How Tiffani Purdy helped 200+ new coaches launch their business in 2020

• Course Instructor: Tiffani Purdy

• Website: www.newparadigmbizbestie.com/the-enrich-formula 

• Course Topic: Starting Your Coaching/Consulting Business

• Interesting Stats: Over 200 students served in less than one year

1. Who are you?

Hi there, thanks so much for having me! My name is Tiffani Purdy, and I’m the owner at New Paradigm Biz Bestie. I help new entrepreneurs start building sustainable incomes at home using the skills and resources they already have.

2. What’s your course all about?

My program is called The ENRICH Formula™, and it is a hybrid experience that is part pre-recorded coursework and part Live group program with a two-week small group component. Inside ENRICH, people who are just starting their entrepreneurial journey can learn how to use the skills they already have to create a truly unique, highly sustainable coaching/consulting business. Students can choose between a self-led version called The Course (with options to upgrade later if they desire to), or the full Live experience with lifetime access to our quarterly two-week small group component.

3. What makes you an expert in this field?

Before launching this program, I spent six years building a coaching business helping entrepreneurs to create business models and marketing plans that make sense for them. Between my own experience as a coach and everything I’ve seen my clients struggle with over those six years, I would call myself an expert – but I believe there’s always room to grow!

4. What is the transformation your course offers to the students?

The end-result for each of my students can look different depending on where they were when they started. Some of my students have been able to set and reach modest income goals that allow them to leave their 9-5 and dedicate to their new coaching business full-time; some of my students have been able to take their current coaching business and scale it using what they learn in ENRICH to create multiple streams of income. One student in particular was able to see a $40k return in less than 3 months of completion of the program!

5. Which market does your online course serve and how did you get into it?

My program can serve freelancers and new coaches at many different levels – but ENRICH was specifically created for people who are brand new to the idea of launching and maintaining their own business. Initially, I got into this market by accident! I had been freelancing for a little over two years, and I started getting flooded with questions from friends and friends-of-friends who wanted to learn how to start a blog, launch a course, self-publish a book (all things I’ve done) – and then I realized that I could help people at a much more impactful level if I took on the active role of their coach and strategist.

6. Why is it important to you to serve this market?

I have a deep soft spot in my heart for people who have the courage to say they want more for their life and the tenacity to follow through on their intention. I personally was thrust into freelancing not necessarily because I wanted to start my own business – but because I was about to have a new baby to support, and I wanted to give us a better life than what my 9-5 circumstances allowed for at that time. Anyone who wants to have more control over their time and income should be able to start a business without feeling like it’s an impossible, insurmountable project.

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7. Describe the moment when you decided to create your own course. Where were you, what happened and why did you decide to do it?

The idea came to me right as the world started shutting down last March. I was seeing so many people needing more control of their income, which is exactly where I was when I started freelancing back in 2014. I decided to take everything I knew to help someone start a coaching/consulting business, using whatever skills they already have.

8. How did you overcome doubtful moments during your course creation journey?

Doubt has a way of rearing its ugly head right when you’re doing something that could change your life for the better or take you to the next level in some way. When I started to feel doubtful of myself or whether my students would see success from this program, I stepped back and took myself out of the equation – was the content clear? Was the experience engaging? Was the experience guiding them to the intended result? Are the intended results a “need-to-have,” not a “nice-to-have”? Answering these questions from an objective standpoint gave me more confidence in those times when I needed a boost!

9. What are some of your tricks to deal with imposter syndrome?

In general, I find it’s best to just not take myself or anyone else too seriously. Everyone makes mistakes, and anyone who would judge me too harshly for the little mistakes I make is probably spending more time looking at what I’m doing than is focused on what they’re doing. If I keep things fun and put my heart into it 100%, imposter syndrome melts away.

10. How long did it take you to create your course?

I tend to work quickly once a decision has been solidified – but even I was surprised at how quickly ENRICH came together the first time. I didn’t have anything more than an outline created when I announced the beta round. In the four weeks between the announcement and the program’s start date, I wrote the textbook that goes with the program. Then when it was time to deliver the course, I taught it Live using timed cue cards that went along with the textbook. From inception of the idea to conclusion of delivering the program the first time, only a little over six weeks elapsed. It took teaching it live three times for me to be satisfied enough with the coursework element to set it up as an evergreen course.

