How my DBA student made €75K in her teaching business.

Welcome to The Empowered Edupreneur Podcast. My name is Michelle Smit, and I am an ex-teacher turned online business coach for Edupreneurs, the owner of Digiteach and a six-figure entrepreneur. I am in love with empowering educators, just like you to create freedom filled online businesses and lives they love.

If you are looking to uplevel your skills, your finances, your mindset, and change the trajectory of your life as an educator in business. Then you are in the right place. Think of this podcast as your weekly dose of business and mindset development to help unlock the infinite potential within you to play bigger with your life and go after your dreams. 

We are going to have so much fun together. So thank you so much for pushing play today, now let's dive in!  

Hello, hello. Welcome back to my podcast. As always, I'm happy to have you here. I am going to be talking about something that comes up a lot and. I just feel like it needs to be spoken about and it's this belief that if you're not in the moneymaking niche, if you're not in a moneymaking niche, then you can't make money in your online business.

Like you need to be helping someone make money in order for people to invest and for you to make money. And I get that a lot from like educators and teaching business owners where there's this belief system that the teaching businesses can't make money. Language niches aren't money making niches.

And so, it's not really a niche to go into, or it can't really be successful. And I really wanted to share a story with you to prove this completely wrong, because it's simply in my perspective, it's a limiting belief. And it's one that keeps us trapped in the same sort of cycle when that's not really necessary, right?

So this story of a DBA student of ours is really inspiring. And it will really show you what is possible for you. If you overcome your limiting beliefs and just go for it, because if that's what you want, if you want to have an online business, you want to have a freedom business that allows you to impact people all over the world and make money and, just have that freedom. 

Then I really want you to listen to this story. I want you to really see how possible it is. Okay. So in 2021, I had a launch and in this launch, I remember I received a Instagram message from a lady. I'll keep her name anonymous, but she was a Dutch teacher and she already started her Dutch teaching business at that point. 

I remember her saying something about having some health struggles and that she couldn't really sustain the demands of working all day in a classroom. And it was just too much for her. So she decided to go solo and, teach her own students Dutch. And she came through one of my launches and she wrote to me on Instagram and I remember her saying and I'll read the message exactly.

Since after my training with her. She was like, I've been thinking about it all night because of the state I'm in now, it's not really easy to spend money. But hey, that's a mindset thing, right? And the fear but I'm feeling the fear and I want to do it anyway. So 8 PM today is my deadline to decide.

I'm going to meditate this afternoon and hopefully I'll feel more calm and make a good decision for myself. And that was about joining DBA. She was super excited about it, but she was also terrified about it. And my response to her was, she was also asking me like, am I the right kind of person for this?

Is DBA the right thing for me? That was also what she asked. And I said, it sounds like to me that this is the perfect program because you've already got a niche. That's really great. Teaching Dutch is really it's such a, cause I'm an expat in the Netherlands. So I was like, this is such a great niche.

There's such a demand. I know that there's a huge demand. I knew the niche was good. And I was like this is something that could really take your teaching business to a whole new level, learning the information that you learn in DBA is going to really help you grow your business in the long run and really take it to a whole new level where you're not having to keep teaching all day, but you can scale up with courses and things like that, much more scalable model, much more sustainable model. 

And she was super terrified to invest as everyone is in the beginning. Okay. It's a big leap. It's scary to make that leap. It's scary to make big investments, especially if you haven't made it before. But she did, she leaped at 8, 8 PM, I think is when she decided and she joined. And then I would say about six months later, she had her first course launch.

Look, it was years ago, so I can't be exact on the timelines and stuff, but it was more or less, maybe four to six months later, she had her first course launch. And I think around in that first launch, she had over 30 students join. And I remember her sharing that she had made over 5,000 euros. And so that was her first course launch.

And that was already five X ing her DBA investment in her first course launch, she five X'd the investment and that's insane. So within six months she five X it. I mean, where else can you five X an investment in that short amount of time? It's quite challenging. So I thought, wow, this lady is smashing it.

I was so excited for, so proud of her for what she had done. And then she launched again. She rinsed and repeated. She had another, I think it was another 5k launch. And then it was probably about a year later where she had her first 10 K launch, and then she grew it to a 15 K launch. And then she went and did a 20,000 euro launch.

And I think she's surpassed that by now. She's probably had a 25,000 euro launch by now. And in this process, she also, she created multiple courses with different language levels. So she started with an A1 Dutch course, then she created an A2 Dutch course. Then she created a Dutch speaking membership where she could help people learn to speak real Dutch and pay per month to access her training and teaching. 

