Creating a Course To Add Passive Income Into Your Business with Lindsay Bowden | 83
Have you ever been interested in passive income or creating a course online? You’re not alone. The course creation field is blowing up and for great reasons.
Recently, I interviewed Lindsay Bowden - self-proclaimed mompreneur who taught for 8 years. Now, she owns a multiple six figure online business and was able to retire her husband. How? You guessed it - online courses.
Lindsay is a former high school math teacher turned full-time mompreneur. She built a multiple 6-figure online course business during naptime by helping math teachers create resources for their classrooms. Her online course, Math Resource Academy, allowed her to quit her teaching job, allowed her husband to quit his corporate job, and helped her to build a life she loves with her family. Now, she's on a mission to help other families gain the freedom they crave in their life by teaching them how to create and sell an online course.
I highly recommend you take a listen to the entire interview with Lindsay. But if you’re crunched for time or prefer the written version here’s an overview below of what we spoke about.
What is an online course and what is passive income?
An online course is a digital course someone buys, typically containing pre-recorded videos on a particular topic. This can be anything from how to play the guitar, to how to use math centers in your classroom.
Passive income is income that comes without direct action. What most people misunderstand is that passive income means you don't have to work for it. Oh, you will! But what makes it passive is that most of the work is done at the beginning, and the income you generate continues with maintenance work.
How do I create an online course?
Lindsay is an expert when it comes to online courses, and she shared lots of ideas for creating an online course.
#1 Find the Problem - You can make an online course about pretty much anything. No matter what industry or niche you are in, if you can solve a problem for someone, you can sell a course. Ask yourself, what problem does my audience have and how can I fix it? For example, selling novel study units to teachers who don’t have time to create them.
#2 Invest Your Time and Money Upfront - As I said, passive income doesn’t mean you won’t do work! In fact, creating an online course requires lots of market research, work, and time. While it’s relatively low-risk and inexpensive to start a course, you may still need to invest in a hosting platform. Lindsay’s advice: put in the hard work at the beginning. Don’t half-do anything. Later, you can fine-tune and maintain with minimal effort.
#3 Pick Your Offer: There are lots of online course types out there, from webinars to workshops. There is nothing wrong with starting with a small offer (in fact, it can help you get your feet wet), but your signature offer (a higher-priced course) is where you want to end up.
#4 Launch and Launch Again: Once you have decided on your signature offer, it may be tempting to jump into evergreen right away, but Lindsay suggests running at least three launches beforehand. Like I’ve said, passive means putting in the work upfront. With each launch, you will fine-tune your messaging and materials. That way, when it’s time for evergreen, you know you have a funnel that converts.
Creating a course online is a big step, but with the right action and attention, you can create a really amazing passive income stream for yourself! If you want to learn more from Lindsay, you can download her Five Steps To Passive Income freebie, or find her on Instagram @meet.the.bowdens
Don’t Forget To SUBSCRIBE
&
REVIEW the podcast!
Thanks for listening to this week’s Inspiring Story! If you would like to share your story on the podcast head to www.marketscalegrow.com/journey to apply today. We would love for you to join us and can’t wait to hear about your journey as a teacher business owner.
If you’re looking for support running your ads, I would love to help you. Whether you’re looking for a 1:1 strategy session, to build your email list or full ads management it is my mission to empower ambitious teacherpreneurs just like you! Let’s unleash your limitless potential, turn your dreams into reality and have an even bigger impact on the world!
Episode Transcript:
Hey there I'm Jenzaia. And this is market scale. Grow a podcast created for ambitious entrepreneurs, looking to have a bigger impact on the world. Achieve freedom, flexibility, and ultimately make more. With weekly strategy sessions and inspiring stories from fellow teachers, just like you. My goal here is to help you create a customized marketing strategy so you can grow your teacher business beyond your wildest dreams.
Okay. So before we hop into the episode, I just want to remind you to download my free guide to Facebook targeting audiences. It has been created specifically for teacher business owners, and I go through the warm lookalike and cold interest based audiences that you need to have set up to be running Facebook and Instagram.
There are checklists and brainstorming pages so that you know, it, you have everything, but as an exciting special, I'm opening up some audience audit calls where you can hop onto a 15 minute zoom call with me and you'll get my eyes on your audiences so that you can make sure not only you have all the audiences, but they truly are.
Perfect for your business. So head to marketscalegrow.com/audienceaudit to book your free audience audit call today. Okay. Now into the episode, welcome back to market scale, grow as you know, I'm your host Jenzaia and this is an exciting guest ex. Did they, I'm talking with Lindsey Bowden about her journey.
