Course Lab – Episode 92
The Power of Iteration (Darnyelle Jervey Harmon)
Abe: But if you want something that is really going to scale like her programs have done, it’s about continuing to improve it to the point where it’s so valuable that it is going to work with a much larger audience.
Ari: Hello and welcome to Course Lab, the show that teaches creators like you how to make better online courses. I’m Ari Iny, the director of growth at Mirasee, and I’m here with my co-host, Abe Crystal, the co-founder of Ruzuku.
Hey, Abe.
Abe: Hey there, Ari.
Ari: In each episode of course Lab, we showcase a course and creator who is doing something really interesting, either with the architecture of their course or the business model behind it, or both. Today we welcome Darnyelle Jervey Harmon to the show. Darnyelle is a keynote speaker, business consultant, and the founder of Incredible One Enterprises.
Thanks for joining us today, Darnyelle.
Darnyelle: Thank you so much for having me. How are you guys doing?
Ari: Excellent. I’m really looking forward to our conversation. So to kick us off, could you give us kind of a 30,000-foot view of yourself and kind of how you came to the world of online courses?
Darnyelle: So I am the CEO of Incredible One Enterprises. We work with six figure service-based entrepreneurs that want to be million-dollar CEO’s. And what really makes our work special is that we have created this strategic infusion of learning, i.e. online courses and content, coaching and helping them to unearth the limiting beliefs and self-sabotage that threatens to derail them getting to their next level and consulting, telling them what we know they need to do in order to get their business to the million-dollar mark.
So for as long as I have been in this online space, which is about 16 years, we were doing online courses before they were calling them online courses. We used to call them home studies. Remember those with CDs and binders? Yeah, we used to have those things. And it’s such a powerful part of the way that we work with our clients because it gives us that omnipresence. They can get access to content and information when we are not on a call that can help them to solve a challenge that they’re experiencing in their business at that particular point in time and help them to get to a result. And that’s why we love courses and presenting our content and information in that way.
Ari: Awesome. And just a clarifying question, do you sell courses individually as well? Meaning without coaching and consulting?
Darnyelle: We do.
Ari: Okay, so it’s the different levels, essentially.
Darnyelle: Correct.
Ari: Okay, awesome. And whenever you’re selling coaching or consulting, do you always also sell courses or you have them like, these are separate offerings?
Darnyelle: So we have it both ways. All of our programs include a course as a part of it, but then we can also sell other courses that are just a la carte one offs based on the challenge that a business might have that they’re trying to solve.
Ari: Okay, awesome. So one thing that I’m curious about is, from my experience, I’ve found that, you know, people who are pushing that million-dollar mark want to become these CEOs often will much prefer coaching or consulting over courses. They want that individual touch, and sometimes selling a course to them can be more difficult. I’m curious to see your experience with that and your thoughts on that.
Darnyelle: Yeah, I definitely think it happens. And what I often will do, or one of our sales team members will do was to help them to understand why they want the content. Because sure, you can talk to me, Ari, and I can tell you all the things that I can remember to tell you in that moment that’s going to get you to where you want to be. But the beautiful thing about the course is that it was outlined and it was researched and it was based on a proven framework or methodology so that none of the steps have been missed. And if I’m just spouting off the top of my head, I could miss a really critical step that could make a difference as I’m consulting with you about something that I need you to do.
So even when I’m coaching clients, I will always reinforce and say, you know what, you want to go back to the module on this? Because the module is going to break it all the way down. The module is going to give you the checklist and the worksheet that you want to complete in conjunction with setting up this task or strategy inside of your business. So that’s typically the way that we get through that. I think most people at any level are going to think that the best way to get the information is from the source instead of going through a modular based curriculum that takes them step by step, everybody’s going to think that they need human interaction.
And I think something that we’ve learned from being in this world and doing courses and seeing the various modalities through which content is disseminated is that we recognize that you can get really powerful stuff without human interaction because the work has already been done. And so it’s important for anybody else that might come up against that objection to just overcome it by helping them to understand the benefit of being able to have access to a course, even if they get you as well. And typically with our courses that are just courses, our interaction is not the entire time. We do a really like a kickstart with them. They might get six or eight sessions right off the bat when the course is first starting to get that momentum going for them.
