Selling an online course in a micro-niche, with Jono Petrohilos
Episode 14, Season 2 – Jono Petrohilos

 

Welcome to the last episode of the second season of The Micro Niche Mastery Podcast.

Our guest for today is Jono Petrohilos, the co-founder and director of Fitness Education Online and Course Creator Community. He is also an international speaker, bestselling author, and podcast host.

Listen to this podcast episode and discover how micro-niching can help you grow into a 7-figure business and expand into an additional business.

• Jono is the 2020 Fitness Australia Educator of the Year. Listen to his inspiring story at 1:26
  
• Jono used to be the worst boot camp instructor. How did that inspire him to start an online course? Check out 3:48
  
• The reason why Jono chose an online course over a workshop is at 6:40
  
• Two things that Jono used in creating his first course are at 9:22
  
• How to market an online course? Find out the steps at 10:11
  
• Why do you need a Facebook group and an email list for marketing? Answers are at 12:43
  
• Two things that generate the most revenue for Jono are at 14:46
  
• The number one way to get people on Jono’s email list is at 15:49
  
• Listen at 21:30 to learn Jono’s next step in growing his business
  

 

Important Links:

 

coursecreatorcommunity.net

fitnesseducationonline.com.au

dailycookie. co

Transcript:

Click Below to see the full transcript of this episode





Open Transcript

Voice Over:

Welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast, where we help you establish yourself in the perfect micro niche. So you will get noticed and grow your business faster. And now your host, he watched the first season of the squid game, Netflix show twice and found 12 hidden gems of business advice in it. Ziv Raviv.

Ziv:

Hello, and welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. Hi, I’m Ziv Raviv. And today I have the privilege of interviewing Jono Petrohilos. I hope I spell it correctly. Hi, Jono.

Jono:

Ziv how are you? I’m impressed. Are you, are you Greek? How did you get that, that name?

Ziv:

Well, I practiced, but Jonno, let me introduce yourself properly. So Jono is the co-founder and director at Fitness Education Online, which is one of the largest providers of professional development courses for fitness professionals in Australia. He’s also an international speaker bestselling author, podcast host, and the winner of the Australian fitness educator of the year, which I have to ask, like, what is that competition or about how do you actually, like, how, how can you actually win that?

Jono:

Yes. Good question. So there’s a a governing body here in Australia, fitness Australia. Right now, if you have a, like a course that fitness trainers take, usually you get that registered with fitness. Australia is like an at accreditation kind of thing, right? And then every year, they have awards at fitness Australia. You know, the personal trainer of the year, the group fitness instructor of the year, the gym of the year, one of the awards is the fitness educator of the year. And it’s done by first nomination process. So they’ll send an email out to all the trainers and they’re like, you know, Hey, you know, nominate your, the course that you did that you thought was the, as to the educator, you thought was the best. If you get a nomination, there’s an application that goes through. So I got an email from fitness Australia that said, Hey, Jono, you know, you’ve been nominated for this award here. You know, fill out this documentation here, filled out the documentation, usual kind of questions. Who are you? What do you do? Why do you do it? All that sort of stuff there, it then goes into a finalist. And then, you know, there was four or five different educators, and there’s a panel of judges, experts who picked the best educator out of those, those finalists.

Ziv:

Sweet like, this is a real deal. This is not something that is easy to get, but I wanna ask you, like, I wanna hear the origin story of your business because you chose us to not sell directly to the end consumers. Like the people that are there that wants to become more fit. You decided to work with specifically the fitness professionals and even specifically teach them online. So tell me a little bit about how did, what were you thinking about when it was just like an idea?

Jono:

Yes. Awesome. Okay. Let me add some, how long do you want me to spend till on this story? Cause this could be anywhere from five minutes to 20 minutes.

Ziv:

Let’s start with the 5.

