310 We Learned A LOT! Recap From Our Online Course Completion Event
Online Course Completion Event
The good, bad, and ugly
Last Friday, a group of inspiring men and women came together to work on completing their online courses.
I co-hosted this full day event with Emily Elliot in beautiful Guelph, Ontario!
It was an amazing evening full of brainstorming, extracting our courses, eating delicious food, engaging in meaningful conversations, and sharing lots of laughter with other entrepreneurs who just 'get it'.
Whether it was struggles with picking technology for our courses or simply trying to make sense out how to prepare an online course curriculum -we shared it all!
In this episode, I do a full recap of what went down at the event: the highlights, successes, lessons learned, tips for improvement going forward…you know -the good bad and ugly from our course completion event last week!
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To connect with Emily:
Access the transcript for this episode:
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You're listening to the visionary life podcast. I'm your host, Kelsey Reidl.
Each week, I'll bring you conversations with the most visionary humans on this earth, in hopes that you'll be able to absorb their wisdom, avoid their failures and feel less alone on the roller coaster ride that is entrepreneurship.
This season, I'll be chatting with creative thinkers, masterful marketers, brick and mortar shop owners, brand builders, and people just like you who have a story to share or a vision that inspires. If I can share one quick secret with you before we get into the episode is that we all have a little bit of visionary inside of us, you know, that spark that nudges us to pursue our full potential in this lifetime. But perhaps somewhere along the line, it got covered up, I'm here to tell you that it's never too late to explore that inner voice and access the brilliance deep down inside of you. It's in you, it's in all of us. Let's dive in.Hey, visionaries, welcome back to the show. I am so sorry that I disappeared last week. It was totally crazy. Because we were prepping for our first ever online course complete full day in person event in Guelph, Ontario. And if you've ever hosted an event before, you know it can be all consuming leading up to the day of no matter how big or small the event, you still have to worry about the venue and selling tickets and having the programming or the curriculum or the speakers lined up, you want to make sure that all your ducks are in a row so that people can walk into a space that feels complete and thought out and that they are comfortable and safe enough to enjoy their time there. And so I'll be giving a full recap of online course complete in today's episode. But since it's been a minute, since I did a solo catch up with you, I thought I would just start with a quick intro and life update here.
So if you follow me on Instagram, at Kelsey Reidl, you may have seen that, yes, I am pregnant, and I am having a baby in two months. And this was something that my husband Dave, and I kept close to home for the last seven, seven and a half months. Because we really just wanted to tell people as we saw them, and in a world that is so digitized, I would guess. Or I would say, I guess that it felt really good to me to keep some news offline. Like, I think the expectation because I share a lot on social media. And because I use Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn and a podcast and an email newsletter list and a website. I use them for business growth, I think people expect that I just have my phone out all the time, and that I am somebody who shares everything online. But that almost couldn't be further from the truth. And I remember hearing an influencer talk at some point. And she was like, you know, it's almost expected of someone like her to have her phone out and be filming all the time. And she's like, I don't want that to be the expectation. And in fact, I'm the opposite. Like I'm not the person with my phone out at a party because I use the phone as a tool. I'm not using it to document everything in my life. So even though I share three to four minutes of stories or content every day, that is the smallest fraction or percentage of what actually goes on behind the scenes. So all that to say it felt really nice. We just obviously told everybody who we saw over the last seven, seven and a half months. But it came to a point where I felt like I was keeping my visionary community, my online community in the dark. And I was so excited to share with you guys that yes, we are expecting a little visionary baby. And it's so overwhelming to even think about how that's going to impact not only life on a whole but also my business and this podcast and the content that I share and the programs that I run and the way I move through launches and the way that
I'm able to show up. However, I cannot wait for this journey. You guys know I love adventure. If you saw my pregnancy announcement you would have seen that I was mountain biking. I was paddleboarding in it and that's because that's me that's who I am at my core adventure thrills me
And this feels like our newest adventure. So I am going to be sharing a lot of content behind the scenes, nothing is going to change from your perspective right now. Besides the fact that I am carrying a little human in my stomach. So I'll probably be talking about that weaved into my marketing and business content.