11. How did your first launch go?

The first launch itself happened quickly; I announced on Instagram and to my email list that I’d be sharing details in a webinar, then held that webinar about a week later. I shared stories of my own journey in entrepreneurship and how I can help, what the structure of the program was going to look like, and that I would only be accepting 20 people for a discounted beta round at $888 per seat. We ended up over-filling, with 25 seats sold in that first round in May. By the time we were ready to take a new round of students a month later, there was so much buzz and excitement that we nearly doubled our enrollment for the June round.

12. How do you structure your launches in general now?

We have evergreen enrollment now, which is amazing! Students can enroll in either the self-led or the Live program at any time, and we hold four Live facilitations a year. This is also a really great model for our affiliates because they can create a consistent stream of income through sharing the program with their audience.

13. Where does your traffic come from?

Most of our traffic comes from Instagram and Facebook. We create organic content to reach new people and position ourselves as the authority in our niche, and then we use targeted ads to get people who’ve engaged with us to download a guide or take a workshop that will put them in a funnel that eventually sells them ENRICH. I also launched a podcast this year called Seen and Sold, and that’s bringing in a whole new audience of people!

14. Which content do you like producing the most?

Oh, this is such a tough question to answer because I truly do love what I do, and content creation is a big part of that! If I had to choose a favorite, I guess I’d have to go back to my roots and say it’s writing long-form content. I like getting to take my time and share my perspective on things, and this is something my audience responds to as well.

15. What online course platform are you using?

We tried a few out while we were in our early days of ENRICH, and we happily settled on Podia.

16. What is amazing about this platform?

Every platform has something special about it – and Podia’s “thing” is its simplicity. My students are coming to me with the desire for things to be easy and the fear that running a business has to be complicated. For those reasons, it was important for me to find a platform that was clean, simple, and easy to navigate. Podia checks all those boxes!

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17. Which features do you wish this platform would have?

It would be nice if Podia had a more sophisticated cart and checkout system that allowed for bumps, upsells, and downsells. While they do have a simple upsell function, most customers miss it because it blends in with the Thank You page. I now use ThriveCart as my cart and checkout system, then have students imported to Podia using Zapier, and I see a huge difference in my sales.

18. Why did you choose this platform over other platforms?

At the time I was launching ENRICH for the first time, I was on a pretty tight budget. I didn’t want to go with a platform that would increase in pricing with more students enrolling, so that took a lot of platforms out of the running right away. After that, I made my decision based on the look-and-feel of the UI – because I know that’s a make-or-break decision for a lot of my prospective students.

19. Which other tools do you use to keep your online business running?

Canva (for making social media graphics and compiling the textbook), ConvertKit (to communicate important things to students via email), Podia (to host the course itself), Slack (to provide ongoing support for students and communicate with my team), ThriveCart (for selling the program and hosting our affiliate program), Zapier (for doing automated tasks on the backend for us), Zoom (for hosting the quarterly Facilitations with breakout rooms for the small groups), Amazon KDP (for printing and sending the textbook to students who want a physical copy)

20. How many students have you served so far?

In total, 228 students have enrolled in ENRICH, to date.

21. How much revenue have you created during your first launch, and ongoing?

In our first launch, we ran on a beta price of $888 and sold 25 seats, for over $22,000 in sales. In total, ENRICH has brought in over $176,000 in sales – and that doesn’t include any of the sales that have come from ENRICH students who’ve chosen to enroll in higher touch (and higher price point) programs after taking the course.

22. What are you running costs to keep the online course business going?

At the beginning, the average running costs of ENRICH were very low – around $200 a month, give or take. Now that I’ve gotten more sophisticated checkout software, have more people on my mailing list and attending Zoom calls and have had to increase my bandwidth, have hired a regular team, and have gotten myself an office in a coworking building downtown – our monthly operating costs are averaging around $4,000 a month.

