¶ Should You Do an Online Course?
In the last 10 years , our field has gone from an unknown specialty to a household name . This brings unprecedented opportunities , but we need to rise up to meet them and give our patients the care that they deserve . In order to help others get better , we need to be better .
This podcast will help you to become more confident with your patients , more successful in your practice or business and a leader in pelvic health , and we're going to have some fun along the way . Join us as we rise together .
We're Jesse and Nicole Cozine , founders of Pelvic Kennedy Physical Therapy and the creators of the Pelvic PT Puddle , and this is Pelvic PT Rising .
Hey guys , welcome back to another episode of the Pelvic PT Rising podcast with Jesse and Nicole Cozine . Hey , nicole , hello , talking today about whether or not you should do an online course and , nicole , this is something we get asked all the time .
Yes , and we see it all the time in the Facebook groups and I get DMs about this daily . What should I do ? I'm thinking about starting this course and how do I do it , and most of the time we're getting asked about what platforms to use and how do you actually deliver it and all the things .
So we want to walk through the pros and cons of doing something like this . We want to give you the step by step way if you are going to do an online course .
But I think one of the things we're going to try to convince you to do is to really decide is this something you want to do or is it something that just has been made to sound easy , that you think that it's going to be passive income ? That's just what everybody's doing these days . I think there's a lot of bad reasons to do an online course .
Totally , and there are good intentions and you have good skills , but do they translate to an online forum and are you ready to really go into online business ? And I think that most people that are asking the question hey , you think I can do an online course , I'm looking into doing this aren't actually understanding what that .
What they're asking is should I go into an online business ? Because what you really are asking is I'm going to create this thing so that people can pay me money and I'm going to deliver this product online in an area that I have not done this before in a totally separate business .
So for those of you guys who are business owners already , you know how difficult it was to start your own practice . It is just as difficult and I would actually argue we'll talk about this a little later more so to be doing stuff online .
So I think we want to disabuse the idea that , oh , this is really easy or it can just be an add on to what you're already doing . You are creating an entirely separate business . Now whether you do that under a separate LLC or not is a whole other question , but it is , by definition , a whole online business when you're doing this stuff .
So if you're thinking about doing an online course or online business , there are four aspects and we're going to make it easy for you . It's A , b , c and D Audience building trust , converting or selling and delivering . Audience build trust , convert and deliver .
So , just starting with audience , this is one of the first questions that we ask and , to Nicole's point , when people are asked this question , almost everybody jumps to asking questions about delivery what platform should I use ? How should I get my stuff out there ? And in reality , that's the fourth thing you should be thinking about .
You shouldn't even be thinking about that yet until we've talked about some of these other things . So audience . Nicole , one of the first questions you always ask is what's your ?
audience , right , and the audience is not the two people that have said , hey , can you please do an online course ? Or the five DMs that you got that are like , oh , do you have a resource for me ? I really like what you your reels right . That is not your audience . If we're talking about an online audience , we're talking about your Facebook group following .
How many people are in your Facebook group that you have ? How many people follow you on Instagram ? Who are those people ? If you're on Twitter , or even like who or what are they calling it X nowadays ? I don't even know .
You talked to your email list . If you're running paid ads , where are you getting eyeballs onto your stuff ? And so that is the very , very first thing that we're going to be talking about . But I think one of the challenges is never assume that anybody who happens to have an audience is actually making money online .
You can tell very little about how well someone is doing an online business by their audience . Yes , you would rather have a larger audience than not all else being equal , but that does not mean that anybody with a big audience is doing a great job of selling stuff .
I mean , if you think about , in your own life , the people that you follow , who are the most the biggest influencers that you follow ? Sorry , I haven't bought anything from Selma Hayek .
Jesse , for the financial part , I like Ramit Sethi . We've you've heard us talk about him before he has a financial course . I haven't bought it .
So just because somebody has a large audience does not mean that they're doing anything to monetize that audience . And in fact , sometimes the way to get a large audience is to be funny or good looking or flippant or whatever it is . That's great . But that doesn't necessarily translate to this next aspect of building trust , and I'll tell you .
