Digital Course Creation with Gina Alemán

Links:Digital Course Creation

Website: New Blossom Matertinity
Instagram: @newblossommaternity

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Transcript:Digital Course Creation

Intro: Welcome to Becoming a Sleep Consultant! I’m your host Jayne Havens, a certified sleep consultant and founder of both Snooze Fest by Jayne Havens and Center for Pediatric Sleep Management.

On this podcast, I’ll be discussing the business side of sleep consulting. You’ll have an insider’s view on launching, growing, and even scaling a sleep consulting business. This is not a podcast about sleep training. This is a podcast about business building and entrepreneurship.

Gina is a certified doula (DONA), certified lactation counselor, certified pediatric sleep consultant, and is trained in perinatal mental health. Gina owns New Blossom Maternity Services and serves families in person in the Orlando, Florida area as well as families everywhere with digital courses and communities. Her goal is to make parent life beautiful for her clients.

Before birth work, Gina was an instructional designer creating courses, assessments, and digital materials in the public education realm. She supports other birth workers by designing their dream digital offerings that allow them to increase their income and reach without increasing their work hours.

Jayne Havens: Gina, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I’m so excited to be chatting with you today.

Gina Alemán: Thank you for having me, Jayne. I’m really glad to be here and talk a little bit with you about, I guess, what it is I do.

Jayne Havens: Yeah, absolutely. Before we get started, why don’t you do that? Why don’t you tell us a little bit about what you do? I’d love to hear a little bit about your business as a doula and then also what you do as an online course creator.

Gina Alemán: Sure, yeah. So I am a birth and postpartum doula. But I’d like to say that I’m more of a birth consultant, because I do provide so much more than just the physical support that I provide for my clients here in Central Florida. I also provide birth education. So I’m helping my clients prepare for their birth. I provide lactation counseling support, as well as perinatal mental health support.

When I’m working with my clients, I love to provide them with helpful resources. I was an educator before becoming a birth worker. It’s a natural connection that I’ve made with my support for my families and clients to provide them with wonderful resources. A part of that has grown into creating courses for my clients, but also for folks no matter where they’re located.

Obviously, I can’t be everywhere. And it was important to me to provide wonderful, wholesome, and really vibrant resources to the community of people that I serve, but also people all over that are seeking the support that I can provide them. So that’s where it started. I have been growing community of courses and spaces for clients and other folks. I would love to be able to provide that guidance to other businesses and business owners.

Jayne Havens: Can you tell us a little bit about the courses? Maybe give us like a couple of examples of programs that you’ve created for your own audience.

Gina Alemán: Absolutely. I, of course, am a certified sleep consultant. And I was lucky enough to go through your program to become certified. One of the resources that I provide for my clients and, again, for anyone anywhere — because it’s a digital resource — I provide a newborn sleep education course since I work mostly with families that are either pregnant, or they have a newborn at home. I created that course myself. They’re able to go through the course. It’s self-paced. They have resources in their videos.

That’s one of the things that I created because I found myself answering the same questions over and over again. I thought, well, wouldn’t it be a great idea to sort of put on this instructional designer hat that I have a master’s degree and a background in that area? Be able to answer those questions, and they can have those answers in the time that they need it, not just when I’m physically available.

Jayne Havens: I love that. And so, you sell that as like an online course or digital resource, whatever you want to call it. But do you ever just offer it to your clients to save yourself time? Like if they can just watch this series of videos or whatever it is, then you don’t have to spend three hours explaining all of it. Do you ever do that?

Gina Alemán: I do. Yes, I do. Where I house my courses, my clients have access to that bank of courses and resources. So they’re able to go in and access those. Then, again, the general public is able to go in and purchase those courses and guides as well.

Jayne Havens: Okay. So when a family hires you as their doula, they get access to all of this programming as just a part of their experience working with you?

Gina Alemán: Correct. That’s correct.

