selling information doesn't work anymore if you're somebody who is trying to build an audience and to take this expertise of yours to teach your audience how to do something you actually do come from a place of service and you're thinking that you can package this information and sell it and make a living generate Revenue unfortunately that's not going to happen and it's sad to say especially as somebody who has been selling online courses since 2017 but in 2022 we noticed some things and we definitely made a change in our business to be able to not
just survive but thrive in this new space and I want to share with you exactly how to do that because it's not information used should be selling it should be something else which I'm going to tell you in just a moment and no I'm not going to make you wait till the end or download anything in order to get that I'm going to tell you trust me but first let's go into some of the data to show you people aren't buying online courses like they used to in 2020 we were at the height because everybody
was at home because of the pandemic but then over time in the next couple years people got overloaded and just tired and you probably aren't buying online courses we've see we saw it on our end as well people just were not buying online courses as much as they used to it used to be so easy we P we past that Golden Era of just selling information now right but number two those who are buying online courses are seeing abysmal completion rates I mean we're talking industrywide 5 to 15% which means means five out of every
100 students who pay for an online course are completing it that's 95 people who don't get the full value of what is being offered there we saw this on our end as well the decline and we said we don't want this anymore we have to make a change and there's been some studies like this one from research gate here that's showing percentages as low as 3% for completion rates which is just insane so even if you are selling online courses and are successful doing that are you really succeeding if you're students aren't completing them no
so what does work what are we supposed to do what can we sell well in order to tell you that we have to get to the root cause of why information no longer is of value and it's because there is so much information out there I mean before back then information was valuable right when I started my first online course it was in 2008 I was selling information to help people pass an exam this information did not exist anywhere online so people paid to get access to it passed their architectural exams and I got paid
and that was great we are past the Golden Ages the Golden Era of just having information be valuable because there is so much of it not only is there so much people can find and search for and it's all free but there's so much getting force-fed down everybody's throat that we're just we don't want more information right so what is working today well we have to think think about what is scarce for people today what is valuable for people today and what is valuable today time is valuable because for all of us it is scarce
and finite we have to stop selling information and start selling implementation implementation the actual process of doing the thing or getting results from that information right and it can be done in three different kinds of ways and based on the way that you select or the approach that you want to take you can change your pricing model your business model and even just your business structure so let's talk about it number one do it for them this is what we like to call a service now what's interesting is you may have started a service and
tried to then convert it into an online course to try to automate it or generate passive income from that that is much much harder to do now again for the same reason there's so much of that information freely available a service is a great way to help people because you can be the person to actually Implement and do the things for them a lot of people wish they had a skill or don't have the time to do something and if you can do it for them you can get paid in fact if you are just
starting out starting a service-based business which is the least passive thing you could do is the quickest way to generate Revenue person has problem or need you have the ability to help them with that hey hire me I'll do it for you boom you can get paid now there are ways to scale this this is where agencies come into play we're not going to go too deep into this but if you were to then hire people to do that service for your target audience then you could be more of a manager and more a CEO
versus somebody doing that work and that's how through the power of people and perhaps even software right software as a service you could scale this up and start to generate perhaps a little bit more passive income in that manner but let's move on to number two do it with them what is this exactly well this is either coaching or Consulting so instead of just literally doing the thing for them you are walking them through the process you're taking them with you on that Journey you're doing it with them this is something that you can also
charge quite a bit for and it does require your time and it still can benefit from more of an agency type model if you have people who represent the process that you teach sure but the key word here is accountability this is where you can through accountability serve these people and yes the information that was available in the course or in your head still may be there and be required the steps are required but that plus one of accountability is going to be the differentiator there this is what most people need and why online courses
alone don't work because there is no accountability right we all hype up the sales page and how great this thing is once you get into it but once you get into it you're kind of left to your own devices that's not working and that's the business model change that we made at SPI which takes us to number three doing it with others that's a community or cohorts right you can run people in groups through what it is that you're teaching because that accountability is there and Studies have shown that people are more likely to succeed
