If you've been online for any period of time, you probably know who James Schramko is. I like his simple and down to earth style in teaching. He doesn't use hype or extreme marketing language. James has taught a lot about online courses, membership sites and joint ventures, and in this episode we talk about each one in depth. One of the things that surprised me was his reasoning for taking his online courses and combining them into a membership site, and James goes into the details of why he did this and how it's helped his audience. Interview notes with James Schramko

• His first course were simple notes that he created. It was a simple checklist
• He opened it as an affiliate and offered bonuses
• James likes checklists and thinks it’s an easy to create online courses and products with checklists
• He wants to create value through his products and courses
• Create a product based on what you want to learn…and teach others how he did it
• Use the format of Intro, Why, What, How, What if, Action Steps to create an course outline template
• Some of his mistakes he’s made is how he’s packaged his products.
• He offers his online membership, where he offers his courses, products, etc.
• Since most students don’t go through the whole course, it makes more sense to offer a membership site with a lot of information
• He doesn’t do many joint ventures
• Joint ventures might be bad if you’re too scared to do all the work and hope that the other person will do all the work
• He recommends buying traffic instead of doing joint ventures
• Don’t do joint ventures with friends…be accountable and have a plan before
• when he does a video and audio, he gets twice the downloads with audio, versus video
• Another great interview on the topic of membership sites: http://www.superfastbusiness.com/business/how-to-jumpstart-your-membership-forum/

Questions I asked James Schramko:

• Tell me about your first course and why you decided to create it.
• Why should someone create an online course?
• What are some good ways to select a topic for an online course
• Explain your course outline template?
• What’s the ideal length of audio/video content
• What are some mistakes you've made with your online courses?
• What advice do you have for joint venture opportunities?
• What are some success stories you've heard from your students?
• **What tools do you use when creating courses or products?
• How do you determine what medium to use? Audio, video or text only?
• Besides  your website, SuperFastBusiness.com, where can people find you through social media?

Online Course Coach Listener Review

Jeff knows his stuff

August 19, 2015 by Xprtlstnr from Australia

Just listened to why one would want to create an online course and if you hadn't wondered about this; maybe you should. Don't be selfish and keep all the good stuff to yourself. Listen to Jeff for encouragement and expert tips on how to get your show on the road!

