Melvin Varghese:
Today's podcast is supported by the American Psychological Association, PsyCareers. If you are a psychology professional looking to advance your career or thinking about a pivot, definitely encourage you to check out PsyCareers, which is the career center from the American Psychological Association Services, Inc. There are over 400 positions available. It's the perfect time to create a free account, upload your resume, and set up job alerts. You can learn more over at sellingthecouch.com forward slash A-P-A. Sellingthecouch.com forward slash A-P-A.

We'll jump right into today's session. Hello, hello. Welcome to today's session of Selling the Couch. Before we jump too much into this, just wanted to let you know that this will be our last episode of the podcast for 2024. I'd like to take most of November and December off. just to mainly just to rest and recharge and plus with the craziness of holidays and then try to release new podcast episodes. I realized about two years ago this is a unrealistic proposition and so I'm going to be taking just the next several weeks off Just one, I think, really to focus on, again, on REST.

I also like to use… I incorporated something last year called Walden Months, which is basically an opportunity for me to, one, prioritize REST, but then to work on a big project that I just normally can't do over the course of running things for STC. And so this month we're going to be re-recording our podcasting workshop that we have. It's a free workshop, but there's been so many changes in the world of podcasting, and I'm excited to re-record that. And today's episode is something, I called it, if I were launching an online course soon, here's what I would do. I know that many of us as we approach the end of this year and are looking into next year are considering launching an online course whether it is to supplement clinical income or if you want to pull back on clinical work and then figure out another alternative income stream.

Whatever that reason is, I know that many of us are thinking about it. I've been a course creator for nine years, and next year will actually be year 10. And my podcasting course, the HealthCasters podcasting course, we just passed our 244th student. We've also generated a little over $328,000 in revenue from that online course. But I am not an overnight success by any stretch of the imagination. And I wanted to like openly and honestly share that with you because I think sometimes in the online space we see these like folks that launch courses and they have like over like very quick success or it seems like overnight success and I This guy right here is not one of those people. But I think developing and growing this course over the past nine years has given me such more of a rich tapestry in terms of how to think about stuff. We've also had the incredible privilege now to support over 50 of our colleagues launch their online course through our STC Elite program. our mastermind program. And so I've learned a ton in today's session. Honestly, I just wanted to share some of the things that I've learned along the way. Now, the very first and I focus this on like kind of five things that I would share. And the very first thing is focus on what you already know and love to teach. Now, I know you might be listening to this or you're watching this on YouTube and you're like, Mel, that is the lamest piece of advice I've ever heard. That seems so obvious. And I am completely with you. It is, it does seem completely like logical. And yet I have seen so many colleagues launch courses that are completely unrelated to niches and specialties they've already had success with. But before we share a little bit more on that, my recommendation generally has been, I'm sure there are some exceptions, but my general recommendation is only to launch an online course once you have a successful practice. and you have a clearly defined niche. Or if you're doing coaching or an online business or something like that, once you are, you don't have to get like, I'm 100% sure and clear on what my niche is because the thing I've realized with finding a niche is it's kind of an evolving thing as markets and trends and all that stuff evolve.

But If you have some clarity, like this is the general ballpark of the folks that I love to work with. And the main reason that I recommend doing it in this way is it's much easier to have folks pay you for an online course if they've already paid you for therapy or if you've done paid workshops or anything like that. In other words, there's already market demand for the topic that you're going to create your online course over about. Now, I know that this seems really obvious, but I just cannot tell you the number of colleagues that I have found or that reach out to me and they're like, Mel, I'm going to create a course on insert whatever topic. And then what I usually will then ask them is, is that a niche that you've already have some thought leadership in, you've already established in? There's a segment of our colleagues that will say, oh, I didn't think about that. No, it's kind of related, but not really. But, you know, I just feel like I want to go into that. And there are definitely, I think, times where you can go into a niche and capture a niche. But I don't think and get good demand if you haven't already made money in that niche. But I don't think that's the norm. And I tend to be pretty conservative when it comes to like being thoughtful about the course creation journey. And what I've generally found is one of the best forms of validation of a course idea is if people have already paid you money, right? So it's not if people have downloaded a something from you to join your email list. It's not, you know, I've accumulated a certain number of social media followers on this topic, any of that. There's a, I think there's a difference in sort of the quality if there's a financial transaction that's involved.

