How long does it take to launch a course online?

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. It's so wonderful to be talking to you today. So I have been in this game of launching courses and course creation and all of that and helping people do it for years now. And I get a question, almost every time I launch or I get it from my students or my coaching clients. And the question is, how long does it take to launch a course successfully online?

And I thought this would be a good question. Topic for an episode. And that is what I'm diving into with you today. So if you are wanting to launch a course and you've ever asked yourself, how long does it take to do such things? Then this is the episode for you to listen to. I think a lot of people don't understand the timelines of things.

So if you are thinking about spending all your time creating a course and how long it takes for you to create the course. I want to stop you there because I don't want you to think about how long it takes for you to create the course. I want you to think about how long it takes for you to get the course sold.

So that people actually buy it, and then once people buy it, you create the course with them. So that might blow your mind, but that is what I 100 percent recommend. Do not go and spend all your time creating a course. That is not going to be a good use of your time.

Because what you don't want to do is you don't want to create a course and spend all this time creating a course. And then you try sell the course and no one buys it. And then you've spent all this time creating something that no one buys. And then you're like, what a waste of my time.

And I don't believe anything's really a waste of your time firstly. I think there's always learning and growth within everything we do, but that would be a little bit of an error. So don't spend all your time creating a course. That's number one. Then the next thing I would say is focus on launching and selling the course.

So it's hard for me to say exactly how long it's going to take you to do this because everyone starts at different levels. Everyone has different skill sets or strengths and different assets that they start with. And that sort of determines how long it's going to take. For example, if you already have a teaching business. 

You already have social media, you've already got a little bit of an email list. It doesn't have to be a big one, but you've got a little small email list and you've posting content on social media. You've got students already. You almost like a tutoring business, but now you're like super tired of trading all your time for money and you're like, I want to sell a course or a group program.

If you are starting at that level. You've already got an email list, you've already been in the game, you know your audience well, you know what your students want. Then I would say that it could take you about three to four months to launch. But it could also take you about two months. It depends, but you're looking at a bit of a shorter timeline.

If you have somewhat of an email list, somewhat of an audience base that you can tap into, even if it isn't necessarily an email list. Maybe you are part of a community already. And that community is full of your ideal potential students. And they already know you, they already trust you. You already know the course that they want, and then you could just sell that course to that audience within, two to four months.

Okay. And then what I would say is focus on the launch process and the marketing of this course. So sell the course first, and then once people have bought it. Then create the course with them by each week, creating the content and drip feeding it. So you can then create a better product. You make sure that the product is validated, meaning people actually want to buy it.

And basically all you need to do is be like one week or two weeks ahead of them. So each week you release a module or you do a training, you can do it live. You can do a prerecorded. But ultimately, you will be two weeks ahead in creating the program for them and drip feeding that content to them each week.

So that's what I would say if you're starting at that level. It's a shorter timeline because you already have an audience. So one of the thing that takes the longest is building an audience. And when I say audience, I mean an email list specifically, social media following doesn't hurt, but I would say predominantly an email list. 

And you would use social media to build that email list. So then if you are starting and say you're a classroom teacher and you haven't got an email list, you don't know much about online business. You have no idea what product to sell. Or you have a general idea of what niche you're in and whatever, whatever.

But you don't really have much of an idea yet. You really want to build an online business and you're very hungry and driven. Now, this is me years ago. I wasn't a classroom teacher. I was an online teacher, but I was really hungry for having a business that would allow me to make my own money from home.

Cause I always wanted to work online and I wanted to be able to make a lot of money and impact people, of course. And so I had no idea about marketing and no idea about online business and selling. So I was like starting from scratch and yeah. So if you're starting from scratch, it's potentially a different timeline.

What I would say I launched within four months, but I went very hard. So not many people won't do what I did, but I buried myself in this thing. I ate, slept, and breathed, I don't even know if those are good words to use right now, that doesn't sound like good English. But I literally just devoured everything in four months.

And I just went so hard and I launched within four months and it was very tough. It was a hard time, but I did it. But I wouldn't say that's what the timeline is. So I would say for those who are starting really from zero but are extremely hungry. I would say if you are committed to it, you can do it in six months.

I have had a DBA student who is a classroom teacher. Her name is Jennifer and she was just a classroom teacher. I don't think she knew anything about online business and marketing at all. But she had a really good hobby, which was training stock dogs. And she was a trainer. That was her hobby.

And she went to competitions and she trained stock dogs and she helped people train their stock dogs and all this stuff like sheep dogs. And she decided to create a course in that. And she was a classroom teacher. She worked full time in the classroom and she had zero knowledge. But she launched in four months. 

But when I speak to her, it was very intense. She went hard, and she really pushed, but she did have an asset, which was her training community, her sheepdog community already. She was part of these groups and they knew her already. So there was that know, like and trust. So she already had an audience.

She just didn't have an email list. But she did have that. So that really helped her. Now, if you don't have any of that, then, I would say six months would be the soonest. And that's because think about it. You're not just launching a course. You're actually building the foundation of a business.

Now you can't build a foundation of a business in two seconds. So don't think that this is like an overnight thing. If you want to build a sustainable business, it's a long game. And six months is not a long time. It's literally like nothing in the lifespan of your life. And people take years to build businesses.

So for you to launch your first program in six months, that's a very good thing. If you were to commit and say for the six months, this is my goal. This is my focus. And you just commit to it. If you want it, you make it happen. You prioritize the time. If you're working full time, then work on the weekends.

That's what I did. I would wake up early. I would wake up at six in the morning. I invested in some mentors. I would absorb their training. And then I would implement the training and I would take action like crazy. And I would wake up early and I would work until night and I worked weekends.

