Valerie Fischer: How To Grow Your Online Course Business Organically
Welcome to the Course Creator Series, where you can learn directly from experienced course creators on how you can monetize and grow your online business.
I’m your host, Dr. Destini Copp and I help entrepreneurs reduce their reliance on 1:1 services or agency type work and scale their digital product revenue. Today, I had the pleasure of interviewing Valerie Fischer.
Valerie Fischer is a Neuro Linguistic Programming practitioner. She has over 20 years of experience in advertising and marketing, and co-founded an e-commerce site for locally made products. She was a Chief Marketing Officer in a real estate company in 2019 but, along with millions of Filipinos last year, she was let go during the pandemic. And, as her story goes, this unfortunate incident actually led her to her purpose.
She now helps new online business owners and entrepreneurs grow their revenue with Brain Science Selling.
Please tell us about your business.
My training and coaching business is only a year and a month old. It started last year in April when I lost my dream job as a Chief Marketing Officer of a real estate company. My boss and I were not seeing eye to eye on how to pivot the sales and marketing team to digital. It was a mutual decision for me to leave.
I eventually realized that incident led me to find my purpose. The same strategies that I was offering my former company were meant for a bigger audience. More people needed this unique concept to help them with their businesses.
I help entrepreneurs with Brain Science Selling. It is a framework I use combining my Neuro-Linguistic programming background, my 20 years in corporate advertising and marketing, and the digital marketing skills I learned from my first business venture, an e-commerce site.
I believe that everything starts with the entrepreneur’s mindset, how he or she frames the business, the challenges, and the brand itself. When this is clear, it is much easier to create strategies and tactics to understand how their customers’ brain works and sell to that. This is the exact process that helped me start and build my business.
Start at the beginning of your journey. What were things like for you? How did you feel? What was keeping you up at night?
I was fortunate to start this training business smoothly. The pandemic created the need for companies to transform digitally. Thankfully, I had the agility to quickly step into a trainer, mentor, and consultant role. Leads and sales kept on coming even without sales calls, Facebook ads, or email marketing. It was purely a personal brand in the beginning. My courses and modules came from what clients ask me to do based on the concepts that they want to learn. That was how I was able to tap them multiple times.
The challenges came when I decided that I was going to try and penetrate the international market.
There were, and they're still are, naysayers. Fellow coaches and course creators called Brain Science Selling BS. Many of the webinars, challenges, summit I attended wanted me to focus on my niche.
Very few understood the concept of having a ready framework and using that vehicle to serve the market. Many nights I suffered from Imposter Syndrome. I guess this is something that will remain a challenge as long as I stay in this industry. But I soldier on, and I win. At least on most days.
What are the top three mistakes you made in your entrepreneurial journey, and what would you do differently?
The one mistake I made in my first venture was not paying myself. I believe that as entrepreneurs, we should also be paying ourselves for the work that we do. I learned that the hard way in my first business.
Right now, I am learning that it pays to invest in tech. You have to understand the technology behind the different platforms, so you are not at the mercy of website or funnel developers or social media specialists. You have to know how to create your own content and publish your own ads.
I am also learning the value of positioning yourself as an authority. That is why I am grateful for platforms like this that give course creators, trainers, speakers, and coaches a venue to tell their stories and share their expertise.
Please tell us about your marketing? What has worked for you? What hasn’t worked for you?
I will share two main strategies that work for me:
Value and Follow Through- Most trainers you engage with only give the training and do not check whether the attendees understood the concept or even used the strategies and tactics. I walked the extra mile. I asked the participants for their Facebook pages to follow them and let them know what I think about their strategies and content even after the training. That feedback provided value and a real connection with me and the participants. Some of my attendees moved jobs or were promoted, and I became their top-of-mind choice to train their own teams.
Start with One to Many- Work with teams. I targeted organizations, associations, hobby groups, team leaders, sales directors, entrepreneurs with a small sales team, chambers, brokerage groups, networking groups. There are two reasons why you should do this: One, you get an instant big following. Your referrals will go through the roof. Two, you get them on your Zoom account, they register, and you build your email list. This elevates your single Zoom training to a relationship you can take to social media or emails.
What is your top traffic source, and why do you think it’s working for you?
The top traffic source for me is word-of-mouth and then Facebook. A personal brand has a lot to do with it. To sell live training and online courses requires credibility, especially in a relatively young coaching and training market such as the Philippines. I credit my 20 years of corporate advertising and marketing experience for building my brand way before I needed to utilize it.
What is your entrepreneurial life like today? What pain points have vanished? How have things improved?