The other nuance of this, and I've, you know, accidentally kind of stumbled on this idea, but it really helps to have a course idea that is a past or ideally a current lived experience with what you're navigating. So for example, again, I didn't think about this in the initial stages, but I have a podcasting course for therapists, but I actively have a podcast. And because I actively have a podcast, I'm able to integrate new things into lessons, new lessons into coaching calls, and all of those things. versus if it's like an area that I have just like a strictly academic knowledge on versus like a lived knowledge on. So it's just something just to think about. My gut feel is also as AI continues to permeate many areas, I think there will inevitably come a time where online courses will be generated through AI. and there is a chance there's going to be this mass amount of courses coming out. But my gut feel on this is if you generate a course that just not only shares knowledge but also integrates your lived experience, the stuff that you can only talk about because you're actively doing it, I think that course is going to then stand out way better. The second tip that I wanted to share with you is to start small and build slowly. Now, many of us want to build an online course, but we also want to then springboard it into other related offerings. So it could be, Mel, I want an online course, and then I want to do a retreat related to that online course. I want to do a conference, or I want to set up a membership site, or I want to write a book related to that online course idea. It's super smart because you don't want to put all of the pressure off on your online course to get sales. So you basically want to like strategically diversify across so that you're not feeling all that pressure as well. Now one of the things that we do in our online course Mastermind for Therapists is we actually have an entire live workshop where we create something called the Value Ladder. This concept is something I learned I would say about four to five years ago. And basically the value ladder is think about like your ideal course student and think about the lower priced offerings and the higher priced offerings in comparison to your online course. If your course is your mid priced offering, what are those lower and higher and even ultra priced offerings that are related to your course idea that folks would be interested in? Now, you don't need 40 of these offerings. In fact, what I've actually found is just having one or two and building those out over a couple of years versus trying to like launch the course, then a retreat related to the course, writing a book related to the course. Like, don't do that because it's just too overwhelming. But a good framework to really think about is an online course. And then think about what a segment of that population that is going through that online course. Think about a recurring offer that is related to that online course idea. So these aren't like finalized, but I'm just I will, you know, just for the sake of being helpful, I'll just share some of the things that I'm thinking through with our help guessers course, right? So one kind of interesting thing is, there might be a need for like editing help, right? So if you already have a podcast, there might need either for audio or for video, because you know, video podcasts are growing very significantly. Another might be to do a course plus a cadence of coaching or a group coaching. And then another related offer might be a course plus, you know, you have one here where it's like course and group coaching access. Another one might be like course plus group coaching plus like one-on-one coaching or something like that. and you would then charge like a recurring fee for that. So the big thing to just take away from this is don't put all the pressure on your online course to make the sales. Think about lower and higher cost offers related to your course, but at the same time don't put all the pressure on yourself to try to create all of these like yesterday. The third tip that I just wanted to mention is validation is non-negotiable. This is a huge one. Before diving in into the course creation journey, I think one of the most normal things is we get a course idea and we're like, oh my gosh, I'm going to run with it. I got to go on Amazon and buy a bunch of gear or I got to figure out my course like where I'm going to the course platform where I'm going to host my course all of that kind of stuff but none of that like all of that's going to go to waste unless you figure out there's actual demand for your course idea. Now, my recommendation, and I say this with humility, is to validate your course idea before you jump into any of it. And the thing is, doing that will save you a lot of heartache down the line because you don't want to spend all this time and money on a course idea.

And you don't want to create like a beautiful sales page and all of this stuff. And then like nobody wants to buy it. Like that would be heartbreaking. We actually have, I've mentioned this a few times, but we have a free 7-day email course to help you validate your course idea. It's built for just therapists. It's called the Course Creator Starter Kit. It's basically the exact same exercises that we use in our online course Mastermind. we put it in email form and you can download that over at coursecreatorstarterkit.com coursecreatorstarterkit.com and it's totally free and it'll give you a lot of clarity with regard to how to move forward with your course idea and it can also help if you have multiple course ideas that you kind of just want to sift through. So use that please like and have it help you and save you a lot of heartache. Hey, it's Melvin. Before we continue with today's session, just wanted to encourage you to check out APA's PsyCareers blog. I know that many of us are thinking about work and especially in work in relation to life. And many of us are also thinking about how do we use this underlying skill set as clinicians in other realms beyond just the clinical room. If you are interested in any of that or are just curious, I encourage you to check out the American Psychological Association Services Inc. Psych Careers blog. It's absolutely free. It's their career center. There are over 400 positions that are currently available. You can literally create a free account, upload your resume, set up all sorts of job alerts, and get started on the next chapter of your career journey. You can learn more over at sellingthecouch.com forward slash A-P-A. Sellingthecouch.com forward slash A-P-A.

