ML141: Olly Richards on Creating a Thriving Expert Business, Building an Engaged Audience and Launching Successful Online Courses
Learn how to build a successful online business based on your expertise, including how to brand yourself to stand out in a crowded marketplace, how to build your audience so you can reach your first students and how to create and launch a course to make your first money online.
Olly Richards is a language learning expert and entrepreneur, who speaks 8 languages and runs the hugely successful blog and podcast I Will Teach You A Language.
He makes great quality content and it's hard to explore language learning online without bumping into him at some point. He was one of the first people I interviewed for the podcast way back in episode 9 - and I've stayed in touch with him over the years.
I've had the privilege of chatting to Olly many times over the last few years and one of our favourite topics of conversation is the business of online education.
For context - I'm currently working on a new project about sharing your expertise online - as you may have noticed, it's a pretty crazy time in the world of online education and there's never been a better opportunity to start sharing your expertise online.
In this episode we discuss a range of topics including:
- How to brand yourself to stand out in a crowded marketplace
- How to build your audience so you can reach your first students
- How to create and launch a course to make your first money online
This was a wide ranging conversation with someone who has a broad experience of the online learning space and it was great to pick his brains. So if you want to start an online business, build and audience and launch a course, this episode has you covered.
Show Notes
- Introducing Olly [00:40]
- What was Olly’s inspiration for starting I Will Teach You A Language? [02:44]
- How did Olly decide to turn his blog into an actual business? How big was his audience then? [04:26]
- What was the decision-making process behind choosing the topic to create an online course on? [05:23]
- Olly shares his experience doing his first-ever live webinar for his course [07:32]
- How do you differentiate yourself from other online learning course creators? [09:20]
- How has Olly’s approach to the language learning space changed over the years? [12:33]
- What is Olly’s advice to people wanting to start teaching online but are reluctant to take a business approach? [14:58]
- Why is customer development a fundamental part of growing any business? [18:53]
- How do you create solutions based on your customer needs? [20:18]
- What are the components of a good sales page? What makes an offer compelling? [23:01]
- How do you utilise a successful email sequence for your business launch? [26:10]
- Why is experience a better driver for a business's success than knowledge of subject matter? [30:10]
- What are key moments to the continuous success of Olly’s business? [31:48]
- Olly’s piece of advice for people who are starting their entrepreneurship journey [34:03]
- Closing remarks [34:58]