SPI 421: Deborah Niemann’s Online Course Success Story (About Goats—Yes, Goats)

SPI 421: Deborah: Deborah’s Online Course Success Story (About Goats—Yes, Goats)

Pat Flynn:
What if I told you that today’s guest is an online course expert? She’s made loads of money, she’s helped a ton of people. And let me read off the names of some of the courses that she has, that she’s offering her people. Goats 101. Copper Deficiency in Goats. Coming Clean, How to Make Toxin-Free Soap Without Breaking the Bank. And that’s soap out of goat milk. Goat Breeding. Just Kidding and Raising Kids. Kids, like goat kids. And Goats 365, a membership website.

Pat:
This is Deborah Niemann, our special guest today, from thriftyhomesteader.com. And she’s run a successful business that she’s had for a while. And in this episode today, you’re going to hear a lot of the mistakes she’s made, but more incredibly, the amazing success that she’s had starting online courses. Now, she didn’t start with online courses. She started with something else that proved to not be as fruitful. So, we’re going to go over the entire story today. I’m so, so grateful to have Deborah on today.

Pat:
She and I actually met each other at Podcast Movement in 2019, and had a great time chatting with each other. And I just asked her right on the spot . . . I actually had heard about her before on several other platforms, talking about her success with her online courses. And I almost felt like she was a celebrity to me, and I was a little shy in asking her to come on the show.

Pat:
And you’ll see she’s amazing, she’s got some great advice. She’s learned a lot of lessons, has a lot of just, “Hey, if I were to do this again, this is what I would do.” So, a lot of information in this particular episode. Stick around, this is going to be a lot of fun. Here we go.

Announcer:
Welcome to the Smart Passive Income podcast, where it’s all about working hard now so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now your host, he once created a clothing line that had only one customer in high school, Pat Flynn.

Pat:
What’s up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to session 421 of the Smart Passive Income podcast. Thank you so much for being here today. I appreciate you. My name is Pat Flynn. I’m here to help you make more money, save more time, and help more people too. And today we’re talking online courses, and specifically with Deborah Niemann from, again, thriftyhomesteader.com.

Pat:
And her successful courses like Goats 101, which is over $100, as well as her free course, Copper Deficiency in Goats, which has helped thousands of people come into her system. I mean, just loads of amazing content. You’re about to hear it. So, let’s not wait any further. Let’s welcome Deborah, from thriftyhomesteader.com. Deborah, welcome to the SPI podcast. Thanks so much for being here today.

Deborah Niemann:
Thanks so much for inviting me. This is going to be fun.

Pat:
I’m so excited. When people ask you, “What do you do?” How do you respond?

Deborah:
I help people raise their goats without losing their mind or going broke.

Pat:
Goats, like goats, “Baa,” goats?

Deborah:
Yes. Yes.

Pat:
Is that the sound that goats make? I don’t even know.

Deborah:
Yeah. Goats are more, “Maa,” with an M at the front, and sheep are more, “Baa,” with a B at the front.

Pat:
Oh, okay. I didn’t know that distinction. But I do know that you’ve been wildly successful online teaching people about goats. So, when you say you teach people about goats without going crazy or going broke, what does that mean exactly?

Deborah:
Well, there is a ton of conflicting information online. And so, typically, like the first email I get from somebody or message on social media is, “This is my problem, and I’ve read this online, and I’ve read this online, and I don’t know what to do.” And so, that’s the losing your mind part, because it’s very confusing.

Deborah:
And then the going broke part is because there are so many people online who say that, “You have to have this ginormous list of drugs, and supplements, and everything to keep your goat alive. And everything your goat does is a symptom that it’s dying.” And so, many people . . .

Deborah:
I just cannot believe, just a couple of days ago I got an email from a woman who had read one of my blog posts, and her first thing, her first sentence was, “I think I’m killing my goats with kindness.” And she had a list of about eight supplements that she was giving her goats.

Deborah:
And I said, “You’re absolutely right. I don’t even know where to begin, but I think you’ve probably got some deficiency and some toxicity issues going on here, because you are giving so many different things. And I really could not even begin to tell you how they’re all interacting with each other.”

