IAM1595 – Online Course Creator Helps Business Owners Turn their Passion Into Profitable Online Course

As a successful professional photographer for 16 years, she turned her knowledge into a business course for other photographers. She grew that course business to $2M per year helping tens of thousands of business owners worldwide. She now helps business owners turn their passion into their own online courses for a stream of passive income. Molly currently lives in New Mexico with her husband Aaron, and dog Franklin, and you can often find them camping in the mountains, road-tripping, or around a campfire with friends.

The Mission of Profitable Courses helps business owners turn their passion into their own profitable online courses for passive sales.

• CEO Story: Essentially, Molly has always had a passion for business, and in high school, she had a passion for photography in college, she went to pursue her passion but sadly she was not taught about having a business, so she dropped it out and pursued to have one. After a few years, Molly had a successful studio and other photographers started asking her how she did it. And so she found out about digital products and online courses. For six years she taught photographers through her course and grew it to over 2 million dollars per year. In 2021, Molly and her husband started their own company as their sole focus now, where they help business owners, content creators, and coaches turn their knowledge into their own profitable online digital products.
• Business Service: Online Course: Profitable Courses. Membership called creator accelerator.
• Secret Sauce: Teach yourself results, and start to get others results. You don’t need to get so many years of experience or profit in order to teach others.
• CEO Hack: In business, you need to be in a good mood. You need to be taking care of yourself and your mental health. Find yourself in a consistently good mood.
• CEO Nugget: When you go to create your own product and you get it sold, don’t go and create another product, just keep selling that one product.
• CEO Defined: Being a great visionary and steering your company in a great direction. Constantly living in the future, constantly seeing what’s your market next. The success of your company really comes down to you and where you’re steering it.

Website: https://www.profitablecourses.com

Instagram: mollymkeyser

Facebook: profitablecreatormovement

TikTok: https://vm.tiktok.com/TTPdpkYrqj/

Youtube: mollykeyser

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Transcription

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00:27 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:54. – Gresham Harkless

Hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Molly Kaiser of Profitable Course courses. Molly, excited to have you on the show.

01:04 – Molly Keyser

Yeah, super excited to chat with you today.

01:07 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, it should be a phenomenal time. Of course, before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Molly so you can hear about some of the awesome things she's been working on. As a successful professional photographer for 16 years, she turned her knowledge into a business course for other photographers. She grew that course, that course business, to 2 million per year, helping tens of thousands of business owners worldwide. She now helps business owners turn their passion into their own online courses for a stream of passive income.

Molly currently lives in New Mexico with her husband Aaron and a dog, Franklin. And you can find, you can find, often find them camping in the mountains, road-tripping, or around a campfire with friends. The mission of profitable Courses is to help business owners turn their passion into their own profitable online course for passive sales. Molly, absolutely love that. Love all the awesome things you're doing. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:58 – Molly Keyser

Oh, I'm stoked. Thanks for having me.

02:00- Gresham Harkless

Yes, absolutely. So to kind of kick everything off, I know I touched on a little bit, but I wanted to rewind the clock, and hear a little bit more about how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

02:09- Molly Keyser

Yeah, so I like to tell the speed dating version because I've been in business for 16 years, so it, you know, it can be as lengthy or short as I want it to be, but essentially I've always had a passion for business and in high school, I really had a passion for photography. So I went to college because that's what everyone told me to do. I found out that I absolutely did not like it. They were not teaching me anything about how to actually have a business and how to actually make money. Some of my business professors, like all of them had never even had a business.

So I just thought, I'm just gonna drop out and just go for it with my business. Fast forward, I think a few years I had my own successful studio and other photographers started asking me how I did it. That's how I found out about digital products and online courses. Because I tried doing some coaching and I quickly realized, I was just trading more of my time for money. I was trading my time for money with the photography service business and then also with the coaching. So when I found out about courses, I thought, wow, this is a million-dollar idea. Because I was in this online course and I think we've all done the math. How many students, what's the cost of the course?

Man, that's a lot of money and then I thought I could help so many more people and also not trade my time for money. So that's when I started my first online course. For six years I taught photographers through that and we grew that to $2 million per year. Then around 2021, my husband and I decided to start a company together. This is our sole focus now, where we help business owners, content creators, and coaches turn their knowledge into their own profitable online products and digital products.

03:54 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I absolutely love hearing that transition. I love the speed date version. I'm definitely going to borrow that from you and be able to talk about, of course, all the peaks and valleys that we kind of talked about before we jumped into the actual interview. But I love hearing the transition of you realizing that that's a very powerful phrase. You realize you were trading your time for more money. Like the new idea, the idea after that that we all want to pursue. There's such a limitation as far as the time and energy that we have that we have to often get a lot more creative and think about things in a different way.

