How Mallory Aitchison is Building a Cryptocurrency Education Platform One Step at a Time

Who: Mallory Aitchison

Website: genesisgrouptrading.com
Course Topic: Cryptocurrency and foreign exchange

Interesting Stats: Boost Instagram engagement by 23,000%

Who are you and what course have you created?

My name is Mallory Aitchison, I am 23-years old, and I am the CEO of Genesis Group LLC in Minneapolis, MN. We focus on cryptocurrency and foreign exchange education. The site offers a paid, subscription-based package where our students can gain access to professional traders’ live sessions and trade ideas.

We found that learning how to invest can be extremely daunting, so our goal is to make it simple. Truly anyone can learn how to do this no matter your age, gender, or where you come from.

Trading is incredible because it connects people from different backgrounds all over the world. Our course utilizes a process where we trade, explain how we trade, help our traders practice what they learn, and then monitor and supervise. We have created an interactive community with our traders through Discord, so people are able to connect with one another and ask questions when needed. We have really created something special.

What market does your online course serve?

Our target market lies primarily between the age groups of 19-30 years old, with a mix of male and female. However, people across all ages want to learn how to be financially literate in investing so we can get a little bit of everything. Typically, the people who utilize our course have an interest in making another stream of income from home. Day trading is something that many are looking to get into, so we also target individuals with interests lying there.

What’s the biggest benefit of taking your course?

Individuals are able to take the uncertainty and noise out of learning to trade. There are many other programs, academies, and courses out there. However, we are 100% people and trading-focused. We have a process that is streamlined and detailed. We also keep open lines of communication with all of our students, so they are not alone. It helps give students a structure to learn how to trade in the foreign exchange and crypto markets. The biggest advantage we have is our community, people are not going through our course alone.

How did you get into the market?

I came together with my CXO, Kenny Diaz, CFO, Mason Schuler, and COO Joel Arias about a year ago. At the time, we were all a part of another trading academy with dozens of students we were teaching. We saw some of the flaws in this other program and decided that we could create our own program with the components we wanted.

Why did you decide to create an online course in the first place?

With the pandemic happening, many people are stuck at home – whether they are working or unemployed. We wanted to provide people with a roadmap to beginner investing. We wanted to provide as much structure as possible to make it as simple as possible.

Did you have any moments of doubt before you created/launched it?

We certainly did. With all of my partners coming from another similar company, we wanted to execute our vision with as much precision as possible. We wanted to make sure we were providing tons of value to people, while also making it simple and easy to use. There was a lot of trial and error with creating our course, but with feedback from our team and students, it has evolved to what it is today.

If so, what made you turn it around and do it anyway?

We knew this was something that can really help people. That was our continuous driver. In our eyes, this was something that people really needed and we wanted to give it to them.

What’s your online course like?

We have a beginner series that is filled with tutorial videos and text. From there, we allow our students to hop on our live trading sessions via Zoom to take trade ideas and learn analysis from our trading educators. The reason we utilize zoom is so we are able to have a more personal connection with our traders. We are able to have them turn their video on, and also type commentary and questions in the chat during our live sessions.

How long did it take you to create your course?

It took about 2 months to fully create and build our website. As time goes on, we will be adding to our course. We have a full educator team that is going to put out informational videos on different strategies and analyses.

It’s great having a diverse team of trading educators because everyone has a different set of knowledge to bring to the table. Each person has a different trading and teaching style to accommodate our different students.

Tell us a little about the process of launching your course and getting your first sale(s).

We had a very warm market of individuals that had an interest in trading that we had connected with through our past ventures. Our biggest puzzle piece was having 4-6 sales representatives that receive a commission in selling our course. We also tried to make it as easy as possible to purchase and start using our course. We utilize Wix, which gives several different payment options and allows us to have monetized content on our site specifically for our students.

Do you have a lead magnet?

We advertise primarily on social media, Instagram, and youtube. People search for a lot of this information online, so we drop educational content on our Instagram and Youtube so prospective customers can see what we are all about.