Pat:
So, these are the kinds of daily issues that you have, and when it comes to solving problems with goats. Your target audience are people who are raising goats, are these farmers or just more for hobbyists? Who are they, exactly?

Deborah:
Usually, they’re people who just have a few goats either as pets, or because they want their own milk supply.

Pat:
Got it. Okay. And so, this is an online business show, but you’re talking about goats, which is something that typically isn’t talked about online. It’s a very rural thing. Rural, I can’t even say that word. Rural. Well, we’re going to leave that in, because that’s weird. But tell me how this all started online for you. Were you always with goats? And when did this progress into an online thing for you?

Deborah:
Well, we moved to the country in 2002, because we wanted to grow our own food organically. And I love goat cheese and thought it was insane that it was like a dollar an ounce back then even. And so, I thought, “Well, I’m just going to get a couple of goats so I can make my own goat cheese.” And after a couple of years, my goats started dying. They weren’t getting pregnant, they weren’t staying pregnant. And I didn’t know why.

Deborah:
I took them to four or five different vets, who all did not know why. And so I started doing research, because it was either get rid of the goats or figure this out. And I ultimately figured out that our main problem was that the goats were copper deficient. And in the meantime, I was also doing all this other homesteading stuff, like gardening, and chickens, and making soap, and making cheese. And people were asking me in the real world to teach them.

Deborah:
It all started out in my kitchen with people coming to my house and me showing like one person. And then I thought, “Okay, this is getting ridiculous.” So, I started doing courses. That, I would have up to eight people in a class. And then I started getting phone calls from people who said, “Hey, so-and-so told me that you taught her how to make cheese, or how to make soap. Could you speak at this conference?”

Deborah:
And then that progressed all the way to the point where I was speaking at the very first Mother Earth News Fair that ever happened in 2010, in Pennsylvania. And that is where a publisher discovered me and said, “Have you ever thought about writing a book?” So I started writing books, and I thought . . . Because I had also had a blog, and I thought, “Oh, you have a blog, you get discovered by a publisher, you write books, and then you get rich.”

Pat:
But?

Deborah:
And you know it doesn’t work that way.

Pat:
No.

Deborah:
So, I worked my tail off. I wound up signing multiple book contracts. I was well into writing the second book contract, I’d already signed a contract for the third one when I realized I could make more money on McDonald’s than writing books. And my books were considered really successful. I mean, they sold out. The first print run of 5,000 sold out within like nine months, or so, which made my publisher very happy.

Deborah:
But when you look at what you get for a traditional royalty, it does not add up to very much. And so, I really struggled for quite a few years. And then I started teaching online for the University of Massachusetts, which is a little more money than writing books, but not much. And then I finally discovered online classes, what all of us are familiar with. Like the classes you teach on podcasting, and thought, “Wow, I could teach people how to do all of these things in online classes.” So, that’s what I started doing.

Pat:
Was there any worry about the technological aspect of taking things online and putting it into a course? Was there any reservation behind putting that information in a course, when normally you would teach these things in person, or in a book?

Deborah:
Right. Actually, there wasn’t. And this is one thing, I’m so glad you asked this, because I hear so many people say, “Oh, I don’t have any background in teaching.” Really, I feel like that slowed me down so much, because I had a couple thousand people in an online group that I moderated for people who were raising goats. And I kept telling them, “I’m making an online course for you.”

Deborah:
And I mistakenly thought, initially, that I could just take my university course and put it into a different format for other people. And I had almost completely finished that when I became familiar with the kind of courses you teach, and everybody else, and I thought, “Oh my goodness, this is never going to work in the private space.” Because an online course involves a lot of research, a lot of assignments. And that is not what the online public course space is like.

Deborah:
I completely trashed that and said, “Okay, I am going to have my son follow me around with an iPad and video record everything in one of my on-farm courses.” I had my on-farm class, and he did. He followed me around all day long recording all of that, and I thought, “I’m going to upload all of this.”

Deborah:
And then I discovered that doesn’t work either, because the sound quality wasn’t good enough. And then, thank goodness, I finally discovered Teachable, and I saw an online course about how to put a course on Teachable. And from that point on, things got much better. I put a course on Teachable, and the rest is history.