We ran into this ourselves in the first time that we launched a course . We were doing a patient focused IC course on the heels of Nicole's very successful IC book . She was on the ICA board of directors , she was a big name and still is obviously in the IC world , and we had a big following . We had probably 15,000 Instagram followers at that point .
We had an email list . We put this whole thing together . We did exactly what we tell you , guys , not to do right . We decided to build this thing . We put it out there in the world . We were so excited by it . We had bought a new microphone , we'd learned how to video edit , we had put all of this stuff together .
We sold it for $47 a steal of a deal and had nine purchases .
Literally nine , you guys .
And eight of them , I think , were other pelvic PTs who were interested in learning to talk to about with their patients . I think we had like literally one patient who ended up buying it . So , if you think about it that way , what went wrong with that launch for us is that we just had an audience . We had a pretty decent audience .
We just hadn't done any of these other things that we're going to be talking about with you guys . So that's what happens if all you have is an audience . The next aspect here , the B , is building trust . Do your audience have trust in you in that area ? That's a whole separate question of do you have an audience .
First , you have to have the audience , and then do they actually trust you within that area ? And what is that area in which they trust you ? Are you putting out consistent content that's fantastic for people ?
And that , nicole , was the single biggest difference between the first time we launched something online and then , almost two years later , when we finished licking our wounds and launched our second thing online .
I was a little gun shy . I was like , dude , this sucks , why does anybody do this ? But thank goodness that we persisted . We did a little bit more research and really we found some great advice to and we reflected and we're like , aha , we did not build trust with this audience
¶ Building Trust, Converting Sales for Online Courses
. So we have . So everybody that we talked to at that point we told our numbers to , we have a great email list , we have a great Facebook group , we have the name , I have the cloud , I have all of the things , but we haven't started talking about and building trust with those people . We just were like , oh cool , we have an audience .
We're just going to like say this is our offering and people are just going to hit the purchase button and watch that stuff just ring on in . And that did not happen . It's because we hadn't built trust . So the second time we did it guess what I was doing ?
We had already created that pelvic PT huddle , but now I committed to going in and doing huddle ups . Now , don't get me wrong , the huddle ups are not only to sell things . They are because I have a passion for getting my word out and helping everybody with becoming the best pelvic rehab provider that you can possibly be . That was the way I got out .
My message was showing up . I did every single week . I don't even think I missed a week . There were times I was doing a huddle up on vacation every week at the same time , the same place . I had put out what I wanted to talk about earlier in the week . I was making sure that people , I was answering people's questions , I was in all of that stuff .
That is what we were doing . I never missed a week for like a year and a half .
Right . So that was the piece that had been missing . That was building trust . And so that's when Nicole did the pelvic PT essentials course . That was the difference between selling nine and we sold out . I think we had initially captained at 30 people and we sold out in like 20 minutes . What was the difference ? And it's like , oh , it was .
It wasn't fancy marketing , language or anything else .
It was a year and a half of building trust by showing up every single day , teaching , letting people hear your teaching style , nicole , see your face , get their questions answered and then , all of a sudden , when you do have something , people are saying oh wait , I've loved learning from her with all of her free content .
If she's putting out something , that's a paid thing . That must be incredible . Of course , I'm going to trust that that's going to be good .
If you would try to do that at the very beginning , it would have been a laughing stock , even though there were 6,000 public rehab providers in the group Right Doesn't matter how great your sales copy is or how great the idea is or , honestly , how great your product is .
You could provide an incredible product and I fully believe that every single person who's asking us about whether they should do this put out a great product , but if you don't have the trust of your audience , no one is going to buy it . So that's building trust . Now your C is actually converting . How do you actually get people to spend money ?
And this is a real difference between when we get people who are like , oh , everyone says that I should make a course . I had a couple of people tell me that and it's like well , did they hand you $500 when they were doing that , or did they just say , hey , that would be a cool thing for you to do ?
Did they actually pony up and put their money where their mouth is ? If you do this , you'll find people get on a wait list of . Very small percentage of people who get on a wait list actually end up purchasing .
