Okay, I don't know about you, but I love a good behind the scenes story, like, it is just something that lights me up and I get so excited about it. And I feel like it is partially due to the fact that I don't live like a super, like, exciting, dramatic life. So I feel like whenever I can get into like, the celebrity gossip, I see all that stuff. And I'm like, Ooh, it's so dramatic. It's because nothing like that ever really happens in my life. But I will say, I'm not a fan of like the housewives type shows or any of those. I don't know. Are we on the same page here? I feel like I'm going on a weird, a weird tangent but I promise I am making a point here. I love all of the things behind the scenes. I think that that is why I'm in love with the Office ladies, if you didn't know this about me That is my favorite podcast. I love the office ladies podcast because I'm such a fan of the office. And this podcast is all about Jenna Fisher and Angela Kinsey, giving us the behind the scenes of what was happening the whole time they were recording and man, they've had the best nuggets of wisdom and really cool tidbits that you just would not know. Like. They've had writers on the show. They've had their prop masters. They've had camera people, they've had just so many like big time actors. They've had John Krasinski Rainn Wilson like Okay, so this is just turning into me and my obsession with the office. But I share all that to say, today, I am sharing with you some behind the scenes details of my digital course whenever I first started, that you won't hear anywhere else, because I've never shared the stories that I'm going to share here today. And if you've ever heard that saying where you don't Don't share from like a fresh wound, right? You want to tell people whenever you have a scar? Does that make sense? Right? Like you don't want to share a lot of stories like when you're right in the thick of it. So like, let's say you launch something and it totally flopped. You don't necessarily want to tell people that that happened the way that it did when it happens. But now that it's been some time later, and I have had successes, I feel it's time. I feel it is finally time for me to share the top 10 mistakes that I did. When I first created my digital course back in November 2018. It's not when I created it, it's when I launched it for the first time. And there's gonna be some cringe worthy moments. So buckle up, because we're gonna get right to it. Welcome To the Proffitt Podcast where we teach entrepreneurs how to start launch and market their podcast, I'm your host, Krystal Proffitt, and I'm so excited that you're here. Thanks for hanging out with me today. Because if you've been trying to figure out the world of podcasting, think of this show as the time saving shortcut you've been looking for. So let's get right to it, shall we? Okay, so if you have been keeping up with things in real time, then you know, the entire month of August, we are talking about podcast monetization, and what that looks like and how you can actually use your podcast content to segue into a digital product like a digital course. So that's really what we've been concentrating on all of this month. And if you're listening to this way later in the future, then go back and listen to the episodes that we previously talked about because They're awesome. So a lot of stories like not to toot my own horn, right. But there's a lot of things that I talked about in this month's episode that I don't typically share in other places, because creating courses isn't my thing. It's something that is part of my business. And I have experience in it. And all my gosh, I cannot wait to share with you the lessons learned that I'm going to share with you here today.
But I don't typically talk about this. This isn't my expertise. It's just something that I wanted to bring up to show you what is possible that I have been able to do with my podcast content. And if you haven't listened to the other episodes, I had only been podcasting for about four months before I created my very first digital course, which we're going to talk about today. But before we get there, all of the mistakes that I'm going to tell you about could have been avoided had I been a little bit more prepared. So today's episode I really wanted to highlight Amy Porterfield new resource, she has the ultimate course creation starter kit. And this is a PDF guide that you can go and download right now it's at KrystalProffitt.com/StarterGuide. And in this guide, she's going to help you walk through three key decisions you have to make to get your digital course up and running. The first one is deciding on your your course topic. The next one is figuring out what you want to name your course. And the third one is deciding what are you going to stop doing once your digital course is up and running and it's successful. So again, go grab Amy Porterfield ultimate course creation Starter Guide, our starter kit which is a guide all these words, it's at KrystalProffitt.com/starterkit. So go grab that there is also going to be a link in the show notes for this episode today. But I wanted to make sure that you knew about this because all the mistakes that I'm going to share with you probably not all of them, I would say at least 99% of them could have been avoided. Had I had Amy's direction. And I didn't. So I had started following. Amy Porterfield probably around this time like I knew who she was, but I wasn't like entrenched in her world. I don't think I was listening to her podcast if I was I had just like, kind of listen to her once or twice. Like her name was not somebody that I regularly thought about