Pat:
That’s awesome. And it sounds like you had a couple of misfires at the start, but you kept going, and that’s really great. I think that there’s a big lesson in there. I’m curious, in that course you took about creating online courses, what was the big thing for you that shifted that mindset? What actually made it possible for you to do this, that you learned from that course?

Deborah:
Just seeing how easy it was, really. In my head I felt like, “Oh, this is going to be so hard. It’s going to be so much work.” And when I saw that course, I realized that it really wasn’t that complicated. And Teachable is, I find it very intuitive.

Deborah:
I actually signed up for their paid plan when they were doing a big promo one time, and they said that you would get two free hours of concierge onboarding. And I thought, “Oh, that’s great. I’ll get all this help.” And I never used it, because I didn’t need it.

Pat:
That’s funny. That’s awesome. I’m curious, at the start, in terms of how you actually marketed this. Once the course was up and running . . . And Teachable is fantastic. I’m an affiliate and an advisor for the company as well, and have gotten very familiar with them. I agree, they’re very simple. This is, by the way, not a commercial for Teachable.

Pat:
But actually, before we even get to the marketing, let’s get to some of the results. So, you put this online. You teach people how to manage the goats, essentially, and keep them alive. If you don’t mind sharing, what are some numbers that you could share with us to put into perspective just what this has done for you?

Deborah:
The very first course was called Goats 101. And here’s a thing too, I thought, “Oh, I’m just going to have a VA take my book and outline it, and put it all into Power Points. And then I’m going to record over those.” And I discovered that actually what I had in my books was way, way, way more.

Deborah:
Goats 101 is seven hours of video, and it’s maybe—I don’t think it’s even half of the book—but it’s all of the really basic stuff. Just the launch of that, I sent an email to the 2,000 people who had been in my goat group for several years, and fifty people bought the course. Which I was really ecstatic about. I was really excited about that. It went really well. And then-

Pat:
How much did you sell that course for?

Deborah:
I was very nervous about it, and so I priced it at $129. But then that first group of people, I told them it was half price.

Pat:
Okay. But still 50 people, I mean, that validates it for you. That must’ve been really exciting.

Deborah:
Yeah, it was. It was very exciting. And I really wish that I hadn’t marked it down that far, but hindsight is 20-20, and-

Pat:
Of course.

Deborah:
. . . it worked. Like you said, it validated it for me, and I knew that it was something people wanted. Then I got all completely positive feedback on that. Nobody asked for a refund. So, it was great.

Pat:
That’s great. Okay, so 50, and so, do you bring the price point back to the $129, and start selling it more? I know you have other courses too. What happened after that moment?

Deborah:
After that I thought, “How am I going to grow my list, and where am I going to find more people?” Because I had had that online group for about five or six years at that point. It had taken me five or six years to build that list of 2,000 people. And so, I heard about, like, “Oh, you can have a free course to get people into your funnel and on your mailing list.”

Deborah:
And so, I was going to do something really boring like goat housing. And then, luckily, I heard somebody say, “Look in your blog and see what works really well. See what gets a lot of shares, what has the most traffic. What gets the most reach and engagement when you share it on Facebook and other social media.” And that happened to be every single thing I wrote about copper deficiency in goats. It would just blow up every time.

Deborah:
And I thought, “I can’t possibly write more about it.” But then people would have more questions and I would write more. And I think I have like three or four blog posts about that. Every time I share it on Facebook, it gets thousands, or the reaches is in the thousands.

Deborah:
And so, I did a free course on copper deficiency, and immediately, there were hundreds of people signing up. I was just blown away. I get up in the morning and I go to my computer, and I had it set so that I would get an email every time somebody signed up for a free course.

Pat:
Yeah, and probably getting dinged all day, weren’t you?

Deborah:
Yeah. And my whole page—because I have like fifty emails on a page—the whole page was, “So-and-so signed up for your course. So-and-so…” And so, I immediately went and turned that off, because it was, within the first 24 hours, I had 400 or 500 people sign up for it. And I was like, “Oh, thank goodness I didn’t do housing for goats.” Because nobody would’ve cared that much about housing, you know?