There are two things that I struggle with often as an entrepreneur: procrastination and imposter syndrome. The first makes it hard for me to do my recordings. I may look and sound confident in talks and live trainings, but I wouldn't say I like seeing myself on camera. So recording myself becomes the last priority even though I know this is where I get sales from.
On the other hand, imposter syndrome is harder to manage as I do not know when it will happen. Sometimes it comes in the form of a comment, a photo you saw, or even a mistake I make in my training. I make sure to remember and have visual reminders of my accomplishments and feedback from people I have helped in the past.
Honestly, I don’t want the pain points to vanish. Having challenges and struggles along the way means I am stretching myself and getting out of my comfort zone. It means that I am learning.
What are your best tips for growing your online course business organically?
Connect with your content. I know it can be tedious to come up with content all the time. So here are three types of posts you have to remember to make or do.
Connection posts
How To’s
Offer Posts
This follows the Know-Like and Trust customer journey. First, you have to connect with your customers by sharing your values, stories about your business, motivational quotes that apply to you, empowering messages, etc. This is a way to introduce your brand to your potential client.
Your How To’s are your Educational / Information posts. This helps create that fondness for you because your clients know that you are helping them.
An example for real estate entrepreneurs: post definitions of real estate jargon, acronyms, and what they mean. This content type also establishes you as an authority. So that, by the time you post your offer, i.e., new project, a new promo, new incentive, chances are they will already trust you.
I have a follower on Facebook; he’s not a paying client yet but watches my Change Makers show regularly. He takes notes and implements them. A few weeks ago, he sent me a message that he sealed a deal for three condominium units and that he wants me to become his consultant for his business. Win-win. I help him with my free training, and he gets me as his consultant.
What’s your favorite launch strategy? Webinars, Challenges, Video Series, etc. Why do you like this approach?
I like Challenges. I did a Pivot Challenge early this year, and with only $50, I was able to sign-up over 300 participants who then bought my first three online courses. My audience likes seeing me live and ask questions. This way, they get a teaser experience of how it is like working with me for live training or small group coaching.
If you had $1,000 to spend on marketing next month, what would you spend it on?
Assuming this is just for advertising, I would like to publish ads using the Reach and Video Views objectives. I booked 190 paid trainings in my first year of business, spending only $300+ in ads. Reach and Video Views were my friends.
Reach allowed me to create more awareness for my new brand. But the strategy behind this goes back to Understanding your Market. I boosted testimonials, photos of trainings, and text feedback from participants and showed them to a similar market. On the other hand, video views helped build my authority when I consistently created short video tips as teasers for my live courses.
If this were my budget for total marketing, I would add a Virtual Assistant and a monthly funnel budget to the mix.
Let’s talk numbers: anything you’re willing to share here. You can talk about numbers from a recent launch, monthly revenue numbers, expenses, etc.
I was able to book 190 live trainings spending only $300+ in Facebook ads because of the Brain Science Selling strategies I mentioned. Given the amount of time and money I initially invested, this business is a real winner. I can’t wait to scale and develop other products and other services.
What do you see as the next steps for your online course business?
I want to take my online course business to the international market. I have started creating all-English courses and have sent them over to other international course creators who have their own platforms. This way, I leverage their existing market without paying to build my own platform.
My local courses will then stay on my existing website.
I will continue being on other people’s stages and guest in podcasts, blogs, challenges, summits, and online shows for visibility and to build authority.
What is your favorite quote or business book?
It’s not classified as a Business Book, but the book Start with Why by Simon Sinek changed my life. I had a great job, I was accomplished even at a young age, but I felt something was missing. That book found me at a great time. It took me two years to come up with my Why: To inspire courage to create change. Coming up with that was worth the wait.
What are the top three tools you use in your online course business that you can’t live without and why?
I can’t live without Calendly. I believe a scheduler like this is a coach’s best friend.
Canva is another tool I love. It has saved me from spending on a graphic designer and video editor for my business.
Lastly, Zoom. Aside from it being my preferred tool for meetings, this is also where I record my online courses. My monthly payment is so worth it.
What advice do you have for other online course creators/entrepreneurs out there?
A considerable part of business building, especially the sales and marketing part, is a clear and deep understanding of your target market. Your branding, communication, strategies, even the types of products you wish to sell will all follow once you have this.
What are your customer pain points? What excites them? What keeps them up at night? What breaks their heart about the world? How do they see their future selves? Once these are addressed, selling comes naturally. They will come to you and ask you to help them. Your clients, customers, buyers will flock to you, and you will not run out of leads and sales.
How can people find you to learn more?
I am most active on Linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/in/valeriepfischer/ or through my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/valeriepfischer.