Transcript: Jeff Long: In this episode I talk with James Shramko about online courses, membership sites and joint ventures. Welcome to the online coach podcast brought to you by truefocusmedia.com, whether you’re a beginner or expert, this is the podcast for the latest and online course creation tips, news, interviews and ideas. And here is your coach, Jeff Long. Jeff Long: Welcome back to another episode and oh man this one is so good. I had the opportunity to talk with somebody that I’ve been following for quite some time. And I forgot where I first got introduced to James Shramko. I’m not sure if it was his website where he blogs or his podcast but they are a great resource. So his website is superfastbusiness.com and we talk a lot about his online courses, his products, as well as why he moved to a membership site and he gives some really good advice on joint ventures. Well let’s get right into the show and I’m really excited to have James Shramko on the podcast. I’ve been a big fan of his for quite some time and he’s been online doing courses on membership sites and training products for years. A matter a fact he talks about his first product and how he got his start. And I’ve been listening to his podcast, I’ve been reading his website, reading his blogs and articles and he shares a lot about online courses and tips and tricks and some of those we’ll talk about in this episode. But I first got to introduce to those on his podcast and his website, so as I was reading those I knew we had to get him on the show because of all his experience. So we actually talk about his first training product. He also shared what he did with all of his courses and the reason behind it. And I think you’ll find it really interesting because he has or had a lot of content, a lot of training material, a lot of courses and he did something maybe surprising that would help not just himself, but more importantly help his audience that you’ll really love. And then lastly, James shares some very wise advice on doing joint ventures or some advice for people who are considering doing joint ventures. You can find James Shramko on superfastbusiness.com where he helps people grow a successful business online and his website has some really good video, podcast and blog articles about things like websites, traffic and other elements required for success online. And when he’s not doing all that stuff to help us, he loves to surf. Just before we hit the record button on this podcast he shared with me how he’s going to a surf tournament and I’ll be honest I sound a little jealous, I’ve gone surfing just a few times in Hawaii and it was awesome. I don’t have a chance to do that much where I live but since he lives in Australia it sounds like he get a lot of time to surf and that sounds like a lot of fun. So James thanks for being on the online coach course podcast. James Shramko: My pleasure, thank you for having me. Jeff Long: So tell me a little bit about your first online course and why you decided to create it. James Shramko: The first online course I created was very humble beginnings. It was actually a ten lines in a excel spreadsheet and it was a checklist I was using for myself, when I was building a website using a particular software program because I found that the software program was good but I'd learnt a lot about SEO, which is Search Engine Optimization and I knew that there was some modifications I could make when  I built the site to make it rank better in Google so I started using this checklist and then I realize that I could promote this software as an affiliate which meant that I could make some commission and to internalize people to buy it from me. I offered them this cheat sheet and the first cheat sheet is when I took this ten lines of excel, turned it into a little word document. I can't remember how big it was but it's only a few pages and effectively that was my first information product because people would buy through my affiliate link and they would send me their receipt and claim their cheat sheet. Jeff Long: That's cool. Now where did you get this idea, were you following other people or were you just kind of thinking, you know what if I had this cheat sheet and check list, I'm sure other people would want to purchase it . James Shramko: Well at that time I was a General Manager at a Mercedes Benz Dealership so I was very up with checklist and standard operating procedures and systems. And I had therefore created a system for myself and I used to have a system when I was a sales person. That I would do every single time and I'm a big fan of frameworks because I think you can get maximum results by going through a framework and even good pilots have checklist when they fly and airplane and doctors and surgeons have checklist in the operating theatre. I think it's a good idea, so the idea to create was pretty straight forward. It was a natural instinct, but when I also realized that other people would also get value from it that was helpful. And I think I probably got the idea from a guy called Steven Pierce who had this idea of complementing a niche rather than competing a niche and I thought that was a good idea and I also discover the possibility of being an affiliate online. I didn’t really understand how it worked 10 years ago from the time of recording this, but has I sort of felt it out I realize that I could come to the market with something of value that was the opposite of a discount which was something that I really despise people who go into the market place offering rebates and cash back, think that’s a race to the bottom. I want to create a value ad that added more value to the buyer that allowed me to get my full commission. So it seemed logical and it worked out great. It’s actually how it evolved into a membership and 100 and 30 something page cheat sheet that I sold a lot of. In fact I made my first $100,000 online as an affiliate for this product and the cheat sheet became so popular that people who already had the software were contacting me saying I’ve already got the software, “can I buy the cheat sheet from you?” And I thought well if you send me $40 PayPal I’ll send you the cheat sheet and they did. Jeff Long: Wow!! James Shramko: And then someone got it and they went into a forum and they said to these other people, “hey if you have this program you absolutely have to get this cheat sheet if you send him $40 through PayPal he’ll send it to you”. And the next day I came home from work and there was all these emails from the forum members, just like 20 or 30 emails from people trying to send me $40. So I ended up putting it up on its own website and I sold more of the cheat sheet then I was selling as an affiliate so that was when the sales tipped across to me selling my first