We'll jump right back into today's session. The next thing I just wanted to share is embrace the tech. And this is point number four. Embrace the tech, but don't let it overwhelm you. Tech is one of the most common things that colleagues come to me about. And if you're watching this on YouTube, this has been an evolution over nine years, but we have a very, like, professional setup now with, you know, hair lights and fill lights and DSLRs and blurry backgrounds and all of this kind of stuff. But when I first started, none of this existed. I told myself I'm going to just set aside like 10% of core sales and over time we will make incremental improvements in our studio setup. The recommended, the way that I would upgrade is first upgrade your sound, then upgrade your lighting, and then upgrade your camera. That's the setup that I would recommend. When I've talked to friends that are in the studio creation space, they've said the same thing because people are very forgiving if you have not great lighting or your camera is a little bit blurry. But if your sound is horrible, or it's got like a lot of static or something, people will click off. And as a course creator, you just, you don't want to do that. Now, that doesn't translate into things needing to be expensive. So if you're like, if you're just using a laptop and you've got the integrated like mic or the integrated camera, that's totally fine. You know, you can probably get away with something like AirPods. The only thing with AirPods is you just have to, if you're recording, because that would give you a little bit better mic quality than like using the standard mic that comes with a laptop, with a MacBook Pro, for example. Usually that's the case. Now the only the thing to think about with if you put use like an airpod pro or use headphones or something like that if you wear things like jewelry or you have clothes that have zippers that stuff can hit on that mic and what I found is it becomes a little bit of a little bit of a pain. So what I would recommend is and just depending kind of on your budget so one The cheapest option I would say is just to get what's called a dynamic USB mic. The one that I like to start out with is the Samsung Q2U. It's around $60 on Amazon. And it would just give you a lot more of a deeper sound and just a more rich sound as you create your course material and then also the marketing material related to your course. Now the thing to just factor in is the benefit of that mic is you can actually just plug it into the USB slot on your computer and then you are good to go. Now if you're like Mel, I don't want this mic right in my face as I record this course. You want to look for something called a shotgun mic and the one that I would recommend starting out with is the Rode VideoMic NTG. It's a bit more. It's around $250 the last time I checked. But the benefit of that mic is you can keep it about 8 to 14 inches away from your face, i.e. off of the screen when you record your course material, and it will produce a really… and it'll pick up the sound. And this one is also USB powered as well, so it just makes it really, really nice and convenient. As I mentioned, I spent about $110 on my initial setup, so I used the Logitech C920 webcam because the webcam that came with my MacBook Pro was just really not good. This is like way back in the day in like 2014. And then the mic that I used was the was my dynamic mic was the mic that I use for my podcast. It's $110. You know, I look at some of the I have some of the screenshots and videos from those early days. And I'm like, look at it now. And I cringed. I'm like, man, that was a hot mess. But The other piece I've just kind of remember thinking about in those early days is, you know what, I just want to get this course out there and I know I can refine these things later. And even down to like the course videos, I can always record it later.

So what I would do is just this sort of defaulting to action is something that's just incredibly valuable. I have found this over and over with clinicians and I hope there's like one day like a study or something done on this but generally what I found is those of us who end up getting like advanced degrees like master's degrees and higher we tend to, and I think it's this intersection of academia, it's this intersection of perfectionism, of being a high achiever, all of that stuff, it manifests in the course creation space by crippling us in terms of actually putting our course into the world, i.e. we think we're gonna get quote-unquote graded on this course, and so we then don't put it out there because we keep making these last 10% tweaks, and we, it's just hard to put it out there. Now, the thing what I've kind of learned, which is actually just been really healing for me is people really connect when you create a course, or you're sharing on LinkedIn, like your course journey on the early stages, and it just, it doesn't look like so put together, people really resonate with that, because it connects you to them at a much more human level, uh to be completely honest like this is sometimes even things that i feel like i struggle with because we have a really nice setup now which i'm like so grateful for but the other piece of that i think a lot about is does it like almost remove me from the therapist as just starting a podcast and wanting to like figure out and navigate this because it just looks like i've got like a really you know i've got a nice mic i've got all this kind of stuff right and but it's just something to think about Now, with course platforms, Teachable has a free tier and as does ConvertKit for your email marketing. So that's a good idea because, you know, we've generally found that email is the best way to sell an online course. And specifically, people sign up for a webinar and then you send messages over email. And those are both have free tiers, and I feel like it's a very low risk, right? Because you're not like investing a significant amount of money, any money, and you can get just that confidence to get your course out in the world. So if you go through sellingthecouch.com forward slash teachable and sellingthecouch.com forward slash convertkit, there should be some discount codes that are available if you do decide to upgrade to a paid tier. And just for full transparency, those are affiliate links. But those are both companies that I've used in the past and have had good experience with. A few years ago, we made the switch to an all-in-one platform, which we currently use, Kartra. And if you go through sellingthecouch.com forward slash kartra, the Kartra team was incredibly kind to create a landing page for just SGC listeners. And there's a discount code there that is not available elsewhere. It's a very generous code there. So, so I would just start there. I would start, you know, the crux of this is start with good enough equipment, start with a good enough course platform and a good enough email, and then just build out. Don't let that sort of I got to get this perfect. Otherwise, I will be judged by either internally or externally stop you from launching your beautiful course out in the world. The final thing I just wanted to mention, and I'll just review the top four. So one is focus on what you already know and love to teach. Two is start small, build slowly. Three is validation is non-negotiable, and there's our Course Creator Starter Kit that you can download again over at coursecreatorstarterkit.com. Four is embrace the tech, but don't let it overwhelm you. And the final thing, I just wanted to mention is build your audience early. Now, if you're thinking about launching an online course, particularly in the next couple of months, really start to think about building your online audience. Now, this is a different skill set and something I think many of us as clinicians are still getting used to, like quote unquote, having social media followers. But you don't want to wait until your course launches to start connecting with your ideal students. I won't go into this but if you're watching this on YouTube I'll link to a previous video here that goes kind of into how I think about social media and the purpose of social media and picking social media platforms. But basically if you don't have an audience like online Start with either a discovery platform. So discovery platform means that your content can be found if people are searching for it either on Google or once they log into the platform if they're searching for it. My current favorite, the one I'm on, is I like LinkedIn because I feel like it has the mindset of the folks on LinkedIn are generally they're coming to learn and they're also the benefit is there's like companies that could also serve your the audience that is that you're creating your online course for as well. But but generally just pick a platform and it doesn't have to be LinkedIn, but generally pick one that people can search for.

