On today’s podcast, you’ll learn how to create work-life balance, fulfillment and wealth working from home. Lisa Rooney interviews Anna Runyan on how to be your own boss. You’ll learn how Anna created her first course, hired her first virtual assistant and how to create your first business plan to start your own business once and for all.

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Lisa Rooney interviews Anna Runyan in the Be Your Own Boss Summit 2016. Learn how to create work-life balance, fulfillment and wealth working from home.

Be Your Own Boss Q&A:

(Here are a few of the questions Anna answered on the podcast).

Q: Can you go into the transition of how you gradually started your own blog and business from being in corporate?

A: I found time in my calendar. Even if it was just 15 minutes per day. This is work every single day that added up over time. It all started with the blog. I always recommend starting a blog like a video blog or interviewing people. I didn’t even think I would become an entrepreneur until people were starting to read my content. I was interviewing other women who were in careers that I wanted to have someday and someone said, “You could make a business out of this.” That was my lightbulb moment. It was making a decision and a commitment and sticking to it. Even though I was very busy getting my MBA and working full-time.

I really loved teaching and training. That was what I really enjoyed. I decided I could start creating an online course on my own. You can reach people anywhere from your computer. I sent out an email to people I knew and pitched a course I hadn’t created yet. It was The Get Unstuck Bootcamp. I was excited but if no one bought it I wasn’t going to actually do it.

I saw the Paypal order come through from my cubicle for $97 and I had to create it. I have always sold products and courses in my business and then I created them later. Which is how it helps me figure out what my customer’s needs and questions are and I create it with them. That is what has made my courses work so well because I am hand-holding along the way.

How do you know what your clients want when creating a course?

Before I even started, I used surveymonkey.com and I had so many questions coming in from blogging. I also think it is important to get on the phone with people and ask them what their frustrations are. Write like crazy and record the conversation. You want to know what they are going through.

 Q: How did you create your first course?

A: I used webinars. I created live webinars with the people that were joining my program and I did it live with them. At the end of the webinars, they asked questions and those questions were included it. When I first started I used ruzuku.com to get started creating my course. Now I use Wishlist member and WordPress because I like having more control of the design. It’s a matter of getting started and selling that first thing.

Q: How did you promote your course?

It was all email. I didn’t know how to do ads back then. I did a lot of blogging about it. People had built this trust with me. I had given out so much free content. Give as much as you can, because then when it’s time to buy your course, they will be ready. They are just waiting for you to create that course. I was sending out weekly email newsletters. In the beginning, it was just getting the word out as many places as you can. LinkedIn messages are a great place as well!

Resources mentioned:

Ruzuku for creating online courses.

Wishlist Member is how we run all of our courses now along with WordPress.

Timetrade.com is great for scheduling appointments.

Here’s a blog post I wrote about how to find a virtual assistant.