And she just thrived and flourished and grew and expanded in so many ways that the person she was a year ago before she joined DBA a year later was like almost unrecognizable. She would actually message me and be like, I can barely recognize myself because it's just so different.

Life is so different. And at that point, when she joined DBA, I think she had around 5,000 followers on Instagram. And now, to this day, she's grown to like over 35,000 followers on Instagram. And that is insane. The amount that she's grown organically in her business and the amount of products she's built and the way that she's selling them and launching them is absolutely inspiring. 

And she told me a couple of months ago that she had made 75,000 euros in her online teaching business. I think it was in 2023. And she had over a thousand students come into her online courses. And I remember messaging her and I was like, do you even teach one-on-one anymore? And she was like, No. And she was like I think she said something like, I only open up like two spots and that's it. 

And I'm sure they're always full, but she only opens two one-on-one spots for once a week or something like that. At that time, I'm sure it might be different now. And I just had this moment where I was like, this woman was working one-on-one in her business, teaching Dutch in classes actively one-on-one.

And now, a year and a half later, she doesn't even offer one-on-one anymore. And that's just her choice. Of course, if you love one on ones you offer one on ones, but her choice wasn't in alignment and she wanted to go focus on the groups and the courses instead.

And so that was also something that I feel was what I wanted as well. And she's done that. And she's had over a thousand students come into her courses. And she always had this like dream of traveling to Spain and going to the beach and going on holidays. And, she really loves summer and beaches just like me.

And we live in the Netherlands, so we both really don't like the winters and, things like that. It's nice to sort of escape to the sun and that's always been my thing. Just follow the sun. And that's also a bit of hers as well. And she now has gone to Spain so many times. 

And continues running her business from wherever she is. It's outstanding. So she's travelled Europe. She can go to the beach and while she's on the beach, students can keep learning from her. So just imagine being able to go to the beach and have students learn from you, while you're at the beach. 

She wrote me a message saying she's living her best life at the beach and she's still making sales in her business. She was literally at the beach and people were buying her courses and learning from her. And this is a language business, okay? This is Insane.

It just shows you how much potential there is in language businesses, but also in just education businesses, as long as there is a demand for what you're doing. If there is a demand, you're not going to have a problem. As long as you learn how to market and launch. And you learn those skills, you're not going to have an issues.

If there's a demand, you've got the skill set to teach the thing and get them results. And you learn how to launch and market yourself, you are literally sorted. So you may be wondering, how on earth did she launch and create these types of results? So firstly, we have to give her a ton of praise and just applaud her for her amazing work ethic and ability to take action and execute. 

When she joined DBA, she didn't spend time worrying about tiny things and getting caught up in these minute details that didn't really matter. She didn't get into paralysis mode. She dived into DBA and she just executed. She executed the recipe down to a T. She launched quickly and she learned quickly and she launched quickly and she learned quickly and she just took massive action. 

And through taking that massive action, she learned the skills that she needed to learn in launching and in marketing and in selling and in course creation, which you can only ultimately learn by executing and taking action. And she took my four-step launch success system that I teach in DBA to launch courses specifically.

Think of it like a recipe to make a very specific cake. Like she took that recipe, she followed it down to a T and she executed it. She didn't try reinvent the wheel. She didn't try and make up her own way. She went with a tried and tested strategy. She moulded it to suit her business and her niche, basically aligning it to, it working for her niche. Which everyone needs to do. 

She took all the assets that I gave in DBA and moulded it to her business and her niche, but following the strategy of those things like the emails and everything. And she just launched. And then when she launched, she then relaunched. So she kept relaunching the same exact way. So she rinsed and repeated it over and over.

So the first time it was a 5,000 euro launch, then it grew to be 10,000 euros. Then it grew to be 20,000 euros. Then it grew to be 25,000 euros. And that's because she's rinsing and repeating a process and she's getting better at the process. She's getting better at selling and she's getting better at articulating her value and selling those courses. 

And each time you launch and you build up those skills and that confidence and the ability to sell and all of that stuff. Every time you do it, it just gets easier and you just end up making more money. So it gets easier, but you make more money and you impact more people. And yes, in the beginning it is a lot of work.

It's a big learning curve. And yes, building a course and digital curriculum and all of that stuff is a lot of work for sure. There's no way around it. You can't have a freedom business if you're not going to put in the reps and put in the energy and put in the work. But once the product is built and you've got a sales system for it with, which is what my four-step launch success system is a sales system that sells it effectively and it converts, meaning people buy it at a certain percentage. 

All you need to do is rinse and repeat and scale. Meaning you need to get more people into your audience and launches. And you need to just improve the launch process, by getting more confident and tweaking things and improving your messaging and improving things like that. And then it's so simple.

