How Russell Masters Transformed Internal Training for His Staff Into a $997 Digital Marketing Course

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  • Who: Russell Masters 
  • Website: creativelydisruptive.com
  • Course Topic: Digital Marketing
  • Interesting Stats: 2500 gymnastics business owners

Who are you and what course have you created?

I created Creatively Disruptive to help with digital marketing.

What market does your online course serve?

The Revenue Toolbox is designed for business owners – gymnastics, restaurants, salons, dance studios, etc.  We are launching separate courses for each.

What’s the biggest benefit of taking your course?

An easy-to-comprehend and step-by-step guide on how to maximize digital marketing to grow your business. This is an agency-proven method that we use internally for our agency, as well as for our clients. We use it to train our own staff!

We teach business owners how to market their business using the same strategies that we use if they were a client of ours.

How did you get into the market?

We’ve been serving small business owners since the inception [of Creatively Disruptive]. We understand that certain restrictions, whether it be time, money, or business structure, do not allow for business owners to outsource their digital marketing to a trusted agency. The Revenue Toolbox walks any business owner — at any level — on how to maximize their digital marketing.

Russell Masters siteWhy did you decide to create an online course in the first place?

Digital Marketing done well is a real game-changer for small businesses. We have seen time and time again how it’s literally life-changing for the families that own and run them. We want to put this power in the hands of as many businesses as possible with an easy-to-follow use and execute course, something that will go a long way to recession-proof these businesses who often are hardest hit by economic downturns.

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

No, not at all. We knew it would be great information to share. We have seen it work magic with hundreds of clients we have and we use it for internal staff training. It was not really about taking a risk on an idea that may work. It was about taking a system that we have used time and time again successfully and sharing that with people who want to learn how to do it on their own or within their organizations.

What’s your online course like?

The Revenue Toolbox is video guided with voice-over and presenter guiding step by step through building campaigns on FB, Instagram, and Google and website advice and guides with PDF downloads to print out. It is fully comprehensive including a professional presenter to communicate very clearly.

How long did it take you to create your course?

It started as an internal course that we use to train our own employees. We then converted it and upgraded it with a lot more polish into a consumer-friendly product that is easy to use and benefit from. - Russell Masters Click To Tweet

That was super important to us It took about 6 months.

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

We’ve done a number of these launches for clients and have launched a previous course quite successfully during the peak of the pandemic. Utilizing Social Media posts, our Niche Facebook Groups, and we already have a funnel we have been running for several years that drives incoming conversions. It’s a pretty seamless process once done well.

Russell Masters site

Do you have a lead magnet?

We have a mini-course on helping gymnastics clubs find new staff and are also working on one or two teaser lessons that people can enroll in and watch for free. We have a pretty good reputation in this niche with a large following of over 2500 business owners in it.

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

We use paid advertising, predominantly through Facebook and Instagram as well as Google PPC advertising. It works well because it is a laser-focused method to get in front of the right audience. We’ve used this method to promote our services since we started.

What online course platform are you using?

We use Kajabi as our course platform.

Kajabi Promo

Kajabi is the All-In-One Course Platform

Kajabi is one of the top online course platforms used by successful course creators interviewed on coursemethod.com. Kajabi includes email marketing and other tools that make it easy to run your entire business from their platform.

  • Price Range: $149 to $399/month
  • Most Popular Plan: Growth Plan at $199/month
  • Annual Discount: Yes, take 20% off!
  • Free Trial: Get a 14-day free trial (credit card required)
*Our content is reader supported, which means when you buy from links you click on, we may earn a commission.

Do you like it?

Yes, it’s a robust online course platform and the student-facing course pages are laid out nicely which is important to us.

Are there any features you wish it had?

Yes, to be able to copy individual lessons rather than only being able to duplicate entire courses.

Russell Masters site

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

We reviewed a number of platforms and Kajabi, for us, stuck out as the clear leader. The student-facing part of Kajabi was easy to use, and the backend seemed to make sense. The features were what we needed, including being able to combine various courses into different packages, the way the pricing options worked, and the email marketing capabilities, including automations post lesson completion. We also felt they had a pretty good roadmap of where they wanted to go.

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

None, with the exception of our WordPress website which is our main website, and Woosender which we use for lead automation.

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

“Storybrand” by Donald Miller

“Ogilvy on Advertising” by David Ogilvy

The Kajabi University

Do you have any big mistakes you’ve made along the way that you’d be willing to share?

This is not really related to courses, but as an agency, in the early days, we took pretty much any client who wanted help and ended up taking a lot of clients who just weren’t ready to advertise their business seriously because they had an untested business.

We started doing a Results Action Plan and business audit before taking on a new client after that which has resulted in being able to better understand our clients before committing to work with them. - Russell Masters Click To Tweet

Please share some idea of revenue.

We ran our course as a “Pay What You Can”  based offering due to the impact COVID was having on small businesses. While that obviously did not drive revenue, we did find that over 70% of businesses offered a payment of some amount for access to the course even though Free was an option.

We have just released our expanded version of that course, now as a paid course with a one-time fee of $997 for lifetime access.

Russell Masters site

What has creating your course done for you personally?

It gives us the opportunity to help more small businesses within the various niches we serve because we can only take on a certain number of clients. We want to be able to have no limits to the number of businesses we can help. For us, that is the number 1 priority.

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

One part of our course, during COVID, was how to create virtual classes for kids’ activity centers whose sole revenue model was on-location classes. A swim club was able to stay open by offering dry land training, in a virtual setting, for its swimmers instead of closing its doors. This was the reason we created our courses and importantly why we made them available for a “Pay What You Can” during the pandemic.

What advice do you have for people just starting out?

Don’t try and get it perfect, just get it good and then launch. We did spend a little too long the second time around trying to get it perfect when in fact the course was already very good. We should have launched it and then improved it.

Additionally, actively seeking your students’ feedback using surveys as the primary source of how you improve the course is the best way to create something that will be perceived as valuable. We gave several business owners 100% free access to the course in return for feedback calls which we found to be extremely valuable.

Learn more about Russell Masters of creativelydisruptive.com:

Lisa Parmley
Lisa Parmley

Lisa Parmley is the founder of coursemethod.com. After gaining a Master's degree, she worked in research for about seven years. She started a training company in 2001, offering a course helping people pass a professional exam. That course has earned multiple 7 figures. She created SEO and authority site building training around 2007 which went on to earn well into the 6-figure mark.

She has 22+ years of experience in the trenches creating and selling online courses. Get help starting and growing your online course business here.

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