when doing the thing that they're doing alongside other people I mean think about going to the gym it's so much easier to go to the gym when you know a buddy's going to be there or you have somebody to call you on that day that you don't want to wake up or you're late to go out on that run whatever it is you know that inherently that it's so much easier to do that so we as creators we can create those spaces we can set up a circle account or a LinkedIn group or whatever to
bring our people together to help encourage them to go through a process right it's just so much harder to have the willpower to go through an online course on your own especially if the material is a little bit harder this accountability between both number two and number three here are absolutely key accountability is the key word and again stop selling information start selling implementation that's what people want if your tire is flat on the road you don't want the information about how to change that tire you want somebody to come and do that for you
and get you on your way as soon as possible and that's what we should be offering that's what we should be selling it's either access to us or people or each other in order to achieve a goal not just the information cuz the information is everywhere in 2020 we launched our very first Community it's called SPI Pro and you can find it at SPI pro.com this is for higher level entrepreneurs who have success in their business who want to come together and what was really interesting is we ran a survey and this survey the number
one least thing people wanted in the community was more content they didn't want more information they wanted connection they wanted collaboration opportunities they wanted join masterminds which is exactly what happens in here we've since raised the price of this because there is so much value in bringing the community together in 20122 we launched our second community and this is a community for more people especially beginners in the audience called our all access past and this has been the most incredible thing because people are able to go through the information that we already had these online
courses that were available but we've restructured them around Community again Community powered courses we even run these things called Accel El ators you can see one here that started for email marketing specifically it has a specific start date and a specific end date and that's really great cuz people know there's a clear start and finish line to this thing and they're going through it together and here are the incredible results for one of our last accelerators 110 people signed up 40 people finished which is a 36% finish rate and that's not just not getting through
the content that's taking action on the things that we're teaching we have a number of courses this one was sort of a 2011 podcasting course we teach everything from email webinars uh creating online courses creating communities all the things inside of the all access path but all this to say the power of community to help people achieve a goal it's not the information alone that's doing it it's the information along with other people with structure with Guidance with accountability and that is huge so you can still sell information but it's not the information alone that's
going to do it so a few things here convert the convenience people pay for a convenience I remember when I first started selling my architecture guide back in the day uh to help people pass an exam much of that information was the same information that they could find on my website at Green exam academy.com that website still exists it's still providing Revenue monthly for over 15 years now which is pretty wild uh and mostly passive but the reason why people were buying that information even though it was still on the website for free was because
of the way it was conveniently put together because it included practice exams and other things all in one spot right and there was accountability kind of built into that so convert the convenience not the information right it's much easier and there's value in this thing I have to offer versus you either figuring this out on your own searching the internet and kind of you know getting lost and all the mess out there come here do it will help you that's the way to do it next you got to really understand what the differentiation is between
what you have to offer and how it's packaged versus what people can find for free because more often than not people are coming here on YouTube to find answers to their things and in many cases sure they might be able to do it if they were to implement it but what implementation opportunities are available inside of what it is a cheer offering and it doesn't have to be a big cohort or anything like that it doesn't have to be coaching but what specifically do you have that is different than the frame information that people can
find anywhere you have to call that out upfront or else people are just going to say oh this person's charging for stuff I can get anywhere else so that's number two number three proof is priceless proof is priceless support your claims about what it is that you're teaching and the Transformations that it could be offering people with real life case studies and proof that this thing actually works which leaves us with a little bit of a conundrum especially if you are doing this for the first time you haven't had students yet how can you get
proof to get students in the first place well this is where our 111 strategy comes into play find one person with one problem and give them one result I have a video that I'll point you to that you can go to it's a very short video that'll go through a little bit more of that detail if you need it and if you're just starting out that's where I recommend you go next and it explains the 111 strategy so that you can get started sooner than later start getting those real life results so that you can
then use that as proof to then scale up and sell your things so good luck hit that subscribe button because I'm going to help you with this business advice out here there's a lot of people who teach business I've been doing it for 15 years I've built a number of different businesses and I'm here to teach you what mistakes to avoid and how to get more money more quickly I got you