But from your perspective, if this is something that you are interested in, if you want to follow along my journey as a mama to be as a new mama starting in December, then I'm going to be sharing exclusive content. So over at Kelsey rydell.com/mama, I will be collecting names and emails of people who who kind of want the, the full behind the scenes.You guys know, I'm happy to share. But I don't necessarily think that this content will resonate with everyone. And especially, you know, if you're not in a season of caring about motherhood, or if you just don't want the gory, juicy details of everything. But I will be launching a new podcast series and additional content under the visionary life brand, beginning in early 2024. And you guys know that for the last five years, this podcast has all been about sharing incredible stories of visionary Canadian entrepreneurs, that is not going to change. But I also do want to shine a spotlight on badass mamas who are running successful businesses and who are also chasing after kids and taking care of themselves and also not afraid to share the realness. So I'm really excited to weave that into what's coming up. I'll also share vulnerably, about our journey towards conceiving about miscarriage about how I'm prepping my business for maternity leave, how I'm preparing for labor, I mean, there's just so much like, Have you ever gone through this transition? It's just like, there are 5,000,001 things that I could possibly share. But either way, I just can't wait. And again, that's Kelsey rydell.com/mama, if you want to receive that exclusive content from me.
All right, so let's transition today I want to share all about the behind the scenes of online course complete how we took it from a vision to reality. So as many of you might know, I run a incredible mastermind with Emily Elliot, we have about 15 women entrepreneurs who show up each week, and we chat about business and growth and numbers and what our plans are for the month for the year for the quarter. And we also lean into like what the hell is going on in the world right now? And how do I manage my business when I'm also going through a personal thing. It's such a great space, and we get the most amazing feedback feedback from our female entrepreneurs. So Emily came to me and she said, You know, I'm kind of sensing that our community, a lot of them want to launch an online course, would you want to host a one day immersive event? And I was like, Yes, I absolutely love IRL in real life meetups, there is nothing more powerful to me than curating a group of individuals. And spending the day shoulder to shoulder getting the energy of a bunch of people in a room who have a common vision. And knowing that there's so much feedback that can happen when you get 15 minds working together. So I would say the first ping that I got was she said, Do you want to host this event? I immediately said yes. I don't know if this is just like an entrepreneur thing where you just kind of like have a gut hit.
And sometimes you just go all in on a crazy idea. Like, we had no idea how we were going to run this, what the cost would be. But everything just felt like a full body. Yes. So when you run a business, you're gonna get really good at making these gut driven decisions. It's like an intuition.You know, there's so many ways you could describe it. But sometimes you just know, like, Yes, I need to put myself on this path in order to grow. Yes, this is what my people need. Because we could have sat in indecision for months and months and not hosted this event until whatever 2024 Or later a lot of people would spend six months to a year prepping for a one day event like this. Emily and I turned this around in six weeks. So there's something about her and I that work really well where we don't mess
surround. And it's funny because we often attract these types of people into our Women's Business Mastermind. People who aren't afraid to make a decision, or they want to learn the tools of decisiveness, because they know that in indecision, nothing moves forward. So yeah, it was really cool that there was the initial, let's do it. We said, yes, we'll figure it out later. So we decided to go ahead with it. And I'll caveat this by saying, it's not like we didn't have wavering belief throughout this entire process. There were literally days when Emily would come to me or I would come to her. And we'd be like, do we just cancel this event now.
And it that actually makes me emotional, because, and I remember I was out for a walk with my dog. And we had one or maybe two signups two and a half weeks out from this event. And I'm listening to voice notes from Emily. And she's like, Look, you are in your third trimester. She's a mom of two young babies. This is a lot of work, or not really seeing the excitement that we thought she's like, at what point do you think we cancel this? And I hope that you're listening to this, or thinking about a scenario where you have gone through similar as an entrepreneur, because it's so really you guys, anytime you are launching something, anytime you are hosting an event and coming up against a growth edge, you're going to want to pull shoot about 1000 times, I'm not even kidding. Like, there are going to be so many moments where you say, is this worth it? No.
