How Creators Can Level Up Content & Revenue with Online Courses

There are dozens of different types of influencers. The two that often get the most grief are the superficial fashion and beauty, maybe food and lifestyle influencers that I like to call the peace sign, duck lips crowd. The other are the self-promoting talking head types in the B2B space … often fraught with marketing nerds like me. They don’t seem to have clients or case studies, but they claim expertise and try to pull you into their online course to pay them a ton of money to learn what they know.

You can probably hear the contrarian tone coming out in my voice here. But there’s a reason I’m pointing those folks out. It’s not that I don’t like the online course pushers or even consultant types who seem more style and less substance. In fact, my opinion on them aligns with my opinion on the long-standing debate over whether or not someone is a social media expert. 

If that person’s clients learn from them, are happy with the work they are doing for them, then for the client, he or she is an expert and our opinion doesn’t matter. 

I’ve always wanted to have an online course, frankly. I’ve started and stopped building one over the years. It can be overwhelming. It turns out there’s help out there for folks like me who struggle with that. Or you content creators or subject matter experts listening who might also be thinking of starting an online course. 

Rocky Buckley is the creator of Platinum Path and The Power Persona Project. He helps experts, thought leaders and influencers “Go Platinum” by reinventing their brand, strategy and even business model. One of the primary ways he does this is through online course, masterminds and other virtual products that serve a direct audience for a subscription fee or similar revenue stream. 

I asked Rocky to come on the show and illustrate to us how one can not only tap into these types of information products to build a community of paying customers around them, but take that to a next level and build that community into raving fans of your content, too.

This episode of Winfluence is presented by Tagger, the complete influencer marketing software platform. Sign up for a free demo today at jasonfalls.co/tagger.

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The Winfluence theme music is “One More Look” featuring Jacquire King and Stephan Sharp by The K Club found on Facebook Sound Collection.

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Rocky Buckley on Winfluence Transcript

[00:00:00] Rocky: What I always teach my clients to do is to try to always go for that 10x ROI. You have to be able to frame it at least as a 10x. The way I like to do it is say, and that’s just in the first year, if you were to look at the results, you’ll get beyond that, it’s like 100x..

[00:00:20] Jason: Hello again friends, thanks for listening to Winfluence, the Influence Marketing Podcast. There are dozens of different types of influencers. The two that often get the most grief and attention are the superficial fashion and beauty, maybe food and lifestyle influencers that I like to call the peace sign duck lips crowd.

The other are the self-promoting talking head types in the B2B space, often fraught with marketing nerds like me. They don’t seem to have clients or case studies, but they claim expertise and try to pull you into their online course to pay them a bunch of money to learn what they allegedly know. Well, you can probably hear the contrarian tone in my voice coming out here, but there’s a reason I’m pointing these folks out.

 It’s not that I don’t like the online course pushers or even consultant types who seem more style and less substance. In fact, my opinion of them really aligns with my longstanding opinion in the debate over whether or not someone can be a social media expert, if that person’s client’s learn from them, if that person’s clients are happy with the work they’re doing for them, then for that client, he or she is an expert and our opinion doesn’t matter.

I’ve always wanted to have an online course, frankly, I’ve started and stopped building one over the years a couple of times, it can be very overwhelming. Well, it turns out there’s help out there for folks like me who struggle with projects like that, or you content creators or subject matter experts listening who might also be thinking of starting an online coarse.

Rocky Buckley is the creator of Platinum Path and the Power Persona Project. He helps experts, thought leaders, and influencers go platinum by reinventing their brand, strategy and even business model. One of the primary ways he does this is through the online course Masterminds and other virtual products that serve a direct audience for a subscription fee or similar revenue stream.

I asked Rocky to come on the show and illustrate to us how one can not only tap into these types of information products to build a community of paying customers around them, but take it to a new level and build that community into raving fans of you and your content too. Today on Winfluence, Rocky Buckley is gonna try and turn all of us platinum.

Before we get to that, let’s touch base on Tagger, our presenting sponsor. It is a complete influencer marketing software platform that allows you to find, reach out, contract, collaborate, pay, and measure content creators for your influence marketing efforts. Now, I use Tagger every day, I literally have projects in the platform for a couple of dozen clients right now. 