But we’re not necessarily there every single week that they have access to the course curriculum. And we design it that way on purpose so that we can actually get people to complete it because we do know that. I forget what the statistic is. You guys probably know better than me, but there is a vast majority of people who will never complete a course if there’s not some level of interaction involved with it.
Ari: And honestly, even if there is a level of interaction, unfortunately.
Darnyelle: Yeah, that part, too. Yeah.
Ari: So just to follow up on that a little bit, to confirm my understanding. So the courses that you’re selling, even as individual courses, they do come with support. So it’s not just videos that they’re going to see, it’s not pure information. There is additional support that is involved.
Darnyelle: Yeah. Most of them come with like a once a month ask me anything call. So we set up a roadmap and we have emails that go along with the course that tell them where they should be and how they should consume the content. And then once a month, there’s an opportunity to check in with a coach based on what they’ve been doing. Because the other thing that can present a challenge about courses is that there’s no customization. So I have to know enough about what I’m trying to accomplish if I purchase a course without any support to know how to actually leverage the course so it works for me.
And because we wanted to increase our success rate of people going through our courses just that once a month ask me anything call has paid massive dividends and them actually doing the work and getting the results so that we can further know that the course that we’ve created does actually do what we set it out to do, but more importantly, that we are able to leverage that course to help people to change their situation.
Ari: And do you use your courses as essentially a stepping stone to your next program? So is this usually people come in at the course level and then upgrade? Then upgrade that kind of situation?
Darnyelle: Sometimes. I mean, it depends. Our clients are typically in that $200 to $300,000 range, but some people have a specific need. So most of the courses that we have, they’re on a specialty inside of business growth and strategy, as opposed to the full continuum of business growth. If they want that, then they’re typically going to come into a program with us. And so as a part of that program, they’re going to get access to a curriculum that is modular based so that they can go through the steps. But with our programs, one of the things that we’ve also done to help to offset the need for that customization is when a client first starts with us, we give them their own custom roadmap.
We don’t expect that everybody is going to follow the course curriculum the same exact way. We’re looking at some of the differences and nuances in their business. For instance, if they work business to business versus business to consumer, the path that we’re going to suggest that they follow to go through the content is going to different. And so we put some of those customizations in place that helps them to navigate how they’re going to do the course. The same as we have people who, that is their first iteration or reaction to us is through purchasing a course.
Ari: Very interesting. So they go through the same, it sounds like everyone is going through the same content, they have access to the same content, but they are given a different roadmap and what to focus on within the course?
Darnyelle: F our mastermind, that is correct. For instance, so just to put some names out there to make it easy even for me, as I’m explaining all of this to you, we have three courses that are standalone courses. We have Business Growth Academy. That course is specifically designed for entrepreneurs who haven’t made their first six figures yet. We have Million Dollar Enrollment Events. That’s specifically for people who want to learn how to leverage the power of live events, live and virtual, in order to make more money in their business. And then we have Speak and Move Millions, which is of course to help people leverage the power of speaking to make more money inside of their business. Those are standalones.
So we launch each of them at least once a year for the individual on our list, because we segment our list when people first opt in, that tells us they have this specific problem and they want our help resolving that problem. That’s a standalone course. As they go through BGA or Million Dollar Events or Speak and Move Millions as a part of that pathway, we will at some point have a conversation with them to see if the next step is to come into one of our actual coaching and consulting programs. So we do have that built in. But those three courses are a la carte standalone, completely different than the curriculum for our move to millions mastermind or our leverage and scale momentum program.
So within those two programs, they each have a curriculum and then we help the clients to determine what their roadmap is going to be. And we do that because all of our clients are not the same. We don’t only work with coaches. We have accountants and attorneys, and interior designers, and financial advisors and financial planners. And being able to help them with their marketing, we’ve had to learn HIPAA and guidelines you can use for marketing when you’re an attorney. And so there is a specific path that we will recommend that they take based on the type of business they have so that we make sure whatever information they’re consuming is actually going to help them to move the needle in their business.