Jono:

Awesome. Mark. Cool. So simple version. I used to be a bootcamp instructor. Okay. So I used to run a bootcamp out in the park and run a business that way there, I worked at a franchise. There were like 75 different locations at this franchise. And you were ranked how good you were. All right. Based on how many of your clients would come back, your attention number one means you were the best number 75 means you were the worst. Take your guess what I was ranked. If when starting off,

Ziv:

I did you thought it will only work if you are the best, right?

Jono:

Well, but just to start off with, I was the worst. Wow. I was 75, right. I was the worst, but I loved what I did. And I was like, well, you know, if I don’t get better, I’m gonna get booted out of a job, you know? So I gotta get better. And I was like, well, what can I do to get better? Well, let me do some courses. Let me do some upskilling courses. Right. And I went and did a, you know, a course on how to run a better bootcamp. And it was good. You know, I did it and I learned some stuff. There was an issue though, that was like the only course out there for that specific style of bootcamp, there were courses, you know, you wanna be a personal trainer at the gym, you know, you wanna be a weightlifter, you wanna be a marathon runner, but you know, for running an actual bootcamp, that style, that was the only course.

Jono:

So I was like, I still wanted to get better. So I would do a heap of other courses that was still related, but not as directly related. And then I would sort of spin it and use that on my niche. So let’s just say, for example, I might do a course on, you know, how to get better at sales. Okay. But that might be sales for everyone in the world. And then I’m like, all right, how can I take what I learned from that sales course and then implement it specifically to my business. Okay, cool. Now I’ve put together my own little system based on what was there. All right, cool. Let me go and do another, another course. Okay. Now this course is gonna be on how to use kettlebells. Okay, great. You know, done this course here, and this is great now how to use kettlebells.

Jono:

But half these exercises are only for people where if you’re working in a gym and you know, everyone’s got their own kettlebells, and they go from eight kilos to 48 kilos. How can I just take what’s here and use it in an outdoor bootcamp setting where I might have three or four kettle bells of the same weight and 20 people. How can I do it from that? And long story short, I got really, really good at running a bootcamp. 12 months later, I went back to the, the same convention where they did the rankings. Now take it. Guess what I was ranked if, Ziv

Ziv:

But finally, yeah. Now you got to the

Jono:

Space now, number one. Right. And what sort of happened from there? What other trainers would ask me? Because they sort of saw me go from the worst to best and like 20 clients to 120 clients in two locations. And they were kind of like, Johnny, what are you doing? You know, how’d you do it? And I was like, well, it’s this and this and this and this and all these different things. And I was like, hold on. I think there’s a course in here. You know, I feel like I’ve, I’ve gone to all these other courses. I feel I can put something together that is better than anything else out there, because nothing is specific for this type of people here. You know, it’s like, if you want to go and run a bootcamp, there’s nothing. That’s like, he’s step by step a to Z. How to run a very successful bootcamp. You’d have to do what I did and attend a million different courses and then take it out and then, and then make it to work for you. That’s how the idea started there.

Ziv

And did you actually create debt costs?

Jono:

Okay. So yes. So what happened there? That’s another story in its own, but in a nutshell, what happened there is originally I was thinking of doing like a workshop, like a face to face workshop. This is back in 2014 online courses. Weren’t a thing. Right. But I was kinda like, I’m already working my, my butt off, you know, and the running the fitness boot bootcamp myself, you know, and I’m like, do I really wanna give up my Sundays to work again? And then, and what if I run this workshop and no one comes, or what if I run this workshop and only one person comes, you know, they’re gonna run it for one person. And I was like, you know what, let me look at this online thing. You know, maybe I can do this online thing. I didn’t know what online was, but I knew that it was there.