Each project is divided by campaigns, and each campaign has groups within it, so I can have a list of creators under one campaign that are, let’s say, all fitness and exercise creators, but another group in the same campaign that has all the influencers from let’s say, beauty and fashion. Tagger allows me to organize and manage lists and groups even within campaigns so I can be more relevant and focused on engaging each creator within a better context, and that makes my influence strategies come to life better than they would otherwise.

Now I could go on, but you know, I use Tagger every day, you should check it out too, it might be right for your brand or agency. Go to Jasonfalls.co/tagger to get a free demo and see if Tagger is right for you. It’s just a free demo, no obligation, you’re just gonna see great software at work, can’t hurt, right? The URL again is Jasonfalls.co/tagger, check it out. 

What do you know something about could that lead you to build an online course or learning product so you can become super influential to an audience? Rocky Buckley will help us figure all of that out, next on Winfluence.

 Rocky, I’ve been around this kinda of personal branding world, if you will, you know, speaking at conferences and writing a book and all that kind of stuff. Building social, presence and all that kind of stuff for 15, 20 years now.

And one thing that I’ve noticed, and I’ve been both kind of the personal brand where I’ve just worked for myself, I’m a consultant. I’ve also worked at agencies and brands before, so I kind of fluctuate in and out of that sort of solopreneur status, but it seems like the majority of people out there that have online courses are those personal brand independent consultants, subject matter experts, why is it that an online course is what people like that flock to?

[00:05:47] Rocky: Sure, well first of all, thanks for having me on, Jason, I appreciate it. The big thing behind moving into a course sort of model or beyond that, membership models, etcetera, is if they allow a solopreneur to shift from typically serving their clients in a one-on-one sort of model, to a one to many model.

it’s the one thing that allows you to really escape that trap of that one to one trading time for money, etcetera, where your income is capped, you can only make so much, you can only work with so many people to escape that and put your knowledge and your expertise into a format that’s external to you, and that could be replicated infinitely , and you basically escape from time and space because you can be anywhere, anytime, anyone around the world can access your knowledge and your training and your expertise, and you can infinitely scale your business as well. 

So from a business model perspective, yeah, it’s extremely attractive for people that you know, you’ve been successful, but you feel like there’s so much more potential and your business model is causing you to be stuck, you can’t grow anymore, and you know, the course model allows you to basically have s escape velocity in your business. It multiplies you many times over.

[00:06:59] Jason: Well, and I can appreciate that and certainly as someone who’s written a couple of books and once upon a time I actually, you know, tried to start an online, learning community subscription based model and didn’t know what I was doing, so I, you know, crapped all over myself and screwed it up, I’m sure. 

But as someone who’s been in that space, it’s always been an attractive model to me, but the question I always come back to and, and maybe this is more therapy than it is consulting, but I’ll ask you the question anyway. why would anybody pay me a bunch of money to basically watch videos of me telling ’em how to do something?

I’ve never, felt like the confidence was there for me to actually invest the time and think that I could be successful doing it.

[00:07:37] Rocky: Sure, I guess I’d probably reflect back to you with a question, have you ever purchased an online course?

[00:07:42] Jason: I have absolutely.

[00:07:43] Rocky: Okay, so what drew you to buy that course?

[00:07:47] Jason: I think the subject matter expertise of the individual who taught it and their credentials and credibility, and they knew something that I wasn’t confident that I knew how to do.

[00:07:58] Rocky: Okay, so prior to this, so if you think back, you reverse engineer it, you had a problem of some kind that you wanted to solve, and you were looking for somebody who could help you solve that problem, right? so essentially, if you have the ability to solve a problem for somebody and there’s value in that, then you have the ability to create an online course.

Now, beyond that, Maybe you don’t have any subject matter expertise, but you know how to package together other people’s expertise, you could still create an online course . So as long as you know there’s a problem and there’s demand to solve that problem, you can either solve it yourself by being an expert, or you can partner with other people who maybe fill in gaps, that you don’t know, right? And you can put a more comprehensive solution together or bypass that, totally, and just be the producer of that course where you don’t appear in it at all, but you basically put all the pieces together. 

So there’s lots of ways that you can do that. So I guess, you know, the first question is really, you know, do you have a problem that you can identify that people are already spending money on? That’s typically what you wanna look for. 