information product. I actually launched it in the warrior forum as a warrior special offer and that wake I was moving house. And for that wake I was making $1000 a day in sales and that was when I thought if I could just put out information products instead of working then I could do this full time. Jeff Long: Yeah, that’s so good. Isn’t that so exciting when you make your first dollar, $10, $100, you know or $1000 online, it’s like wow this is real. I’m really helping people. I’m serving a need and people are wanting this, that’s such a good feeling to have. James Shramko: I still think it’s bizarre you know. If I have any reoccurring nightmare it’s something about me working in a job and I quit my job about 7 or 8 years ago. I’m well past that point but you almost have to pinch yourself to think what a different life you can have and that’s in part because it’s the leverage that comes from being able to sell ideas, literally electrons. People are paying for electrons and bandwidth, that’s sort of an invisible asset. Jeff Long: Yeah I know that’s brilliant. So a lot of our audience has online courses already. They’re in the mix teaching people. There are a hand full of people that are still contemplating, how do I teach or what do I teach. So James what are some ways that somebody recommends select topic for an online course. Maybe they don’t have the exact topic or maybe they are trying to choose from an array of topics. How do you select a topic for an online course or product? James Shramko: Mine always usually driven through my own self need. You know if I was trying to figure out how to rank websites and how to build a website with the software it’s logical to think that other people would also be having the same challenge and by solving my own problem through research and try in an area I was actually creating an information resource that is valuable. So I’m seeing all the courses on niche research, keyword research and determining competition and all of that but that’s not really how I roll. I really usually just solve my own challenges first and then as customers come on board they are pretty quick to tell you what they need or ask for things and that helps you innovate. So if you were to look at my business today, 10 years after I started it’s actually extremely simple business and it’s just helping people out with things that used to be a challenge for me but they are no longer a challenge for me because I solved them and made the solution available to other people. Jeff Long: That’s great. Yeah that’s so good you’re not overcomplicating things, you know it’s like you’re saying, “hey what do I either already know or want to learn and how can I make that knowledge available to other people, it’s pretty simple. James Shramko: And I think one of the core things is you got to be at least interested enough in it to surround yourself with it for a number of years. Jeff Long: Sure. James Shramko: That’s why I feel contrary to a niche research and you decide you want to do and info product, a model train operators or gold fish earners, I mean that’s very commercial maybe but it’s not really that exciting or interesting. Jeff Long: Sure. James Shramko: To think about, so… Jeff Long: I don’t know gold fish earners. That’s pretty out there. James Shramko: Look I mean no offence to gold fish earners but like it doesn’t float my boat. Jeff Long: Sure. James Shramko: I want to make sure that I’m able to face this subject and have discussions on that topic for some time to come so I’ve built businesses around areas that I have a natural leaning towards. So this board is on that sort of passion versus commercial thing. And sometimes I will do things that are commercially good but might not be amazing for my level of interest. But I pretty much weighted those out over the last few years because I have the choice now. Jeff Long: Yeah, now one of the ways I was first connected to you through your blog and your podcast, which I’ve been following religiously is you talked about an online, a course outline template, you know this grid system. You might want to walk through that a little bit, explaining what that course outline template is. James Shramko: Yeah it’s called “Format” and some smart lady invented it years ago and I first discovered it when I went to a presenter’s course and the short version is that it covers different modalities and it sort of open up topics to put it into an easy digestible and actionable method. The format is…why, what, how, what if and then I’d added action steps. So if we were to use the example of the format, we could go through the framework, why. Why do you have a format? Because it gives you a really easy framework to use every single time you create a piece of training material. What is it? It’s just a simple step that you fill out on a piece of paper or on a whiteboard before you start training. How do you do it? Once you’ve drafted out your ideas then you can take all the good ideas, cross off everything bad then you’re pretty much ready to roll. And the what if, is to cover off objections. What if you don’t like frameworks or you’re worried about it being formulate or you don’t understand how it works. Well just try it and see how you go and ask questions if you don’t understand it. I know people sometimes ask questions on my blog where I post at least 3 different versions of this on my blog. The reason we keep publishing it is it’s by far one of the most popular subject on my entire blog at superfastbusiness.com. And then the action step is to post question. What someone should do as a result of going through that training module. So having this framework means that I’m able to interview an expert or deliver a training subject on any topic with about a minutes worth of preparation. It’s just so easy to follow. It’s actually step by step system and it really does cover the subject in good detail. Jeff Long: It’s interesting as I’ve been reading that and studying that and thinking about that template or that format I see you use it in your podcast, in your blogs and so it’s really cool to almost learn from the master doing it. You’re not just saying, “hey you should do this everybody”, but you’re doing that in a lot of your materials which is really cool to see you do it in different formats. James Shramko: It really helps when you interview someone who you’re not that familiar with. You can go through that format, it doesn’t seem like you’re punching through a template. I may not use the actually word, why or what or how or what if, you know spell it out. But I’m usually always going through that framework. Jeff Long: That’s good. That’s really good, good advice. So what are some of the mistake you’ve made with your online courses, the products you’ve made, I’m