Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and
Speaker 1: Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: Safe to say the pandemic Tim made us kind of
Speaker 2: think differently about learning online. Some good we know, though
Speaker 2: it was very very tough on kids who were stuck
Speaker 2: at home, and it wasn't easy for those kids to
Speaker 2: do school and not be Actually in some.
Speaker 1: Friends who I have said they're still seeing the effects
Speaker 1: of it. I bet they are kids. Yeah, it's really
Speaker 1: it's really troubling. But it also opened up a world
Speaker 1: of thinking differently, especially for adults and how they're learning,
Speaker 1: and also how people are teaching how to bake.
Speaker 2: Bread, how to make cocktails, all stuff you're still doing. Yeah, paint, no, yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: I'm back in the office. But online learning it was
Speaker 2: the fix, it felt like for so many during the pandemic.
Speaker 2: And keeping with that, our next guest is helping others
Speaker 2: create and really launch their own online courses. So with
Speaker 2: us is Danielle Leslie, founder of Course from Scratch, joining
Speaker 2: us on zoom in Los Angeles. Danielle, nice to have
Speaker 2: you here on Bloomberg Business Week. So tell us a
Speaker 2: little bit about Course from Scratch. How you started it,
Speaker 2: when you started it, and what's going on the type
Speaker 2: of activity you're seeing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, I mean so exactly what you all said.
Speaker 3: We saw this shift in trust of learning online. I
Speaker 3: got into it over ten years ago, so at the
Speaker 3: very beginning of it, I would say, when it was
Speaker 3: still new, and I worked at You to Me, which
Speaker 3: had you know, tens of thousands of online courses and
Speaker 3: people were learning from all kinds of experts. And after
Speaker 3: doing that for a while, I work out on my own,
Speaker 3: and so about seven years ago I launched course from
Speaker 3: scratch and we've now helped over ten thousand people, and
Speaker 3: as you mentioned, we're seeing people create online courses on everything.
Speaker 3: I think the big takeaway for people here is to
Speaker 3: know that your life experiences can help someone else. So
Speaker 3: we have someone who was a single mom, you know,
Speaker 3: who learned to co parent her son successfully and she
Speaker 3: created a framework out of it and has now helped
Speaker 3: hundreds of other single moms.
Speaker 4: Co parent their kids.
Speaker 3: And another person you know who's a really good friend
Speaker 3: of mine, Tara Reid, developed apps without code.
Speaker 4: So you know, a lot of people are coming out
Speaker 4: of the job.
Speaker 3: Market and asking, how can I start my own business,
Speaker 3: how can I develop my own app?
Speaker 4: And so she's now helped thousands of people do that.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it's been a huge wave, and it's been
Speaker 3: so amazing to see all of us kind of contribute
Speaker 3: our gifts to the world.
Speaker 1: How would you say you differentiate between simply somebody teaching
Speaker 1: someone something on YouTube? Like what's been amazing for me
Speaker 1: is you know, if the dishwasher breaks or if there's like,
Speaker 1: you know, an error code on the washing machine, I
Speaker 1: can just type that into YouTube and some plumber or
Speaker 1: appliance fixer will actually show me how to do it,
Speaker 1: and I'll save like four or five hundred bucks for
Speaker 1: some professional coming and fixing it. How do you differentiate
Speaker 1: between you know, what anyone can do in terms of
Speaker 1: a video versus like quality control that you'd find on
Speaker 1: your platform.
Speaker 4: Such a great question.
Speaker 3: I mean, I love a good YouTube video to solve
Speaker 3: an immediate pain point. I would say the biggest differentiation
Speaker 3: between a problem that a YouTube video can solve versus
Speaker 3: an online course that we teach inside of course, from scratch.
Speaker 4: You'll see the best courses are not.
Speaker 3: About teaching you how to do something, but helping you
Speaker 3: transform into being something new. So it's a question of
Speaker 3: who do you want to transform into being. So as
Speaker 3: an example, there are lots of YouTube videos on how
Speaker 3: to play piano, right, you can take a piano one
Speaker 3: on one course, but there is a program that has
Speaker 3: an actual curriculum that takes you from point A where
Speaker 3: you are so beginner piano player who lacks confidence, who
Speaker 3: lost their sense of play and improvisation as an adult,
Speaker 3: grew up.
Speaker 4: Playing piano with their brothers and sisters.
Speaker 3: Point A two point b, which is an improvisation master
Speaker 3: someone who's able to play piano, what will teach their
Speaker 3: kids as part of a legacy and bond with them
Speaker 3: and take that same sense of play to the office
Speaker 3: in the boardroom and have confidence to improvise on the
Speaker 3: spot because they've been practicing improvisation with their piano program.
Speaker 3: So big thing is the curriculum of framework in transforming
Speaker 3: you from one identity into a higher identity.
Speaker 2: So tell me what the business is it? On one
Speaker 2: hand helping others create their own course and on the
Speaker 2: other hand, is it benefiting from all those people who
Speaker 2: are creating courses in kind of like a library, if
Speaker 2: you will, of where people want to go learn.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So my business model is the first piece, so
Speaker 3: a program of helping people follow the program, and it's
Speaker 3: designed as a sixty day program that takes you from
Speaker 3: how do you even select a course topic that can
Speaker 3: be a premium course topic, how do you create the curriculum?
Speaker 4: And then how do you launch online?
Speaker 3: Even if you have no personal brand, no following on
Speaker 3: any social media, how do you launch and actually get sales?