Deborah:
And so, within a couple of weeks, there were over 1,000 people signed up for that. Now, I’ve had over 4,000 people sign up for that. That’s the primary way that people wind up on my email list now, is that they find that course. And so, now I have several paid courses. In addition to Goats 101, I’ve got a course called Just Kidding and Raising Kids, which is all about birthing and raising kids.

Deborah:
I’ve got a course on soap making. And I have a membership program. The membership program is five courses in that, and I’m uploading new stuff every month. And I have a premium membership program where people get my cell phone number for texting, and we have two monthly Q&As on Zoom.

Pat:
Well, it sounds like you built an incredible business, which is just awesome. I love hearing these kinds of stories. I want to go back to a couple of things that you mentioned. First of all, with all the courses that you have available, like how many students would you say have gone through your coursework at this point?

Deborah:
The total number is over 5,000 people who’ve gone through the courses.

Pat:
Oh, 5,000. How does that income compare to book writing, and those kinds of things?

Deborah:
Oh my goodness. Let’s see, I think 70, 80 percent of my income is from my online courses. It’s way, way more money than books. In fact, I keep saying I’m not going to do another book. My publisher talked me into doing another book.

Pat:
Well, the book could lead, potentially, now that you have these courses and such, more people into the courses. So, maybe it’s not a direct ROI from that initial purchase, but it could lead more people into your courses maybe.

Deborah:
Right. Yeah. I do have another book coming out in June, and it’s called Goats Giving Birth. And so, yeah, so I’m hoping that will lead more people to the goat birthing course. Because after reading about it then they’ll want to actually see all of the birth videos that I created. Because I have videos in there of twenty kids being born, as well as kids who had problems. Like hypothermia, hypoglycemia, dehydration, and how you deal with all of those things.

Pat:
You’re the goat whisper, all right. I’m sure you’ve been called that before. I guarantee it. You had mentioned a bunch of courses, and then you mentioned this one called soap making, which is seemingly outside of the realm of goats. But what was your thought process in creating something like that?

Pat:
Which is more, when we talk about vertical marketing, it’s sticking with one thing and offering as many things as you can about that. And this seems like a play on going a little bit more horizontal. Something that could relate to the type of person, but not exactly about goats. How did that course go? Tell us the story about that course.

Deborah:
That came to be, because in my books I do have recipes and instructions for making soap using goat’s milk.

Pat:
Oh, okay. It’s, halfway, adjustment from just goats, in general?

Deborah:
Right. Yeah.

Pat:
How have people responded to that one?

Deborah:
Good. And, in fact, I think I’m going to play that one up a little bit more now with the current challenges that we’re facing. A lot of people are looking at wanting to be more self reliant.

Pat:
Totally.

Deborah:
And like, “Well, how do you make soap? Because that was not a concern we had. I have lots of soap in the house and we have the ability to make lots more, so we’re fine.

Pat:
How has your business, if you don’t mind me asking, been impacted by what’s going on now with COVID-19, and that sort of thing? Are you noticing any major shifts, or is it business as usual?

Deborah:
It’s been pretty much business as usual, which surprised me a little bit. I was actually planning to do a traditional relaunch of the birthing course last week. And after things started to not look so good for the world, I thought, “Hmm, this doesn’t really sound like the time to do it.”

Deborah:
I did send out an email that said, “Okay, I really struggled with whether or not I should send out this email. But if you have pregnant goats, they’re going to give birth regardless of what else is happening in the world. And so, if you need this information, I just want you to know that my goat birthing course is here for you.” And some people signed up, so that’s good.

Pat:
Yeah, that’s great. I mean, people are still buying things. They still need things. We were right in the middle of a launch for Power-Up Podcasting when all this was spiraling out of control. And we sent a very honest email to our audience as well, basically saying, “Hey, we’re going to pull back the marketing plan. We’re not going to send you a load of emails and any of that stuff, but this course is available to you and the launch ends on this date. However, if you need more time or you want to come back later to it, we’ll honor the bonuses and the discount during that time.”

