How I Productize My Training Business

It has been a little more than six months since I converted my in-person training workshops into online courses. By far, this is one of the best business decisions I have made.

In the past six months, 4,000 over students have enrolled in my online courses, and 90% of them are from countries outside of my hometown, Singapore! I am incredibly grateful – and thrilled – to have the opportunity to reach out to all these amazing people in my online courses.

Having conducted training workshops since 2008, my experience tells me that creating content is not the toughest part of being a trainer.

Truth is, the biggest challenge of EVERY trainer is in marketing their courses and getting people to enroll in their classes.

Many trainers I’ve met often have difficulty marketing their courses, and they are on a constant lookout for alternative marketing channels to promote their workshops to reach out to a wider audience.

Last year I came to a realization – rather than trying to do all the marketing work on my own, I ought to be working with marketing partners who do what they know best!

In fact, as a trainer myself, I firmly believe that our core value lies in content creation and providing support for our students .

When we spend too much time on marketing (believe me, it will take up a lot of your time), not only do we have lesser time to upgrade ourselves, we also end up depriving our students from the support that they need from us.

If you are a trainer who wants to add tremendous value to your students, I would strongly recommend you to consider finding a strong – and reliable – partner who can help you to market your courses. That way you can free yourself up from marketing activities and focus on what you are truly good at, and enjoy doing for that matter.

Remember, LEVERAGE is the key.

Personally I have chosen to move most of my training programs online and partner with one of the largest e-learning platforms, Udemy.com.

In the past, I used to spend 80% of my time doing marketing and only 20% on content creation and supporting my students.

But after partnering with Udemy, I have seen drastic improvements in my daily schedule.

Nowadays I only need to take 10% of my time for marketing, and I can spend the rest of my day on things that I find most fulfilling, like writing books, creating online courses and supporting my students online!

And if you ask me what is the biggest bonus that I get from moving my training business online and working with an awesome marketing partner like Udemy? I get to save thousands of dollars every month now without having to rent training venues, hire staff and create offline marketing materials!

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that you must move your business 100% online!

Rather, it is worthwhile for you to consider investing 10% to 20% of your time in creating information products (such as online courses or ebooks), so that you can leverage the global market to get more students – without you having to do MORE marketing.

Here are some of the giant platforms that you can consider joining to leverage their enormous customer base:

1. Amazon Kindle Book (200 million customers)
2. Udemy (6 million students)
3. ClickBank (500,000 affiliates to promote your digital products)

I hope this post will inspire you to take action if you have been thinking of venturing online for the longest time!

P.S. I am truly thankful for Amazon and Udemy. It’s all because of them that I now have students buying my online courses and books every single day (even on Chinese New Year)! Thank you, Amazon and Udemy !