Speaker 3: So yeah, that's the core business. And then there are
Speaker 3: advanced programs for people who have now helped people scale
Speaker 3: to seven figures and even eight figures, and so we
Speaker 3: have an advanced program that helps you then scale that
Speaker 3: using ads and webinars and more advanced strategies.
Speaker 4: So that's the first piece of it.
Speaker 3: The second piece you mentioned, which is a marketplace for
Speaker 3: other courses. I'm a partner in a platform called member Up,
Speaker 3: and member up is a course hosting, community and membership platform,
Speaker 3: and so on that platform you are able to see
Speaker 3: other courses and other personal brands that you can connect with.
Speaker 1: I'm just on your website right now, Danielle. It's pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: You have some numbers in here, and I think this
Speaker 1: is referring to you, but you started out with your
Speaker 1: own online course making eighteen thousand dollars right in twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen up to in twenty twenty nine point one million dollars.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that's if you think about what year was that, right?
Speaker 4: What happened?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was the pandemic, of course. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I see something like this and I think to myself, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's amazing and good for you, congratulations, but you know,
Speaker 1: results not typical? Yeah, fair to say, Yeah, No.
Speaker 4: You're right, You're right. It was quite a quantum leap.
Speaker 1: Yes, it was amazing. I mean from twenty nineteen to
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five million dollars edition in additional money.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: We'll talk to us then about the average individual who
Speaker 2: takes your course and what they end up with in
Speaker 2: terms of a business. Because correct, if I'm wrong, I'm
Speaker 2: just looking at the webside too, it's about twenty five
Speaker 2: hundred dollars for the course, correct, Yes, So then what
Speaker 2: are the results on the other side?
Speaker 3: Absolutely so too for the first piece, you know, what
Speaker 3: are the kind of the typical results. It's really interesting
Speaker 3: because this program is designed to help you create and
Speaker 3: launch your online course, and what we found is that
Speaker 3: there are three big benefits that people report getting out
Speaker 3: of course. From scratch, I thought money was going to
Speaker 3: be the number one. I thought they were going to
Speaker 3: be like financial independence, you know, I was able to
Speaker 3: build my brands.
Speaker 4: Number one was self acceptance.
Speaker 3: So going through the program, they learned the power of
Speaker 3: their story, they learned their uniqueness, and the second thing
Speaker 3: was money, and the third was community.
Speaker 4: And I share that because.
Speaker 3: Surprisingly a lot of people get into the program and
Speaker 3: they realize, oh wow, this is just one way I
Speaker 3: can build my business online. And because of all the
Speaker 3: resources that I'm grateful to be a part of online,
Speaker 3: you'll find that people say, Okay, now I know my
Speaker 3: story and I know how to articulate it, and I
Speaker 3: know how to create a framework. I actually want to
Speaker 3: write a book. I actually want to start my own
Speaker 3: show online. So I would say that's the number one
Speaker 3: reason that we don't have one hundred percent of people
Speaker 3: who go through the program watching their course, it's because
Speaker 3: they can actually see a new possibility for themselves. For
Speaker 3: those who do launch, I think on average they launch
Speaker 3: in sixty days and they make between fifteen to twenty
Speaker 3: thousand for that first launch. And a big part of
Speaker 3: that is because we recommend that you price your program
Speaker 3: around two to three thousand dollars and that you are
Speaker 3: focusing on walking before you run. So for that first launch,
Speaker 3: don't try to do the fifty K one hundred K launch.
Speaker 3: I want you to just get five to ten people
Speaker 3: enrolled into that first program. So that's typically what you'll see.
Speaker 2: Any statistics on how many of those businesses that started
Speaker 2: are still around.
Speaker 4: Oh not at all. No, I wouldn't be able to
Speaker 4: share that with you.
Speaker 3: What I do know is, as I shared with you,
Speaker 3: I mean, we've got dozens with now crossed the seven
Speaker 3: figure mark. We have over a thousand who have written
Speaker 3: in with their results, and those have done at least
Speaker 3: five figures from their launches, but we have not done the.
Speaker 4: Best job of following up with them and seeing where
Speaker 4: are you now? You know, where has your course scaled? Now?
Speaker 4: All right?
Speaker 2: Got it? Well, I'm good to check in with you.
Speaker 2: Danielle Leslie she's founder of course from Scratch joining us
Speaker 2: on Zoom from Los Angeles. But yeah, a lot of
Speaker 2: people certainly online and it's interesting to see how it all.
Speaker 2: But I do feel like all my learning, you know,
Speaker 2: as we think about it, is going through a little
Speaker 2: bit of a reckoning too.
Speaker 1: It is what would you teach if you could design course?
Speaker 1: Putting you on the spot.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I don't even know what I would
Speaker 2: What would you say?
Speaker 1: You would teach sailing?
Speaker 2: Oh I could teach sailing.
Speaker 4: Yeah I could do that.
Speaker 1: But could you do that from a computer. That's like
Speaker 1: the type of thing you've got to be on a boat.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but you could do.
Speaker 2: People that look at the YouTube channels. My husband are
Speaker 2: kind of obsessed with these people who sail the world.
Speaker 2: You and I haven't talked about this.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, is this your new thing?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like been watching all of these people who have.
Speaker 1: Seven figure studio on your boat.
Speaker 4: No, you don't do that. You just use cameras, you use.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 4: It's well, we'll have to talk about this, all right.
Speaker 4: You're listening and watching Bloomberg Business Week.