sure you made a couple right. You’re not infallible there? James Shramko: I don’t make too many mistakes. I just think it’s easier to learn from other people than to make the mistake firsthand. I’m not a big fan of that fail fast or fail big school of thought I’m much more strategic than that. I think the main mistake that I’ve made and other people make is the way they package their products. Generally it’s tempting to start off with one information product, that’s a onetime product. And I just told you that’s exactly how I started but I quickly moved into a membership scenario where the only way to buy my products now is to join subscription membership. And I do that because it’s better for the consumer. Instead of being able to have a low investment in themselves, say $39, download a PDF and some videos and some mp3s and maybe or maybe not ever look at it again. Now they join a gated community where they pay a monthly subscription fee or membership fee. They can now access all of my information so they can get the information they need right now because it’s all in their like a super market and they can have support, they can ask questions. And because it’s somewhere where they go they can also network with other people who are also at the same pace or even a little further down the track than them. So they get the advantage of having a peer group pulling them through and some action and accountability, so for that reason whenever I record my live events and whenever I put out a new monthly training it all gets put into the membership and that’s the only way that people can buy my products now. Jeff Long: That’s great. When did you get to that point where you said, “you know what I think I could be more affective if I bundle it all together”. Was that a process or is that a fast thing that you just decided to do one day. James Shramko: It was about three years ago and I was mapping my business up on a whiteboard which I do every 12 weeks and I recommend everyone listening does this. And I was drawing up my products and one of my products was a membership forum and I drew this big circle of my products and then outside the circle was joint ventures and this membership was a joint venture so it was half in the circle and half out of the circle; then I realized that all of my products in the circle were feeding this membership and it was literally leaking my revenue to a 50% share partner who was an amazing character, honest, impeccable person however was not contributing to the marketing or the delivery or fulfillment of the membership to the same extent that I was. So I was probably answering 75% of the questions but I was adding 99.9% of the members through my own information products. So I recognized that this is a mistake so I repackaged it, I pushed the whole thing into the circle and I put all of my products into this one thing so I was able to package it better for my customers. So instead of buying separate things now, my customers could buy one thing and get everything and it's much easier to understand the offer, it's much easier for me to fulfill and to deliver. It's creates a lot of power and leverage of the networking between the customers and also when I looked at my sales and if you're familiar with the AD20 principle; what I realized is that basically the bottom 20% of my products were driving about 1% of my sales because I realized, to my horror that I was giving people an easy option that doesn't really serve them well. They could just pay $39.00 or $29.00 and they thought they were getting a bargain but they were ripping themselves off because they're not paying me the money, they're investing in themselves and I was only letting buy a very small snack and they were not utilizing it as well and I was astounded at how many people don't make it through a multi-video training sequence in a single product format so I recon if you were to cast your survey around your own members, I think you'd find that the people who deliver one time information products, if they look at their analytics, very few customers ever make it through to the end of the product. And then of course you're in this constant feast and famine mode, you have to do a launch and you have to drive sales and you got to set out the next product and you got to put up another sales page and you have to drive affiliates and you've got to have JV contests and you've got to bang the drum and own the market. Instead, I've just got this one omnipresent information portal that people can join and stay a member of for life. So the average customer value is astronomical. Jeff Long: Yeah you brought up some really good points that I want to hit at. The first one is; you mentioned the analogy of a snack and a meal. You know a lot of times consumers, students or whoever, they are going for that cheap hey I just want to learn this, and they think that the smaller, cheaper product will help them but they don't even make it through the course and so like you said, they're shooting themselves in the foot, they're doing themselves the service by in a way being cheap but they're not helping themselves in the long run so I like your attitude on that. James Shramko: And on the flip side of that you get these ridiculous $2000 and $3000 courses that have thud factor and only a fool measures information products by the pound but marketers have made people think this is how I should measure an information product by how big the box is and how much it thuds down on my desk; it is not consumable. I've got a hard drive here on one of my shelves that is stuffed full of gigabytes of information products. I've got someone’s entire back catalog but I'm scared to plug it into my computer because I just can't commit the time that's going to be involved to digest that; it's really like eating an elephant but when you give people a subscription membership, you think of it more like a Netflix where you can just go in and consume what you need right now. You can go and watch a TV series on Netflix and go through episodes and they queue up for you and when you finish that you go on to the next one and you've said, you know what, I'm happy to pay this monthly subscription ongoing as long as I feel I'm getting value and support. The information product can't support people but a subscription membership with a networking factor really can support people and it helps people choose what to consume and it's always available for them when they're ready. Jeff Long: Yeah, that's good. And I love that you have that community aspect built into your membership because as you know that's some of the power there is multiple minds getting together to sharpen each other. Do you have any success stories on some of your students that have gone through your membership site