That's normal . That is a normal thing that happens across the US Any true online business person . You will find that they extremely small percentage of people that get on a wait list actually purchase .
If somebody's expressing interest or you put out something , hey , would anybody like to learn about this thing ? And people are like , yeah , and then the next question has to be well , would anybody pay for that thing ? Then the yes are a lot quieter . Because we do . We vote basically with our dollars . It is , it's a responsibility .
When you are putting something out in the world and you're going to take money for that thing , it has to be good , it has to be something you know is going to be important for somebody .
I think this is another area where we struggle with online courses is if we are actually doing this because we're struggling potentially in our own brick and mortar or not making as much as we'd like , or financially all the things . It's actually way harder to sell something that is tangent . It's just floating in the ether .
Some course that's going to do what for somebody , as opposed to being able to get them in the clinic and get your hands on them and actually make a difference in that moment . Sometimes it's easier to think about this in looking at somebody else's business .
¶ Creating an Online Course
If you had a massage therapist who was just fantastic , a line out the door couldn't get in with her and she said , cool , I'm going to go ahead and sell an online massage yourself course . It's only going to be $37 . It's going to contain all of this brilliant information .
It's going to teach you to be the boss of your own health All the things that we say to our patients when we try to sell them online stuff . Do you feel like that person is going to be successful ? Do you feel like that success in person is going to translate To me ? Absolutely not .
I would see that person for a massage in her office for $150 , $200 , no problem . I definitely would not buy a $27 how to massage your own toe course because I don't want to massage my own toe . The whole point is I go to you for the help . Is it actually making sense with what you're doing ? Sometimes we can see that when we look at it .
It sounds silly when we talk about it for a massage therapist , but that's exactly what we're trying to do when we start selling online courses to patients . Hey , I'm having success . I can really help you when I get my hands on you in the clinic in person .
What if I take away all of those things that made me successful and then try to do something over here ? It's no wonder that it's really hard to sell that to patients , especially when they could just if they're not local to you walk into another pelvic health place that's down the corner from them and actually get hands on care .
That's the option that they're weighing when you're trying to sell to patients all over the place .
Right , and one of the most important things about conversion actually comes from your work building trust , because as you're building trust in the previous step , you are learning more about what your audience actually wants and would respond to .
The conversion piece is actually a combination of building your audience and then also building trust within that audience and learning more about what they actually want , so that when you actually are creating an offer and saying this is what I want to give to you all , it's not just this is what I think you need .
This is exactly what they've been telling you over a long period of time , that this is what they want to hear . Sometimes those two things are not the same . That's part of the conversion is being able to give patients and or your audience what they need , wrapped up in what they want .
Yes . So we've talked about audience A , we've talked about building trust B , we've talked about converting C . Now we have delivery . This is something that I think , again , we just get so many questions and misconceptions about when it comes to delivery .
Oh , I'm just going to record this thing and I'm going to put it out there and then , hopefully , things are going to go up , it's like , but you're not thinking about ensuring that you're getting results for the people who are buying it . You're not thinking about the questions that are going to come up . How are you going to deal with those ?
How are you going to provide access to you ? Everyone always wants to have this like evergreen thing that just they put on their website and makes them money overnight . They wake up in the morning and they just start chuckling to themselves that they sold eight courses while they were sleeping . It just doesn't work that way .
Especially at the beginning , you are going to want to very much over deliver . Make sure you're providing an amazing product . When Cole did her first essentials course , she did it with a private Facebook group . You were in there all the time . You were doing one-on-one clinical mentoring calls .
That's what made the essentials course incredible down the road is because you spent so much time over delivering with those first few groups of people that you knew what questions they were going to have . All of a sudden , a draping module ends up in the essentials course because you realize that no one had ever taught anybody draping .
You didn't realize that right at the very beginning . You would get halfway through and be like someone have a basic question about how to drape . In that position , Totally .
And the other big module in the essentials that really developed because of that first beta testing group was the communication section of that right Is that ? That was one of the things where I was like gosh , all of these one-on-one calls that I'm doing were really coming back to how to talk to your patient better and no one teaches that either .