because I was just getting started. I didn't know who the pros were and who the experts were, other than one specific blogger I had been following for a long time. And I had taken her digital course I believe I signed up for it in August of 2008. It was a little overwhelming, I didn't really know what I was doing. And I will say that the best thing that I learned from taking that course about blogging was how to set up a website. But in hindsight, knowing Now, like I didn't know all this stuff, then blogging has a very different perspective than a podcaster or someone who's wanting to create an online course business. So I'm saying that to justify some of the mistakes that happened, but we'll get there, we'll get there. So today I'm going to share with you 10 ways that I totally messed up when I first started my digital course. And like I said, there are 10 so we are going to get going, I'm going to share all the stats with you that I'm sharing with you today. I can't even say that right. All the stats I'm sharing with you today can be found in the show notes of this episode. So if you're just one Want to listen to the stories awesome, but if you really want to go back and say oh my gosh Krystal really like you screwed up that much. Yes, I will show you because I want you to learn from my lessons. Okay. So KrystalProffitt.com/Episode180 is where you're gonna find all of the messy details. Okay, so now that we've gotten all of that out of the way, let's dive right in, because we got a lot to cover.
So Mistake number one, that's what we'll call these. We'll call these mistakes. Because the first thing that I did with my course is I priced it way too low. Way too low. Can you guess like I want you to guess Obviously, I'm not going to hear what you are saying. But I want you to say out loud, what do you guess was the price of my course. Did you guess $38 because that is how much it was. And I Gotta say I went to school for marketing. And I thought I was playing some kind of like mind games with my audience, which was very few and far between. I didn't have a big audience, we're gonna talk about that in a little bit. But I was like, Okay, I'm gonna put on this Canva graphic, that it's $98. And then I'm going to put a slash through it, and I'm going to say it's actually $38. So it's $60 off the original price, because I'll just be honest, I didn't know what I was doing. And I thought, well, $38 anybody would be happy to pay that. But then I realized people did not see it as valuable, because it was just $38 and they're like, why would I take a course? That's $38 whenever I could take another one from someone who is actually established, I wasn't even established as a Anything I was just like, I'm just gonna throw this out there. We're gonna see what happens. And I'm gonna give you the stats and second about what kind of sales I made, how many students and all the things but it was $38 so I priced it way too low. If you're creating a digital course I would love to see you at least start your pricing at or around $100 I really do because once people have the skin in the game, to invest their hard earned money, they are going to show up in a better way because I did have some sales but only a few actually one person. I'm going to say it was my mom finished it. She actually paid me Okay, I didn't give it to like she wants to make that clear. Anytime we tell the story. She's like you tell people I paid for it. And you didn't just give it to me. I was like, yeah, you paid $38 for it. So anyway, anyway, we're moving on. Moving on those Mistake number one, I priced it way too low.
Mistake number two is I didn't really know who I wanted to serve. I really didn't. And we've talked about this before, in the four reasons why you won't make any money podcasting we talked about, if you're not talking to the right audience, then you don't really have the ability to make money. Well, I didn't know who I was trying to talk to. I had like this broad, general audience, right. I didn't have like an ideal listener persona. I don't have any of that. I was just like, people that want to podcast. And I kind of threw that out there. And I definitely had people interested that wanted to podcasts, but they were not the type of people. Like I think of my ideal listener today. Like my ideal listener today is mostly like everybody listening to this podcast right now is gonna fall under one or two categories. You either have an online business, right and you're trying to add a podcast into the mix as your marketing strategy. or two, you are wanting to create an online business and you know that a podcast is the type of content that you want to create. So either way and both of those scenarios, you are moving towards having an online business or having a business of some sorts. Well, I got a bunch of people that were interested in creating a true crime or a hobby podcast. And I didn't know how to talk to those people because they just wanted to know how to get more downloads, more downloads, more downloads, more downloads, like honestly, I feel like they didn't even really care about their audience at all. It was just about the numbers like how can I trick the algorithm into giving me all these downloads and then just make it look like like they're the people that would hire, sell like a bot? to go and listen to doubt like Their podcast over and over and over again, to get more downloads just to make it appear. And I am not about that. I am not about that that sleazy slimy practices and I don't stand for it whatsoever. So I wasn't attracting the right audience because I didn't know who I wanted to serve. So that was Mistake number two.