And how do I get myself out of this, and you can just pull the plug.
Because it's not like you work for a huge conglomerate company where you have to follow through on the launch, right? Like if I worked for Kellogg's,
and we were launching cinnamon Frosted Flakes. And there's a whole team working towards getting cinnamon frosted flakes on the shelves at all major grocery store retailers. Even if things are going wrong, you just push through. You call your sales reps and say guys, like, we need you to do better in the meetings you call your marketing team and say,
You know what, maybe cinnamon is not the flavor, but we need to make it sound better. What are the health benefits of cinnamon? You call your social media team? And you say Do you guys have all these posts prep for when cinnamon Frosted Flakes launches, anyways, and you don't quit because you work for Kellogg's. But somehow when we work for ourselves, we're like, I'm just gonna give up early, I'm not gonna follow through, follow through with this launch.And then you get zero results, or you didn't stick it through to the end. And I'll just, you know, slide forward here and say we sold out our event in the end with insane wavering belief just two weeks before. So in this episode, I'm gonna kind of share a high level overview of how we planned it.
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Nobody, and I cannot wait to share this process with you. So, if you're tired of not showing up on Google or being buried on page 933, then it's time to enroll in everyday SEO, just head to Kelsey rydel.com/s E O. That's Kelsey rydel.com/seo. And you can get started right away, deciding on a space and why that's important coming up with a curriculum or an agenda and making sure it hits on a lot of different touch points. I've actually recorded an episode about the visionary meetup if you scroll back into the archives, from May 2023. And how I think it's so important to curate events so that there are elements that touch all the senses. So what are the sights, what are the sounds, what are the the things to touch and hold on to experience design is whole thing. It really is. And so I want to share a little bit of that, and then share some of the results and whether we plan to run it again. Do you think
they're all that work, and I will just say I was pretty drained. I don't know if this is just my pregnancy body talking. But I was so tired on Friday night.
But I think anyone who hosts a event and there's a lot of buildup leading up to it.
That's certainly how you feel. So I first want to just talk about like, when we got the initial vision, we're like, okay, we want to host online course complete. Now what? So, first off, coming up with a name that summarize what we wanted to do, and I'll credit Emily for this, she came up with the name online course complete.
So I think in coming up with a brand name or a title, you really want to make sure it hits on that clarity. succinctness. People know what it is, but maybe need to learn more through the description, easy to say, easy to pronounce, easy for us to market. And then her and I just jammed back and forth. Okay, online course complete, what does that look like? What are our audiences asking for in terms of finishing a course? Well, a lot of them just have the idea. So we knew we needed to help them extract the idea. And that actually was done in a workbook we sent them before the workshop, we wanted to help them build out and stress test the idea. That's the magic of doing a group workshop. And then we wanted to teach them a simple way to launch So kind of going into the marketing plan.So we get the overview both of us brain dump in a Google doc just share whatever's on our mind as it relates to what is online course complete. And Emily wanted to host it in Guelph, Ontario, which is the perfect spot because it's about an hour away from a lot of common locations. So an hour from Toronto, it's about an hour from where I live. It's about an hour from London, Ontario, very close to Kitchener Waterloo. So both of our communities found Guelph to be accessible. And that's where Emily lives, she wanted it to be a little closer to home for a couple of reasons. So I tasked her with finding a venue. And I will just preface this by saying that's not an easy task. So
confirming a venue and then paying for it and signing contracts. Like that's a whole thing on its own. That's why people hire event planners. But again, I'd say my best advice for this is Ask around. When I was hosting a meetup back in May. I asked someone who lived in Hamilton, Ontario, the city where I hosted the meetup, I said, Do you know of anywhere, and she suggested this amazing plant based restaurant, downtown. And I was like sweet, so I went did a site visit. And it all just felt good. And like the right spot. So Emily did the site visit, she confirmed the venue. So we had a date. In this timeframe of about six weeks up, we started messaging a few key people as well who had expressed interest. And we said, what would you want to see out of this eight hour day? Like, could you give us a brief overview of what would feel successful to you, if you paid a certain amount showed up? What would your expectations be? And we also created a little bit of a landing page with a payment link. So we decided on pricing, we confirm the date and that's it. Like we probably only spent a couple hours doing the initial foundational work. And I think it'd be really easy to get caught in the nitty gritty here. But the important thing initially is that you have the high level vision you talk to who you think will be your
First five customers, and you confirm a location, a date a time, so you have something to advertise.