Jono:

And I got a quote from someone for a website. They were like, yeah, we can do this. It’s $15,000 or something. And I was like, oof. You know, it’s too much of a risk that I wanna spend at the moment. And I was scrolling through Facebook and I saw an ad for an e-book and I was like, oh yeah, an e-book I might let me, let me purchase this. E-Book you know, let’s see what this ebook thing is, purchased an e-book. And I was like, cause at the a time I thought an E to get, have an ebook. You, you had to be like a publisher, you know, or like an author, you know, and you had to that sort of stuff. And I got this ebook and I was like, hold on. This is just a Microsoft word document saved as a PDF.

Jono:

Now I’m a technological Dunst, but I know how to create a Microsoft word document and save it as a PDF. So did that, you know, created a Microsoft word document. Awesome. A really, really good solid course there saved as a PDF. And I was like, okay, I’ve got this course, but it was a limitation. It looked just like a Microsoft word document. And I was like, I think I gotta do a better job and make it look prettier now me being a technological Dunst. You know, I tried to make it look prettier and I made it look worse. You know, there were breaks and indents all over the place. And I was like, what am I gonna do? So went to my old friend, Google and realized there was a website called Fiver, where back in those days, you can get anything you want done for, for $5.

Jono:

You know, I still remember some of the things, there was a, a gig on there where, where a guy said, he’d slap himself on the face for five bucks. And I was like, what does his site even rule? You know? But anyway, paid someone $5, they edited the document. They made it look better. It wasn’t amazing. It was a $5 job on Fiver, but they made it look better than what I could have. And it no longer just looked like a Microsoft word document. It now looked like an e-book. And along that journey as well, I also discovered unlisted YouTube videos because I actually purchased the gig of the guy that was gonna slap himself in the face $5. And what he sent over to me was an unlisted YouTube. Like it was him slapping himself. It was awesome. He slapped himself hard. It was good, but it wasn’t like a personalized video.

Jono:

It was just, he did it once, you know, put it up on YouTubers, unlisted, you know, and then anyone that purchased his gig, he just sent it over to him, you know, had like a hundred or 200,000 views. By the time I saw it, he made like a million bucks from slapping himself in the phase once. But anyway, I learned to then unlisted YouTube videos. And I was like, okay, let me put a few of these videos together and let me insert these into the e-book as well. Now it’s a good course because it’s got all the info in the e-book. It looks nice. It’s edited by someone that’s good at that stuff. And it’s got some videos in there as well that people can watch there. That was the first course. I think I sold it for about 200, 250 bucks Australian to start with. Yeah. That’s how it, how it started.

Ziv:

So you had your first product, but once you, you have that, you also need like people to hear about it. So what did you next?

Jono:

Yes. So I did a few different things. The easiest thing for me was getting it approved with that body fitness Australia, because when you get it approved with fitness Australia, it goes up on their website. Right. And they’ve got, I dunno, 20,000 trainers there that go and check that website for courses and that sort of thing there. So even before I had a plan, I didn’t even know how to sell it. I had this document, you know, I got it approved. It was on my computer. I, I was like, I’ll get it approved. And then I’ll come up with a plan. Got it approved. And I was like, right on Monday or something. And I was like, right this week, I’ll, I’ll think about a plan. And then I got a call that day. Someone’s like, you know, Hey, I see your course on this website.

Jono:

You know, how can I buy it? And I was like, oh no, I didn’t even know how you can buy it. I was like, ah, look, I’m just in a meeting, let me call you back. So got their phone number and went on Google. And I was like, how do you take payments? And you know, or you could do it on PayPal. You know, got a PayPal link, you know, emailed them over how you can buy this. Here you go. You know, here’s, here’s how you buy it there. That person purchased it. And it was, was interesting there as well. That was where a bit of luck swung my way as well, because in those days, the, the courses on that website, we’re just listed alphabetically, right? If your course begins with a, you were the first one on there, they were like five, 600 courses on this thing.