Ari: Very cool. And I really like your model of essentially, you know, there is the feeder based on what they signed up for, what they showed interest in. And I’m assuming you’re telling them about all of your different offers throughout the year. So it’s initial offer to next step, which is it sounds like the mastermind or a coaching or consulting mandate. So it sounds like you have a very clear funnel, essentially built in and very well thought through.
Darnyelle: Well, thank you.
Ari: To feed your business. That’s awesome. Abe, you have a question?
Abe: Just curious, because it sounds like you’ve gone through a few iterations to come up with the structures that you have now. And, yeah, just wondering if you can share more about what have been some of your lessons learned that have led you to what you have in place now and what have been some of your findings in terms of helping people get results from the courses that you do offer based on where you’ve landed?
Darnyelle: So I would say the biggest lesson that we’ve learned, which is part of the reason why now we at minimum, have the monthly ask me anything with all of our courses, is that we realized we were putting these courses out. I put my blood, sweat and tears into this course to make it palatable, to make it palpable, to make it such that a person could navigate the path that we set for them and get a result, to find that people weren’t getting a result. And so what we recognize, and this probably even started before they were online courses, back when they were home study programs, is we would sell our, we used to have a program called the magnetic marketing success formula.
We would sell those things by the trunk full. And when we would check in with our students and people have purchased it, within 90 days, many of them, it had fallen by the wayside. And so we recognize that if we really have a mission to impact and eradicate small business poverty, which we do, we would have to do it differently so that we can actually be the change we want to see in the business marketplace. And so that was a big part of the reason why we, based on how the program is coming out, if we’re at launch point, it comes with that kickstart, which again, might be six to eight sessions right off the bat with a coaching team, and then moving into that monthly ask me anything call.
And we did that because we wanted to not only get momentum and we wanted them to be excited about the course, but we wanted to give them the opportunity to ask us questions about how to customize the course to work for them because it is really challenging. It can be done, but it is challenging to think of every possible scenario someone who could purchase your course could be in, and think about that in advance and be able to provide it for them without any interaction. So that was probably one of the biggest lessons that we learned.
In our coaching and consulting programs, the reason why we introduced coursework as a part of it is because what we were finding is that although we were doing calls with our clients, whether we’re doing group or one on one calls, it wasn’t enough time to make sure that they truly got to master whatever it was we wanted for them to learn. So by introducing a course path as a part of that, it allowed them the opportunity to spend time in study, then in implementation, and then come to coaching and consulting, to troubleshoot, to fine tune, to verify and amplify.
And we watched the results that they would get massively increased once we had the learning modalities and the way that most people like to consume content and be serviced, had all of that covered inside of our course and inside of our portal, and the way that we support our clients, we watched their results really, really magnify. That was probably the biggest mistake early on. I can just create this course, I can create this home study, and I’m going to change the world and everybody’s going to get it, and they’re just going to go out there and do everything except for their humans. And that means they’re probably easily distracted.
And if they’re on social media, they will run across ten different people, all offering them ten different ways to solve one problem. And because of that, they won’t stick to it long enough to actually see the result. So that part, as well as adding in some accountability versus both through an email sequence and touch points from our coaching team, has been really, really powerful to help our students.
Abe: It was interesting to hear and a little bit surprising that you work with such a broad range of client. So you mentioned, oh, we can, like, we work with attorneys and accountants and like all these different areas, which sounds like it’s working very well and yet is contrary to sort of mainstream advice that you might hear, which is, oh, like you really need to focus and have this specific area of client that you help. So curious if you could share more about how did you land on that model of going broad and serving a wide range of different people?
Darnyelle: Yeah, so I’m contrarian by nature, and personally, I love the challenge of being abreast of what’s happening in various industries. And so I didn’t want to pigeonhole myself to coaches. You know why? Because everybody and their grandfather serves coaches. And yes, there are a lot of coaches out in the world, but attorneys need to learn how to get to the million-dollar mark too, just the same as accountants, just the same as interior designers. So by broadening to service base, we still don’t work with product-based businesses. Not because we can’t, our framework would work for them, but we choose not to because it’s, there’s only so much I can charge for your water bottle. You can’t sell them for $10,000.
