Training Agency Startup Looking for Feedback / Input from coaches/course creators

[ChetUBetcha]

Whats up everyone!
My names Davis. Im the CEO and Co-Founder of a startup company called Combat Sales.(www.combatsales.com) We're a training development agency that creates, optimizes, and hosts custom training courses on our proprietary LMS (Learning Management System).

A little background on our journey...Ill try to keep it short and sweet for sake of time. My co-founder/twin brother and I have spent the past 6 years in the Door to Door sales industry in the United States. During that time we grew our teams very quickly because we created a method and system to streamline training and rep development. We had created courses around our sales approach and figured out a unique method of delivering the training that increased training effectiveness from 10-20% to 75%+ with 1 out of every 5 guys we recruited becoming a manager within 2 summers. Its important to note that when we were about four years into the D2D industry (out of 6) we took all our profits from selling and decided to build our own gamified software LMS system to streamline our training for the bootcamp.

Fast forward to the beginning of 2023 and we launched Combat Sales as a sales bootcamp (Basic premise was to use the D2D industry to train people and we get them jobs outside of D2D after.) While trying to get this business off the ground we heard from multiple business that we approached for partnership in the bootcamp that the bootcamp was a cool idea but they're more interested in the training platform and how we grew our teams so fast. We were determined to give the bootcamp a fair shot so we stuck with that idea and put the training on the back burner. From Jan 2023-April of 2023 we didnt make much headway for the bootcamp so we went to go sell for another summer (summer 2023)

In Sept of 2023, after the summer ended, we pursued the idea of becoming a training company. At the end of the summer (Aug) we approached the company that we sold with. We spent two months in meetings learning the B2B grind. Over the course of 4 or 5 meetings, we showed them the training, the courses we had used to train our people at their own company, the results, and they loved it. So much so that they tried to strong arm us for equity saying if we didnt let them buy in they wouldnt use us. We told them no thanks. Upside; we knew we were on to something!

After that we went to the drawing board and tried to figure out our offer. We knew how to create impactful training courses but we also had a training platform. We felt like we were two business is in one and we didnt know how to price ourselves our structure the business that well. We did know how to help D2D managers grow their teams so we started cold Dm'ing and started building our brand on instagram. (following Alex Hormozis map from 100m Leads). We got stuffed trying to do cold Dm's because managers werent the DM's. They couldnt use our platform without permission from the higher ups. So we were back to the B2B grind. However, we found some pretty awesome success on our instagram because we had a reel go viral as part of a new series we launched where we show funny videos that revolve around sales. The reel hit 21+ mil views and took our page from 1.8k followers to 20k followers. pretty cool.

in January of 2023 we stumbled upon a business model called a "Training Development Agency" and realized that that's exactly what we are. This allowed us to clear up the service+ software dilema and come up with a solid pricing strategy. However, it didnt help us solve what to do about B2B sales being more difficult and longer than we thought. (We're on a runway with our business we have business debt from development updates)

So now we're rounding the end of February and here's where we're at:

Our value proposition in the marketplace:
-The reason that our training is so effective is because we've figured out a way to increase the effectiveness and retention of training information by using video prompts and submissions. In a normal course, to move from one lesson to another, students just have to read the info, watch a video, and maybe pass a quiz. This is largely ineffective because these are PASSIVE styles of learning (check the Learning Pyramid out for more context) and they get very little custom help and accountability. We're different because our platform requires that students use ACTIVE learning methods by requiring students to read a prompt and submit a video of them either performing the skill or teaching the information back to us. This increases the retention of the information from 10-20% (passive) to 75-90% (active). That, coupled with our ability to develop the training courses using a method and 7 step. process, delivers a one stop solution for creating an impactful streamlined training system. Because of this we're extremely confident we can deliver on our offer of course creation/optimization with software hosting that is more effective than most platforms on the market currently. (Udemy, Thinkific, Konjabi etc).

-We got our first client through a referral two days ago (woop woop) Its a solar company.
-We have a social media presence. We know how to create good content, but all of our content on our insta is aimed at our initial approach of selling to D2D managers and now as a training agency.
-We have 4 months or so of runway, We need to get customers in the door asap.

Our biggest hurdles (and where we need the input for Coaches/Course Creators):
1. Nailing down our customer avatar
2. Nailing down an offer/ Pricing
3. Generating Leads

Here's what we're imagining each hurdle:
1. Avatar
The way we see it we have 6 avatars that we can choose from
-Content Creators WITH a preexisting course already and they want to sell it for more
-Content Creators WITHOUT a preexisting course. But they have an audience that we can sell to
-1-on-1 Coaches WITHOUT a prexisting course that want to offer 1 on 1 coaching
-1-on-1 Coaches WITH a prexisting course that want to streamline their 1 on 1 coaching
- Business owners WITHOUT any preexisting training courses (they might have materials but no courses built)
-Business owners WITH preexisting training system in place but they want to make them better/streamline them

We have a google form that we're trying to get answers from so we can see which of these avatars is a starving crowd. We're leaning towards course creators / coaches/ business who already have a course but want to create an upsell for their company. (more on that in the next section)

2. Offer/Pricing

When looking at what is the quickest path to getting customers on board and making money using our platform. We imagine that it's finding coaches or course creators with an existing course, transferring their already existing course to our platform, adding in prompts for the videos, so they can then charge 2-3x the price using the exact same course theyve already built. Im including a picture of the visual that might help explain this.

Option 1 Per project Basis + Monthly Recurring: As an Agency, we charge a flat rate of $500-1000 per week of work that it takes us to develop the courses and then we charge a flat rate of $250 per month for the platform with unlimited students. So if we had to build a course from scratch and it would take us 3 weeks, we charge the $1500-3000 for the course and then its unlimited students.
Option 2 Flat Rate + Monthly Recurring: We charge a one time fee of 1-3k to create or transfer courses on to the platform and then we charge the $250 per month.
Option 3 Revshare: We dont charge anything to transfer a course on to our platform and then we take a 20% profit share - same as lightspeedv.

3. Leads
We're tight on cash. leads has been the biggest hurdle for us. If we had more runway we would be cool with spending money to run ads to see what people click on but we're just strapped right now. We want to hustle as hard as we can to really make sure we're moving forward using data and by talking to customers before we put any money behind it. But I feel like we're also taking too long and we might see a ton of results if we put 1k into 20 ads and see what took off.

My ask from the Fastlane Forum:
1. Would love any feedback on the information above, I can elaborate on things if need be
2. If you're a course creator/ coach what do you think about the offer? Would you consider using our platform if you could 2-3x your price?
3. Any course creator if you could fill this out that would be super helpful: 1-1 Mentorship in E-Learning: Opportunities & Challenges Survey

You can check us out at Combatsales.com or @Combat_sales on instagram or my personal instagram @daviscarbo

 

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