So that actually became a more robust module in the essentials course that still exists today because of that . But that was because , as we were building trust and I was learning more about the audience and then we were delivering something , we were over-delivering and getting more information and then making an even better product on the back end of that .
And what you're doing when you over-deliver is that you are building trust with the people that trusted you , and that's one of the reasons it's always the lowest price when we do the first launch of something .
We want to reward the people who are trusting us , the early adopters , the people who signed up and put their hands in the air and said , yeah , I wanna take a chance on this .
And a lot of those people , nicole , who were in that initial cohort , have been working with us for years in different capacities , are now in our business mentorship program , who are now being coaches for us in our rising coaching program . I mean , that was a huge thing the people that we mentored and really poured into with some of those initial courses .
That's one of the way that you build trust . They've referred people to us over the years because they had such a great experience . That doesn't happen if you would just slap something together , recorded it and put it on . Maybe people still bought it .
I'm sure it would have been a great course and people would have loved it , but you're not building that kind of trust and ongoing loyalty with your early adopters , with your people .
Right . So delivery we get tons of questions about , like Jesse said , we get logistical questions about delivery , but we rarely get questions about how to actually essentially over deliver and make sure that the product that you're selling is really amazing for the audience that you have built .
So we hope that this outline here gives you a better idea of what actually goes into an online course that disabuses you of the idea that this is somehow easy or passive . This is a full-time , own , separate business , like Nicole was talking about before .
So that's your ABCND of how to actually do this , and if you're thinking like , wow , that sounds like a lot of work , it is it is and it's not a one-time thing .
You don't build your audience one time . That is an ongoing process . You don't build trust one time . I'm still building trust with you all on this podcast . We're building trust with our Instagram following and being consistent there . We're building trust in our Facebook group still Like that is an ongoing process overall .
I love how you put that , nicole . It's not a one and done hey , I've got this course , everybody buy it , and then it's finished . So we have just a couple of additional points kind of the miscellaneous things before we wrap up here for you guys . One I would just say is be wary of the quote unquote success stories that you see online .
A lot of those are from people who are . It's not even necessarily a bad thing . You can just be putting a spin on something , but no one is gonna go online except for us . Now you hear us on the podcast saying this , but no one's gonna go online and say , hey , I had this online launch and it totally flopped . Has anybody seen a post like that ?
I would love to see it . I mean , if you see one share it like that . But that kind of honestly just doesn't exist in the online world . And I get it and that's fine . Nobody wants to put that out there and admit it . But what that means is from the outside .
Looking in , we see everybody being incredibly successful and in reality , we have no idea whether that worked or didn't or whether it was a good thing or not a good thing for that person .
And , additionally , we are seeing people who , legitimately , are successful and doing really well with stuff , but that is the vocal minority , not the majority of people , who are doing this and kind of struggling to build an audience , to build trust , to actually sell , of course .
So be wary of those success stories and be wary of people who are trying to sell you those success stories , because those are the people who are actually doing really well with online courses , or people who are making online courses to teach you to do an online course . It's like , well , it's a little bit circular at that point .
Another point that we'd have , nikolas , it's objectively easier . We always believe in business . This is a hallmark of what we teach . It's easier to double down on what's something that's already working than to go and do a new thing .
So if you have a brick and mortar and it's going okay , not great , or you're not completely full or you haven't expanded to a new space , our advice would almost always be to double down on what has shown to work for you until you run into the fact that you can't grow anymore , for whatever reason .
Either you don't want to , you don't want to hire , you don't want to move out of your space , you've maximized your current business , cool , then go and start a new business . But this is not . You know , getting an online space is not a money grab . It's not going to just be easy passive income falling from the sky .
And going back to what Jesse was saying about , if you think about what's happening at your brick and mortar practice people , or even if you don't own a practice and you want to start something online , people are coming in to see you and they're getting to be with you for an hour . They're getting tangible results .
You're literally putting your hands on them and helping them to achieve their goals .