So making that decision, it does make us an anomaly in the marketplace, which speaks to the whole contrarian nature. Consumers are programmed to notice what’s different. And if everyone is spouting the same exact thing and we come along and we say something that is different, we get the attention, which means we can pull them into our ecosystem and see if they’re a good fit to work within our programs. We do still have stipulations of what kind of service-based businesses we’ll work with and what they have to be able to do inside of their business in order for our framework and methodology to work for them to produce the results we know are possible.
But broadening it allows me the opportunity. As a speaker, I spent a lot of time out on the road in front of audiences, speaking to really vary my approach to the entrepreneurs and small business owners that I’d like to work with. And it has worked extremely well for us. I couldn’t imagine going back to just working with coaches and consultants. I couldn’t imagine because we have so much fun and it keeps my entire team really sharp on what they need to know about how attorneys can market and what CPAs need to do and what the regulations are like that.
Just like we love that and we love being able to find a way, even within some of these industries where there’s strict guidelines that we can create an environment for them to see an increase in their revenue and growth of 50% to 200% in a year where their counterparts, if they grow by 5 or 10%, are excited.
Abe: Anything else you would want to share with other course creators you think would be helpful for them to do?
Darnyelle: Three things pop into my head right away. Number one would be whatever the problem is that you’ve decided that you want to solve, as you think about creating a course, create a course from every angle to solve it. It is going to produce a wealth content that gives those who are consuming that content the ability to get a level of clarity about what the options could be. I personally am not a person who loves the it’s one way or the highway. So even when I think about my primary methodology to move to millions method, it is business model agnostic.
Every business needs to look at strategy, sales system support and success mindset. I did that on purpose because I really want for any kind of business to be able to access what it is that we do and be able to see results from that. And so as I build out a curriculum for a course like, you know, we just finished our Speak and Move Millions Course, which was an upgrade of a home study we used to have back in the day. And as I was doing that, and I thought about everything I wanted to be able to teach to them, I thought about college and university speaking versus corporate, speaking versus governmental, speaking versus speaking in elementary and high schools, versus speaking at association meetings.
Now, that gives any speaker or aspiring speaker who is also a business owner, the opportunity to determine which path they want to choose to speak because there are subtle nuances amongst every single industry that they now are privy to as they make a decision about which one they want to hone in on to see the most success in their business. And if as a course creator, you have the foresight to think that way, it will open your course up to many more people and allow you to really be the impact that you want to see.
Number two, don’t be afraid to, as you’re creating, try it out like I love a good beta. In fact, I will never, ever, ever, for the rest of the time that I’m in business, create any course without human interaction. So whenever I get an idea of a course that I want to create, I put together a beta. I allow people to pay me to do something I was going to do anyway. And it also serves for me as an opportunity to validate that the course that I want to build is a problem that people want to solve through accessing a course.
And I might even only try to get ten or 15 people in this beta and they help me to shape the course based on the questions they ask and everything that I put together so that when we finally launch it, I know we have something that is, a, going to produce results, b is going to speak to the needs of the people that have the problem that I know this course is going to solve, and c is ultimately going to lead them to getting the results that they want. So don’t be afraid of having a course idea and creating a beta to validate that this is an idea that you should pursue and actually build a course around because I also don’t believe that you should ever build it before they buy it. Let them buy it first and then build it.
And then the third tip that I would have been especially with the entrance of AI and the ability to be able to create and synthesize data and content relatively quickly, use the AI because sure, a time saver. But don’t rely on the AI to tell you everything that you need to include in your course outline in order to make sure that a person’s going to get a result. Depending upon which of the AI tools you use, that data is recirculated from a lot of different sources and it may or may not speak to the exact needs that your clients have.
So see what they’re saying, but then also add what you bring to the table because you’re the person creating this course in the first place. Add that to it so it enhances what happens inside of the course, which is ultimately going to enhance the possible results that those who will take the course will get.
Ari: Awesome. Those are all three great tips. Thank you.
Darnyelle: Thank you very much.
Ari: This has been super, super helpful. Thank you so much, Darnyelle, for coming on and sharing.
Darnyelle: Absolutely.
Ari: And if someone wants to learn more about you and your work, is there something that you want to share that you want people to be aware of?