High school, math teacher, two full-time mompreneur. She built a multiple six figure online course business during nap time, which I totally totally resonate with. I often work during nap time. And so Lindsay has been helping teachers create resources for their classrooms and. Even has an online course called math resource academy.
That course allowed her to quit. Her teaching job, retired her husband and has helped them build the life that they love with her family. Now she's on a mission to help other families gain the freedom that they crave in life by teaching them how to create and sell their own online courses. So this is such a great conversation to have in high school.
It Is a wonderful way to move from a one-to-one model to a one-to -many model. And it's a great way to build out your portfolio and add additional revenue streams to your business when you're ready. So without further ado, let's dive into the episode with Lindsay. Welcome. Welcome Lindsay. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
How are you doing today? I am doing fine. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah. I've been looking for this episode for, or this interview or chat for a while now. Can you just go ahead and introduce yourself to the audience? Let them know who you are and a little bit about your background. Sure. So I'm Lindsay Bowden.
I am a former high school math teacher. I taught for eight years and I really struggled when I was in the classroom to find resources for my students. So that's kind of how this whole journey to online courses began. I saw a problem. I personally had the problem myself and I saw other teachers were having a problem with finding resources.
I remember being a first year teacher and we literally didn't have a textbook. Anything. And I was spending every night, every weekend looking for resources. So I decided to start creating my own math resources. And then I decided to create an online course about math resources and how to create them.
And yeah, that's kind of how this journey to online courses. Now you're like an online course expert, right? Yeah. So now I help families who want to have more freedom in their lives and potentially earn passive income. I helped them to create and launch an online course and then put it on autopilot so that they can, you know, do what they want with their time.
Spend more time with their family, have more freedom with their finances, all of that. Hmm. So we're going to dive in deep about online courses, why you love them and why everyone should have one, right? Yes. Okay. So let's get started about why they are amazing to add to your business. Yeah. So online courses are so versatile, they can literally be applied to any niche.
I can't really think of any niche that couldn't have an online course as part of their, you know, streams of income. So an online course, if you don't know, basically. A way to teach somebody something. It's usually a collection of pre-recorded videos and you are teaching someone how to do something.
It could be how to play guitar. It could be how to create math resources, how to do Facebook ads, how to crochet, like I said, literally anything. So, you know, if you have a problem that you can solve, someone will pay you. To be able to solve that problem. And you know, online courses are really easy to do because they're low risk.
They're not very expensive to start. So yeah, it's, it's just a really good option for anyone even before. And it's a really great form of passive income. So can you speak to a little bit of that piece of the puzzle of it being passive income? Yeah. So online courses are definitely not passive at first.
It takes a lot of effort to, first of all, create the online course and make sure it's really valuable through market research and you know, making sure you know exactly who your audience is and what they need. And then also figuring out the marketing piece, you know, organic marketing, paid marketing, setting up your sales funnel, which is just how you get someone to become a customer.
Once you kind of figure all that out, you can automate it. So you can set up an automated process where you have this valuable piece of free content that gets someone kind of into your ecosystem and interested in your offer. And then they go through a funnel. It could be like an email sequence. It'd be like a series of videos.
And then at the end of that funnel, they would buy your online course. And you would say all of this up on autopilot so that you are still continuing to sell your online course. But it's happening behind the scenes and the a that's like an evergreen model. Yes. That's the evergreen model. Do you recommend starting with an active evergreen model?
I did an episode when we're recording this, actually the episode isn't live, but by the time you are obstacles live, it will be. So I did an episode about live launching versus evergreen and my opinion on it, but I would love to hear what your thoughts about live launching versus evergreen are and how to, how people should approach.
Yeah. So I do not believe you should go evergreen at first, unless it's like a mini course or a mini offer, you know, a low price point because someone will easily give, well, I won't say easily, but there'll be more likely to give you 37 bucks, 47 bucks, even if they don't know you yet, even if you haven't built an audience, but with a signature online course, which I believe should be, you know, $197 and up.
I think you should do at least three live launches. First, for a lot of reasons, that's going to build your audience, build your email list. That's going to build hype around the course. It's going to help you get testimonials because people will have already gone through your course before you put it on evergreen.
If you just go straight to evergreen, it's going to be harder to get those testimonials and to get you know, customer success stories. Which is really what you need to convince people that your course is awesome and that they want to buy it. So, yeah, I suggest three live launches first, and then you can move into evergreen.