Jono:

You know, it’s almost like a for personal trainers kind of thing. It’s like, if you have a course on U good luck, you know, if someone actually buys it. Right. But my course was called four steps to a successful bootcamp. Cause I had the number four, it was the first one there. Right. So, so with, you know, Udemy now they rank it by most popular, I think, or whatever it is, you know? So if you got a new course, you’re gone, you, you are number a hundred on there or, or something. Right. But because this was alphabet goal, your mind rank number one. And because of that, I would get not a lot, I’d get like one or two sales a month kind of thing. Right. But it was enough for me to be like, okay, I’m onto something here. I’m doing absolutely nothing.

Jono:

And people are, are inquiring and buying it. And the other key key thing was the feedback. Cuz the first couple ones I sold I would, was scared of the feedback. Cause I was like, man, are these people gonna email me back and be like, you just saw me a Microsoft word document, give me a refund, you know? Or were they gonna be like, I already knew this stuff, you know, gimme a refund. I, I didn’t know cuz I, I was only working in the, on, in the, the face to face world at that stage. Right. I only really interacted with people in my area. I didn’t know what people on the other side of Australia were doing. They, or even the other side of Sydney, I don’t know what they were doing. So, but I got feedback and it was really, really good. And I was like, okay, you know, I’m onto something here.

Jono:

And then I just did some really basic sort of stuff. Right. I just created a Facebook group because I already knew a lot of fitness train. Well, not a lot, but I knew a few as trainers anyway, because just from working in the industry, it’s like, I’d be working in the industry five years. Look like anyone. I don’t care what your job is. If you’re a magician, if you’re a real estate agent, if you’re a chiropractor, you’re gonna have some friends in that space. You know, you studied with them, you worked with them, you used to work with them. You met ’em at a networking event, you know, whatever it may be. So when I started a Facebook group and just invited all my kind of friends into that Facebook group there, and I would do the odd promotion in that Facebook group as well.

Jono:

And I would also just collect an E I’d have an email list as well, basically from anyone that inquire, even if they didn’t, if they bought great they’re on the email list, if they didn’t buy. Okay, great. You know, they also go on the, the email list as well. Right. And then from there it was like, all right, that’s I guess the, the start point of it there, those two things there, the next kind of thing from there was then the, the email marketing. I didn’t do a lot of it, but I just did kind of enough to see the result as well. It was just, I can’t remember what I, I think it was like once a month or something, I would just send one email out and to anyone that that was on my list and hadn’t bought was essentially like, Hey, if you haven’t bought, here’s the course register today and you get X amount of discount or whatever it is.

Jono:

And then I make a couple sales like that as well. And then from there I was like, all right, I can see all the pieces. If there’s just a way I can put it together. It’s like, if, if people do the course, they like it. If I can get in front of people, they’ll buy the course. And if I can get some of these emails, I can send this email and I can, I can do it that way there. How can I just essentially build my following? So that was the start point of it there.

Ziv:

And nowadays you have a lot of ways to build up your following. You have podcasts, you have, you know, your website, you have your Facebook what’s like, would you consider the one tool that is, that has brought you the most success in your business?

Jono:

Ooh, it’s tough to answer. I know the stats exactly. In terms of like revenue, it’s split dead even with my email list and my website. So give or take there’s about $15,000, 15, $20,000. That’ll come in every month, just from my website, just from people that have gone to the website via SEO, Google ads, and just gone on there and purchased the course. And then similar with my email list as well, you know, from sending out regular emails every month, there’s about 15, $20,000 a month that comes through just from that. But in saying that I’ve obviously had to do things to build that email list, right. That email list is 15,000 people. I didn’t just click my fingers and, and do that. You know, there’s been obviously a lot of things to build it, but right now it’s, it’s those two things there that generate me the, the most revenue,

Ziv:

I guess the next question would be like, how do people, like, what is the number one way for you to get people on your email list?