Mistake number three has oh my gosh, I tried way too many things at once. I tried so many things at one time, and I wasn't taking it step by step in like a systematic strategy approach. But to be honest, this is just I know this about myself. I'm more of a baptism by fire kind of girl. Like just throw me in coach. I'll figure it out. It's how I've always been. I've always been this way. I feel like I was like this with parenting like, just like authentic. Hear it out, I felt like I was this way with cooking and fitness and other things that I've taken on in my life. I'm just like, I will figure it out. So with my course, when I launched it, I was also trying to grow my social media and establish an email list. We're going to talk about my email list. And second, because if you're just getting started, you're absolutely gonna relate to the size of my email list. And you might even laugh because it's is really small. So I tried that I tried. I'm trying to think of all the other things I tried webinars. Yeah, no, shouldn't do that. I was still trying to figure out how to create sales pages and write, copy and talk to people in a way that didn't sound like it was just reading a textbook. There were just way too many things that I was trying at one time. So to piggyback off of this mistake is I don't want you to try so many things all at once. Like if you are just now starting your podcast, you don't need to create a digital course right away. You don't I told you, I was podcasting for about four months before I ever created and launched my course. So, I mean, I'm not saying you got to wait years in to podcast and then create something. But I would say one thing at a time, like establish your podcast, establish yourself as the expert in what you're doing, start growing your email list, maybe get a following on social media, and then lunch to an audience that knows who you are, what you're all about, and why you can add value to their life. me. I just kind of threw a bunch of stuff together and said, I'm gonna throw this out there. It's gonna be so successful. And it wasn't so okay, we're gonna get to that in a second. So that was number three. I tried way too many things at once.
Number four, I felt bad selling. I was so just not confident in what I was saying in my emails, I felt like I was unsure like, you should buy from me I guess if you have the money and you want to do this, and there's you know, you don't want to go learn from these other people. I didn't actually say that. But this is what I was thinking in my head. And I just was not confident. I wasn't confident in my skills. As a teacher as a leader. And I just do I didn't show up the way that I show up today because I am confident in my skills today. I feel very proud of all the things that I've accomplished with my own podcast personally, but also with just how far I've come from this person who didn't know how to write emails and I didn't even know where to start with this sales page or show up on live camera. Like all the things I have learned so much, but I just felt bad in the beginning. And the reason why is because, again, going back to number three is our number two, actually, I didn't know who I was speaking to. So you definitely get a confidence boost once you figure out who you're talking to, and how you can add value to them. So don't feel bad about your marketing. You will fall in love with your marketing, once you know how you could help people because you have identified what their problem is, how you can help them solve it and who it is that you're actually trying to help. Those just become, oh my gosh, marketing. I'm in love with marketing now. Like I have no problems, telling people that my course is right for them or that my membership is right for them or they should go listen to my podcast. It could help them or go check out my YouTube channel. Because if they're a visual person, and they want to see all the examples, and that's where they need to go, I have no problem saying that now because I have confidence. And maybe confidence just comes over time. But at the beginning, I just felt bad. I did and I don't even know. And maybe that was like a psychological thing for me. As I, you know, I went to school for marketing, I took all these professional selling classes, and I did not learn how to speak directly to another individual. I learned skills and strategies that had to do selling from business to business. And so seeking out people through email or social media that wasn't taught, so I didn't know how to do that. And it was just like, thrown in the deep waters. There's great white sharks swimming all around me and I thought I was drowning because I didn't know what I was doing. But thankfully, I was thrown a life raft in here. Here we are today A few years later and I got it figured out.