And Jesse said before , you take all that stuff away and all of your skillset has to translate to online , where that's not happening and that's difficult , that's hard , that's a different way of teaching , that's a different way of treating , that's a different way of doing everything , including it's different in terms of business .
And so if you are super successful in your brick and mortar practice , then you need to double down on that and , like Jesse said , the first thing we would ask you is that are you maximizing that ? Are you up to your ears ? Are you have a six month wait list ? You have all that kind of stuff .
Then we would even argue that we would want you to expand your in-person practice , because that's what's going to bury you more fruit than trying to abandon that . Essentially , split your time now with that and your focus and your energy and try to do a whole other thing .
Absolutely . You know . The other thing that falls into that , nicole . I just thought about that . We talk about when people ask us these in our one on one calls a lot , and the coaching side is do you enjoy the kind of things that would go into doing online business ?
What do you enjoy most let's say you're running a brick and mortar practice or you're an employee , someplace even , and treating there . What do you enjoy most about the day to day ? Is it creating Instagram content ? Is it sending out emails ? Is it creating back end systems in a program like Kajabi or Teachable or YouTube ? Does that stuff light you up ?
And if the answer is no , you're going to not enjoy the online business side . We've got a lot of people who are like I just really love patient care , so I'm going to go into online business , and we're like whoa , what , hold on . That's literally the exact opposite .
Now , if you got somebody like me who wants to just be holed up in my den typing away all day , fantastic , it might be for you , right .
But if you hate the analytics , if you hate website design , if you hate all of that stuff , if it's not fun or enjoyable , then you're also putting yourself in a position where not only are you doing something that's going to be more difficult than patient care , you're not going to enjoy it enough to have the longevity to stick with it and be really good at it
.
And that goes back up to the letter B up there with building trust . You have to like building trust
¶ Considerations Before Creating an Online Course
, so you have to . I loved going into the huddle and figuring out what I was going to say and seeing everybody like hop on , and how many people were there and people saying me I want to hear more about this . And voting for what I'm going to talk about . Like that is exciting , I love it .
I love going on Instagram and figuring out what people want to hear and making reels and that kind of stuff . That's super fun for me .
So that this podcast ? Are we freaking ?
love this podcast .
And if we did , there's no way we would be closing in on 400 episodes .
Right , absolutely . So again , make sure that you are paying attention to what is working well right now , and is this the right time to essentially split your attention and go into something that is different than what you're currently doing ?
Yes . So a couple other , just little quick hitters . By doing this , by going online , you do put yourself in competition with literally everybody in the world . So you're going to have to have your niche , your unique selling proposition .
You're going to have to have that stuff all dialed in , because now you're in competition with anybody anywhere who's doing the same thing that you are . People aren't coming to you because you're the closest person who can help them . They have choices of everybody who's out there .
So when we're talking about all that stuff , it becomes , you know , even more of a challenge and Nicole mentioned a little bit more about this . But the opportunity cost what are you giving up by spending all of that time and effort and mental energy into building an online course ?
If your practice is going fantastic and you know it's running on autopilot , then great . You're not really giving up that much . On the business side , you might be giving up stuff on family time or lifestyle , but a lot of times we see people looking in two different directions and now their online stuff isn't going as well as they were hoping .
But it's also really hurting their in person because they don't have the time and you know , if you're thinking about where do you have an impact ?
Would you rather do a local workshop for 20 people who get to see you interact with you , maybe come in to your in person , or create this online thing for an unknown number of people who you're not going to get to see and interact with , and and how many of those workshops or community events or practitioner meetings or other types of things could you be doing
?
what's the opportunity cost of what you're doing with this , something I don't think we often consider the next thing to consider in in these little additional points here is that your timeline in that building your audience and building trust with that audience , you need to be looking at 18 months minimum to truly be able to have a successful conversion of that
audience when you actually have a product . And that's not just us saying that . One of my really good friends , shantay Cofield , who you might know is the movement maestro , and her counterpart , jill fit , or Jill Coleman , who's also Jill fit on Instagram that is what they have said as well . We've seen that . They've seen that that's in the industry .