Pat:
And people really appreciated that, yet we still sold several courses. And a lot of people are using this opportunity to start a podcast, which is pretty amazing. I want to go back to when you first started launching your courses: Marketing. And marketing can be a huge struggle, I think. It’s one thing to put a course together. It’s another to actually go out there and have the confidence to sell it. How did you end up getting it in front of your audience? Did you do any special type of promotion, or was it just flip the switch on and see what happens sort of situation?

Deborah:
I got Jeff Walker’s book, Launch, and combined his . . . I used information from the Seed Launch chapter. I emailed my list and said, “I’m working on a course, what do you want in a course? What would be helpful to you?” And then pretty much . . . I got feedback from people about what they wanted so that I could be sure that I included all of that. And I pretty much just followed his launch formula in the book.

Pat:
A video series essentially leading up to the launch day?

Deborah:
No, just emails. I just-

Pat:
Oh, just email?

Deborah:
Hmm-mm (affirmative).

Pat:
That’s great. And how did you, if you might remember—or when you do launches now, what are the types of things that you’re talking about in the email besides just, “Hey, here’s the course, it’s available.”? Do you have any specific strategies or things, perhaps, that you could take from Jeff and share with us, that are working really well for you?

Deborah:
One other things that I do is I talk about my experiences when I was a new goat owner. And how it was very frustrating for me to get conflicting information online. And that I was lucky enough to find a mentor or two, who I trusted, who was experienced. And so that I could go to them instead of just going . . . Because when I started, Yahoo groups were the thing.

Deborah:
I got the same conflicting information on Yahoo groups eighteen years ago, that people are getting on Facebook groups today. And so, I put a lot of information in there so that they know that I’m empathizing, I know where they’re coming from. I guess that’s the main thing I do in the emails. And talk about some of our birth stories, like some of the first. Our first birth stories were hilarious, because we really had no idea what we were doing.

Pat:
I love it. It shows empathy, like you said, I think that’s absolutely important. You had mentioned that you are becoming a resource for people amongst all the noise, amongst all the confusion and conflicting information out there.

Pat:
How do you position yourself as somebody who can become that expert? How do you specifically do that? Because I would imagine that for some, they might feel, “Well, I’m just going to share my own experience, and guess what? It’s going to add more noise.” How do you position yourself as an authority in this space while people are confused?

Deborah:
I tend to quote a lot of expert sources. I have every vet textbook that’s ever been published in the last fifteen or twenty years, for goats. And so, instead of just saying, “This is what worked for us.” I actually quote the research. And I also, since I teach college, I have access to the library’s subscriptions to scholarly journals. And so, I talk about the research.

Deborah:
And that’s one of the things that people tell me they really like about me, is that I’m not just saying, “Do this because it worked for me.” I’m saying, “Yeah, this worked for me and it saved my goat’s lives, but it’s what the research says. I didn’t just do this because Joe Smith down the street said it worked for him. I did it because I read all of the research, and the research led me to do this.”

Pat:
That’s really great. I think that’s really smart. Essentially, you’re just showing proof of what it is you’re talking about. And proof comes in many fashions. For you, it’s coming from studies and things that only you or many other people don’t really want to get access to, but you do and you own that. And I think that’s fantastic.

Pat:
For me, my proof was, “Well, let me show you how I did it, and the mistakes I made, and what worked and what didn’t.” And so, it was showing up, but this was different than other people in the blogging space back in 2008, when I started. Who were just, essentially, regurgitating everybody else’s stuff, but they didn’t have their own case studies. So, I leaned into that.

Pat:
I think it’s really important, for everybody listening, when you’re teaching, how might you also differentiate yourself. And how would you prove that what it is that you’re teaching is actually working, or is actually correct. And thank you for sharing that. How many years have you been doing online courses, now, at this point?

Deborah:
Three years, this month.

Pat:
Three years this month. Congratulations on the anniversary, by the way, and for being here. I want to know, if you could go back and do it all over again, what would you do differently? Or, what’s one thing that you wish you had learned sooner in the online course process?

Deborah:
Start your email list.

Pat:
So, start the email list sooner?