23. What are some of the biggest mistakes you made along the way?

Mistakes are essential tools in my business, so I’ve welcomed them as they’ve presented themselves! I think if I had to pinpoint the biggest mistakes that yielded the best uplevels in my business, it would be the mistakes of not hiring soon enough and not creating or enforcing boundaries until I’d already reached a point of burnout.

I launched and ran two rounds of ENRICH back-to-back between April and June 2020, and by the end of June, I was near collapse. I took a couple of months off to recuperate, and in that time, I restructured some things in my life and business to allow for more down-time. In October, I decided it was time to add permanent team members, and the level of stress that has alleviated is unmeasurable. I’m able to show up for my clients (and for my life!) in a much more engaged and impactful way now that I have figured out how to stay in flow and in my zone of genius.

24. How has your business changed since implementing an online course into the business model?

Before adding courses to my business model, I was very much in the feast-and-famine cycle. I’d have time to create content and engage with my audience, and then I’d sign a few clients and would funnel all my energy over to taking care of them – losing steam for creating content and growing my audience.

Then the client contracts would end, the money would stop flowing, and I’d start the cycle over again. Courses allow me to be more accessible to clients who aren’t ready (or don’t need) to invest at a higher level, and help me leverage the wins coming out of the program to enroll more students and/or sign people for higher investment programs.

25. How has your personal life changed?

Since launching ENRICH, my personal life is so much more abundant and relaxed. Actually, I’d say that this is where I’ve had to process my imposter syndrome more than in the business itself. Confidence in my business savvy, experience, and ability to help others make it easy?

No sweat! But when I opened my banking app for the first time and saw over $30,000 just sitting there – with all my bills paid, with all our needs met and exceeded, with a small but mighty team behind me and a $5,500 mentorship fee I was paying without even noticing it leaving my account? That was a shock to my nervous system.

26. What’s the greatest transformational story you can tell about one (or more) of your students?

It’s been such an unreal experience to watch what some of these students have been able to do after going through ENRICH! With over 200 students, it’s hard to pick just one transformation to share with you. On a financial level, it was pretty remarkable to watch Shaneh W. book over $40k in calls in just three months from her participation in the beta round – and then she went on to book over 200 calls in 2020.

In terms of marketing and branding, Ashley A. took what she learned and now has 40.7k followers and 1.1M likes on TikTok – mostly just having fun at home with her young son. And then just in terms of all-around transformation and growth, it’s been amazing watching Jean S. to build a multi-faceted business that allows her to stay in her zone of genius as a digital creator and artist – she recently launched her own line of digital downloads and physical merchandise, in addition to her freelancing projects creating art for other coaches and her budding course library. I could keep going – because there really are so many amazing transformational stories to come out of ENRICH – but these are the ones that stick out in my mind as the most dramatic.

27. If you could use a time machine and send yourself back to the time before you started out, what advice would you give yourself, knowing what you know now?

I think about this all the time – because I was really on the cusp of throwing in the towel in my business entirely back in December 2019. The feast-and-famine cycle was really getting to me, and I told myself I had one more year to break the ceiling. If I could go back to that point, I would tell myself that the world is about to need what I know more than ever, and in a time of international crisis, I was going to be able to help hundreds of people to give themselves the helping hand that they may not be getting elsewhere.

28. What is your million dollar piece of advice to those who are just getting started in their online course journey OR for those who are looking to scale?

Start simple! Your job is to organize the content of your course in such a way that students can easily go from Point A to Point B. What actions will someone need to take for them to get the results you’d like to offer them? What resources will they require? What beliefs will they need to have about themselves? The answers to those questions will inform what is essential for you to begin.

Now that you know your program is viable and yields results, you can start to think about how to do two important things to scale: First, how can you make this program less hands-on for you? Does that look like hiring a co-coach, community manager, or someone else? And second, how can you increase the number of people who are being exposed to you & your program? Does that look like running ads, setting up funnels, or creating an affiliate program? You don’t have to do it all at once – but these are excellent places to start the scaling process!