Jono:

Ooh, another good question. Because every trick in the book to be honest, but the best one for me is actually face well is two of them. No, I’ll, I’ll just simp. I’ll simplify it and say Facebook ads because the system I use for Facebook ads for that business anyway, is I’ll simplify it again. I put about $500 a week on a Facebook book ad, right. Promoting my course, which costs $500. Now I know the stats. If I put $500 on that Facebook ad, I’ll get about 25 inquiries right now. I know of those 25, about 10% of them will sign up and let’s call it two to keep it simple. Right? So I know if five put $500 on Facebook ads, I’m going to make $1,000 back. So it’s a $500 profit, which is okay, but the better part is I’m getting those 25 leads for free.

Jono:

And then it’s just like, you know, and obviously I can scale up and down on that sort of thing as well. But just with that, there it’s just a constant flow. I’m essentially getting paid 500 bucks a week to get 25 extra people into my database. And that’s happening week after week after week after week, I’m obviously doing other stuff as well. You know, my Facebook group, my podcast, organic social, the website partnerships, it’s a whole other heap of stuff going on as well. But I guess my one that grows consistently with me doing anything is Facebook ads.

Ziv:

And are you using it with like a lead gen campaign or with a conversion campaign? Like what type of campaign do you run?

Jono:

Yep. So lead gen campaign and the funnel is essentially lead gen campaign. So someone lead gen campaign on Facebook, I found that’s the best way to generate leads. Someone ops in, I’ll get a phone call from one of my team and they’ll also get some follow up emails as well. So it’s simplified version. They opt in, they get three phone calls and three emails selling them to that thing. They opted in directly if they don’t purchase that thing in that period, there they go into the main email list and they get my regular email marketing.

Ziv:

Basically, they signed up through Facebook on through the Lead gen form to get on the call with you because they wanted to learn more about the course

Jono:

Yeah, exactly. So the, the Facebook ad is essentially, you know, are you running a, you’re a personal trainer, you’re running a bootcamp. You want to get better at running your bootcamp and also get your, your CEC points as well. We’ve got this course here. It covers bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And it’s currently on special if you’re interested into your details below and we’ll send you over the info, right. So it’s not, it’s not a free thing. They’re opting in for all the list. Like they’re opting in directly for that, that course there.

Ziv:

Did you add any additional products at some point, like group coaching or coaching or, or anything else?

Jono:

Yeah, so we now have 40 different online courses. So that was just the first one, that bootcamp one. And then the model was really good. So it’s like, let’s put another one, another one, another one, another one, another one, another one, another one of those 40 half of them don’t sell. I’ll be honest, but there’s at least 20 ones that sell and of those 20, maybe 10 that sell really, really well. So that’s fine. Cuz it’s just, it’s like a 12 week cycle kind of thing. It’s like this week, this course on special and this one, this one, this one, this one, this one at the end of the 12 weeks. Repeat that process again, back to course, number one, we do also do some group coaching as well. We focus more on the online course side of things just because it’s for lack of a better of term, it’s easier. It’s kinda like there’s no work to be done. You know, if you’ve already got the list, like, like in our situation where we’ve got the list, it’s like, okay. And you know, the traffic essentially like great, you know, we’ll just make these sales and then every sale is zero work. So we do coaching, but that’s more like a side side sort of thing.

Ziv:

These days. Like, do you also have clients coming to your business from outside of Australia?

Jono:

Not really, to be honest for that business. Very few. Like we, we do like, and when I say Australia, it’s, it’s mainly Australia and New Zealand. It’s pretty similar, but the New Zealand market is so small that it doesn’t really do it. We do a little bit of work in the US as well, but very minimal. I think it’s a couple thousand dollars a month from us. And the reason for that, there’s a couple reason and this, this might come down to micro niching as well. Not only am I just focusing on fitness trainers, but I’m focusing mainly on boot camp, fitness trainers, not only that, but just Australian boot camp based trainers because there are, even though like fitness is fitness and even in the business of Fitnesses are similar all around the world, but there are some subtle differences and because I’m targeting just Australia, to be honest, it’s more just the price point.