If you truly are following this , this path where you have an audience , you build trust with that audience and then you convert that , those first two points take about 18 months it's going to be a long-term play .
This is not get some extra cash before Christmas y'all .
Yeah , this is thinking that your online course is going to be launching December 15th for those holiday sales that you are going to probably flop . Yes , just to be quite honest , just like we did right and you know what .
If you do , that's fine . Pick yourself up , dust yourself off , try it again . All of us have had something like that , but we want to just give you guys the real inside story of what this is going to be like .
I feel like this is two of our business episodes that , cole , that have been I wouldn't say negative , but a little bit negative on , you know , going into a second location . Is that something you want to knee jerk and make a choice into ? Do you want to knee jerk into doing this online course ? I think my answer .
But you don't want to knee jerk into anything in business .
But one of the things that we do , I think , really , really well in the accelerator program , in our coaching , is helping people focus on the things that are really going to move the needle and really matter to them , and a lot of times these other things are just distractions that get in the way of building the thing that we really do want .
I mean , if this is something you want to do , if you're passionate about it , if you have this passion for building something online , absolutely do it like we've done it . So I don't want to be hypocritical and say , you know , no one should do it .
But we also went into it with eyes wide open , at least after our early initial complete failures full on full on , full stop . I mean we literally paid more for the microphone and the hosting platform than we made in sales and we spent like month you guys month on this thing . The other part was Nicole wasn't as good of a speaker then as she was now .
Oh , my gosh , that was the other thing . It took me so long to record it because I was re-recording I'm not joking probably at least 10 times per module oh , the outtakes man , the f-bombs that were said you think I have f-bombs now with my outtakes oh whoa , that was like . And I was seriously like , really fresh .
I had to walk away for a few days because I was like I don't know what's going on , like why , as soon as I hit the record button , I cannot talk . I literally could not speak . I like froze by myself in my computer , in front of my computer , and then Jesse would come and be like , are you done ? And I'd be like no , I haven't even started .
Oh my gosh , it's the worst . And so all that is to say to summarize what Jesse was saying is that we're not telling you to not do it , we're telling you to do it if you're passionate about it .
And we would ask you to go through those steps the a , b , c , d and really make sure that the a and the b part are dialed in before you are trying to get people to buy absolutely so .
Let me hit you with a couple practical takeaways at the end of this as well . Hope this has been really helpful for you guys .
But we really , really , really believe in doubling down on what works first , what works for you for your life , what you've already shown to be effective if you're already a current business owner , and then , if you do want to do something online , assess the viability first .
Ask people if they're interested in it , put it out there and see if anybody gets on a wait list for it . You don't have to . If you say that you might do something , you don't have to create that thing . It's not a promise to do it .
If you put an online poll on your instagram and say , hey , does anybody want to have this diastasis exercise course that I'm thinking about making , and literally nobody says it , it doesn't mean that you have to make that course . Even if you put out a wait list and put people on it , it doesn't mean that you have to do that . So assess the viability first .
That's one of
¶ Considering the Opportunity Cost
the first things .
If , if this is something that you're really thinking about and passionate about , just see , see where you're at and don't get all the way down to the point where you know , nicole and I did with our first thing where you've done all of the delivery , you've done part d and you missed part a , b and c , and that's what we'd really wish for you guys .
So if you're doing this , we want you to go into it with eyes wide open . If this gives you pause , frankly good , then be thinking about it and say you know , is this really where I want to be , or is this an opportunity cost ? Is this distracting me from what I really want to be doing ?
So I hope this has been helpful for any of you who have that itch , who have been seeing that or hearing about that . That's where everybody should be going .
This gives you a little bit of the inside scoop on exactly what that should be and then I hope now that if , for those of you listening to the podcast who end up DMing me , I hope I'm getting more questions on the a and the b , maybe even a little bit of the c and not so much of that d all right guys , as always , would love to hear your feedback if
this has been helpful .
If you have other thoughts , please reach out . Let us know . As always , we want to keep this conversation going and let's continue to rise .