Meredith Noble and Alex Lustig were at their wits end with their grant writing course. “We were charging $350 for lifetime access to our course, and realized that it was actually costing us $700 to acquire and serve each student,” Meredith said.
Thankfully their consulting side of their business had been keeping them afloat. But in November 2020, Alex discovered a Facebook ad for the Recurring Profit Program.
The duo decided to go all in with the RP methods, and completely overhauled their offer, webinar, course and automated sales system – in THREE weeks. “We only had six or seven weeks of runway left, and then we were going to run out of money,” Meredith said.
Fast forward to January 2021, they relaunched their course and made $7K in their first month. Today, they’re making $66K a month, using sales psychology and an automated sales machine.
Meredith is the Co-Founder of Learn Grant Writing, and Alex is also the Co-Founder and Integrator for the company. They help women build careers in grant writing and have the coolest mascot ever – a unicorn! In today's episode, we're sharing how this grant writing duo makes $66K months.
Timestamps:
0:30 – Meet Meredith and Alex
1:23 – What is an Integrator for a Business?
6:08 – Implementing a Cadence
9:45 – Focusing On Course Creation
12:22 – What Changed Everything
18:00 – Building a Team
19:47 – Deep-Work Wednesday
25:18 – Reaching $66K Months
32:16 – Advice to Other Entrepreneurs from Meredith and Alex
38:18 – Work Wedding
APPLY TO WORK WITH US
If you are a course creator or membership site owner who wants to hit $25K+ months, I created this training just for YOU!
If you are ready to FINALLY have a lifeproof business, so your business can grow while you step away for whatever reason: apply to work with us and learn more about our Recurring Profit Method. Go check it out at automatemarketing.com and don’t be afraid to DM us on Instagram if you have any questions!
IN THIS EPISODE
How this Grant Writing Duo Makes $66K Months
What Does an Integrator Do?
Meredith reached $100K in revenue, and realized she needed help with operations.
That’s when she brought on Alex as a project manager for about five hours a week.
As an Integrator, Alex was able to put systems in place and build procedures out of Asana. But systems only work for so long, then those hit a ceiling too. This is due to rapid growth. So you have to rebuild them every so often so that your systems can work at their highest-functioning level.
Implementing a Cadence
It’s tempting to run with every big idea you have for your business. But Meredith and Alex try to keep it simplified, taking on one big project and two maintenance projects every quarter.
To make sure they’re following through with this plan, they meet every six weeks and “white board” ideas. Then, they go back and work out these logistics and stay on tasks for those projects.
Focusing On Course Creation
In June 2018, Meredith created her first course. Her first year, she made $2K. She never thought she needed to build an email list. Just build it, and they’ll come, she thought. “All the mistakes a person can make in course creation, I made them,” Meredith said.
Second year, she made $10K, and wasn’t getting much traction. Right before Covid hit, Meredith launched a book, and the grant writing course had close to 400 customers. However, it was only a $350 course to serve a customer for a lifetime.
When Alex came to work full-time, the team of two were both exclusively working on the course business, and found out that their cost to acquire and serve a customer was actually $700.
“We realized that the consulting side was actually paying for the course side. So when we stopped doing the consulting, we realized the financial picture wasn’t actually what we thought it was,” Alex said.
Alex and Meredith tried every avenue to make this course business work – challenges, Facebook ads, a free Facebook group to get leads – nothing worked!
Using Recurring Profit Strategies
In November 2020, Alex found a Facebook ad for Recurring Profit, and they purchased the program. They completely overhauled everything about their course in just three weeks.
In January 2021, they relaunched their course and made $7K in monthly recurring revenue.
Deep-Work Wednesday
By February 2021, Alex and Meredith realized they needed to invest in a team. Today, they have a team of 12 people – 3 full-time team members and 9 part-time team members.
As their team grew, they realized that their culture was shifting a direction they didn’t necessarily like. Team members were emailing on the weekends and working late nights.
So they came up with the idea to implement deep-work Wednesday. On Wednesdays, there’s no slack or emails allowed, and you can only work on a deep-work project.
Scaling from $7K to $66K Months
The growth line is the exact same from when they relaunched their course in January 2021 until now.
The difference is two small things. They use National Unicorn Day to establish urgency. The second is that they doubled the price of the course last August.
Another piece of their success that Meredith and Alex are proud of is that they have a high-performing SEO on their website. Meredith codes the Learn Grant Writing website herself. And that’s another distinguishing characteristic for success because the company has 7,000 organic visitors to their site every month.
More marketing doesn’t always equal more leads.
Advice from Meredith and Alex to Other Entrepreneurs
“There is no overnight success,” Meredith said. “A lot of it you have to dig in deep.”
Meredith believes the reason Recurring Profit works so well for her business is because she had already built a course and went through the struggles of live launching with no recurring monthly profit. So she didn’t have to question the methods of Recurring Profit.
This is the only program Meredith says that talks about pricing your course and getting your offer set up correctly, so that you don’t get burnt out.
“Many other programs talk about where you find leads,” Meredith said. “But honestly none of that matters if your offer isn’t where it needs to be.”
For Alex, Recurring Profit was a way for her to understand the industry of course creation. And allowing her to see the methodology behind it in a very systematic way. She also encourages those who are pursuing their dreams to not give up.
“You have to think about what matters to you,” Alex said. “Being an entrepreneur has changed the way I look at life, and if you want to be an entrepreneur, just keep going.”
CONNECT WITH US
Social Media: instagram.com/recurringprofit
CONNECT WITH Meredith Noble and Alex Lustig
Social Media: instagram.com/learngrantwriting
Website: learngrantwriting.org/
Podcast: The Unicorn Living Podcast
SUBSCRIBE + REVIEW ON APPLE PODCASTS
You're the best for being a listener, I hope this podcast has been such a helpful, inspiring resource to create the kind of life you want with your course.
To help get this resource in front of more course creators, please consider leaving me a rating and review on Apple Podcasts here! The 10 seconds you take doing this means the WORLD to me and the podcast team.
Click here to subscribe to the Recurring Profit Podcast on Apple Podcasts!