Jayne Havens: I love that. I have a few resources myself in my situation. It was actually during the pandemic when we were all sort of stuck at home and craving that connection but weren’t like out and about together. I started doing sort of group coaching calls on Zoom. I would get 10 or 15 moms with all babies that had similar ages. We do a conversation on whether it was newborn sleep, or toddler sleep, or whatever that looks like. I have them recorded, and they’re in my online learning platform database.

I do share them. I just share them with my clients from time to time because it makes my job easier. They can just watch this hour-long video, and then I don’t have to explain everything to them verbally. But then I also sell them, from time to time, to families that have never worked with me before. So it sounds like we’re doing a similar thing. So it helps us to make our own jobs easier, but then it also generates some passive income at the same time.

Gina Alemán: Exactly right, yeah. It adds so much value to us as business owners and service providers to be able to say, “I’ve created this, a plethora of resources for you to be able to access.” It really makes us stand out as providers.

Jayne Havens: Yeah, absolutely. We talk a fair amount, inside of our CPSM community, about creating multiple streams of income as well as having some passive income. I think course creation allows you to do exactly that. For all of the sleep consultants and doulas that are listening to this podcast, I bet many of them would love to create their own course. But perhaps they either don’t feel ready, or they don’t feel like they have enough experience. When do you think is the right time to expand from one-to-one services towards offering group trainings or online programming?

Gina Alemán: Sure. I think it is helpful to spend some time getting established in your field and becoming sort of an expert in your community and to your audience. But I feel like as quickly as possible and you feel like you’ve got your feet on the ground, and you’re really getting a good knowledge, and you feel comfortable with your field, once you have that information that you share and, again, you begin to notice that you’re sort of repeating yourself quite a bit, that would be the time to start creating something that is again passive for you.

So you do all the work at one time. You do the work upfront. You make it available to people to be able to purchase. Or, like you mentioned, Jayne, if it’s something that you just offer to your clients.

But absolutely, I think that it’s important for those of us who are in the parent-centered field that we can only be in one place at one time. Because there are so many people that are needing our support, there’s such a wide range of people that we can reach, having those digital courses or digital resources are a wonderful way to create that passive income but be able to reach more people than one to one.

Jayne Havens: Can you share a little bit about what your process for supporting birth workers and sleep consultants through the experience of creating a digital course? What does that look like?

Gina Alemán: Yes, that looks like us meeting and spending time planning out the project. I like when folks come to me, and they have an idea of what it is that they want to create and put out and share with the world. That way, we’re not starting from ground zero. But they have their idea, and they’re just not sure how to execute it. So I come in and meet with them, and we plan what it is they want to create.

We can also talk about different platforms that they can use to get their information out to people. So we talk about that. We talk about the visual aspect of it, how many modules they want if they’re creating a course, for example. And from there, once they are hiring me, I’m working on helping them create those resources and then building them out in the platform that they have selected.

Sometimes it’s a learning management system. That’s usually the easiest place to create a course. From there, we’re working together depending on the difficulty of the project. That determines how long I anticipate our time together. I work with them closely. They get updates on the project timeline. Once it’s complete, we sort of have a celebration to say, like, “Here’s your final product, and it’s ready to push out and share with the world.” That’s a big deal for folks who have had this vision or idea in their mind.

Because of time, because of the demands of this field, they just haven’t had a chance to do it, or they don’t feel comfortable doing it. And because I have that background as an instructional designer before I was in birth work, it’s just a perfect way of being able to support other birth workers, other sleep consultants, so that they can have that beautiful project to share.

Jayne Havens: Yeah, I love that. For somebody that is perhaps not feeling ready to hire a course creator to get started, with somebody like you who’s really going to help them soup to nuts do, make it all happen, for somebody who’s maybe thinking about doing it DIY, do you have any sort of tips or sort of best practices or things to keep in mind if you’re going to try and go at this yourself?

Gina Alemán: Yes, one of the tips is to remember that it doesn’t have to be perfect. That’s what holds a lot of folks back. It’s they’re thinking that they have to rent a studio, and have perfect lighting, and create this beautiful, polished product. That’s nice. But if that what’s standing in the way of a wonderful professional getting the information out there and helping people, I invite you to eliminate that barrier.