Then you can literally hire a virtual assistant, which she's already done, hire a virtual assistant. You get them to set up the entire launch for you. And every time you just get them to set it up and you just need to show up and run the event and your impact is unlimited basically. 

So your impact and your income is unlimited with this model. And that's what she did. She kept rinsing and repeating the same launch strategy I taught in DBA, but she improved it every time and moulded it to her niche in her business. She built up the money making skills, especially selling and launching, which are very important skills.

And marketing. Selling, launching and marketing. Which she developed through doing DBA and taking action. And she focused on growing her audience, which is huge as well. If you can have an audience you're already 50 percent of the way there. If you can grow an audience online and build an email list, and now she is on track.

This year to hitting six figures in her online teaching business. So since joining DBA in 2021, she has almost nearly a hundred X to her investment, a hundred X, and that will go up to, 200 X because every single year she applies the same skills. Over and over again, and she keeps making money.

She can keep making money for as long as she wants to be making money in her business. And I personally can't think of another way to invest where if you put in 1 that you get a hundred dollars out, that's an insane return on investment. I don't think you can find it in any other investment strategy. 

And this is why I always say investing in yourself, in your skills to make money, to grow a business, to develop yourself personally, professionally, even just personal development. Investing in yourself is the best investment you'll ever make, because you yourself are your greatest asset.

If you put in the money into yourself. No one can take that away from you. You can make money for years to come. You can be a better person for years to come. Even if it isn't investing in making money, even if you're just looking at becoming like investing in your relationship or getting a relationship coach or getting a nutrition coach or exercise coach or whatever thing investing in yourself to be a better version of yourself.

Is the best investment you can make. And when it comes to business, investing in your skills to make money and launch and make all of that, no one can take that away from you. And that is what I think safety and security is ultimately for me, because people think a job is secure and safe, but when you depend on a job or external factors, you outsource your power to those external factors, you could lose your job, they could do something.

And suddenly you are in a vulnerable position. But when you depend on yourself and you build skills, you build badass skills that no one can take away from you. Then you own the power. You are in a position of power. And that is what I'm passionate about. I'm passionate about helping people take back their power, especially educators and teaching business owners.

I'm passionate about helping them build the skills that will help them make money for years to come. Build the skills that will make them money for years to come. And for me, that is selling courses ultimately. That for me has been life changing and I know it's life changing for anyone who really makes it work. And so many of our DBA students have had amazing results like this. 

If you want to change your life and you want to create freedom and you want to scale your income and impact, leave a legacy. Launching courses and group programs is the way to do it. It's a model that is much more sustainable. And you don't have to be in the moneymaking niche to make money.

This example of this woman who's in the language and language niche. She is doing so well and she helps people learn a language. And I just want that to sit with you and inspire you because it's so possible. And if you don't think it's possible, that's a limitation of your mind. 

That is not true. It's a story you're telling and it's not true. And you can see it's not true because you can see evidence for the opposite. For example, this awesome story I just shared with you of one of our DBA students, that is evidence for your brain to show you that it's possible. So if this is something you are excited about and you're like, yes, let me learn how to launch a course. I am interested. 

Then I want to invite you to my free masterclass coming up. And I'm going to be sharing with you my four-step launch success method that I have used to launch all my courses that I help my students use to launch their courses. To create the success that they've had. It is such a powerful thing to learn, and I'm so excited to share it with you in this free masterclass. It's going to be on the 22nd of February at 6PM CET.  

And there's only one session. It's going to be around 60 minutes, but I will do some Q&A after that. So like 75 minutes. There are limited spots in the room. So if you do sign up, please make sure to attend. It's going to be really, really, really good. It's the first live masterclass I've done in over two years. So I'm bringing all the fire for this one. 

So click the link below and get signed up or wherever you find the link. Otherwise message me and I will get that link to you. I hope you found this inspiring and helpful and I will chat to you again next week. 

Bye.

 Thank you so much for listening to today's episode.

I have some exciting news for those of you who are wanting to learn more about how you can launch a course or group program online and fill it with dreamy students. I'm hosting my free quadruple your teaching income through launching courses masterclass soon. I'm going to share my four-step launch success system that will help you launch any offer online and fill it immediately.

It is a life changing system that has helped me make hundreds of thousands of dollars online, as well as change the lives of many of my students. This masterclass is free. It's going to be live. There's just one session and there are limited spots in the virtual room. Click the link below to join us. 

I appreciate you so much and I can't wait to connect with you in the next episode. In the meantime, go create a business and life you love.