Okay, so we're moving on number five, Mistake number five. Let's just go back through one through four again. So number one as I priced too low. Number two, I didn't know who I really wanted to serve. Number three, I tried way too many things at once. Number four, I felt bad for selling Oh, it's just so bad like and you, you really stumble over your words when you don't have that confidence in what you're doing and knowing who it's for. So make sure you take time to really understand how your product, your service, your podcast, whatever it is, make sure you take the time to understand the value that you can add to someone else. Okay, so Mistake number five. I did not 100% 100% believe in myself, because I was the only person who had gotten results with my service. stem. Now, this could absolutely be true for you if you are just listening to this and you're like, Oh, that's me. I started my podcast because I'm an expert in fill in the blank. But I'm the only person that has gotten results doing it. The way that I do. An example would be if you're like a health and fitness coach, like you just got certified and you're like, Okay, I want to build my business up, but I'm the only one who's gotten results. Maybe you lost 50 or 100 pounds doing what you know how to do, but you haven't gotten those results for someone else. That's where I was. I was trying to sell a product, but I didn't have testimonials. I didn't have anything other than Oh, yeah, I have a podcast. You can go check it out on Apple. That was it. No, that was literally the only proof that I had an attorney I know that I talked about my podcast. Oh, this is so bad. I'm thinking back to my very first original sales page. I don't even know that I really mentioned all the things about my podcast journey. I was probably just like, Hey, guys, here's this course. Buy it. Good luck. It's about it. I'm not even joking. I think it was that bad. I think it was really that bad. Oh my gosh. So I want you to feel confident in yourself when you go to sell something because you've either gotten yourself results which if you have, please, please, Lord, figure out how to talk about your own results better than I did because I just I just flopped on this 100% or get testimonials of people that you have worked with. And here's like a great like example tip life hack, whatever you want to call it, but work for us. People for free for a while. This has y'all heard me talk about Jackie, I actually have another podcaster that I helped Caitlin. She was kind of my first client. I say that with air quotes because she didn't actually pay me. We just went back and forth and I was helping her and I was like, Hey, I would love to have a testimonial for your party like helping you with your podcast. You know, even though we weren't like we didn't have this established client coach relationship. She was like, Yeah, for sure you helped me, you know, get started get going. So she gave me gave me this fantastic testimonial, which was awesome. So shout out to Caitlin from the happy home birth podcast. She is just doing incredible things with her show. But I hadn't gotten to that point yet. This was actually pre launching our pre like even talking to Caitlin I had already launched the course. And so that story came Later. So if you don't 100% have confidence in yourself. And you were the only person that's gotten results, you got to figure out a way to talk about your own story and take the time to figure that out and do this better than I did learn from my mistakes, please. Okay.
Number six. I was overwhelmed with way too many mentors in my head. So if you do this, then you are just like me. We are so much alike. If you are trying to solve a problem, and you get on Google, and you start searching and you find five different blog articles that you think look pretty credible, right? They have like the featured in Forbes logo on their website or they have something that you think okay, they probably know what they're doing. There was like seven of those people in my head. And I was so extremely confused. I was so confused because I would look at one. And I said, Oh, yeah, all right, sweet. They said this, I'm absolutely on the right track. But then I would go to this other tab, right? If you're anything like me, and you have like, 50 tabs in your Chrome browser open at once. Yeah, I know. It's probably not a good thing. But I do it. It's just, it's how I operate. And I would switch in between tabs, and I would look at another expert. And they would say, Oh, no, you absolutely do it this way. And it was the total opposite of what the other expert had just said, the one I had just gotten on board with, I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna do it this way. And then this other person is saying, No, no, you got to do it this way. But then I listen to this other podcast and they said to do it that way. And then this YouTube video had another fantastic idea. So there's these like, like contrasting shiny objects just flying all around me. And I was so overwhelmed and at the end of the day, I felt like I was just throwing darts blindfolded on which idea I was going to run with which option I was going to choose. And maybe at the end of the day that works for some people. Obviously, it worked for me just to get started, but it's not a great strategy. I do not recommend doing that moving forward with your business or with your podcast, or however you want to apply these lessons today. But oh my gosh, try to stick with and I've talked about mentors in the previous episodes. I'm gonna link to it in here in the show notes. So KrystalProffitt.com/episode180 I actually talked about my mentor Amy Porterfield. And I do have a few mentors. And the difference between a mentor and someone that you admire, which is what these other people were, they had built successful businesses, but he didn't necessarily want a business just like there's one of them was a very successful blogger who had grown a huge huge following. And she had just so