And guys, that's it. And then you need to hold the vision, like you need to work on yourself and your mindset. So you don't just cancel the contract and say screw it, this is too hard. So in the next, I would say like the six weeks leading up to the event, so five weeks before, four weeks before, we're starting to tease the idea. But we're not seeing a lot of signups. So Emily and I are not necessarily in our sales
phase at this point, because it feels far away to both of us. And we're both busy. And so we're still holding the vision, we're touching base, we're sharing ideas for the curriculum. But not much is happening five weeks before four weeks before, almost even three weeks before I think is when we are messaging each other going, maybe we should just cancel it. And we're putting together the most awesome curriculum, Emily has been chatting with this amazing catering company, a little boutique, food shop that she loves, called Little Lake market.
And she's confirming catering. So we're still moving things forward. We're starting to map out and the agenda. But again, we're not really in sales mode. So even though we're talking to people about the event, we're not seeing ticket sales come through. And we did have a revenue goal that for many reasons, we felt like we needed to hit it not only because there are a lot of expenses, but for both of us to be able to take a full day off of our client calls for her to find childcare for us to both be like we're splitting everything 5050, right. So it's not like just one person is taking in all the revenue of the event. This is split. So we wanted to make sure that we hit a certain milestone in terms of sales. Andwe charged what some people might feel is a high price point for a ticket. But when you really think about it,
like there's a lot that goes it, there were a lot of expenses incurred. And then in order to fork over all the resources that say we would give a private a private client in the span of so I do two hour sessions with people, so a fraction of the time and I charged them $1,000 For all these resources. So again, for many reasons, we felt like we needed to put it at a particular price point. We felt good about that price point. But we also worried like is this affordable.
And I think we hesitated to share the full price. But let's fast forward to two weeks before. So we're like 14 days away from our event. We're still wondering like we only have a handful of people, we need at least five to run this event, and to make sure it's worth our while. So what are we going to do.
So in the two weeks before the event, this is when we get into like full blown DM messaging mode. This is not an event that we're selling on a mass scale. So I'm not like trying to run
like expensive Facebook ads over to my website because this is hyperlocal like you have to be able to come to Guelph Ontario.
So with such a short timeline, our strategy was really to send out messages and invites and talk to as many people we knew from our current communities, like really warm leads, I would call them we're not necessarily looking to convert cold leads at this point.
Maybe for future events like we would build out. Sorry, it's the morning.
Maybe for future events, we would build out a funnel and start bringing people in with materials around how online courses are amazing and you know, opt in for this freebie, and then we'll send you an email sequence and then we'll invite you to our next event.
However, with two weeks out, you're really relying on people you already have connections to. So I want to share some of the things that worked and some of the things that didn't work. So number one, something that didn't work, we did print a lot of posters, and Emily spent some time actually going around Guelph and pinning those posters. I love print marketing but
I think in this case,
number one, the price point was too high, like there was no easy entry point. And number two, I just think maybe this type of event is too niche for hanging posters in coffee shops. Am I glad we tried it, of course, because without trial, you really don't know, we didn't know where our sales were going to come from. So we were willing to try anything. So putting up those posters, great exposure, but we didn't get any sales, we didn't get any cold leads from these posters.
