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Join the Waitlist for the Launch Your First Mastermind Workshop here >>> https://www.launchyourfirstmastermind.com Have questions for Jamie or are you interested in the Brighter Together Mastermind? Contact Jamie directly on Instagram @JamieBrightAdventures Sign up for podcast  email reminders here  >>> http://brightentrepreneurpodcast.com/email Transcript: One of the most fun and admittedly, sometimes frustrating parts of running an online business is that things are always changing. This means you always have something new to learn and figure out which can be really fun if you get bored quickly with doing the same old thing over and over again, but it can also be incredibly frustrating. If it means that you're getting left behind and the market is shifting and you haven't kept up. Now, if you are at the forefront of this and you see where things are going and you can react quickly being the first in your market to make a massive shift that everyone kind of follows suit with, it can be a huge benefit. And so today what I want to share with you. Is the shift that I see happening in the online education space that I am watching very closely and I mean, I've been in this business for just about 10 years now. So I've been watching and I know when the shifts are happening and they happen every, I would say every 18 to 24 months. And we're right on the edge of another big one. So that's what I'm going to share with you today in this moment, ? cast Well, 2020 has been one of those years that many of us never want to go through again. One of the beautiful things that has happened is that many people have started online businesses. Now, this is really exciting for me because I know that when I realized I could have an online business that gave me the freedom and the life that I really wanted to have, I was all in. Like, I literally remember the day that I found the pro blogger site from Darren Rouse. And started reading it and was like, Oh my goodness, I could do this. I could totally make money helping people. And it blew my mind. Like I was completely consumed for the entire day. And for months thereafter, I just got really excited about it and I know how much it's changed my own life. And so I get excited to see all of the people who are realizing the opportunity that's there for them and the freedom that they can have even though 2020 has been a really hard year. And some of them are starting businesses because they have to, because they've been laid off from jobs or whatever it is, , which admittedly is very difficult. I really believe that many people are going to look back on this year, especially those who started online businesses and be really grateful for the transition that happened. Now, that being said, for those of us, who've been here for a while, it means that the market is. Becoming more flooded. There are more and more people starting online education businesses, and each niche everywhere, not just online education businesses, there's even box subscriptions and e-commerce and all sorts of stuff starting. So no matter what you're selling or what you're doing, if you're selling online primarily to an audience that's online and you don't have a brick and mortar store, your going to start to have a lot more competitors. This year, the people who have been selling how to start your own online course and how to start an online business type of resources have been flourishing. In fact, I have friends who do that exact thing, and it's been a really great year for them, but that means as people start implementing this. And selling their stuff. The market is going to become more and more saturated. Now this can be really hard and this can be really scary to go through and it absolutely can affect your bottom line. If you go back to season one of this podcast, back when I was called the personal brand journey podcast, you can all listen to what happened in my own business. When a few years after starting it. The market flooded with all sorts of people, teaching in the professional photography education space. It was hard. I actually lost half of my revenue over two years because I didn't realize what was happening and I didn't take measures to protect against it. And it took me quite a while to recover. You can hear the whole story and the very first episodes of season one, that being said. I don't think that you have to be afraid of the fact that the market is going. To be more flooded with people. You're going to have a lot more competitors. I think you just need to do three things to respond. Clearly. That's going to keep you ahead of the game and it's going to help you stand out from everyone else. That's just started their online business and is offering stuff to your clients. And really help elevate you as the expert in your field in a way that maybe you haven't stepped into yet. So I want to share these with you because these are hard earned lessons that I learned after. I went through this experience and struggled through it. the first one is one of already talked about a few times in the last couple of months is you need to get more personal and connect with your people. One of the things that got me out of my slump back when the photography market flooded was moving from a generic bank brand to a personal brand and really focusing on how I could build real connections with people in mass. My photography business has 120,000 email subscribers. So you can't connect with each of those people one-on-one. So I had to learn how I could build that connection, how I could build that familiarity, that personal connection, where people felt like they knew me. Even