04:25. – Molly Keyser

Yeah, absolutely. Because that's the thing is I was like, well, I really want to share my knowledge, but now I'm just working, 80 hours a week. I'm like, this is not the right solution for where I'm at.

04:36- Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. So being able to make that more quote-unquote scalable. Being able to kind of take that expertise, that knowledge, and be able to scale from there has been absolutely huge. So I wanted to drill down a little bit more here on, what you're doing, you and your husband, how you're making that impact, and how you're helping out these business owners.

04:53 – Molly Keyser

Sure. Yeah. So, all of my previous businesses, just two, the photography and then the education for photographers, were all 100% owned by me and my husband. He was full-time in it, unlike myself dropping out of college, he actually got multiple degrees and he went on to do it. But what's crazy well, not really crazy. I'm sure you guys, some of you guys listening can relate, but you know, with how expensive student loans were and then how much money he was actually making in the field, it just didn't really make sense to keep doing that. We both just talked about it for a number of years.

He worked in my business for a number of years, left his full-time job and we just thought what if we just combined our skills and did this together? Of course, we're married, so it makes additional sense there as well. But we, we both have completely different skill sets and so I think that's something interesting if you are interested in having a partner in your business is, I do think it's important to have, you know, different skill sets. So I'm more of the face of the company, the marketing, the sales, education. He definitely is like funnels, tech ads, data like complete opposite skill sets, which is really great, so that, that worked really well.

What we're doing now is we only have two main products. I really recommend focusing your time and efforts into like start with just one product. So the first product we started with is called Profitable Courses. We help coaches, content creators, and business owners turn their knowledge or passion into their own profitable course. And then we just recently opened up a membership called Creator Accelerator where we help these same people to start growing their following and dabbling in digital products.

The reason we did that is because we noticed that a lot of people before they get into courses, want to grow their following and like dabble in digital products, see if it's for them first. That's another lesson to share with you guys just always like listening to your market and what people are saying and creating the things that not only you think are going to help them, but that they're quite literally telling you that they need help with.

07:06- Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. I guess the quest to build a better mousetrap, you actually ask, is this a better mousetrap? Is this something that you might use and want to create and there's no better, you know, person to ask or people to ask than your actual community that you've been able to build?

07:21 – Molly Keyser

Oh, absolutely, yeah. But first, you got to build that community and we could talk a little bit about that. But yeah, I think that's important to do that on so many levels, but mostly so that you can survey and talk to them and just remember that they're humans and that your job is to help them if that's the type of business that you're in.

07:40 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that makes so much sense. I definitely appreciate that. So would you consider that to be like what I like to call your secret sauce can be for yourself the business or a combination of both, but the ability that you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique. Is it for you to be able to understand maybe all these tips, tidbits, all this information and be able to kind of teach that to people and help people to be able to kind of excel as well? Do you think that's part of your secret sauce?

08:06 – Molly Keyser

Yes, but I think what's interesting to note is I think a lot of times people won't think they can do a course or digital product or something because they're like, I have nothing to teach. What's interesting is everything I've learned about TikTok, I've learned in the last six months. It's not like I knew all this stuff about social media and TikTok and everything necessarily before I started my business.

Of course, with this business, I had the previous knowledge that if you're going to teach courses you should probably know what you're doing. But my point is, let's say you're like, well, I'm really interested in social media and I want to teach it and you don't know anything about it. You can learn, you can learn about social media so quickly and all you have to do is get results for yourself and then you can start to get results for other people.

This doesn't have to be like a 10-year journey. I thought before teaching courses. So with my previous business, I just kept telling myself like, I can't teach people digital products or courses until I make at least $1 million a year. That's great and like cool for me to be able to share that number, but I don't think that that's like 100% necessary. You just need to be able to get yourself a result, start to get other people results, and then you know, hey, now you're a teacher, you don't even need that piece of paper or anything anymore. We're in a digital age where results really matter.

09:26- Gresham Harkless

So yeah, yes, I absolutely love that. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. You might have already touched on this, but this could be like an app or book or a habit that you have. But what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

09:41- Molly Keyser

Well, I do think that in order to be productive and successful, you need to be in a good mood, right? Because in business there's a lot of ups and there are a lot of downs and it really doesn't matter how big your company is. I almost feel like I actually had more ups and downs the more I grew my company. So I don't know, just something to keep in mind. But in order to keep your mood good, to be able to deal with problems that arise or things that come up that aren't necessarily positive all the time, you just need to be taking care of, yourself and your mental health.