And I didn't really have much of a social life for that period. And that's because I was really hungry to make this happen. And I was committed. And so that's generally what it can look like if you want to do it soon. You have two levers here.

You've got money and you've got time. Those are the two levers you can pull to increase the speed at which you are able to launch your course. If you've got a lot of money, you can pay people to do a lot of the stuff for you, great. Outsource, winning. That is going to get you there faster. A lot of people don't have the money to do that.

So then if you don't have the money and you have time, then put in the time. That's going to get you there faster. If you don't have money or time, then you have to create one of those levers. You have to create time. Or you have to create some money. Save some money, so that you can invest because saving is a definite thing everyone can do.

Something that I've done a lot of my life is just change the way I'm spending my money so I can save money and put it in things that are actually going to bring me to my goals. Or take inventory of your time and say, okay, cool. Maybe I shouldn't be spending so much time on Netflix or scrolling Instagram or spending time with people who actually don't energize me.

And I feel kind of heavy after seeing them. Be ruthless with your time and say, this is precious energy right now that I'm going to put into my goal, my dream, this is for me. And you have those choices. That is all within our reach. We all have those choices to make, and it's based on the choices we make, whether we move forward in this in this venture and in this dream of creating this freedom filled online business.

 Or if we just stay in the same position we are forever. So now if six months, I would say is the soonest, if you're starting from scratch. But you might be an anomaly like Jennifer, who does it in four months.

But I don't think you should worry about the timeline either as much. Yes, it helps to have a general idea. So now you have a general idea. It's four to six months on the fastest level. A lot of my students only launch within a year and that isn't a bad thing. It's fine. 

Everyone's on their own timeline. People have children, people have families, people have commitments, life happens. Don't beat yourself up about it. It's okay. Don't expect this to be an overnight thing. Don't burn yourself to the ground. I mean, I worked at a pace that was not sustainable. Obviously to build my business, I worked very hard, very intensely for the first two years. 

Then after that, I decided, this is not the way I want to run my business. And I decided to lean into a bit more of a relaxed, sustainable approach. And I'm loving that. But yeah, to get it off the ground, there will be a little bit of a push needed. But you do it in your own time that feels good to you.

So don't compare yourself to everyone else. Don't be like, okay, if I launch in a year, then that means I'm like a failure or something bad. No, it doesn't. You are part of the 0. 1 percent who takes action and is brave and is courageous and just follows their heart, follows their dreams and just does something that's for them.

 And it's terrifying. So don't beat yourself up. Launching in a year is amazing. Launching in two years. It's fine, it's good. As long as you do it, right? As long as you take action and implement, it's totally fine. My DBA students are all launching at different times.

What I would say though, is that obviously I would say the sooner you launch, the sooner you learn. It's like you can only really learn the skill by doing it. So if you're going to wait and wait and wait for the stars to align to do it, don't do that because the stars will never align. What I would say is messy action wins.

The sooner you launch, the sooner you learn. It doesn't need to be perfect. It's never perfect. You just got to get it out there and you just got to learn from the experience so that you can do it again. And remember one launch. Is just the first launch. It's just the beginning of many, many, many more launches in your life where you're selling products, selling courses, making money, you will keep launching.

So don't think that you launch once and it's done and you're forever going to be like, the successful business owner. It's the art of launching happens in the relaunching. You keep doing it. You keep rinsing and repeating so you can scale up. So yeah, that's another thing that I wanted to mention.

People think you should just launch once and then you're set for life. No, if that was the case, we would all be millionaires. Imagine you could just launch once and make all this money. And keep making money forever just from one launch. We wish, we wish that would be great, but yeah. So that's it.

That's my answer for you. It's going to be different for everyone's timeline. It depends on where you're starting. Do you have an audience? Do you have an email list? Do you have real results in the expertise that you are wanting to teach? I've also had some DBA students who decide that they actually want to qualify in something else.

And then they go and qualify in something else. And then they go and launch in that space because they weren't feeling confident in it. So are you confident in the space that you're in to become an expert in. If you are, that really makes a difference. If you're not confident in it, it will take longer.

And the audience is the biggest thing. So building an email as an audience it's a slow process. It's a slow burn. It's a consistent thing that you do, and it takes time. You can always run some ads and speed up the process, which is great. But in general, that's a labour of love. 

And what I would say is focus on building your audience and email list, that's the priority. Don't focus on building the product, focus on building the audience in the email list to sell the product to, then focus on launching that program to that email list. And then once people buy, create the product. All right. And this is what I help you do in my program, Digiteachers Biz Academy. This is my expertise. This is what I help people do. It's all about launching scalable offers. All right. 

So I hope this answered your question and this was helpful. And let me know on Instagram if you enjoyed this or send me an email. I really love hearing from you. I love to hear your feedback always.

I'm also really happy to take on topics for the podcast because just helps me create stuff that you want to listen to. So if you have a question or you want to have a topic that you want to share, please share it with me. I would love to hear, and I hope you have a beautiful rest of your day. 

Bye.

 Thanks so much for listening to today's episode.

If you are a teaching business owner, freelance teacher, or online teacher, and you are interested in creating a digital course or group program to scale your income and impact without teaching more hours, then I have just the thing for you, grab my free Scalable Digital Course Roadmap, and it will walk you through the six steps of turning your one-on-one classes into a scalable offer that frees you from the teacher burnout trap. 

Creating scalable courses and programs have allowed me to 10 X my hourly rate, hit six figures in my business and impact hundreds and hundreds of people around the world without having to be actively teaching all day. If this is what you desire, grab my guide in the show notes and let me help you.

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.