much revenue in her business from her blog. But she had a model that I just didn't agree with. So at the end of the day, all of her success didn't translate because I didn't want her business. She had a physical product she was selling, I have no desire to have inventory of a physical product ever in my life. If I can get away with it, she had a totally different models. So I encourage you go check out the episode about mentors, and only have one mentor in your head 1-2, 2-3 at the very maximum, but honestly, I truly believe that one to two mentors that are pretty aligned with what they believe in and how they teach and the values that they hold can help you just not feel so overwhelmed and just give you some relief. That was really what I was looking Four was just a step by step, do a Dooby Doo C and then do D, and then run with it and try new things and then come back and do it again. But in this order and this way, that was the kind of mentor I was looking for. And that's not what I had coming at me. I had 1000 ideas. None of them made sense to me. And I felt very frantic, doing the whole thing. I just remember feeling very anxious. The whole time I was doing it because I didn't know what I was doing because everything was so all over the place. Okay, so moving on. That was Mistake number six.
Mistake number seven is I used way too many templates instead of just trusting my own voice. So like I said, I had a blogging course that I had taken. And within this course, they had included lots of email, swipe, copy, which if you don't know what swipe copy is That means it's just a template. These are email templates that say, okay, just copy all of this. And we're gonna highlight where it says name or product or story, you know, and they put like these brackets in there, of how you should write things out. And I remember, I was doing that I literally copied and pasted everything that they had. And then I did like a Ctrl find to replace the word name, or to, you know, put my product, my course name in there, the price, those kinds of things. And that was really about it. I didn't take the time to write out everything in my own voice, because at that moment, I hadn't found my voice. I really hadn't like when it comes to creating emails and writing to my ideal listener. And I think that that was the problem is I didn't have an ideal listener. I had created a very general audience. And I didn't know how to speak to that general audience because it was just so vastly different. Like from each person that opened the email, I imagine every single one of them, reading it in a different tone in their head, right or not understanding. If I made a joke. I remember thinking, Oh my gosh, well, if I say something about friends, everybody will think that's so funny. But then I got nervous because I was like, wait, but what if they don't like friends? Or what if they don't know about that office? Or what if this or what if that and that's really only in hindsight, can I realize this, but that's how I knew I was not concentrating on a very specific person. I was trying to reach so many people. So if you are just starting out on your journey, whether it's writing your show notes, writing emails to your audience, I highly recommend you doing all this in your own voice instead of using swipe, copy and tempo. It just makes it so much more personal, when you can just write the way that you speak. Okay? And we're not I look, I feel like we need to go deeper into that. But I'm going to put a pin in here for now, because we're going to talk about that in a future episode. I think that that's very important to learn how to write, especially the more that you speak on your podcast, because you can do this with transcripts and Hall otherwise, okay, I'm just like going on a tangent now, but we are just going to put a pin in that we're going to come back to it...
Because we're going to move on to mistake number eight. And this is one that I still tend to do today. And it's like I say it through gritted teeth, because if you know me, you know, but I have tried to bootstrap literally everything. Literally everything in my business. I've tried to bootstrap it everything's like held together with a piece of used scotch tape. Okay, it's not even a fresh piece of tape. is used scotch tape that I got from an old Christmas wrapping paper or something I don't even know guys like it's so ridiculous. But whenever I was bootstrapping everything in the beginning, everything took 10 times longer. 10 times longer. And I don't do this as much anymore. I have invested in some very specific tools. I'm actually going to be sharing those with you. Pretty soon. Like if I were to start all over again, what tools would I invest in? So that's a podcast episode coming up in the next few weeks, but it took me 10 times longer because I did not want to pay for tools that can help me I kept saying, I don't need to pay $35 for this, I can just do it on my own. I don't need to pay to have this software make this happen. I can do it on my own. I don't need to pay for this or for that. I can do it on my own. And I don't know if it's just the stubborn gene of me wanting to have control over it, or if it was just me being the cheapest person alive, which I can absolutely be both of those people. But at the end of the day, looking back, I realized I could have gotten so much further faster had I invested in the right tools. So I want you to keep that in mind. It's not about just throwing money at tools because even still today, I don't use a lot of tools that the experts tell me to. I use the ones that will move the needle the most the fastest in my business. And that's it. I don't go above and beyond just because I can I'm making money and I can throw money at things No, no, no, no, no, you will never see me doing that. I'm way too deep with my money to do that. But I will say I wish I would have taken more time to invest in myself and in my business from The very beginning. Okay, so we're moving right along number nine.