For me, it's so simple but like every morning I go on a one-hour-long walk with my dog. I don't anything other than nature and animals, like no people. That might not be possible for everyone, but for me, it really puts me in a great mood. I think I should say too, that it's not just the walk, it's the consistency of the walk. So like find the things that, you know, help you stay consistently in a great mood to run your business and then like do those things over and over and over.

10:45- Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely love that. I usually ask for a CEO nugget which I think you might have already touched on, which is kind of like a habit or something motivational that you might tell your younger business self or potentially tell your favorite client. But what would you consider those things around social media, building the following? Do you consider that to be your CEO nugget?

11:05 – Molly Keyser

I will give two. Actually, that's okay, I'll say the first, the first one is when you, when you go to create your product and you get it sold, don't go and create another product, just keep selling that one dang product. I think so many times, I don't know about you, but I find it fun to create new things. I'm like a hyper-creative and I like to do all that stuff, but. But just channel that into the one product. Like, you've already done the hard work, you've already got the product selling. Just sell more of it.

You can put your creativity into the ads or the campaigns or the messaging, different things. Then also the second thing I would say is to build a brand, build a following. If that's the type of business. Well, I don't even think it really matters what business you're in. I think building that following and building that brand is crucial. I mean, like, look at, Kylie Jenner, for example, she was a billionaire by, what was it, like 20 or something? I mean, what real skills does she have? I don't know. That's debatable. What she does have, though, is a brand and a massive following. She could have literally sold, like, dog poop and people would buy it. Like, she could sell anything because she has this huge brand. I'm not saying you should sell bad things, but just trying to be goofy.

12:24 – Gresham Harkless

Yes. No, I definitely picked up what you were putting down. It wasn't the dog poop, but it was very valuable. So I had to. Exactly, exactly. But no, I think that's so powerful in understanding that the saying was always like, people do business with people they know, like, and trust. I feel like that's been accelerated to a massive degree. When you have that following, you can sell whatever it is that you bite to.

If you have built that brand in the community people trust you. They trust that whatever it is that you are pushing out there is something in alignment with your values because they feel like they connect you with you, and got to know you. So I think that that's such a powerful nugget as well, too.

13:03 – Molly Keyser

Yeah, absolutely. Just Mr. Beast, for example, his one focus for like 12 years was just to make good videos and get paid through AdSense. That doesn't need to be your route. Just an example. But then he's like, okay, now I can add hamburgers or whatever. Now I can add chocolate bars and keep in mind he has partners, he has operations managers, people, and you can start to do more things once you've grown that first thing.

13:28- Gresham Harkless

So absolutely nice. Absolutely love that. So wanted to ask you now, my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different, quote-unquote, CEOs on the show. Molly, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:41- Molly Keyser

Being a great visionary and steering your company in a great direction. Whether you have a team or not, you still need to be constantly living in the future, constantly researching, knowing what's going on in your market, and seeing what's next. Then if you do have a team really communicating that with them and. Being the leader and steering your team in the right direction and the success of your company really comes down to you and where you are steering it.

14:12 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I absolutely love that. You know, just from a visual, you know, perspective, you can kind of hear how important it is. Like, even when we were talking about, on a very practical level of TikTok, how you were able to say that, okay, this is something that you wanted to kind of focus on and learn and do those things and how that has impacted you and be able to kind of help support your clients and the people that you're working with. If we take that same kind of practical approach to whatever the future of our industries, and our world end up, can pay dividends if we are really doing that and really trying to be a master of our craft.

14:44- Molly Keyser

Oh, I totally agree with everything you just said.

14:47- Gresham Harkless

Nice. Well, Molly, truly appreciate that perspective and that definition. Of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. Of course, how best people can get a hold of you, and find out about all the awesome things you and your team are working on.

15:04 – Molly Keyser

Sure. So that goes hand in hand if you go to profitablecourses.com which we are rebranding to Freedom Creator. So if you see that when you go to our website, just keep that in mind. Same thing. But profitablecourses.com we have tons of free tools for you guys. So if you're thinking about if you want to grow your following on TikTok, we have free tools for that. If you want to create an ebook or a course or something like that, lots of free tools for you guys.

No matter where you're at in your journey and no matter what business you have, it could be a great idea to add a digital, digital product to scale with really high-profit margins. Not having to deal with shipping of physical products and things like that. So yeah, just trying to always add value and help you guys out with lots of free tools.

15:54 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome and to make it even easier, we're going to have the links and information in the show notes as well too. I truly appreciate you for providing value. Loads of laughs as well too and just really great information that's super important for us as CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business owners. So I appreciate you for all the awesome work you're doing, of course, I appreciate your time today, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:14 – Molly Keyser

Thanks so much. You too.

16:15 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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