The answer: A lot!
As part of my 2025 growth plan for Move at Pace, I decided that I would take the knowledge I have and productise it into a course. Over the past year, I have worked with dozens of entrepreneurs worldwide, and almost right across the board, I have delved into sales, finance, and systemising processes. These are the foundations of scaling any service business.
Our first conversations often settle on ambitions and then figuring out a plan to achieve them over many years. We break this down into milestones and begin focusing on the next one in front of us. Then it comes down to putting the systems and processes in place to make sales less salesy and more likely to result in success.
Well, that’s the theory anyway.
There is a commonality in business, and I found myself repeating the same conversations and discussing similar foundational processes across many businesses. The difference often came down to the current state of play within my client’s business and the maturity of the systems and processes they had.
Setting goals and making a plan to achieve them through good business practices is logical, yet many of us don’t give it consideration. Yes, you have an idea of where you want to be, but you rarely build the road map fully to achieve it. And if you do, you stray from the plan at the first challenge and never return.
And yet, doing just the basics works. I have had one client achieve 132% revenue growth since we installed robust processes. Another hit their first, second and likely 3rd 50k months. We’re now talking about what it’ll take to bridge the gap to 100k. And I have no doubt they’ll achieve.
Because sales and scale in a service business are primarily about leverage. Leverage of those you employ and of the systems and processes you put in, to maximise the output. The greater the output, the greater the potential we have for more profit.
People are often our greatest advantage, but even with the best systems and the best processes, this leverage can only go so far. That’s why scaling a service business is so hard. We’re selling a finite resource, and while we can grow more resources in our teams, this comes at a cost and comes with more headaches.
Yet if we sold a product, we create this once and sell it many times over. We gain economies of scale and our bottleneck rarely becomes production, but the ability to sell this to an ever-wideing market. In my last article, I talked about the productisation of service, and it’s something I consider almost daily. How can we as service business owners productise our service, or at least instil product-like qualities that will help us maximise output while retaining the highest quality of creative integrity?
The answer, of course, differs depending on the skillset of your team, and the markets you serve will dictate your knowledge of opportunities available. But there are opportunities, and it’s our job to learn them.
In my business, I share a lot of the same theory time and time again. I help my clients implement such systems and processes, and if they do just this, I’m confident they’ll reach the next phase of growth no matter what stage of business they are at.
On one hand, I have a client who would rather pay me to provide the support he needs. Whereas I also appreciate that the cost for my 1-1 time to do this is prohibitive to some clients.
Which brings me to the point of launching a course. I’ve never done this personally. Yet, I’ve helped my clients do so to great success, and since announcing I was launching one, other clients wanted me to write this guide for them to follow. They plan to do the same in their respective industries.
Why though?
As you’re about to find out, I’ve built an asset for my business. This asset alone is something I’ll be able to sell time and time again. Yes, I intend for there to be revisions and updates, but the majority or bulk of work has been completed. Every course I sell comes at a marginal cost for doing so. And while it’s very competitively priced, it doesn’t take too long to see significant income from these sales.
Already in the group I shared the course with as beta testers, 3 have approached me on the back of this to work with them directly on their business. The additional benefit is that this should become a low-barrier entry point to people who want to work with me 1-1 without them having to commit to the investment in this.
My aim in the course is to help clients build profit in their business. If I can do this on the course, it takes away the biggest objection people have to investing in 1-1 support.
Before I move into the elements, you need to launch a course and consider what a product might look like in your business. Maybe it’s WordPress or Shopify themes, or are they templates for designs? Do you have specific industry knowledge that can be shared in small groups or a digital course?
What do you need to launch an online course?
Firstly, you need a course. Well, you don’t! The first thing you need to do is to determine if there’s a need or market for the course.
Building an online course requires a lot of effort. As of this morning, I’m at 244 hours and over 10k invested. And that’s before launch. But before I started, I did some research to ask if clients and potential clients would be interested in this method of knowledge delivery and, importantly, if they’d pay for it. Some just wanted to work with me, but others agreed that if they got the same output, then they’d be happy with a cheaper option.
I eventually plan to use the course as a lead-gen tool, so I was building it anyway, but this solidified my decision.
- The Course
You need the course content. This can be as short or as extensive as you want. My course is over 4 hours long. The unedited version is over 7 hours. My problem was never what I would write, it’s what I omit from the course. Because at some point, you have to stop. I broke my key points into 5 individual lessons and used this as the outline.
The majority of the time I’ve spent so far has been in the course creation phase. Building the outline, writing the drafts, revising the drafts for clarity, revising them further because you realise you’ve made mistakes, and then getting to the point where each lesson will make sense to someone else, and that’s important.
I write a lot. I’ve spent the last 15 years practising this skill, and I’ll admit I’m still just a beginner. If I were better at writing, this process would take significantly less time, but it is what it is.
When you’ve written the course and are happy that the content meets the needs of your audience, you need to record it. All I can say is that good lighting, good sound and good assets are the key to this. Using a teleprompter will save you days and make the process much smoother, and practising your content a few times will help you identify any challenging sentences or points that need to be paused and worked on further.
- Course Assets
Your course must keep your audience engaged. Even the most boring finance modules need to be designed and have assets created that will help your customers. In my course, each module comes with a workbook, and every lesson presentation has 30-40 slides I talk through. Before you hit record, every element of your presentation must be ready.
Now is probably a good time to look at what I had designed.
- A brand. A client asked me where the course sits in the company structure, as they are considering launching their own. Well, my thought on this is that the course is an asset of the business and like every sales channel, it should provide some nod back to the overall company. Unless you want it to be completely removed from your current offering, anyone who takes your course may be a client elsewhere.