Deborah:
My website, Thrifty Homesteader, I have had since 2011. And I only started my email list four years ago. It started with those 2,000 people that were in that online group. And it was a group that I had access to their emails. So, thank goodness, I had access to those 2,000 people’s emails.

Deborah:
Because if you have a Facebook group, you don’t have access to people’s emails. So, this is a NING group, which I have to pay for. But I still keep paying for it because people still keep coming through there even though the traffic is nothing like it was five years ago.

Pat:
Right. And that’s NING, N-I-N-G?

Deborah:
Yeah, is the platform. Yeah, I started, I couldn’t believe how fast people signed up. As soon as I put the—because I got ConvertKit—as soon as I put the sign up things on my website, there were like 500 people who signed up within weeks. Yeah, I just couldn’t . . . I was shocked. I was like, “Oh my goodness.”

Pat:
And that was from your website. How are they getting to your website?

Deborah:
Like 70 percent through Google and… Well, actually, now it’s about 60 percent through Google, 10 or 20 percent . . . the rest of it is split up between directly through from my emails. And then from Facebook and Pinterest are the big ways that they get there besides Google. But back then it was, probably 80 percent or more was coming from Google.

Pat:
Yeah, Google has definitely changed since then, but we’ve also had a lot of other things that have come about, to house communities, to then find your stuff. So, yeah, Pinterest I know is huge for some. And so, thank you for that insight.

Pat:
A few more questions for you Deborah, because I’m just so fascinated by this goat story. And I promise you, I’m going to be using this episode as an example many, many times in the future when people go, “Well, I don’t think I have anything I can create a course about.” And it’s like, “Well, check out this goat episode with Deborah. She’s amazing.” So, thank you for that.

Pat:
When it comes to having multiple courses, how are you cross-promoting, if at all, the courses? And what’s the cadence for having a person journey from one to the next, and how are you managing that? Because I know it can get pretty complicated once you start to introduce more options.

Deborah:
Yes, it did start to get complicated. And that’s why I decided that I had enough courses and I wanted to provide more information in areas that were not super huge. I wanted to do cheese making, but I didn’t want to have another whole separate course to sell. And so, cheese making is part of my membership. I put soap making into the membership. I’ve got something in the membership about businesses, and that a big one.

Deborah:
Because I really love talking about the business aspect of having goats, but I didn’t want to create a whole course on the business part of goats. And using social media for your soap business, or your cheese business, or whatever, so I put that into the membership. Because one of the things I did early on was, I thought, once I had four courses, which was Goats 101, the birthing cores, parasites and goats, and soap making—

Deborah:
And parasites is all interviewing experts, like PhDs and veterinary medicine, doctors, it’s like that. Once I had those four courses, I thought, “Oh, well, maybe for people who don’t want to buy, I will provide the opportunity for them to rent all four of the courses.” I put that out there for $19 a month, and I got some really super angry emails from people who had purchased the courses, because they thought I was taking away their course that they’d purchased. They’re like, “I can’t believe you’re going to make me…” I’m like, “No, no.”

Pat:
Right. Because you sold them for one-time payments, and then now you’re putting them in a monthly plan. And it’s a change, for sure.

Deborah:
Right. And so, if somebody only bought Goats 101, I thought, “Well, maybe they would still want to do the rent, because they wanted to look at these other courses.” That’s why I didn’t exclude people who had bought in the emails, but it just caused huge confusion. I was like, “Okay, not going to do that again.”

Pat:
So, how are you managing that? The courses versus the membership, at this point.

Deborah:
I presented it as a membership, and I do not sell the parasite course anymore. So, if you want the parasite course . . . And I didn’t even mention that, because, before, everything that was available was stuff that people could have bought. And so, that was why I created the membership and created courses that were specifically for the membership.

Deborah:
The only thing that was being re-used was parasites. I had put parasites in there. I did not even mention, like, “Oh, if you bought parasites before…” or anything like that. Just threw it out there. It’s like, there’s five courses within the membership plus these other things that you’ll have access to. Like handouts, and if you get the premium then you’ve got access to me with Q&As on Zoom twice a month. Maybe you got confused by that.