and plugged in or helped other people? I've got tons of them. A lot of people would know some of them. My first millionaire student was James Dyson; we pretty much invented optimize press and then I've help other people from Clay Collins through to Kevin Rogers, a copywriter. His forum that we set up as an information product has just turned one and he's absolutely flying. But we also help people in the fitness market. One of my students just made $100,000 in a month, Chris Dufey in the fitness niche. So this works for different markets; in fact one of my best to students right now is launching an information membership, Andre Chaperon and he's been doing that under my guidance each week for the last year or more and he was a one-time product I was doing affiliate promotions each month and he also believes.., you know I've convinced him that it's better for members to be a part of a community where they're accountable and they can get support. So those are some names that you would be familiar with and maybe some names you weren't. Jeff Long: Yeah, I'm a big fan of optimize press by the way. I've used it several times, very good theme, good system there. You mentioned a while ago a little bit about joint ventures and I know we could do a whole podcast interview or episode on the topic of joint ventures but what are some tips that you would offer the listener if they're thinking about doing JVs or if they're getting asked to be a part of the JV? James Shramko: So, I don't do many JVs anymore with the exception of my podcasts. They have genuine joint ventures where I will pair up with a co-host and we produce something together as a marketing tool but I don't do financial backend joint ventures often because I don't need to. Often you'll need to do a joint venture in the beginning if you're missing something. If you can't drive traffic, it makes sense to find someone who's got your customers and do a joint venture with them. So joint ventures can be very powerful. One of the reasons not to do a joint venture is if you're being a complete wuss bag and you are petrified of doing something on your own and you secretly wish that your business partner will do everything for you and you can piggyback them and hang on to their coattails; that is a very common reason for people to joint venture because of their just scared and they can't man up and step up and be courageous enough to do it on their own. So if you can buy traffic or if you can get out of having to do a joint venture I much prefer 100% ownership so be very careful when you joint venture that you are not giving up too much of the pie, make sure that it's a very, very clear agreement, upfront, so that it's clear on how the partnership will and. You need to know how will end before you started. Be very wary of doing joint ventures with friends. It's better to have a business contact who becomes a friend than a friend who becomes a business contact. Especially, be accountable to yourself. If you know you're doing a joint venture because you're just being a scaredy-cat, that's a really terrible idea to do a joint venture. It's not going to work out. Jeff Long: You just packed a lot there, that's fantastic. I was taking a little bit of notes and I'll have to go back and listen to that part because it is easy to think that a joint venture will just easily bring success you know, two mines are better than one and all the clichés that get thrown out there. James Shramko: But you know, at the very core it means that you're half the profit. Just to put it in perspective, I paid about $400,000 in partner tax for my joint venture and when I turned on that joint venture.., and I try to do it in a very amicable way, offered to buyout, offered to sell out, offered to adjust the split but none of those were met with any sort of response so in the end I just had to start my own thing. But it was literally worth $15,000 per month back into my pocket for getting the structure correct and if I'm honest about why I started the joint venture it really is because I wasn't being responsible enough to set up the technology that was required to get it started so I wouldn't of had it without the joint venture but it was pretty expensive in hindsight. So if you can learn anything from my for eye it's, be super careful about what the deal is and how it's supposed to work and in fairness when we started, it was supposed to be 50% each driving traffic and 50% each fulfilling on the product and it just didn't work out that way and a lot of partnerships don't because it's so rare that two people will move through life at the same pace. Someone might have a change in relationship, someone might move country, someone might have a different business division that's taking off and I think that's what happened in my case. My partner had different translation businesses all sort of exploding and foreign translation markets and had great businesses on the side but it meant that our business was sort of neglected. So the chance of people moving at the same pace are slim and that's why you need to know how it ends before you start it. Jeff Long: Yeah, that's so good. I had a business partner for several years, great guy, I trusted him but like you said we were just moving at different paces, kind of in different directions at the time and we did decide to part ways and that was a great decision. I still bring them on, I hire him for some projects and that definitely has well worked that way. James Shramko: I have partnerships like that where we did things together and then I purchased his halfback and then I still have a joint venture with him where he supply services in lieu of you is for you to use a self, I guess we call it a barter or trade, contra deal where he does things for me and I do things for him and that's great. So you can have really successful joint ventures but you need to be very clear why are you doing it. I think that most people fall over with the motivation. Why they're doing it is often the wrong reason and then of course everyone's Pollyanna and optimistic when they go into a joint venture, it's really easy to talk about a joint venture when there's no money coming in but once you've got several hundred thousand dollars coming through the front door, it changes people. Jeff Long: That's so good, that's such a good advice. So to the listener, you are thinking of joint ventures or if you're stepping towards that rewind this episode, listen to that; such good advice James. What are some tools that you use when you're creating some of your courses and your products? James Shramko: Mostly just a pen and paper were whiteboard, I'm not super fancy. Also my team, I might ask them to do stuff and then I'll just curate it or compile it. So for example, I'm going to be