You don’t wanna be the first one who’s ever trying to sell a solution here. You wanna see proof of concept in the market, there’s already a lot of competition. There’s people selling solutions here, so you know that there’s a market for it. And then, you know, figuring out, okay, how can I solve this uniquely?

How can I be a different voice? How can I put a different spin on this? Maybe I’m solving the problem in a way that, other people are not kind of coming from that angle. So there’s a lot of that, strategic, process that you have to go through to think through it. And there’s other ways to road test it in real life, before you commit a lot of time and money and energy into creating it. 

So if you have an audience already surveying that audience, floating things out there, hey, I’m, looking to put a group of people together who wanna learn about this, raise your hand, let me know if you’re interested, and you can kind of tell right away whether or not there’s interest, if you have an audience built in. 

That’s the problem. A lot of people don’t have, that a lot of people can’t solve is they don’t have the audience. So typically you have to go through a process of building an audience first to be able to survey them properly, but we’re getting into deep weeds here.

[00:10:08] Jason: Well, let’s, pause the deep weeds and let’s survey the audience, coz I’ve done a, I think, a half decent job of building an audience of people who want to know about influence marketing, so I feel like I have a little bit of expertise in the, category. So if you’re listening to the show and you would be interested in an online course on influencer strategy for me, let me know, just, you know, respond, hit me jason@jasonfalls.com and let me know, and then if enough people say yes, then I’m gonna join Rocky’s course and learn how to do all this stuff. So there we go, this podcast is gonna be good for both of us.

[00:10:40] Rocky: Yeah. 

[00:10:40] Jason: So I guess my next question, and you started, you answered it a little bit, but I, I wonder, when you are talking to someone, obviously, I mean, it, it behooves you to convince people to want to create an online course because that’s what you offer, that expertise that you can share with them.

And we’ll go deeper into that a little bit later in the show, but I wonder is there a difference between someone who should create an online course and someone who maybe shouldn’t? Is there a limit or some things you look for that say, eh, maybe this person is not right for this role?

[00:11:10] Rocky: Well, I think It’s not so much about courses per se, as it is about being able to package your expertise in some format that can be leveraged outside of you. So whether that’s you’re gonna write a book, you’re going to start a podcast where maybe it’s monetized in some way from sponsors or something like that.

The question is, can you make that shift from one to one, to one to many? I think that’s the essential question. So there’s different formats for that. I personally, as much as we’re talking about online courses and my background has been working with some of the biggest companies in the world in the education space, creating trainings, curriculums, etcetera.

I personally see the future as moving more toward membership models where there’s courseware, there’s content inside of it, but there’s also a human connection, there’s community, there’s coaching, it’s all of those legs of the stool, that are happening at the same time because a course itself is a static product that will age very rapidly.

So by the time you actually go and create it, put it out into the market, market it successfully. It’s already getting old if, depending on the subject matter that you’re talking about, it could already be obsolete by the time it comes to the market. Right? So I think it really kind of depends, do you have valuable expertise of some kind? and or could you package together valuable expertise with other people? Right? So you could create an online course or where I’m going in my own business is more toward membership models and masterminds. I believe that the dynamic human interaction mixed with content and mixed with coaching is really where the future is.

So, if you’re somebody who runs a community, really well, you know, I would say definitely look more toward the membership model. If you’re really great with people and you can get people to interact. Masterminds are great, right? So I think the big question is, if you have expertise, how can you now leverage your business model and shift that business model so that you can again, go one to many and proliferate your knowledge and your expertise around the world, regardless of time and space? That’s the key question.

[00:13:20] Jason: So, another thing that I’ve noticed with online courses, and this is not necessarily a judgment, it’s really more of reflection of what I see in the marketplace maybe and what I value and that kind of thing, but when I go and look up someone’s online course, and let’s say it’s, you know, someone who’s offering, I don’t know LinkedIn sales training.

And I go to their page and I think, okay, this is interesting. I would like to learn more about this. I go to their landing page and I scroll down through all the texts and all the, buy now by now. And I get to the price point, and the price point for some reason always kind of makes me pause because, and I’m making this up, I’m not pointing to any particular person, but I go through that, oh, LinkedIn sales, I could, learn that I, could use that information and I get down to the bottom of the page and it’s a thousand dollars, I’m like, I just don’t feel like there’s value a thousand dollars worth of value in me learning something that’s probably the content that’s packaged into a webinar, and so steer me in the right direction here.