Mistake number nine. I tried a Facebook ad when I had no idea what I was doing. Okay, and maybe there are some of you out there saying, Oh my gosh, I'm so glad she said that because I've done this too. Yeah, the whole boost this post, probably could work for people that know what they're doing. I had 00 idea. I didn't even know that there were different levels. I like it's like, I went into ads manager. And I was like a bull in a china shop and I started clicking things around. And of course, the only thing that I knew was how much money I wanted to spend. I was like, Okay, I'm only gonna spend I think it was like 50 bucks, or maybe it was even $100 but that money was gone so fast with no results. And please don't waste money on Facebook ads. Unless you know what You're doing okay, unless you can hire someone to do this or take a training, do some sort of like, in depth research on how ads actually work. I don't want you touching Facebook ads with a 10 foot pole, please do not because that can turn into so much money gone. And I would much rather see you do this in a really smart way. I would rather see you invest in anything else in your business before you invest in paid advertising. Because this is going back to again, we keep circling back to if you don't know who you're talking to. Facebook ads won't do anything for you. Okay, so this was one of the biggest mistakes that I made that now I can see where I could have done way better way, way better, but you don't know what you don't know. But that was one of my mistakes. So that was number nine.
Number 10 was I immediately wanted to move on Something else, because I didn't make thousands of dollars on my first launch. So I want you to hear me and this is the reason why I wanted to end on this specific one is because I did not make a ton of money with my first course launch. And I was ready to shut it away in a closet, pretend like it never happened and move on to something else. But I don't want you to do that. And that's actually not what I did, either. It's what I wanted to do. Oh, trust me, it is absolutely what I wanted to do. I want to just say, Okay, I'm just going to figure something else out. Like this was a terrible idea. It was I shouldn't have gone this route. But luckily, so I launched this in November 2018, who luckily in January, February of 2019, is when I really really got introduced to Amy Porterfield. And I got it enrolled with her doing B School, which is Marie Forleo is program. And I got so many questions answered so much clarity. But it wasn't until I had heard Amy talk about she created one course and launched it over and over and over again. That I got it sunk in my head. Oh, okay, this was just version 1.0. Because before then I had just thought, oh, people launch a course one time they make thousands of dollars, and then that's it. Maybe they'll do it again, you know, somewhere in the future, but I hadn't even thought about making it better. I just thought this is as good as it's gonna be. And I didn't love everything that I did, because I had no idea what I was doing. First of all, I really didn't. I was piecing a lot of information together. And it just didn't turn out the way that I had hoped it would. And so that's really My story like and what I want to just really hit home today is you can do amazing things with digital course. But you have to have the right framework and the right plan in place. And if anything like listening to this today, you can hear I'm thinking of like key emotional words. I was overwhelmed. I was anxious. I was not confident. And I was just struggling all around because I wanted everything to work so bad. It's like I was trying to wish it to happen. Did you ever do that as a kid, like where you cross your fingers, you cross your toes, and you just really you're like, if I wish hard enough, my digital course will be successful. Friend, that is not what happens. Okay? You got to put the hard work in. You got to know what you're doing and you have to know what to focus on. So I told you, I would give you some numbers.