Pat:
If you can clarify for me, you have your main courses available for one-time purchase, like Goats 101, and et cetera. And then you also have, on top of that, the membership, which is a certain dollar amount per month to have access to you, which has different courses, almost like mini courses, if you will, within that?

Deborah:
Right. Yeah. The only thing… And I told… And I actually… And this may be help too, because the last time I sold parasites, I said, “This is the last time you will be able to buy lifetime access to the parasite course. It’s going to be rolled into my new membership program, which is going to launch this fall, which will be available on a monthly subscription basis.”

Pat:
Do you require people who purchase the main course to… That’s separate than the membership, but how do you promote the membership? And if you do, what’s the pricing positioning there, if you don’t mind me asking?

Deborah:
The basic membership is $19 a month, and the premium is $29 a month. And then you get two months free if you pay for it all upfront. If you can do a year in advance, you get two months free.

Pat:
Got it. And then if somebody purchases Goats 101, for example, do they get access to the membership as well, or is that an additional, a separate thing? That’s separate?

Deborah:
Completely separate. So, Goats 101 is completely separate and lifetime access. The birthing course, completely separate, lifetime access. Because both of those are… Well, Goats 101 is like seven hours of videos, and the birthing course I think is like nine or ten hours of videos. They’re both really excessively long. I feel like in the online course world, they’re really big.

Pat:
That’s great. Do you offer, for people who purchase Goats 101, any incentive to get membership? And how soon after they get that do they . . . Or how soon after they purchase do you, if you do, mention the membership and get them in there?

Deborah:
The membership, I’ve only made it available . . . It was available last September at all four levels I mentioned. And now, people can still get the monthly basic if they want, but the only way that they can get the annual is to get it in September each year. And Goats 101 is just evergreen. It’s out there for anybody to buy at any time.

Pat:
Oh, man, this is great. Who did you learn membership site stuff from?

Deborah:
Just from listening to everybody. I had shiny object syndrome.

Pat:
Well, I mean, it worked out in this case.

Deborah:
Right. Yeah. You and Amy Porterfield are two of the big ones. Because I took Amy’s Digital Course Academy.

Pat:
DCA. Yeah, that’s great.

Deborah:
Yeah. And then I’ve done some of your courses. Rachel Miller’s, Moolah, for helping to learning to promote things.

Pat:
What membership platform are you using?

Deborah:
I’m just using my Teachable site for that right now. And then I do Zoom. I use Zoom for the Q&A calls.

Pat:
Okay. So, Zoom takes place of the community component. That’s where people are seeing each other having conversations. And I would imagine, is there an online text-based chat component to it too?

Deborah:
Yeah, there’s a Facebook group. And I also created a separate group on Mighty Networks for people who are not on Facebook and don’t want to be on Facebook, and would always email me and say, “Well, I’m not on Facebook.” That’s why I did the Mighty Networks thing so that . . . Because that is completely, totally private. There’s no advertising on it. People can just sign in there and ask questions on there if they want to.

Pat:
Deborah, I’m incredibly impressed and very inspired. I think this would inspire a lot of people who are diving into courses for the first time. Or even have courses, who want to understand how they might be able to put a membership component into that, and start to manage all that stuff.

Pat:
If there’s one more thing I can ask you, that would be, well, out of all the things that you’ve learned, probably the number one tip that you would recommend for somebody who’s about to follow your footsteps. You know more than anybody what it takes to do. And so, speak to us who are just starting out in this world.

Deborah:
The first thing is that, as soon as you have a website start collecting email addresses. Because I try not to think about it, but my website was out there getting like 30,000 visits a month for five years, and I was not collecting email addresses. When I look at the fact that I’ve gotten 6,000 email addresses in the last three years, I just think, “Oh my gosh, where could I be if I had started collecting those email addresses sooner?”

Deborah:
And then the next thing too is, I wish I would have started a podcast sooner. Because every year, in January, I send an email to my followers and say, “What do you want to hear? How do you like to learn?” And they would always come back, and podcast will be at the very bottom. Thirty percent of them would say that they would like me to have a podcast. And then I heard you say enough times that, “You can get new followers through your podcast.”

