, so I'm super easy to find on social media, so feel free to come and follow me. Go to my website, super simple Shaa.com. You'll find all the details around where I am on Facebook and Instagram and everything else.
[00:38:15.420] – Sharyn Sheldon
Yes. Thank you so much. This was really, really inspirational. And we've got tons of comments with everyone saying, good point.
[00:38:23.670]
And I agree. And thank you so much, Kim and Fran. Great message.
[00:38:36.120] – Shaa Wasmund
You're really, really welcome. And I think that this is it's just a really important message. I think that right now, where we are living in so much uncertainty, we don't know what's happening around the corner. And I think that one of the things that I know for sure is that we're always stronger together. So I think that by reaching out and asking for help, by giving other people your help, we are going to get through this.
[00:39:02.220] – Sharyn Sheldon
All right. Thank you so much.
[00:39:04.230] – Sharyn Sheldon
All inspiring and head over and learn more about Shaa because this was great. I really appreciate you coming on Shaa.
[00:39:10.990]
Pleasure.
[00:39:11.660]
We'll let you go. Take care.
You can find Shaa Wasmund at Shaa.com
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