You can set up a nice background in your home that’s nice and clear, and you have good sound. You don’t have dogs barking and things like that. You can create a beautiful video explaining something that you’re really good at. You start with one video, and then you create another one. And you add it maybe a PDF that you want to share. You put this all together. That can be enough to be something that you begin to share with people and get comfortable in that space of having those digital resources available.

Jayne Havens: I think that that’s really great advice. When I first created Center for Pediatric Sleep Management, I was in a place in my career where I was not even entirely proficient with my own computer. I’m not a tech person at all. The videos that are in CPSM, like the welcome video and short little video clips of just me that have been there since the very beginning, are literally filmed on my cell phone because I was overwhelmed with the idea of setting up my computer with the camera. It just felt outside of my comfort zone. I literally filmed the videos on my phone with a phone stand, selfie style. And that was it.

Actually, I have an assistant helping me in my business now. She’s going through the course and cleaning it up. We’re adding things, and we’re taking things away. She messaged me the other day, and she’s like, “Hey, Jayne. I love you. But I was just watching the welcome video inside of the course, but you’re so much better than that now. You need to change that.” And nobody has given me a hard time about that, except for Ali, if she’s listening. I’m going to call her out. That’s why I love her because she’s honest and real with me.

But nobody has given me a hard time about that. It’s totally been fine that that jalopy welcome video is the welcome video. Now we’re going to change it. And it’s okay. It’s been several years. It’s been in there, and everything’s been fine. So I entirely agree with you, that if what’s keeping somebody from getting going is just their own worry or fear that it’s going to be anything less than perfect, that is a crazy, silly reason to get started. I totally agree with you.

I think that when many entrepreneurs are trying to decide whether or not to create a course, one thing that gets in the way is whether or not they have the audience to sell it to. I think that that’s legitimate. Because if you are used to just working one-on-one with families, and then you’re going to go out there and create a whole digital program, who’s going to buy it if you don’t have an audience?

Do you think that, to some degree, you need to form some sort of audience, whether that’s on social media or — I don’t know. There are so many different ways — an email list, right? It doesn’t need to be on Instagram or on Facebook. It could be creating an email list. But do you feel like generating some sort of audience is a crucial component to all of this?

Gina Alemán: I would say it’s certainly helpful to have people that you’re going to be able to push this content out to. Like you said, it doesn’t have to be on social media. It can certainly be an email list. It can be a Facebook group that you’ve created. You can have an audience to share out that way. That also wouldn’t be a reason that I would wait to create something.

Because yes, it is nice to have an established audience, and you have people who are possibly eager to purchase whatever it is that you’re going to share. But sometimes, just having the digital product helps you to create an audience. Because now you share it with one or two people, and then they share it with their friends. That audience can sometimes come from having the product that you’re sharing.

Again, you feel confident. You feel as if you’re an expert in your field. This is something that you’re really, really confident about. It’s something that you are wanting to share. People see that in what you present. That may be the way that you gain that following is by having this digital product.

Jayne Havens: Yeah, I love that. It’s sort of like what comes first, the chicken or the egg, right? I think the answer to that is that, either way, you have to get out there and talk about something. I always say that in order to build a successful business — and I think this is true, whether it’s supporting clients one-on-one or whether it’s selling a digital product — you have to get out there and tell people what you do and what you have to offer. So if you build all of this amazing curriculum and it’s sitting in a bank, in an online learning platform, and nobody knows about it, then it’s just going to hang out there, right? So you have to get out there and talk about it.

Gina Alemán: Absolutely. I agree. That’s the whole point. That’s why we do this work that we do. It’s we want to be able to reach people and change their experience for the better. And if you have something to share, then this is a beautiful way to be able to share it with a mass amount of people, and people that are not right there in your community that you’re meeting with face to face. This is your way to really get that out there to the public.

