Today on the podcast I’m talking to my client Cami Farey of Simple Site Blueprint!
Before Cami came to the Accelerator she was running her own web design business, booking 1:1 clients charging premium rates. Like many service-based business owners, however, she was at the whim of the limited number of hours in her day, which had her searching for a new (more scalable) business model.
Enter the Accelerator.
When I met Cami she had a small email list of 250 subscribers, had never sold a product or done a webinar before. She was starting from scratch.
In this episode, we look at the strategies behind Cami’s success. We get into the nitty gritty details of all the milestones Cami hit in her BRAND NEW online course business (and exactly how she hit them).
In less than a year, Cami:
- Enrolled 4x as many students as projected during her course pre-sale
- Hosted 15+ webinars
- 10x her email subscribers
- Blew past her first online course launch goals
This podcast is an amazing listen for anyone entering the online course world as a total newbie with a small audience, as Cami was when she started working with us.
Tune in below to hear Cami’s story & read more from Cami’s interview!
Hi Cami! Please Introduce yourself.
I’m Cami and I’ve got a course called Simple Site Blueprint (simplesiteblueprint.com) where I teach entrepreneurs how to create stunning websites that sell their services — without wasting months on DIY or spending $5,000+ on a designer.
My students are coaches, virtual assistants, photographers, home organizers, web designers, healers, and so many more. I love helping them go from website shame to “man, I’m proud to send you there!” and book more clients as a result.
Everyone thinks that they need a Ph.D. in computer science and/or a trust fund to create a great website, but it’s not true. As long as you’ve got the right guidance, it can be really simple.
Where I see a lot of smart business owners get stuck is that they think they need a fancy, overly-complicated website to stand out and book clients. But actually the opposite is true — you need to simplify to amplify.
Simple doesn’t always mean easy, though. A big part of my work with 1:1 web design clients over the years (camillefarey.com) has been developing a framework that helps my clients get clear on who they are, what they do, and what they want so that we can build a website that’s reverse-engineered to help them get there.
Now I’m teaching this framework to other business owners and helping them create their own gorgeous, money-making websites from scratch!
What was your biggest hesitation or struggle in your business before joining the Accelerator?
Before joining The Accelerator, I was offering 1:1 website design services and trying to figure out how to scale. I was booked-out with clients (yes, I’m aware that this is a champagne problem) and struggling with a few things, including...
- Even though I was charging premium rates, my earnings were directly tied to my time and energy in a way that I knew wasn’t going to be sustainable over the next 10+ years.
- I absolutely did NOT want to grow an agency. For my personality, the idea of running an agency = full nightmare.
- My energy and output fluctuates. Sometimes I’m really “on” and productive. I want to create non-stop and tell everyone about my ideas! Other times I want to curl up in bed, read Harry Potter, and talk to zero humans. This is not ideal for 1:1 client work.
One of the big myths floating around is that courses are “too hard” compared to services, so I actually wasn’t even considering scaling with a course before I met Mariah.
Now that I’ve sold both, I can see how much nuance is missing from that argument.
At a basic level, yes, it is simpler and quicker to sell a $5,000 website to one person rather than sell a $500 course to 10 people. You need an audience to sell courses and that takes time. You also need to be constantly bringing in new leads.
With services, the challenge is in the delivery rather than the lead generation. It might be straightforward to sell that $5,000 project, but then you gotta manage it, deliver it, and navigate shifting timelines and stakeholders.
Ultimately, I think that running any kind of business is challenging — doesn’t matter what you’re selling. It’s up to you to decide which particular challenge you’d like to take on. For me, that was creating a course!
Did you already have a website, product(s), or services? Tell us about where your business was before starting the program.
Before joining The Accelerator, I had a successful web design business working with 1:1 clients. I’d productized my services, developed a signature process, and gotten really clear on my ideal client, why I’m different, and the results I deliver. I love services for this reason — you’re getting paid to learn and do market research!
Courses and services are SUCH different business models, so when I joined The Accelerator, I was starting from scratch in some major ways...
- I had a teeny email list of 250 subscribers
- I had never hosted a webinar or sold a product
- I didn’t have an existing source of traffic (no YouTube channel, Pinterest account, or organic traffic to my blog because my business had been running on word of mouth)
What is your industry and are there many other courses on your topic? Are there no other courses on your topic?
I teach Squarespace web design, so I’m definitely not the first person at this party! There are quite a few courses on my topic, but I see that as a positive thing. It means there’s demand. It means that this niche works.
It also means that I have friends and colleagues to talk to, which is a MASSIVELY under-rated benefit of having a bit of choice in the marketplace.
In normal jobs, people can just Google their expected salary range and check LinkedIn for ideas about how their career might grow. We don’t have any of that in the online course industry (and don’t even get me started on the inflated numbers and wild promises that you see in FB ads).
I’m lucky in my niche because I can call up another Squarespace course creator and have a chat about what’s working, what’s not working, and how we’re dealing with XYZ. It’s a huge perk of not being the only person teaching about a certain topic!
How did you feel while taking our program? What changes / results did you start seeing right away in your business?
I’ve loved every minute of the Accelerator. The outcomes of the program are so specific that if you do the work, you’re going to get results. It’s basically impossible not to.
I started seeing changes right away. In the first 8 weeks of The Accelerator, I…
- Nailed down my course topic and idea with Mariah’s copystalking exercise and support from The Accelerator group
- Hosted a viral giveaway, which grew my email list from 250 subscribers to just under 500
- Created a webinar to pre-sell my course
- Made 19 sales and earned just over $5,600 on my very first webinar!
Based on the size of my email list, I was expecting to make 5 sales, so 19 really blew my mind — especially since the course didn’t exist yet. I remember posting a video in the group where I was like “I can’t believe the humans want the thing!!” I was so excited.
After that, I focused on creating and delivering my course to a group of pilot students. I also hosted a couple more webinars to my own email list. My first webinar went so well, I just wanted to keep going!
I wish I could tell you my next couple of webinars were as amazing as the first and I skipped off into the sunset with wads of cash, but actually they tanked.
Looking back on it, I’m grateful for those failed webinars because I learned two key lessons about having a course-based business:
- You need to grow your email list between promotions
- Your email list doesn’t compound, meaning that if you have 1,000 subscribers for promo #1 and 1,200 subscribers for promo #2, then you’re only really selling to 200 people in promo #2
- I’m so glad I learned these lessons early — and FAST!
After my failed webinars, I immediately changed tactics and decided to make list-building my top priority before doing a full launch of my course. I did this almost entirely through joint venture webinars, which I learned about in Webinar Rockstar®.
Since then, I’ve become the JV webinar queen and 10x’d my email list without paid ads or a ton of traffic. I’m obsessed with how powerful and quick JV webinars are!
Most recently, I followed the framework in Launch Your Signature Course® to do my first full launch of Simple Site Blueprint. I went into my launch with an email list of 2