speaking at an event in Colorado soon and I just briefed my team of what I would like and they've gone and created 20 or 30 illustrations to use the slides based around a podcast that we've already done before and I'll basically just order them and put some notes in the presenters notes and the presentation will be all good to go. And I'll be able to record that with screen flow and make it an information product for my customers. Jeff Long: And how do you coordinate with your team? Is it email, is that a certain system? James Shramko: Slack, we all use Slack. You don't need to use email anymore or Skype. Jeff Long: Last question here is; with some of your courses, I know that you're a big fan of podcasts, you blog, you do a lot of video stuff so with the course or with a product how do you determine what medium to use, if it's audio or video or both or text-only? What are some of the guidelines that you follow and think you through that process? James Shramko: Well I always think about the customer and is going to help them if they have multiple modalities available to them because people learn differently. Some people like to read.., I've got one customer who will only read, he will not listen to audio, you will not watch videos, he's a pastor really but he's also a gift because we transcribe everything that I do. Every single monthly webinar that I run we transcribe in full most of my podcasts. Certainly everything one superfastbusiness.com gets transcribed. So we provide PDFs, we provide the video and the audio so when it comes to information products I like to me the video version because it's easier to make keynotes, it's really easy to record a keynote with screen flow and once I export that into a video and loads up to whistier which is our video player and we embed it into our forum my people come along and they'll strip out the audio and they'll transcribe every word of it into a PDF and it will be available for customers in whatever modality they like to learn. See, I preferred to read or listen than watch videos for some reason. When it comes to creating content for my podcasts I really like the audio medium; it's significantly easier to just talk to a microphone, don't have to do here in makeup and lighting and camera, it's really just the easiest possible modality. So the thing that's important to me is working in the medium that's easy for me to create content. In fact, recently I just created a six part business case study series with a co-host and it took us about 2 1/2 hours in total to create that so it's a very effective medium for creating good quality content, it's got a huge distribution platform with platforms like iTunes and stitcher and your own website and it's working for you 24/7. These things get downloaded like 2000 times a day which is phenomenal when you think about how much it would cost to buy ads on Google or Facebook and you know, you could just keep doing that so I like the audio medium and really helps people hear your tonality and decide if they trust you and if you know what you're talking about or not so it's a very personal medium as well. Jeff Long: That's fantastic. I have a background in video; having this podcast as well as other audio formats, a lot of times there such a benefit to that you know, you're in people's ears with the podcast with audio and it's almost this intimate thing where people feel this connection to you. James Shramko: Plus you can listen to a podcast in an airport or on a plane for jogging or doing things to where you can't necessarily watch a video so think of it as a little bit more portable and I noticed that when I put a video and audio there'll be twice as many audio downloads as they are video views. And the other thing is I don't type, I literally hardly type so I'm not sitting there blogging off like some wannabe writer you know, I just talked and my team transcribes, that's how it works for us. Jeff Long: Well James, I could ask you questions all day but I want to respect your time, I know you've got a lot going on including surfing; you were telling me a little bit about that. So James, besides your website which is superfastbusiness.com, where can people find you through social media or other outlets? James Shramko: I've got a Facebook page and I also do Twitter but that's about it. I don't care much for LinkedIn or Pinterest or Instagram, I want to keep it simple actually, I'm a pretty simple guy. Most of the time I spend in my own community answering people's questions, that's the thing I like to do the most. Jeff Long: Well James, thanks so much for being on the show giving so much good advice on these online courses, membership sites, joint ventures. I'm going to go back and listen to this again and I hope the listener does as well so James Shramko thanks so much for being on the show. James Shramko: Thanks for having me. Jeff Long: Well there you go. That was the interview with James Shramko. I know personally, I'm going to go back and listen to that episode again because there were so many good things he pulled out. Just the wisdom that he had joint ventures as well as the membership sites so if you're considering some of these things whether it is a joint venture or a membership site, definitely rewind, is that what you do with the podcast these days? Rewind, go backwards, whatever it's called to those parts and relisten to those. Hey they could do one thing for me, share this podcast out on your social media channels whether it's Twitter, Facebook you name it. I would be honored if you were to share this episode out. I think it was a great episode, it helped a lot of people and so I want to harness the power of you on a listener base to share this out so if you're listening to the podcast on your phone just did that share button and send it out to your social media channels. If you're listening to it online go ahead, copy that URL, post in Facebook, post in Twitter etc. I would be honored for you to post that out and include me on it if you don't mind. If you're on Twitter my Twitter name is @Jeff_long and that will help me see you treated that out. So if you're listening to this in time I will be at FinCon which is September 17-20 so if you're at FinCon, if you're going to FinCon definitely let me know if you're there will have to connect or if you're listening to this after FinCon and maybe you didn't go definitely ping me, let me know that you were there and will chat about the conference. If you're not going definitely check it out next year, it's something that I've heard is a really good conference and so that's why I'm going this year. Well hey, keep coming back to the show is my goal that this podcast helps of you to teach many to impact millions so keep coming back to the online course coach podcast.

