You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Safe to say the pandemic Tim made us kind of think differently about learning online. Some good we know, though it was very very tough on kids who were stuck at home, and it wasn't easy for those kids to do school and not be Actually in some.
Friends who I have said they're still seeing the effects of it. I bet they are kids. Yeah, it's really it's really troubling. But it also opened up a world of thinking differently, especially for adults and how they're learning, and also how people are teaching how to bake.
Bread, how to make cocktails, all stuff you're still doing. Yeah, paint, no, yeah, totally. I'm back in the office. But online learning it was the fix, it felt like for so many during the pandemic. And keeping with that, our next guest is helping others create and really launch their own online courses. So with us is Danielle Leslie, founder of Course from Scratch, joining us on zoom in Los Angeles. Danielle, nice to have you here on Bloomberg Business Week. So tell us a
little bit about Course from Scratch. How you started it, when you started it, and what's going on the type of activity you're seeing.
Yeah, absolutely, I mean so exactly what you all said. We saw this shift in trust of learning online. I got into it over ten years ago, so at the very beginning of it, I would say, when it was still new, and I worked at You to Me, which had you know, tens of thousands of online courses and
people were learning from all kinds of experts. And after doing that for a while, I work out on my own, and so about seven years ago I launched course from scratch and we've now helped over ten thousand people, and as you mentioned, we're seeing people create online courses on everything. I think the big takeaway for people here is to
know that your life experiences can help someone else. So we have someone who was a single mom, you know, who learned to co parent her son successfully and she created a framework out of it and has now helped hundreds of other single moms.
Co parent their kids.
And another person you know who's a really good friend of mine, Tara Reid, developed apps without code.
So you know, a lot of people are coming out of the job.
Market and asking, how can I start my own business, how can I develop my own app?
And so she's now helped thousands of people do that.
So yeah, it's been a huge wave, and it's been so amazing to see all of us kind of contribute our gifts to the world.
How would you say you differentiate between simply somebody teaching someone something on YouTube? Like what's been amazing for me is you know, if the dishwasher breaks or if there's like, you know, an error code on the washing machine, I can just type that into YouTube and some plumber or appliance fixer will actually show me how to do it, and I'll save like four or five hundred bucks for
some professional coming and fixing it. How do you differentiate between you know, what anyone can do in terms of a video versus like quality control that you'd find on your platform.
Such a great question.
I mean, I love a good YouTube video to solve an immediate pain point. I would say the biggest differentiation between a problem that a YouTube video can solve versus an online course that we teach inside of course, from scratch.
You'll see the best courses are not.
About teaching you how to do something, but helping you transform into being something new. So it's a question of who do you want to transform into being. So as an example, there are lots of YouTube videos on how to play piano, right, you can take a piano one on one course, but there is a program that has an actual curriculum that takes you from point A where you are so beginner piano player who lacks confidence, who lost their sense of play and improvisation as an adult, grew up.
Playing piano with their brothers and sisters.
Point A two point b, which is an improvisation master someone who's able to play piano, what will teach their kids as part of a legacy and bond with them and take that same sense of play to the office in the boardroom and have confidence to improvise on the spot because they've been practicing improvisation with their piano program. So big thing is the curriculum of framework in transforming you from one identity into a higher identity.
So tell me what the business is it? On one hand helping others create their own course and on the other hand, is it benefiting from all those people who are creating courses in kind of like a library, if you will, of where people want to go learn.
Yeah, So my business model is the first piece, so a program of helping people follow the program, and it's designed as a sixty day program that takes you from how do you even select a course topic that can be a premium course topic, how do you create the curriculum?
And then how do you launch online?
Even if you have no personal brand, no following on any social media, how do you launch and actually get sales? So yeah, that's the core business. And then there are advanced programs for people who have now helped people scale to seven figures and even eight figures, and so we have an advanced program that helps you then scale that using ads and webinars and more advanced strategies.
So that's the first piece of it.
The second piece you mentioned, which is a marketplace for other courses. I'm a partner in a platform called member Up, and member up is a course hosting, community and membership platform, and so on that platform you are able to see other courses and other personal brands that you can connect with.
I'm just on your website right now, Danielle. It's pretty amazing. You have some numbers in here, and I think this is referring to you, but you started out with your own online course making eighteen thousand dollars right in twenty sixteen up to in twenty twenty nine point one million dollars.
Yeah, and that's if you think about what year was that, right? What happened?
Yeah, it was the pandemic, of course. But yeah, I mean I see something like this and I think to myself, Okay, that's amazing and good for you, congratulations, but you know, results not typical? Yeah, fair to say, Yeah, No.
You're right, You're right. It was quite a quantum leap.
Yes, it was amazing. I mean from twenty nineteen to twenty twenty five million dollars edition in additional money.
Yeah.
We'll talk to us then about the average individual who takes your course and what they end up with in terms of a business. Because correct, if I'm wrong, I'm just looking at the webside too, it's about twenty five hundred dollars for the course, correct, Yes, So then what are the results on the other side?
Absolutely so too for the first piece, you know, what are the kind of the typical results. It's really interesting because this program is designed to help you create and launch your online course, and what we found is that there are three big benefits that people report getting out of course. From scratch, I thought money was going to be the number one. I thought they were going to be like financial independence, you know, I was able to build my brands.
Number one was self acceptance.
So going through the program, they learned the power of their story, they learned their uniqueness, and the second thing was money, and the third was community.
And I share that because.
Surprisingly a lot of people get into the program and they realize, oh wow, this is just one way I can build my business online. And because of all the resources that I'm grateful to be a part of online, you'll find that people say, Okay, now I know my story and I know how to articulate it, and I know how to create a framework. I actually want to write a book. I actually want to start my own
show online. So I would say that's the number one reason that we don't have one hundred percent of people who go through the program watching their course, it's because they can actually see a new possibility for themselves. For those who do launch, I think on average they launch in sixty days and they make between fifteen to twenty thousand for that first launch. And a big part of that is because we recommend that you price your program around two to three thousand dollars and that you are
focusing on walking before you run. So for that first launch, don't try to do the fifty K one hundred K launch. I want you to just get five to ten people enrolled into that first program. So that's typically what you'll see.
Any statistics on how many of those businesses that started are still around.
Oh not at all. No, I wouldn't be able to share that with you.
What I do know is, as I shared with you, I mean, we've got dozens with now crossed the seven figure mark. We have over a thousand who have written in with their results, and those have done at least five figures from their launches, but we have not done the.
Best job of following up with them and seeing where are you now? You know, where has your course scaled? Now? All right?
Got it? Well, I'm good to check in with you. Danielle Leslie she's founder of course from Scratch joining us on Zoom from Los Angeles. But yeah, a lot of people certainly online and it's interesting to see how it all. But I do feel like all my learning, you know, as we think about it, is going through a little bit of a reckoning too.
It is what would you teach if you could design course? Putting you on the spot.
Oh my god, I don't even know what I would What would you say?
You would teach sailing?
Oh I could teach sailing.
Yeah I could do that.
But could you do that from a computer. That's like the type of thing you've got to be on a boat.
Yeah, but you could do.
People that look at the YouTube channels. My husband are kind of obsessed with these people who sail the world. You and I haven't talked about this.
Oh my god, is this your new thing?
Yeah, it's like been watching all of these people who have.
Seven figure studio on your boat.
No, you don't do that. You just use cameras, you use.
Exactly.
It's well, we'll have to talk about this, all right. You're listening and watching Bloomberg Business Week.