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How Iesha Vincent Left Her 9-to-5 by Becoming an Influencer and Now Teaches Others To Do the Same
- Who: Iesha Vincent
- Website: livinglesh.com
- Course Topic: Influencer Course
- Interesting Stats: 225,000 Social Media and Blog Users
Who are you and what course have you created?
I’m a former high school teacher. I decided to follow my passion for fashion, beauty, and traveling and become a lifestyle content creator. Currently based in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia, I work full-time as a content creator and mom. On a daily basis, I take pride in engaging and building my community of over 225,000 individuals across my blog and social media channels.
I’ve been running my business full-time since 2016, but my brand, LivingLesh, has existed since 2014. When I first started, I had no idea what I was getting into. If you had asked me then, I would never have imagined that my little blog would grow into a full-fledged business that allowed me to leave my 9-to-5.
My course – The Influencer Biz – is a self-paced course designed for influencers, bloggers, and content creators to learn about running a successful influencer business. The course deep dives into how to organize processes in your business and automate those processes, how to understand legal and organize finances, how to pitch brands and secure brand partnerships, how to grow other sources of revenue, and much more.
What market does your online course serve?
Over the years, I have seen many influencers looking for help understanding legal contracts, setting rates, and organizing the business aspects of the influencer business. This course fills that market and doesn’t solely teach influencers how to create content and successfully grow on social media. Instead, it teaches influencers, bloggers, and content creators how to run their businesses so that they can scale their businesses to full brands.
What’s the biggest benefit of taking your course?
The biggest benefit of taking The Influencer Biz course is that you gain a lot of insight into how to run a small business. Though content creation and social media are a big aspect of being an influencer, there is more that goes into running an influencer business and students will benefit by learning about the legal, financial organization, team growth, and other business aspects.
How did you get into the market?
I came up with the idea to create this online course through seeing questions in many of the Facebook influencer groups that I am a part of where many of the influencers in the group were consistently lost when it came to business processes and aspects of their work. There were constant questions about what something meant in a contract, how to charge certain rates, and how to grow their business to not be dependent on-brand campaigns. From seeing those questions consistently, I felt that there was a need.
Why did you decide to create an online course in the first place?
My passion has always been in teaching. I went to school to be a high school teacher but changed my career path based on life circumstances. So when I saw there were a lot of influencers looking for help in the business aspect of influencing, I decided to create this course. I had already been mentoring some influencers and they consistently told me that if I had a course people would really enjoy it and find so much benefit in it.
Did you have any moments of doubt before you created/launched it?
When I first opened up early access for my course, I went into a moment of self-doubt because I wasn’t getting a lot of traction in making any early sales on the course. I became defeated and thought that I had spent all of this time and money to create this course and it was not going to go anywhere. I still have those moments when I am not seeing the sales that I want to see, but I know that there are always shifts and that I just have to keep putting in the effort and educating people on the benefits of the course.
If so what made you turn it around and do it anyway?
I had a test group that I let into the course early on. That way they could help me in understanding where the strong points were in the course and test out all features. The testimonials and feedback that I got from them showed me that this course was something that is valuable and that it would just take time for others to get on board and enroll in the course.
What’s your online course like?
The course includes modules that each contain various lessons based on the module topic. The lessons are videos with coordinating slide decks taking students through the topics and strategies. The course also comes with an extensive workbook. You can fill it in and use it right along with the lessons. The course also includes templates that you can use in business processes, video tutorials on tools specific to influencer business processes, bonus content, a private Facebook group, and live Q&A sessions with me.
How long did it take you to create your course?
It took me about six months to create my course. When I first decided to create a course, I first polled other influencers to see what specific topics they were looking to get deeper information about that they would actually pay to learn about. I then took that data and sat down and outlined all of the modules and lessons in the modules.
After the outline was created, I hired an independent contractor to help build templates. They also assisted with the graphic aspects of the course. As I went through each lesson, I wrote out all of the content on each of the slide decks and for the pages that went into the workbooks, printables, and other digital assets.
After all the content was written, typed, up, and reviewed, I recorded each lesson starting from the first module to the last module. Once I had each lesson recorded and uploaded to the platform, I brought on my test group to have them test out the features over the span of 8 weeks. If there were any errors, they submitted them and I fixed them.
Tell us a little about the process of launching your course and getting your first sale(s).