Get the free bonus audio interview where Michael shares his top membership website resources and productivity tools.

Click to Download the Bonus Audio

Podcast Questions with Michael Kitces

1. Give us a background of what your business does.
2. I see the word Educator all over your website, while most people would classify themselves by their degrees or other accelerates, it looks like education in one of your priorities. Do you consider yourself primarily as an educator?
3. Why did you start offering Continuing Education services on your website?
4. How are you uniquely qualified to help accelerate the growth of people's own financial planning knowledge?
5. How has this business model positioned you as an industry leader?
6. What are some ways someone in the financial industry can help more people and increase their revenue by creating online courses?
7. Bonus: What are some of the technologies used on your website to developer the members only content? (click below to download the bonus audio interview)
8. Bonus: what are the productivity tools you use in your business?(click below to download the bonus audio interview)
9. Where can people learn more about you?

Get the free bonus audio interview where Michael shares his top membership website resources and productivity tools.

Click to Download the Bonus Audio

My Notes During the Podcast with Michael Kitces:

• Michael has a B2C and a B2B business
• He considers himself an educator
• The financial industry is 5-10 years behind with technology (there could be some opportunities here)
• He went through a process of being able to offer Continuing Education credits
• The CE provider has to give a quiz or test to show the student went through the content and passed the quiz
• His business is growing 5%-10% per month since he gives his content away for free, but they have to pay for the CE quiz and credits
• He was a speaker, then had a newsletter service, then added blogs, and then added Continuing Education services, and not he’s adding more services and businesses to serve his audience.
• If you want to create an online course in the financial services industry, be more focussed and niche, not broad and general. There are too many people doing generic courses.
• He offers the content for free but charges for the CE quizzes
• He loves Evernote to plan, blog and organize his life and business
• Don’t make your business model, the content portion. Make the monitization strategy the implementation and strategy portion
• Get the free bonus audio and hear Michael answers to: "What are some of the technologies used on your website to developer the members only content” and “What are the productivity tools you use in your business?"
• Another great interview on the topic of membership sites: http://www.superfastbusiness.com/business/how-to-jumpstart-your-membership-forum/

Michael Kitces' Bio:

I've known Kris Simmons for several years. What started out as listening to his podcast, turned into buying his e-books on how to create a proposal for my video production client. I eventually became a part of his membership site in 2013 and have been a member ever since. Kris and I both help corporate clients create high quality training videos, safety videos and much more, so I wanted to have him on the show. And, just like me, Kris is an entrepreneur, who has created very profitable ebooks, online courses and membership sites. In this episode Kris shares his insights on how to produce quality training videos. He also goes in depth of how he started and grew his online membership site. Keep listening for his tips and tricks to give the most value in a membership site, without having to kill yourself with continually adding the wrong content. Please help us bring share this content with others by leaving a rating and review. Or, share the podcast on your social media accounts directly from your podcast app or on the website.