What’s the traffic strategy that works best for you?

Utilizing several different types of ads with different faces helps our traffic. We also try to make sure our SEO is running correctly to boost the engagement on our website and bring in our targeted audience. I think diversity is very important in driving traffic from different sources. Social media is a very powerful tool when used correctly because this is our prime source, we try to be active and put out different content every single day.

What online course platform are you using?

We had to be creative in how we used our course platform. Wix has a portion of their website called ‘Blogs’. You are able to monetize these to paid customers, so our entire learning academy is built here. I like using this because you are able to make different categories and add pretty much anything to the blogs such as videos, pictures, and links. It’s great because only our paid students have access to this content.

Do you like it?

We have enjoyed it so far. We may look at moving to something different as time goes on, but this is working perfectly for now.

Are there any features you wish it had?

I wish there was a way we could arrange the Blogs in non-chronological order, that is the only issue that feature has.

What made you decide to use your chosen platform over others?

We wanted to be able to add and build the course as time went by.

The primary form of our education comes from our live sessions, so our course built into our subscription is the side-car to that. -Mallory Aitchison Click To Tweet

We wanted our website to be the prime driver of collecting payment and learning, and discord being the place for commentary and live sessions.

What other tools do you use to run your online course business?

Wix has multiple different apps that can be added to the website. There are apps for analytics and SEO, design, and other tools. I try to utilize as many of these apps as possible.

What books or training programs have you found useful on your journey to a successful business owner that others might find valuable too?

Some of my favorite books are ‘Relentless’ by Tim Grover and ‘Hustle Harder’ by Curtis Jackson AKA 50 Cent. Mindset is everything to becoming a successful leader and business owner, so I focus a lot of my reading and podcast listening in that category.

Please share some idea of revenue.

We are currently selling our packages for $89 a month for unlimited access to our courses and live sessions. Our goal for year one is to sell 500+ packages, bringing $44k in revenue per month to the company.

Please tell us a little about what the money you’ve earned from your course has done for you.

We aren’t to our target goal yet to be enjoying some of these things, but we love the community we have built. We support one another through the good and hard times.

I have been able to make connections all across the world with our students and educators. Some of our goals would be to expand our business into social media marketing, helping out companies in building their social media presence. We also want to start our own podcast with our founders as well.

In addition to revenue are there any numbers you would like to share?

We currently have an Instagram base of 500+ organically built Instagram followers. The key to this is being consistent in posting different content as well as 5+ stories a day. We have been able to boost our Instagram engagement by 23,000% with this strategy. I make it a goal to post one post on our feed a day, with 5 stories on our Instagram. Make sure to use interactive stories such as polls, quizzes, and questions to engage your audience. This has boosted our overall Instagram engagement rate to 85% which is unheard of for Instagram.

What has creating your course done for you personally?

It’s very fulfilling for us to be able to work with people each day towards financial literacy. Learning how to trade can change people’s situations in more ways than one. We love hearing stories about how someone was able to make a big purchase, go on a trip, or even pay off debt. Helping others is the most fulfilling thing for us.

Do you have a story of a transformation from any of your clients?

Among my leadership duties, I also act as our lead cryptocurrency educator. I had one of my old business mentors from the insurance industry begin to trade and take crypto trade ideas from us. He was able to bring his daily trading up to around $5k per day. He had helped me so much in my career so it was great to be able to give something back to him.

What advice do you have for people just starting out?

Work with a team of people who align in goals and morals. -Mallory Aitchison Click To Tweet

Our leadership team is incredible. We are able to openly bounce ideas off of each other and give feedback. I can also say, make sure your website is top-notch. Little details are everything on a website. I built the website myself, but without the critiques I got from my partners, it wouldn’t be what it is today.

Learn more about Mallory Aitchison of genesisgrouptrading.com:

Website: genesisgrouptrading.com
Genesis Trading Twitter