Deborah:
And I started to think, part of it was because, so I’ve got 450 articles on my website, 125 are about goats. I have pretty much written almost everything there is to write about goats. There’s a few things that come up sometimes, I’m like, “Oh, I can write about that.” But for the most part I’m like, “Yeah, I think I can . . . I think I’ve written most of it.”

Deborah:
So, really a struggle for me to get more than three or four articles, even in two or three months. Doing an article a month just was not happening anymore. But since I started the podcast, I mean, that just opened up a whole new world to me, and a whole bunch of new people. There are people out there in the podcast world who were just waiting for a goat podcast.

Pat:
It’s crazy, right? I mean, there’s all kinds of podcasters. Wooden boat podcasts, there’s trains podcasts, there’s goats podcasts. And just so proud of you and everything you’ve done, Deborah. Thank you for that encouragement, and I hope this is exciting to people. Stick around, I have some final thoughts here. But Deborah, I want to wish you well, keep up the great work. Tell us all where we can find all your great stuff. You are the greatest of all time. The GOAT, in my opinion.

Deborah:
Thank you. I am all over the place, as Thrifty Homesteader. My website is thriftyhomesteader.com. I’m on facebook.com/thriftyhomesteader. As well as Instagram and Pinterest, @thriftyhomesteader.

Pat:
All the right places. Deborah, thank you so much. Appreciate you, and all the best.

Deborah:
Thank you.

Pat:
All right. I hope you enjoyed that episode with Deborah. Again, you can find her at thriftyhomesteader.com. Lots of amazing lessons. What was your biggest takeaway? I just want you to think about that right now for you in your online course journey. Online courses, as you know, have been a big part of my life over the past three years, and over at SPI media, SPI. It’s just been the number one way that we’ve been able to help people.

Pat:
And I remember when I first started even hearing about online courses, I had a lot of people in the audience, podcast listeners maybe like yourself, who were asking me for an online course, even though I didn’t have one. I was just doing affiliate marketing at the time and I had loads of people ask, yet I was always pushing back. And the reason I was pushing back was because I didn’t think I was good enough to create an online course.

Pat:
But the truth is, you don’t have to be the expert, and you don’t have to be the first to market. You just have to create something that resonates with your audience, that will solve their problems. And even if you’re just a few steps ahead of your target audience, you can help them and they will pay you for that. Or at least get into your email list for something like an online course.

Pat:
And truth be told, my first online course was a companion course to my book, Will it Fly?. So, it was a free course, which by the way converts 53 percent of readers into an email address, which is just incredible. And if you are on that list, if you download the companion course for Will It Fly?, thank you so much. I appreciate you, and I’m glad you picked up the book.

Pat:
And whatever the case may be, I just want to wish you all who are listening to this right now, the best. I know you’re thinking about starting an online course, or maybe you have some already. It’s a great and an amazing way to front load a lot of work. It is a lot of work to create, and to sell, and to validate. However, it can pay you back in loads, over time. And we’re going to be leaning into a lot more content creation on our website to help you with online course creation.

Pat:
Just head on over to smartpassiveincome.com, and you can check out more. Actually, in fact, I would recommend checking out the Show Notes page. Because, over time, we’ll continue to add more resources there to help you with your online course journey, smartpassiveincome.com/session421. Once again, smartpassiveincome.com/session421. We, at a SPI media, we are here to serve you.

Pat:
So thankful you’re a part of the crowd and just wishing you all the best, and can’t wait. I can’t wait for the next episode, so make sure you hit subscribe if you haven’t already. We’ve got a lot of great stuff coming your way. And once again, big thanks to Deborah. And let me know what you thought about this episode. Hook me up on @patflynn on Instagram, or Twitter. Let me know what you thought about this.

Pat:
And for those of you who have gotten all the way to the end here, if you wanted to take a screenshot or perhaps a photo of where you are while you’re listening to this, I always enjoy those. I’ll give you a fist pump back and I want to say thank you for listening all the way through. And final words, of course, as always, you’re amazing, and #TeamFlynn for the win. Peace.

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