I planned out a marketing strategy. It started with first educating my audience about the upcoming launch of the course and what the course was. Then I also established a date to “open the doors” for the first student cohort.
I spent about 2-3 weeks in the education phase. I pushed those who were interested in a newsletter list. The list sent emails with initial free content and kept them up-to-date on the upcoming launch date.
Once we got closer to the date, I went through my launch phase. This is where I set up an email campaign that included discounts and bonus content for those who signed up at different times throughout the time that the doors were… Click To TweetI also did Facebook ads with targets who I thought would benefit from the course.
Do you have a lead magnet?
I have an influencer resource page on my blog. It includes free PDF downloads that work as lead magnets to bring potential students. They go to an email campaign that educates them further on the course. Then it alerts them when doors are opened.
What’s the traffic strategy that works best for you?
My biggest traffic strategy has been SEO for my sales page, social media using Reels and TikTok, and webinars. Teachable did a summit to educate others on how to launch. I took their launch template which included the above aspects and used that. It has helped me to grow and generate sales.
What online course platform are you using?
I use Teachable as my course platform.
Check Out Teachable
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- Price Range: $0 (+ transaction fees) to $299/month
- Most Popular Plan: Pro Plan at $119/month
- Annual Discount: Yes, take 17% off!
- Free Trial: Try out Teachable’s core features for free
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Do you like it?
I do like the platform. I received a lot of assistance when starting to design my course. That made it easy for it to fit my needs and build my course. Now, with it being launched, it has allowed me to monitor sales and student activity. Plus I receive direct connections to my students whether they are in the Facebook group or not.
Are there any features you wish it had?
The only feature that I currently wish they had was a system that would automatically detect what was being said in a video lesson. That way captions for the video could be auto-generated. I am looking to put captions on my videos, but it is very time-consuming.
What made you decide to use your chosen platform over others?
I decided to go with this platform based on referrals from other course creators as well as from my connection with chloédigital.
What other tools do you use to run your online course business?
I use Mailchimp for my lead magnets and email campaigns, Facebook Ads for ads, Google Analytics to monitor analytics on my sales page, and Zoom for one-on-one sales calls.
What books or training programs have you found useful on your journey to a successful business owner that others might find valuable too?
The Growth consulting plan that I have with chloédigital has been my biggest training and assistance with my journey as a business owner.
Do you have any big mistakes you’ve made along the way that you’d be willing to share?
When I first completed the course and set up all of my pages, I thought that people would jump on it right away simply by me sharing it on social media and sharing it with my blog newsletter. I generated some traffic, but not much. Then I tried to put money into Facebook ads without any marketing strategy of how I wanted to push it. I realized that I was making a big mistake because I didn’t have a marketing strategy at all. I needed to step back and form one before I officially launched.
Please share some idea of revenue.
When I first officially launched, I enrolled 15 students in my first enrollment period. My goal was to enroll at least 10. This would give me a 15% revenue based on the investment costs that I had already put into the course to build it. I exceeded my goal on my first launch. Currently, I have an enrollment goal of 15 students in the upcoming enrollment period.
Please tell us a little about what the money you’ve earned from your course has done for you.
Adding this source of revenue to my influencer business has helped me to branch out in other aspects of my business and invest more into myself. It has helped me to be able to further grow in other aspects of creating that I wasn’t able to before such as being able to upgrade my camera, and add more contractors to my team so that I can step back from some of the tasks in my business and focus on the tasks that I love, and begin planning on building a custom home.
What has creating your course done for you personally?
Creating this course has given me more confidence in expanding my business. This course was something that I was interested in doing and was a passion project.
I wanted it to succeed not based on revenue and growth of my business, but because it was something that I wanted to succeed because of my love to teach and inspire. - Iesha Vincent Click To Tweet
Do you have a story of a transformation from any of your clients?
I have had a variety of students tell me they have gained confidence in running their businesses and demanding fair rates for the work that they do as influencers. In a space where influencers are often taken advantage of, it makes me feel great that these students are now speaking up for themselves and have the knowledge behind them to demand their worth.
What advice do you have for people just starting out?
As you are preparing to launch your course, make sure to have a full marketing plan. Invest time and effort into putting that plan in place and scheduling each part. Creating a course that you don’t launch successfully can be heartbreaking. I wish that early on I knew the aspects of what it took to put a full course launch marketing plan together so that my initial attempt at launching wasn’t a failure.
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