The price point always bothers me, so I never really know what I’m gonna get out of it, and I’m never confident that I’m gonna get enough.

[00:14:24] Rocky: Yeah. And, typically the reason that you would feel that way is the fault of the marketer, they haven’t properly framed the result that they’re getting you in terms of a return on investment. So if the marketer was better, they would be sharing with you why you’re gonna be able to get at least a 10x return on that thousand dollars, right?

Why this is worth it. What you’re gonna learn in here should enable you to be able to get clients consistently like clockwork. If they said, you know what? If I could help you to get one extra client a month, it would be well worth the price of buying this course, right?

So they have to frame it properly, they have to be offering a high enough value result so that you can see this is a no-brainer, this is a tremendous deal. So what I always teach my clients to do is to try to always go for that 10x ROI. You have to be able to frame it at least as a 10x.

[00:15:17] Jason: Okay.

[00:15:18] Rocky: Presumably hot, you know? And especially the way I like to do it is say, and that’s just in the first year.

If you were to look at the results, you’ll get beyond that, it’s like 100x. Like if you take the results that you get now, just in the first year, you’re gonna make 10x back, but then if you look at year two and year three, beyond, and you’re growing , it’s way, way, way more than that. So I think that, course creators, really need to be able to, first of all, position their value properly, really be able to articulate the value of the result, and again, that’s another way to even increase your value of your pricing is to solve a bigger problem, solve a higher value problem that people will be willing to spend money for. So that’s a whole other strategic conversation but really important one.

[00:16:04] Jason: So the creating the course or creating the membership community as it were, whichever your path, you know, may be, or Masterminds, I feel like that’s half the battle. The other half the battle is being able to market it and sell it consistently over time so that it does become a repeatable business so that you do have consistent revenue coming in, so is the 50% of the job for whomever does this, regardless of what they know about half the job is probably marketing would say?

[00:16:32] Rocky: Probably 80%

[00:16:34] Jason: Yeah.

[00:16:35] Rocky: 80% is marketing, yeah, and that’s why you have to have margins built into, that’s one of the reasons that the course model is so attractive, first of all, is you’re selling a digital product. You’re essentially selling electrons, they’re free, so their margins can be incredibly high with knowledge.

People have a difficult time valuating knowledge properly, so it’s not like I’m gonna buy a jar of peanut butter or a gallon of gas and I can go, okay, when you’re selling knowledge, that’s pro providing some kind of a result, you can kind of talk about how, what the value of that is. And it’s somewhat elastic, right?

It’s perceived value, it’s, sort of, and that can enable you to charge high prices. And one of the reasons that marketing is so important is that when you can have a high priced product of some kind, and you have high margins, it enables you to do a lot more in terms of marketing. So you can get into things like paid ads, you know, and so on, where if you’re selling a cheap product, that’s $37 or something like that, you know, you’re gonna blow all of your budget on marketing and probably take a big loss on that.

So the margins are really an important defining feature that then enables you to do the marketing and you basically build your funnel backwards from the margins that you’re getting from the product.

[00:17:50] Jason: Very nice. We are talking to Rocky Buckley. He’s the creator of Platinum Path and the Power Persona Project, he’s got some new stuff coming up we’re gonna talk about it in a minute. Now, we’ve talked about the nuts and bolts, when we come back, we’re gonna dive into becoming a Power Persona and going from, I have a course to, I am a well paid subject matter expert with a community of rabid fans. You’re gonna learn all about that in a minute, stay tuned. 

 And we’re back with Rocky Buckley, he is the creator of Platinum Path and the Power Persona Project. He helps experts, thought leaders, and even influencers, so put your ears are perk up there folks, some of you folks listening, but he helps them go platinum by reinventing their brand, their strategy, and even their business model.

So Rocky, you have a training program for experts, that’s a very broad definition, but tell us what that is and who its for?

[00:19:01] Rocky: Sure, Platinum Path is a training program mastermind format, for people who are experts, thought leaders, influencers, they’re the kind of people that we were talking about earlier. People who have valuable expertise that can solve a high value problem. So typically those are in three big areas.