though I may never have even seen their name or had any idea that they were out there listening, watching, learning, et cetera. And the reason is that people buy from those, they know like, and trust as more and more people are offering the same types of products promising the same sorts of outcomes. The thing that's going to make them decide who to hire. Comes down to who they feel, understands them best. And the people we feel understand us best are those that we've connected with and that we trust when we can show them that we understand their deepest fears, their struggles, and we can show them solutions for getting out of that. Give them quick wins that help them gain momentum. They're gonna. Believe that we understand their problem more deeply and can help them with the bigger stuff as well. They're going to want to keep working with us. So you definitely need to focus on being personal, both in your own brand and being the face of your business as well as mixing in as much. Personal touches. You can. And I have a whole episode, like I said, a couple episodes back about how to be more personal in your business that will give you lots of ideas of how to do that. Whether you have 105 email subscribers, or you've got 120,000 email subscribers, that's definitely worth a listen. Number two, I believe there's going to be a massive desire for experiences instead of just. I believe that if you want to stand out from, what's been done for the last five or six years, which is mostly online courses, video courses with maybe a Q and a session or something. I think one of the biggest things you can do is to offer implementation experiences, a virtual retreats, some sort of opportunity to connect with other people to come and get stuff. Done and to have a whole experience. That's not just learning. It also incorporates doing in a very tangible way, where at the end of the experience, they're going to have something completely finished and they're going to feel that excitement and that big win. Now I. I have seen a number of people doing implementation days with their students, where they offer to say, Hey, if you want to come and we'll all just work together and I'll kind of be there to answer questions and guide you through it. Um, you know, it's a certain amount of money. We'll all hang out on zoom and we'll get her done. Another thing that works really well is masterminds, which is part of why I'm so excited to do this because I believe that, , having that connection. And that ongoing experience, not just one off is incredibly valuable. Now this kind of actually leads me into the third point. So I'm overlapping a little bit, but bear with me not only do we need to be personal. Not only do we need to create experiences instead of just education, but I really believe that we need to be offering something to the advanced people in our specific niches. Now, when people start their online businesses in a topic, like when I started teaching professional photographers, how to book clients. I focused on helping the beginners because I didn't feel that far along. I had a lot of insecurity about being seen as the expert, and I knew that there were always way more beginners than there were experts. And so my market was going to be bigger if I focused on beginners. That's great. But if you've been in this business for any amount of time, or if you really know your topic inside out, you're going to find that all of these new people, I would say the majority of them are going to be focusing on how to teach beginners, which is great because what's going to happen is that there's going to be more people who are beginners, who actually start to make some progress. And now. Are looking for that intermediate to advanced thing that can help them take what they just learned and implement it in a deeper way. And new people coming into the industry, rarely have anything set up that is going to help people beyond beginners to really advance in their fields. So if you can take your offerings and think about how you can serve that intermediate to advanced audience better, not only. Are you going to have more people who are ready for that because of all these people who are flooding your market. So that's one of the positives of it, but you're also going to be able to charge more, which allows you to make more money, which is fantastic. And. Oh, and this is so beautiful. You're going to be seen as an even greater expert because you're talking about the things that are more advanced and not just beginner stuff. And it's really easy to fall back into the trap to speaking to just beginners. But when you can shift that conversation, To a higher level conversation. You're naturally going to attract more advanced people into your business. It's all based on the conversations they're having. And my guess is if you're anything like me, you are so tired of having those same beginner conversations anyways, and it would be really exciting. To have deeper level conversations with people who are further along in your topic or your niche that you can help in a deeper way. And you know, personally on my side too, I love working with people who aren't beginners. I mean, I love my beginners. I have nothing against them. But I really love working with the people who are more intermediate or advanced in growing their businesses, because they're my people, they're there. They've done some of the work they've shown that they get progress. They're not the ones who are going to let limiting beliefs hold them back nearly as much because those people are weeded out at the beginning. Right. They never get past that beginner stage. And so it's easier to get them results and it's