Two weeks before, we also hosted a giveaway. So we decided to do a giveaway of
$150. And it was given to somebody who commented on the post and shared what their idea for an online course was. So this was really neat, because it actually got only people participating who wanted to launch an online course. And then by nature of them actually entering the giveaway to win $150. And then sharing their idea. At least we could see who was interested in the course, and maybe attending the event to build it out. And it kind of gave us an idea of who's in our world that might want a ticket to online course complete. So we ended up randomly selecting a giveaway winner, and she actually was on the fence about coming to online course complete.
So we transferred her her prize compensated her that was all well and good. And then she said, Yeah, I might actually want to drive in from Ottawa and attend this event. So we were pretty excited about that strategy. I don't think it actually converted anyone, and she wasn't able to come. But I thought I would share that nonetheless.When I look at where did the people come from? in those final 14 days, it was clients who are already in our world. So people who were in our mastermind, or in our group program, it was people who we DM privately. And it was people who were on our email list or who might have listened to the podcast, and heard ads and then reached out after they decided that maybe they'd want to be there. So did it take a lot of work to fill the event? Yes. Because people maybe are still in that mentality of COVID, I can do my business from home, I don't need to get out and meet people. And I just think a lot of newer entrepreneurs, they don't understand the ripple effect of getting into a room of other visionaries, other creatives, other business owners who can help you build out your idea. And I know how important that is. And I'm willing to invest 1000s and 1000s of dollars into ensuring that I get myself into workshops and conferences and retreats. You guys probably remember back in July, I flew to Park City, Utah, and did a three day immersive retreat for adventurous entrepreneurs when I knew nobody. And that's where the growth comes. So for me, it's obvious to spend as much money as you need to spend to get into these rooms. For a lot of people, I think it's still not obvious. So anyways, a week out we are making the final sales. We are confirming the agenda. We are confirming catering Emily does another site visit. We're sending out you know, onboarding emails, we are just like making sure everything is gonna go smoothly. We're looking at the weather, what's it going to be like? What's our surroundings? Do we have everything we need pens, sticky notes. And day before making sure the workbook is solid and that we have both gone through the agenda. Basically, minute by minute, hour by hour, we know who's responsible for what.
And Thursday night, we're both messaging each other until like, late, late, late. And we know that in the morning, it's go time I'm waking up at five, going to shower, get ready, head to Guelph pick up all the coffee, arrive at Site early and we're gonna go from there. So that's a bit of the prep work that went into it. The feelings leading into the event are oh my god, this is a lot. But also, holy shit. We've made it. Tomorrow morning we wake up and we were going to deliver this thing that we've been planning for almost two months. And it's equally exciting and overwhelming to see your vision come to life. It's scary because you know
People are walking up with expectations. It's incredible because you know, you're gonna meet people that you've only ever met in the online world, in person for the first time and you get to hug them. It's strange, because you're bringing together a group full of people who don't know each other and then have to spend the day together. And they're all kind of looking at you, like, who's beside me? And who do I talk to? And where do I sit. And so you're trying to hold space for 15 unique individuals. But what's really cool is, every time I have hosted a retreat or an event, there is so much synergy between the members and serendipity between their stories and the connections. They're just kind of magic, I'll say. So we arrive at 8am. It's a beautiful day, the fall colors at this venue, which is a nature reserve are absolutely stunning.