There are others, but the three core ones are money, health, and relationships. And typically the people that I work with, can solve urgent problems in those three areas. So it might be, you know, I can help you make a lot of money or save a lot of money in your business. I can help you save your relationship, right?

Or create a relationship for the first time, or transform your health, you know, go through a fitness journey and radically transform, your, health, your fitness, etcetera. And I teach people how to basically take the knowledge that they already have, and shift it so that they can charge a lot more for it, and then turn that into a system, a framework that they can then sell in the kind of formats that we’re talking about.

Courses, workshops, retreats, memberships, masterminds, etcetera. So it really is conceiving the business model shift, it’s like taking people that are really good at what they do, they’re very talented, they’re skilled, got a great reputation. They’ve been in business for a while, but they’re stuck in this sort of one to one, business model and you know, they know that they’re capable of a lot more and they wanna shift into this multiplied, leveraged sort of model one to many. And I teach them how to do that.

[00:20:27] Jason: That’s awesome, now, I think that’s different from the concept of a power persona slightly, so tell us about the concept of a power persona, and is that for everyone?

[00:20:38] Rocky: Sure the power persona is kind of the other side of the coin. It’s, okay, I, can start out, I’m an expert, I know this stuff, how do I immediately in the short term, take what I know, transform my business model, turn that into a high price program, retreat, workshop, etcetera. But then the bigger picture is, becoming a public figure, right? It’s not just about being successful selling a specific program or a course or something like that. It’s the bigger picture, it’s making that shift toward being known in the public, becoming a celebrity in your market niche, etcetera. And how do I do that? How do I become this public figure? And a lot of people, start putting out a lot of content online.

They start putting themselves out there and they find that they’re not resonating, with the market, right? So the question is, how do we take the best parts of ourselves and become strategic and conscious about creating this best version of ourself for the public? Cause that’s the person that in the big picture, is gonna create a successful business around themselves.

It’ll transcend just having like a program to a portfolio of different products, offerings, etcetera. Partnerships, collaborations, and also the part that goes with fame and influence and impact. The bigger picture that allows a person to really make a big difference in the world and leave a legacy behind, ultimately, at the end of the day.

So the second power persona ideal is really how do you become that person who can be, the figurehead of a , you know, of a successful business and brand that’s built around your passions and your expertise and knowledge, etcetera.

[00:22:16] Jason: So I’m, curious. I get that and I, guess to a certain degree, although I probably wouldn’t characterize it the same way, it’s kind of what, I and many other talking heads in the marketing space have tried to do for ourselves over the course of the last 15, 20 years as social media has given us that opportunity.

And not just in marketing, but in other avenues as well. But I’m wondering, there seems to be a difference between the people who do what you just described, and the people who do what you just described and also create raving fans for their brand, what’s the difference? What are the people who don’t have the raving fans missing?

[00:22:52] Rocky: Well, the kind of people I’m talking about are the people who have raving fans, so that’s what I’m, I’m trying to essentially build with people is like a blue ocean strategy, where you own a category, you are that person who owns that space, you created your own space, etcetera, and then you’ve got your tribe of people who are, again, raving fans, love what you do, etcetera.

I mean, I think the difference is, you know, when we use the word influencer there’s a surface deep sort of interaction with a market. It might be, okay, I’m on Instagram and I’ve created this sort of lifestyle influence sort of thing that I’m pedaling and I’m essentially monetizing that maybe by sponsorship deals or something, but there’s no real, I’m not really providing anyone any value.

I’m just somebody who looks cool, , and I can put out a product and promote a product to people that I may or may not have any real attachment to. and that’s a thing, and you can make a living doing that, right? There’s ways to engineer fame now. I think a lot of people are learning the science of that, and it’s very attractive to be able to do that.

But the kind of people that, I think you and I are talking about are the people who actually deliver real value into the world and who are minded from the standpoint of making impact. So they’re not just about fame and money, it’s more the full four quadrant sort of success.

It’s success on all levels. Making an impact and leaving a legacy are really important, at least to the kind of people that I, like to work with. So they’re aimed at providing tons and tons of value in the world, making a difference, changing people’s lives or businesses in some way, and really, I think to me, that’s the essence of true success, when you can do that, it’s not just about fame and money for sure.