I'm going to run down real fast and tell you the top 10 mistakes again. And then I'm going to give you a little bit of background and then we're going to wrap it up. So number one is a price my course way too low. Remember, it was only $38. I want to see you price your course a lot higher than that. So people have a perceived value in investing in the course. Number two, I didn't really know who I was talking to and who I wanted to serve. Number three, I tried way too many things at once. Please don't do this. If you're just getting started with your podcast. Focus on that for a little bit. Focus on that for a quarter right for three months focus on your podcast, and then let's explore a digital course. Number four, I felt bad selling. I just did not have the confidence. I want you to feel 100% confident in what you're selling. Number five, I didn't believe in myself, because I was the only one who had gotten results with my system. So focus on crafting your story and how Got your results, figure out exactly what you did to make it happen or even better, focus on getting someone else results so they can give you an incredible testimony. Number six, I was overwhelmed with way too many mentors in my head, have one to two mentors that are your go to people, right? Like they are the ones inside your head, say do this, do that. Don't do this. Don't do that. But only one to two people three at the max. Number seven, I use templates instead of creating and trusting my own voice. Try to steer clear of things that are just swipe, copy and templates. Try to really find your own voice in your writing and in your podcast. Number eight, I tried to bootstrap everything you guys I'm all about being cheap, being frugal, whatever you want to call it. But at the end of the day, if you have the money to invest in tools and services to take you further Faster, do it. It's absolutely worth it to do it. Number nine, don't try Facebook ads unless you know what you're doing. I had no idea what I was doing and I lost some money. So I want to see you investing only when you know what you're doing or you can hire someone who knows what they're doing. And number 10 I tried to move on too quickly. Because I feel like what I had done was a failure. I had expected to make thousands of dollars and have people banging down the door to purchase my digital products and it didn't happen. And I was ashamed. And I wanted to run away and hide and never look at this thing that I had created again, because it was something that just needed to be swept under the rug and forgot about right. Those are all harsh words, but it's really how I felt.
So here are the hard facts like here are the numbers because I'm sure by this point, you're like, well, Krystal, How bad was this, we really just want to know. So I initially sold my course for $38. I had six students sign up, six. One of them was my mother. So five students, plus my mom bought this course, I ended up making a gross amount of $228. But I didn't bring home that much. It was like around $180 that I actually took home. So there's that. And how many people were on my email list, I had less than 100. So I had imported around 80 people onto my list. So even when I go back, and I've scrubbed my list since then, and most of those people are gone. So I'm actually looking at my ConvertKit right now. And it says I had 42 people on my list whenever it launched. So I could have had more at the That time, but they've since been scrubbed and they're gone 42 people. Okay, so now imagine what everything would look like, had I known what I know today about creating something of value about talking to the right audience about using my own voice about how to feel confident in my own skin and what I'm selling and getting other people results like oh my gosh, everything would be so dramatically different. Had I known then what I know now, which is why I am just I've already said this and I'm gonna say it again. I really want you to go grab the ultimate course Creation Kit, the starter kit that Amy Porterfield created because she is one of my mentors, and everything that I've learned about course creation, and selling online doing marketing has really come from her like she is that voice in my head, whenever it's like okay, should I send this Email this way, should I write this post? Should I keep sending more emails? Should I do more podcast episodes? How should I do this? How should I word this? She is in my head. And she is telling me, these are the steps that you should take or this is the next right move. This is the thing that you should try. Because I listen to her very intentionally because she's gotten success. She has achieved a level of success in her business that I hope to one day, so I'm going to encourage you go grab that PDF download. It is so helpful. I wish I would have had it before I made all of these mistakes that we talked about here today.
But again, you can go to KrystalProffitt.com/Episode180 to grab the link to the starter kit or go check out all the things that we talked about. I'm going to list all of these out very plainly, so you do not make these mistakes as well. But that's all I have for you. Today, if this is your first time tuning in, wow, what a way to get introduced to all the things that have happened in my online business since 2018, which is really when I got up and running. And I love sharing these behind the scenes. I'd love to hear what you think about it. So I encourage you to subscribe to this show and leave us a rating and a review. Wherever you're listening to this podcast, take a screenshot and share it on social media. I would love for you to tag me and let's start a conversation about what it would look like for you to add a digital course to your business. But that's all I have for you today. So remember, keep it up. We all have to start somewhere.