People are showing up coming into the room and the conversation starts and we kick off our agenda right on time. And we've got coffee setup, we have snacks, we have this beautiful room surrounded by trees, big windows, it's bright. We have their workbooks, 40 page workbook set up in front of them sticky notes, pens, water, anything that they would need to succeed through this day. And we start working through the agenda. And it is hopefully the best frickin agenda for completing an online course. Of course, a day flies by so you know, getting through the material meant we had to stay on time, much as there was so much conversation and laughter and people offering each other feedback, which was so cool, but we had to keep it moving, right? Because we could chat all day, we're a group of 15 business owners, we're a group of 15 people with an idea. Like we could just rip and jam and share the state of the industry. But we did really prioritize staying on time. And we had an amazing human named Colin Matthews, there. He is a yoga teacher. So he led us through a couple of breaks where we did like yoga stretches and just moved our body. We had a one hour lunch break where we got it catered super healthy, good vibe food. And then we went on a walk around the grounds of the arboretum, which was beautiful, got to move our body be in nature a bit more. And then we came back for our afternoon session. And again, more feedback, a little bit of solo workbook time, and giving people everything they needed at that point to really bring the idea to life and figure out their launch plan. SoI mean, a full day right up until 5pm, it was so cool to see what was coming through for people. And I must say it was one of the most rewarding days that I've had all year to execute this event, to not only dream it and have it as an idea, but to bring it to reality and arrive at the finish line. And then at 5pm Everyone said goodbye, we did our group photo, we told them what they could expect next.
And we started packing up and really just soaked it in and kind of like you know, said, I'm very proud of us for going forward with this. Because not everybody wants to host in person events because of the mental load.
And just if you don't like party planning, this might not be for you. But I do want to say we had the best attendees so if you were there thank you just power houses like honestly, people. And I'm not saying power houses in these people already have like mega successful courses, just people who came and we're willing to open up and be like, I'm scared to charge 150 bucks. And some people who showed up and we're like, I'm charging 4000 I don't care. This is good material. And we all gave each other so much feedback. So much, just really good insight shared. And I do believe that millions of dollars will be created
from that one day, because if everybody launches their course and if everybody starts selling it for the next five to 10 years, think of the magnitude of that and the impact in each of these person's lives. So we packed up I was out of there by about 6pm That day, drained but decided to go out for a celebratory dinner with my husband and with our friends. I kind of just sat and listened to a lot of the conversation because I felt like at that point, I was you know really needing some soul
low time to just process. And so I took that evening later and then the morning to solo process. And then Emily, the CO facilitator of the event and her husband came over the next day just to relax, we sat by the fire. I made us chicken noodle soup and homemade sourdough bread and a nice little short coterie platter. And we just talked, we talked a little bit about the event and how it went. But we also just sat in nature sat around, you know, just enjoying each other's company. So there you have it, the first ever online course complete, how it went, why we brought this to life, the challenges the feeling that we had in completing this. And I hope that if you got anything from this, it's that anytime you launch something new, your belief will waver, you have no idea whether this is going to be a hit or not. How could you know you've never done it before. And anyone who's a business owner who launches a new product or service or rebrands, you don't know how people are going to receive it. There's no way to know unless you move forward unless you engage and ask your community unless you try to sell this thing.
And to not even give yourself a fair shot. Whether you're launching a course and you want to, you know, have it done in the next month and sell it for $500. If you don't even give yourself a chance and really push until the end. You'll never know you will never ever know. And let me tell you, we got a lot of sales in the final 24 to 48 hours. So don't give up. I say this all the time to my private clients expect miracles in the final hours because that's when your energy is dialed in. You're just looking out like Who else who else who else. And it's very possible to double your sales in those final moments. So I hope this was an enjoyable episode. Thanks for staying right until the end. If you do want to attend a future online course complete event, we have another one coming up in May of 2024. It'll be here before you know it. So head over to Kelsey rydell.com/occ. Kelsey rattled.com/occ add your name to the waitlist and we can keep you posted for when this next magical event is going to happen. And maybe if you live far away, you can book a plane ticket or a train ticket plan a weekend to see your friends afterwards. So don't be afraid to make the commitment because it might just change your life, your business and you're gonna meet some really frickin cool people. All right, you guys. That's it for this solo episode, and I will see you in the next one.
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of visionary life. I love bringing you these conversations on a weekly basis. So it would mean so much to me. If you could help me out by rating and reviewing the show on either iTunes or Spotify. It just takes a second. And if you don't want to rate the show, you could also just take a screenshot of the episode and share it on your social media platform of choice. tagging me at Kelsey Reidl. I'll catch you in the next episode.
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