[00:24:33] Jason: Very nice, I know that you’ve got something new coming up in the next few weeks or months with what you are doing. I think you’re shifting a little bit of what you do with the power persona or the different programs you have. Tell people what to expect from you in in the coming weeks?

[00:24:47] Rocky: Sure, well, right now, you know, if you were to to look up Power Persona Project, it would be a Facebook community and it’s a free Facebook community, so if you’re on Facebook, go and look up the Power Persona Project, and it’s right now a free Facebook group. But what’s coming later this fall is a paid Power Persona Projects community that will be hosted on Mighty Networks.

and you know, it’s gonna be affordable for everyone, but it’s really gonna go into this inner and outer game of success as a public figure. And it will also get into some of these platinum path concepts as well of transforming your pricing and your business model and so on. So for anybody who’s looking to become what I call a power persona, right?

A person who’s a public figure you’re sharing your expertise and your passion and your interests and your enthusiasm with the world, and you’re making a difference in people’s lives, and you wanna have a successful life and business around that. That’s what the power Persona project is all about, and again, I deal with the inner game, a lot of that, like we haven’t really gotten into that, but the thing that we do differently is look at this from more of a personal development, inner game standpoint. How do I develop myself and all of my internal resources and the assets that I have from my life story and my history and all of this stuff?

How do I take everything that I’ve got inside of myself and create the best version of myself for the public so that I resonate with other people so that my messaging sticks and penetrates and cracks through the noise that’s in the market, right? So that’s really what the power persona project is all about, the inner and outer game of success as a public figure.

[00:26:18] Jason: Well, and I, wanted to have you on the show because I know there’s a lot of creators out there who listen. And there’s also a lot of consultants and agency types who listen to, who fit that sort of pathway, who probably have the expertise, probably have the, either the desire or the potential to, you know, sort of carve out that life and that business model for themselves, especially the content creators and influencers out there.

And, you know, as Rocky was saying, there’s a level of that sort of, you know, surface deep influence that we talk about on this show as being quote unquote influencers, the way the mainstream media portrays influencers, and then there’s that deeper level that Rocky’s talking about of people with influence. Actual influence.

And that’s a deeper dive and a deeper level of value that you’re transferring from your expertise and your brain through your content to your audience. And so, that’s what Rocky is helping build there. So Rocky, if someone is interested in signing up, learning more, getting involved with what you’re doing, where do they find you on the innerwebs?

[00:27:17] Rocky: Yeah, the first place is just at my website, rockybuckley.com, and that’s my personal website, and you can get access to all of the different things I offer there and also the Power Persona Project is my Facebook community. Go to powerpersonaproject.com and that’s the entry point into the Facebook group as well.

[00:27:34] Jason: Very good. Rocky, thanks so much for taking the time for sharing this with us, and I’ll let you know the feedback I get from the listeners here, because having either an online course or a membership community is sort of on my list of things that I want to aspire to build, and so, if I get the right kind of feedback, well then I’ll be signing up and I’ll see you again soon.

[00:27:53] Rocky: Awesome, thank you so much, Jason, appreciate it. Great being here. 

[00:27:56] Jason: All right, Rocky Buckley from the Platinum Path and the Power Persona Project. Thanks, 

 I’m actually not kidding, folks. If you would potentially pay for or subscribe to an online course or community where I not only teach influence marketing, but maybe offer up office hours to members around the subject, reach out and let me know. I’d love some data points to prove I either should or shouldn’t create that kind of space for all of us Jasonfalls.com is the easiest way to do it, just email me or respond wherever you’re seeing or hearing this podcast. 

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If you have a moment, drop Winfluence or rating or review on your favorite podcast app, we are on all of them. You can also help make a future episode of Winfluence awesome, ask your question about influence or influence marketing that you want my answer to or take on, send an email to jason@jasonfalls.com.

If you’re feeling adventurous, record a voice memo on your phone and email me that file. I’ll let you ask the question right here on the show using the recording. Winfluence is a production of Falls and Partners, the technical production is by MPN Studios Winfluence airs along MPN, the Marketing Podcast Network. Thanks for listening folks, let’s talk again soon on Winfluence..