Jono:

Like I know the price points over here that are just no brainers or if a personal trainer is like, okay, I’m getting that for that price there, shut up and take my money. It’s a bit different in the US because there’s more competition over there. You know, there’s some heavier hitters over there and there’s also a bit of a, a lack of in Australia. Anyway, there’s usually a bit more trust if you’re working with an Australian person, cause it’s kinda like, ah, this American person, they can run off with my money and what am I gonna do? You know, this it’s Jon O down the road. If he runs off with my money, I’ll go and punch him in the head. You know, there’s a bit of yeah, so I do get SA like it literally like 99, you know, 90 plus percent Australian and then less than Australian New Zealand and then less than 10% American,

Ziv:

What’s your next step for growing your business?

Jono:

Yes. So that business there, the step is to be a hundred percent hands off, which I pretty much am. So that business there, I basically do absolutely nothing. Right. I’ve got a team that, that runs it there. And I just check in couple times a week, make sure everyone is okay. So what I’ve done now is starting new business, the course creator community, which is where I essentially help people do similar because I was like here, I was running fitness education online, really good business, only about a million dollars a year in revenue, but that business was kind of helping fitness professionals to make a hundred thousand dollars a year. And there’s a couple of thing. I felt I was selling myself short, like, man, I’ve got this skill that can make me a million dollars a year online, but I’m just teaching people this very small part on how to do the fitness business side of things. So that’s where I created the course creator community.

Ziv:

This has been really inspiring cause like kind of textbook example of how you take a very specific niche problem. Only Australian fitness professionals, only online education and only boot camps. You can’t go more niche than that. And, and even just an e-book, like an online course of an e-book and, and an unlisted video, because really what matters most is like is, do you have a solution, right? Did you actually solve problem? Did you provide value for people? And you did, you, you knew.

Jono:

That’s what I was shocked with. Well, that’s what I was kind of cause that’s the thing, like it was literally an e-book, but the feedback was great. The feedback was like, this is awesome. Such good ideas. This is exactly what I needed. Didn’t really, the production meant zero.

Ziv:

All that matters. It, it wasn’t the logo. It wasn’t the yeah, the, the, the website, it was just the fact that you took all those online courses and distilled them to what people actually need. They didn’t need to learn how to do everything. They needed to know how to learn, how to do those boot camps. And you provided that. And late now, now is like, you go into a very oiled machine with 40 online courses and selling them through emails and through your website organically and, and making money from like Facebook pays you money basically for growing an email list constantly and cons and growing. It just, it’s beautiful. It’s a textbook example. And I can see how just looking into your model and getting inspired by the details because there’s a lot of details in every single piece of, oh yeah. It’s what you do. You need to, to understand everything that you do well, like be good in, in that Facebook group and create you know, an engaged community and be good at your CEO. Right, right, right. You now have this community where you share a lot of wisdom and, and I’m part of this community myself and I’m impressed. So tell people where can they learn more about both of your businesses?

Jono:

Yes. So my fitness education, online business, just type fitness education online in any social media platform, it’ll, it’ll come up there. Same with the Course Creator Community, just type course, create a community that’s we are in all or platforms. I’m mainly a Facebook group guy. So you can find us on, on any platforms, but the, where, where most active is if you join our Facebook group, the Course Creator Community, Facebook group.

Ziv:

And I think that if you are into any type of business, not just course creation, then just following this community and learning more about how they grow and how they very engaging. That’s a topic for another interview, maybe one day about like how you manage to leverage Facebook groups. I wanna thank you Jono, for taking this time. I know you’re a busy guy, but taking the time of sharing with us, how niching down so specifically to such a now part of your audience in solving a problem well helps you create a seven-figure business and nowadays even expanding into additional business. Thank you so much, Jono.

Jono:

Thank you.

Ziv:

You. And thank you everyone for listening for another episode of the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast,

Voice Over:

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