just more satisfying. My favorite kind of people to work with are those who are more advanced because we can have deeper conversations. It's more thought provoking for me. They have stuff I can learn from them. It's just one of these win-win wins all around and because it is more advanced knowledge, I can charge a lot more for it. So it brings me back to masterminds. I truly believe. That masterminds and running masterminds in a variety of different topics, not just in the entrepreneur space or how to build a business space, but having a mastermind structure, even if it's not called that is going to become more and more popular for people who want to stand out as experts. And honestly, People want this more than ever after having been stuck in their homes and being forced to cancel their travel plans and not see the people they want to see and live the lives that they've normally been living, which are full of people in connection, people are hungry. To be a part of a community. They need someone to believe in them more than ever, and they are ready to move beyond this beginner stage and really dive into something deeper with other people. They value that energy more than they ever have before. And that's why I'm so excited about masterminds, because I think that. Does this so well, not only does it provide that personal touch and the experience, that's not just once, but it's ongoing month after month after month, year after year after year. And it allows you to work with your best customers and clients and have those deeper conversations to really see them make massive growth and really just get to. Believe in them. It's so fun to be able to cheerlead them and guide them and not have to be providing all that basic how to content, because they already know it. It's not something they're joining because they want more information. It's something they're joining because they want more support. They want somebody who can help them see what's possible and then help them. Understand what that next step is. You know, masterminds are more about getting that one comment or that two comments a year that totally make your money back because they were the right thing in the right moment from somebody who knows you, trusts you and understands what you're going through in your business, that maybe you were just too close to see whatever it is. I get really excited about them because they're also a lot of fun. And I think that fun and friendship and connection has been lacking so much this past year. So I would love to challenge you to think about as you're going into 2021, what's happening in your marketplace. Do you see a lot of people starting to teach in your marketplace? And if you're still focusing on beginners, which is fine, I'm not saying you can't help them. I'd encourage you to think about how can you be more personal with them. How can you build more experiences into your business? Not just courses, but actual experiences where people get to connect with each other and implement something and come, even if it's virtually, which I assume it will be for a while yet, but come do something together and then have a tangible outcome by the end of the day or, you know, multiple days, whatever it is. And then three. Okay. I would have you consider if maybe serving the higher end market with a mastermind might be something that can help you elevate your expertise and serve those more advanced customers and clients better. So if you want help with that, I'm currently working on putting together a mini workshop. It's not going to be super long. It's not going to be super expensive. that's called launch your first mastermind. And basically it's how to launch that very first mastermind and what you need to know in order to price it appropriately. Find the right people, get them to sign up and get this rolling as quickly as possible as well as what mindset shifts do you need to overcome in order to do this? Because when you start doing a higher ticket offer, working with more advanced customers and clients, sometimes that can stir up some insecurities and limiting beliefs that we don't even know is there, like we've got personal junk in there, things about our worth and our expertise and, you know, imposter syndrome and there's all sorts of stuff that. Offering a high ticket item can start to stir up. So I also talk about a few of those things that can come up and how to overcome them in this workshop. Now it's not ready yet at the time of this recording, but it has getting super. Deeper close. if you want to be notified, when it is ready to go, you can join the wait list at. Launch your first mastermind.com. And if it's launched by the time you're listening to this, that'll take you to the information page where you're, it's available to you, but go check it out. And if you have any questions about it, by all means, reach out to me. My contact info is in the show notes. but I really believe that going into 2021, this shift is going to become more and more apparent. More markets are going to be saturated and people are going to be craving more advanced. Opportunities to help them get beyond that beginner level. And they're going to want to have that connection and that personal touch because 2020 has stripped a lot of that away from them. They're going to want to have experience. They're going to want to build friendships as well as being able to grow their business or, you know, whatever it is you serve them and help them to do Check it out, launch your first mastermind.com. And would that my friend just remember we are brighter together and the world needs us honestly now more than ever. So let's go out and let's make it ? brighter.