Darnyelle: You can go to drdarnyelle.com, comma, whatever we have going on at the time that you watch this interview, there will be a nice, pretty pop up right there on the website waiting for you to learn all about it.
Ari: Awesome marketing efficiency right there. Perfect.
Danny Iny: Now stick around for my favorite part of the show where Abe and Ari will pull out the best takeaways for you to apply to your course.
Abe: Okay, Ari, it is time for the debrief where we summarize key insights from our conversation with Doctor Darnyelle. Anything that jumped out at you?
Ari: I mean, I feel like everything that she shared is really awesome best practice. She’s essentially where people should be aiming for, especially with the last tips that she shared at the end. All very valid, very interesting. One thing that really did jump out to me is her take on the broadening of the market and the questions that you were asking her about it. What I found interesting was, yes, she’s serving a very broad market, a lot of different people and a lot of different professions and niches, which is great, but she is still very, very clear about what she is and isn’t willing to deliver and who it would or wouldn’t work for.
So yes, she’s fine with going broad with the markets, but at the same time, she’s being very conscientious and deliberate about, okay, who is this for? Even if that for is broad, what’s the slice within each of those markets that this is actually going to work for?
Abe: I mean, it seems like she really spends a lot of time understanding who her customers are and what their needs are. Her approach is not just based on making assumptions, and it’s not just based on, oh, there’s this sort of general kind of problem, or I should provide this general roadmap in this area. It’s very concrete and grounded. It was interesting that she described herself as a contrarian because, as you said, it’s an encapsulation of best practices. So there are aspects I think are very well honed and well understood, and then there are these areas that are more surprising and contrarian that people could learn from.
So one is the kind of just being willing to think for yourself in terms of who you’re serving. The other is, what exactly are you delivering? Where does the value from your course come from? To me, what she demonstrated there is that you really get to that through a series of cycles where you’re learning and improving from each cycle. And I think people understand that conceptually, but don’t necessarily do it. People may create a course and then kind of want to be done with it, which I can understand. But if you want something that is really going to scale, like her programs have done, it’s about continuing to improve it to the point where it’s so valuable that it is going to work with a much larger audience.
Ari: Yeah, the thing that really jumped out to me about that, that she mentioned a number of times is the way that, or the fact that she is tracking success and tracking outcomes for people. Because I feel like a lot of course creators do create a course, and then after the fact, they’re like, okay, what did feel good? What didn’t feel good about this? How do I think this could have been better without really going deep into what were the outcomes for the people who went through the course? How many people actually completed the course? What was that whole process like and kind of letting that guide them.
And it’s a lot of work. I mean, going through that process of actually asking those questions and getting that feedback and following up later as well, not just immediately as the course ends. There’s a lot that goes into that, but very valuable. And that is what ends up creating a really powerful course multiple iterations down the line.
Abe: Yeah, yeah. Both being results focused and being willing to learn and improve having that mindset of this is a stick in the ground, but we’re going to work to make it better over time, even if that means that you have to tear up a lot of what you’ve already done. That may be what is the sticking point of the challenge as iteration sounds nice in concept, but actually being willing to delete and change all this work that you put in is not so easy when you’re doing it.
Ari: Yeah, her funnel is working very well, and the only way that a funnel from course to higher ticket program will work well is if people got results from the course. And so as uncomfortable as it may be to iterate and rip up some of the things that aren’t working, and that’s how you’re going to be successful as a course creator or as a coach or consultant or whatever the end goal is, your products need to actually do what you’re promising that they will do because otherwise people are not going to continue working with you.
Abe: That’s what it’s all about at the end of the day.
Darnyelle Harmon is the founder and CEO of Incredible One Enterprises, as well as the author of the new book Move to Millions. To learn more about her and all she’s got to offer, head on over to drdarnyelle.com. That’s drdarnyelle.com.
Thank you for listening to Course Lab. I’m Abe Crystal, co-founder and CEO of Ruzuku, here with my co-host Ari Iny. Course Lab is part of the Mirasee FM podcast network, which also includes such shows as Once Upon a Business and Making It. This episode of Course Lab, was produced by Cynthia Lamb, and Danny Iny is our executive producer.
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