Or the other alternative is to do what I did, which is use a discovery platform and a relationship deepening platform. So in the early days of STC, we had the STC podcast, but the reality with podcasts is they're still not like the best in terms of discoverability they're getting better and better with it but so a lot of times you'll need a discovery platform to kind of prop it up so a logical one that a lot of therapists think about is like a facebook group or something like that basically you don't One, the big thing from this is you don't want to wait to launch an audience and you don't want to wait until your course launches to start creating and building an audience. And you also don't want to depend upon somebody else's audience in order to get your course sales. Otherwise, for example, you'll be like going from one podcast to another. You may get sales from that person's audience, but I almost see it as like doing things like podcast interviews as the cherry on top versus, again, putting all of the pressure on you going on these interviews and trying to get it from audiences that may only know you from that one interview. And so I hope that you find today's session incredibly helpful. More than anything, if you are thinking about launching an online course, I'm just genuinely excited for you. I think it's wonderful that so many of us are adding courses to our clinical toolkit. I think it makes a lot of sense, given the demand for mental health services and just not enough of us that are licensed in order to be able to provide those services. And then I also love that so many of us are thinking about private practice and business differently in that it's not just focused on this model of trading time for income, but how do I expand beyond that and also then by extension design a career around the life that I want versus fitting life around a career. Thank you again for tuning in to this year's episodes. It has just been an incredible joy to be able to serve you in this way and to serve our field. I can't believe we're going to be at year 10 next year of the STZ podcast. I feel great. Like I had no barometer of where we started this thing of like how long I would last, things like, you know, nine years of podcasting, 10 years, those were not even fathomable. So I really do feel like I'm just kind of, you know, going with it. But I'm thoroughly enjoying podcasting. And I feel an even more joy with podcasting than I did even when I first started. And there was a lot of joy there. but i'm looking forward to new sessions with you and uh you know i realize i'm just so keenly aware that none of this would be possible without you uh without you telling colleagues about the stc podcast and uh so from the bottom of my heart thank you we are now officially in the top 0.5 percent of podcasts in the entire world which is just really wild for a podcast that literally started on a tv dinner stand and some old psychology So I appreciate you and I will see you next year. And if you are tuning in, we'll continue to have some replay episodes since we have so many from the backlog through the rest of November and December. And I'm so excited to release some new episodes coming up in 2025. Have a great rest of your day and I will talk to you soon. Bye.

Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Selling the Couch podcast. For more great content and to stay up to date, visit www.sellingthecouch.com.

Melvin Varghese: Hey there, I hope that you enjoyed today's session. Thank you again for taking the time to listen all the way through. If you are a therapist and you're specifically in a season where you're a seasoned therapist and you are wanting to move from clinical to online course income, We actually have a specific mastermind for therapists who are doing this. So this is basically a group of really kind and supportive therapists who are also wildly successful as business owners. We meet together to build and grow and scale our online courses. You can learn more about that mastermind over at sellingthecouch.com forward slash mastermind all one word sellingthecouch.com forward slash mastermind. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to today's session.

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