Jayne Havens: I love the way that you framed this. Because I think that one thing that gets in the way of entrepreneurs putting out their content, whether it’s just information about their one-on-one services or an online course, whatever it is, is that they feel uncomfortable selling. I think that that’s one thing that gets in a lot of people’s way. But the way that you talk about it is so spot on — that we have something to offer that other people need.

There are moms who need this type of information. There are moms who are craving this type of support, or education, or whatever it looks like. It’s not about being salesy. It’s about giving access to all of this knowledge and all of these resources. We’re the experts, and we have this information. It’s up to us to get it out there and share it with those who need it. I love that perspective.

Gina Alemán: Right. Especially for the folks who go through your certification, that was hard work. They did something really big to be able to become certified. What good is it if you just sit with it, and you’re nervous about it? Great. You help your neighbor or your friend with their child and their sleep struggles. But really, I mean, your potential is endless.

Jayne Havens: 100%. You’re a mom, a doula, a course creator. I’m wondering how you have time to do it all? What’s your secret? How do you manage the day, or the week, or your life?

Gina Alemán: Sleep is very important to me. I prioritize sleep all over most everything. I have to have the energy to be able to do all the things that happen in my day. I just try to be very, very structured. I have a calendar. I look at my week a week out. We have a family calendar that I share with my husband. We just make sure that we have things as structured as we possibly can, understanding that, in this work, things come up. We always have a backup plan. We try to leave room in our schedule for things to go wrong. That’s essentially it.

I also function that way with my clients. My clients have access to my calendar. They schedule things, but I only have availability based on what’s allowable in my life. My family comes first. My clients come close second, and they fill in those spaces. That’s how I managed to have a nice solid calendar and a life that makes sense for me. It’s fulfilling for me, and it doesn’t feel overwhelming.

Jayne Havens: It sounds like to me that you really are truly putting out something that is genuinely your passion. You really, when I listened to you talk, it’s like you live it. You breathe it. You own it. And it’s really yours. I think that that’s ultimately what sells or what leads to success. It’s that you’re showing up to serve and to support. People are craving that knowledge and that help from you. I just think it’s awesome.

Gina Alemán: Thank you. I appreciate that. It is what I love to do and this is what — I know this is the space that is right for me.

Jayne Havens: Tell everybody where they can find you if they want to connect with you to learn more about your services, whether they be doula support or online course creation. I bet, for most people listening to this, they are interested in what you do from a sort of education and curriculum perspective.

Gina Alemán: Yes, I am most active on Instagram. I’m @newblossommaternity. I know we’ll have that information available for folks. That’s where you can follow along with all of my adventures, whether it’s birth, postpartum, my family, sleep support, courses, community, all the things. That’s where you find me.

I also have a program set up and ready for folks who are ready to take this next step in having digital content ready to share out with their communities. You can also find that information by following me on Instagram, or you can reach out to me. We’ll have my email address available for everyone. That’s where you can get started. I’ll sort of walk you through this process. We’ll sit down and have a little consultation to plan out what it is you’re looking for, and we move forward from there.

Jayne Havens: While I was listening to you talk, I think I just came up with your next idea. If you haven’t already done this, I think you need to create a course on how to create a course. I think that’s the thing. I’ve seen other people are doing that. But I think that you have to do that, like create an online course for sleep consultants and doulas on how to create their digital course. I’m going to put that on your to-do list.

Gina Alemán: Very meta, but yes.

Jayne Havens: Well, if and when that ever comes to be, you let me know, and I will be the first to share. Thank you so much for being willing to have this conversation with me today. Congrats on your success. I hope that some in our community reach out to learn more from you or work with you directly.

Gina Alemán: I appreciate your time. Thank you, Jayne.

Outro: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Becoming a Sleep Consultant Podcast. If you enjoyed today’s episode, it would mean so much to me if you would rate, review, and subscribe. When you rate, review, and subscribe, this helps the podcast reach a greater audience. I am so grateful for your support.

If you would like to learn more about how you can become a certified sleep consultant, head over to my Facebook Group, Becoming a Sleep Consultant or to my website thecpsm.com. Thanks so much, and I hope you will tune in for the next episode. Digital Course Creation