In this show we talk about some of the following:

• I'll be at the FinCon (Financial Conference) in Charlotte, NC on September 17-20th. If you're there, I'd love to meet you.
• In this episode we start off by talking about his video production company and some tips on how to make the best training video
• We talk about how to market your courses and ebooks as well as his successes and challenges along the way
• He talks about how much value you should be bring into a course or membership site. Is there such a thing as too much value?
• What happened when he moved his forums to FB and what results that provided
• Kris recommends just getting it out there and launched, knowing that he can modify things as he moves ahead

Questions I asked Kris Simmons in the podcast

•  Tell me about your corporate video experience and background.
• What type of corporate training videos have you produced over the years?
• How do you go from safety training manual to a training video
• Share with the audience the the genesis of why you created your first e-book?
• How did you market your ebooks?
• What led you to creating online training materials for your audience?
• What is Kre8 university?
• What are some tools you use to make Kre8 University site?

Kris Simmons of 6 Strong's bio

6 STRONG’s founder and executive producer, Kris Simmons, is a leader in utilizing production, design and communication strategies for creating and executing successful corporate videos. His commitment to learning and mastering these principles won him Tennessee’s “Young Entrepreneur of the Year” honors from the U.S. Small Business Administration in 2004. It has also resulted in numerous awards from the American Advertising Federation among several other national and international organizations. Kris is an advisory board member for the Digital Video Professionals Association (DVPA) and has also served on the board of directors for Carson Newman University (his alma mater), the Chattanooga Technology Council and the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce. In addition to running 6 STRONG, Kris has helped over 10,000 video professionals worldwide learn how to be more successful in the video production industry through his training programs, ebooks, coaching services and speaking appearances. Under his leadership, the 6 STRONG team produces hundreds of video productions each year for clients ranging from the Fortune 500 to successful small businesses and non-profit organizations located in Chattanooga, Atlanta, Nashville and throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia.

You can find Kris at 6Strong and Kre8Insights.com

The goal of the Online Course Coach podcast is to interview people in different industries, so when I met Ryan Allen on a video shoot and learned of his background at the University level with eLearning and Learning Management Systems, I knew I had to get him on the show. Since I come from a family of educators (my parents are college professors), I had a great interest to hear of Ryan's experiences in online courses at the collegiate level. He shared how they've grown in their Learning Management Systems (LMS), how they work with professors to put their courses online and some of the struggles he's had in the process. We discuss open source LMS' like Moodle and why they use a custom LMS for their online course content. Ryan's department helps professors by teaching them how to use software, get online and use the LMS, so the professors can more effectively teach their students. He works with the professor of crafting a course for online consumption, which usually means restructuring the in-class content to be more effective online. While some people don't like online learning, Ryan gives a compelling reason for eLearning in all sectors, including in the university setting. Ryan shares some of the tools and resources they use to help their professors build their eLearning courses. Many of these tools are the same ones that are used outside a university settings, which is good to hear that various screen capture tools can be versatile across industries. The good thing is that while many of the tools they use are robust and expensive, there are many tools they use that are free of very affordable and Ryan talks about them in the interview. The University of Dayton has many types of online classes and Ryan shares some of the differences between an online course without instructor led training and one that has it. I find that the courses that we create for our clients have much better retention if there is a video of the instructor's face, or if the students have access to the  instructor through private chats, forums, weekly calls or other such ways. While it's easier to create an online course to "set it and forget it", the students actually learn best, when an instructor is involved in some way. What are some ways that you can be a part of your online training, so that students can have access to you and your experience? This could make all the difference in the success of your online course, tutorial videos and eLearning. While most of the interviews on this podcast have been with business or entrepreneurial applications, it's nice to hear how the masters of teaching (universities) have been doing it best both in person and online for hundreds of years. I enjoyed my time with Ryan and learned a lot through our conversation.

About Ryan Allen:

"Ryan Allen is the Associate Director of E-Learning Systems and Support in the University of Dayton’s Ryan C. Harris Learning Teaching Center.  He has eleven years of experience working in the field of educational technology with a focus on distance education pedagogy and the use of Learning Management Systems.  Ryan manages the development, training and support of the UD’s open source Learning Management System - Isidore.  He received his undergraduate and graduate degrees in Business Administration from Heidelberg University.  He is also a Project Management Professional.

Tools he uses to help the professors:

• Blackboard Collaborate to help him teach the professors
• Screencasting software (Snagit or Camtasia)

Find Ryan Here: University of Dayton

Fun Delta Airlines Safety Videos that take a boring topic and make it engaging and funny. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vttuonfu2BM