That is like, almost exactly what I said, but, and I also said like, it helps with the messaging piece of figuring out how to speak to your audience and to the people who are following you and to draw people in. So, yeah. I felt I had. We'll make sure that in the show notes, people can, that we'll link that episode that I did.
So you can hear my thoughts on it. I think that that's a really good balance. Of between the two. So yeah. And that was live launches, giving you so much good data. Like you get data about your email sequence. Like if there's an email that just, no one is opening, you can adjust that subject line before you put it on evergreen, because once you get it on evergreen, you'd want the system to be working really well and not have all these kinks in it.
Absolutely. And I really liked what you were saying about testimonials because that social proof piece is huge. And if people see. Oh, well so-and-so even if they don't know that person, but just like a random person, like, oh, they liked it. And then this person liked it. And this person likes it, which is why, when you go to those really big name courses, half of their sales page, it feels like sometimes it's just testimonials and video testimonials and more testimonials.
So, and that, and that works. You know, people want to see that other people have been successful with this course before they buy. Just like when you go to Amazon, the first thing you do is look at reviews every time that's just human nature. You know, you want to see what other people are saying about this course.
I don't know about you and I'm on Amazon and maybe course creators should start doing a little bit of this too. I always go to the like ones and twos one and two stars because I want to see what they have to say. Cause sometimes those one and two star reviews. Are basically like user error or you're an idiot or whatever, or, but other times it's like, okay, that's valid.
And I wanted to hear that and like, see that and like, know that piece of information. And I would never actually recommend that a course creator put like a one-star review on their sales page, but I'm just saying like on Amazon, I do do that because I'm like, okay, well I want to know what the bad experiences are, right?
Yeah. Yeah. I definitely agree. And I think, you know, some ways that you can maybe. You know, kind of touch on that, but not necessarily just talk about all the bad reviews. It may be like having in-person interviews where you're asking someone like, okay, but really what do you really think about this course?
You're not going to hurt my feelings, you know? And I think if you get those honest reviews and people are going to trust you more, instead of just like, this is the best thing ever, I love it so much. It's a hundred percent perfect, you know, but maybe more honest reviews would help with that. It's such a good point that you touched a little bit about this already, but who should create online courses and what kind of courses.
Could you do, are there different, like variations of what the course could contain? Those are, that's like four questions wrapped in. Yeah. So, I mean, I really think that anyone can create an online course. Any niche could incorporate an online course into their customer journey as far as what types of courses.
So I kind of focus on two different types of courses for my students. I like many offers, like a mini course or a paid workshop. You know, that's kind of solved. A little problem giving a quick win, something that someone can consume quickly and easily and immediately apply. I recommend doing that first and that's a great way to test out your niche and see if people are willing to pay you for information about this niche.
And then I tell my students to move into a more signature course, which solves a big problem. And a lot of facets within that problem. Like a specific example would be if you're teaching someone about being a vegan, your mini offer, or your mini course could be, you know, how to survive your first 30 days as a vegan or something like that, or how to ensure that the food you're eating is vegan.
Just a small problem within that niche. And then your signature course. The vegan life and everything about being a vegan, how to deal with friends and family who aren't vegan you know, and solving a lot of different problems within that umbrella of problems. Does that make sense? Absolutely. Yeah. And I also really like how you split that up into like that small offer and then the signature offer.
It's a good way to have different price points for people to enter in with you, to work with you and not necessarily. Like that $37 offer isn't necessarily less valuable or for it's for the exact same audience, someone who wants to become a vegan. But the difference that you're explaining is that it solves one problem instead of like a big overarching problem.
It's not like that's for the beginner and this is for the more advanced or anything like that. It's targeted at the same person. So then hopefully they're like, oh, I really liked this $37. Now I want to see the whole vegan lifestyle or whatever, the bigger pieces. And so I like how they kind of flow together.
Yep. I like that too. And, like you said, people are going to be willing to pay that lower price even though it's still really valuable, and this is great, especially for people who are new and don't have a huge audience yet. If you create that many offers, that's going to build your audience and help people to trust you before they move into investing in that bigger price point, offer and trust.
So huge in the online space right now. I think that we've made it in the last year or so. There's been a huge shift towards. And it's not even like towards, for the first time, it's almost like coming back to relationships and building trust and a little bit more of the feminine side of marketing. I think that there was a phase that was very like bro marketing, very masculine energy, a lot of FOMO.