I got a full brand created for the Selling Creative Services course. Because I wanted my course to be reflective of the market I serve. It needs to look and feel like a designer put time and consideration into the creative. Because they did. - Course Presentation – I’m not a designer, but I can use the Adobe Suite. It’s easy for me to bring predesigned assets together in an approved format. My creative team designed the assets, and I brought them together in the presentation. These included: Covers for each presentation and multiple backgrounds, as each lesson has its own unique style and image direction.
- Course Workbooks – Each course has its own workbook to allow participants to fill in details as we progress through the course. These were all designed with graphics that support learning in the modules.
- Landing Page
Now that you have your course ready to go, you need somewhere to host it and somewhere students can buy your course. After a lot of research into course platforms, I decided to use Systeme.io. Primarily because of cost, but because this platform has everything I need now and a roadmap for development that is seeing great features released regularly.
If you check out https://courses.moveatpace.com/selling-creative-services, you’ll see what the sales funnel landing page looks like. Every element on this page was designed or edited by my creative team. As I have some development knowledge, I put the page together in Systeme. But anyone can do this as it’s a pretty easy drag-and-drop editing system. The support is excellent, also.
All of the content on this page needs to be written. My plan here is to provide as much information as I can to justify the purchase of the course and to overcome as many objections as I can before you make the final decision. If I get a question I haven’t answered here, I’ll update the page to make it as complete as possible.
At the time of writing, I’m in my pre-launch marketing phase, so the goal is to build an email list of potential clients who might want to buy the course. If you read this after launch, it will be focused directly on getting you to buy (and you should).
- Sales & Marketing
This article/video is just one piece of the extensive sales and marketing plan I have for the course. Over the next 4 weeks before launch and ongoing after, I will be following my own advice and engaging in the following activities.
- Social selling on LinkedIn and Instagram
- Outbound emails and calls to new customers
- Content marketing schedule across all platforms – videos, graphics and text
- SEO activities on my website
- Webinar for launch
Now, each of the above could be a post on its own right now, but if you buy the course, you’ll realise how robust each of the processes is I’ll be doing. My plan is to educate and inform clients as to why they might want or need the course. If I do that, then when they’re ready to buy, they’ll be able to do so with all the knowledge that its right for them.
If you follow my social media over the next 8-12 weeks, you’ll see how this plays out in real time. If there is one word I’d use to describe my plan. It’s relentless.
- Advertising
But sales and marketing alone won’t reach a wide enough audience. To be honest, after a year as a solopreneur, my focus has been more on working with my clients than building my own brand. My Instagram was neglected, and I’ve not posted a new video on YouTube since December. Now you know why. But to reach a wider audience, one that is worldwide, the quickest and easiest way to do that is to pay for the exposure.
I am working with a client who provides digital ad management services, and they have built out a robust plan for ads across Google Search, Google Display, Meta and YouTube. They’re about to go live, but each ad needed to be considered with the challenges and opportunities service business owners face to entice them firstly to sign up for the waitlist and secondly to buy the course.
Over time, this is where the bulk of my cost of the course is going to come from. Yet with every sale expected to be net positive to the business, it makes sense to have ongoing advertising.
Every ad needs copy, it needs to be designed or created as a video, and it needs to be strategically placed in front of your target audience. Any or all of these factors can cause you to throw money away on ads that don’t speak to or even target your prospective clients. But when they work, they leverage and compound your efforts.
If I only wanted to sell a handful of courses, I wouldn’t bother with ads. But because I want to sell to those I believe can benefit from it, I’m putting a lot of effort and resources into this method alongside my sales and marketing.
- Course Hosting
As mentioned above, I am using Systeme.io to host the sales funnel, but this platform is also the place where the course will be hosted and students managed. Each lesson page needs to provide an outline of the module, it needs to host the video you create and provide links to all associated assets. I used Claude.ai to summarise my lessons, and this became the basis of the content on these pages.
- Sales Funnel Nurturing
Once someone signs up for my waitlist, they’ve shown intent. But intent isn’t always enough. Now that I’ve turned unknown social media followers into known personas, I start the process of nurturing the lead to answer any questions they may have before buying. I do this through a sequence of emails that answer many of the questions they have considered and others they may not have. I engage with every prospective client who replies to my emails and ultimately help them decide if the course is right for them.
- Testimonials & Feedback
From the beginning of this idea, I worked with multiple clients and people kind enough to review the course content. Their feedback has been invaluable in determining whether I needed more or less, and if they could understand the content I’ve created.
I talk a lot about finance in the course, and I do so in a manner that makes sense to me. But an accountant kindly sense and fact checked this to make sure I make sense, but I’m factually correct in my theory.
Other beta testers have already provided testimonials that I’ll use as social proof on launch.
Everything noted so far is the pre-launch phase of course building. You create the assets, build the course and start to market to your target audience. Easy right?
The aim is to build awareness and to build trust that the course will deliver greater value than its cost.
Over the 4 weeks before launch, the goal is to build as much awareness and demand as possible. When it launches, this gives us the greatest opportunity to maximise sales revenue.
And that’s where I am right now. Focusing on building awareness and focusing on widening my audience nationally and internationally. If you’re reading or watching this, it’s part of the show-and-tell or build-in-public aspect of my marketing.
Let me know if you found this useful and if I can help with your own productisation of service, please let me know.
Finally if you want to check out the Selling Creative Service Course check out this link – https://courses.moveatpace.com/selling-creative-services