And we're now into that, like relationships, like I said, trust and like empowering your buyers to make the choice that's right for them. And that's really nice to see . It feels good to me. Yeah, I like that too. I'm all about maintaining integrity in your business and not using fake urgency and you know, kind of like the infomercial style marketing where it's like buy this nail in 30 seconds or, you know, payments $3 and 22 cents, you can afford it.
That stresses me out so much that I'm all about. Still good marketing things that feel good to your gut and you know, understanding that your offer is actually going to help people and that kind of being your why for your business. I like that a lot. So that kind of filters into the next point is how have you built your online course business?
I know that Facebook ads have been a bit of a, a bit of a part of it and I'm sure organic marketing has as well, but like, can you speak to that? How have you done that? Yeah. So with my math worse, I started with organic marketing. I did some long form content. I kind of tried all the things, honestly in the beginning, which I don't necessarily recommend because you can get overwhelmed, but I did blogging YouTube videos.
I did some virtual conferences which helped a lot. I was active on Instagram. I built a Facebook group. Basically, I just wanted to establish myself as the expert in the math resource creation niche, which is really important in the beginning that people see you as the expert for that one niche and you're not confusing your audience.
So I started with that and then I moved into paid Facebook ads. I created a lead magnet, which I'm sure your audience knows about. But a free piece of content aggregated, a pixel art guy, which is like a type of math or resource if your audience has an ad. But I ran Facebook ads for that pixel art guide and that built my audience a lot as well.
And it was also, you know, showing them that, Hey, Lindsay knows what she's talking about. She understands math resources. And then once I get them onto my email list through those various channels, I continue to nurture that. Weekly monthly. That's kind of how I built my audience from. It's cool to hear about all those different avenues and how they come together and create something so powerful and impactful.
Yes. Oh, I forgot Pinterest. That's a huge one too. Yes. Interest goes into my long form content and my lead magnet straight. The lead magnet. That's a huge one too. I don't recommend doing all of the things that I don't want to overwhelm your listeners. I recommend one type of long form content, either blog, YouTube or podcasts.
And then if you want to do social media, pick one. And then if you want to move into paid ads, definitely do that. And that's exactly the same day that I recommend as well. And I, I talk a lot about, and often it comes up in interviews of, it looks like we're doing everything now. Like I have a podcast, I have a blog, I show up on social media.
Right. Like I do all these things, but it was very intentional. I did one thing until I got it. And then I added the next thing in, and then, and it's the same thing. Like if you look at someone like a huge name, like Amy Porterfield and you scroll back to 2014 or whatever she started, she only was doing one thing or two things or whatever.
And over time she's added additional things in and she's grown her team. And so I like to remind people to separate the like human that is now versus the beginning of their journey. More like that chapter two, wherever you might be in your journey to figure it out. As you're going to add little pieces at once, what you're doing is easy and you can continue to do it because the last thing you want to do is say, okay, well now I'm ready to add in Pinterest.
And I'm going to stop emailing my list. Like you don't want to, it's not an either or it needs to be when you add something new in, it needs to be an and right. Exactly. Yeah. I was like, you know, people say, don't compare your chapter one to someone else's chapter 10. So I put it in. It is hard. I remember when I first started back in, I first started my teachers pay teachers store back in 2017 and I would look at other sellers and I would literally say, I'm never going to get there.
Like, how is this even possible? Five years later, you know, look where my business has gotten me. I quit my job. I retired, my husband. We stay at home with our toddler. Like I think, the biggest thing is you just have to keep going and kind of put on blinders and not look at what other people are doing.
That's kind of a whole nother topic, but I think it's important for, for people that are wanting to start a business here because it can be really overwhelming and disheartening and biggie. You just gotta keep going. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for sharing your expertise. If people want to find you, I know you have a free guy.
Can you chat a little bit about that? Sure. Yeah. So I have a free printable guide. It's called five steps to passive income and it kind of details the process. I took to creating an online course and then eventually put it on autopilot. So you can grab that. Meetthebowdens.com/guide. And that will be linked in the show notes.
Yeah. Awesome. And where is the best place for people to cyber stalk you for fine
place for people to find you? I love it. So I hang out on Instagram for the most part, so at meet dot Bowden's. Perfect. Awesome. Well, thank you so much again for coming on with me. Thanks.
Thank you for listening to this. Week's inspiring story. If you'd like to share your story with us, then head to market scales, grow.com forward slash journey and complete the quick application form. Then head to our community at marketscalegrow.com/community. So you can join our group of inspiring teacherpreneurs who are working on growing and scaling their businesses to see you soon. .