The Art of Selling Online Courses

225 How I Made 6 Figures in Under a Year Selling Courses

• John Ainsworth • Season 1 • Episode 225

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Erika Quest started her online course business with just 167 email addresses scraped from her hard drive. Within a year, she had built a six-figure side hustle. Today she has around 5,000 people on her email list and 3,000 of them are paying customers. That ratio is absolutely wild.

In this episode of The Art of Selling Online Courses, Erika shares how she built her platform Level Up Movement in the fitness and Pilates education space. What makes her approach different is her focus on high-touch customer service and relationship marketing. She actually responds personally to customers instead of relying on bots and automations for everything. Her philosophy is simple but powerful: loyalty is a relationship.

We also talk about her business model of selling other people's courses. She finds experts in her industry, produces all the marketing and delivery, and splits the revenue with them. Her 2026 calendar is already fully booked with talent. All of this growth has happened organically with no paid advertising.

Erika runs three promotions a month and hosts monthly live workshops she calls Claster Minds. She went from 20-30 attendees when she started to nearly 200 ticket sales for her most recent event.

If you have been thinking about starting an online course business but feel like you are not expert enough or do not have a big audience yet, this conversation will show you what is possible when you just get started.

🔗 Connect with Erika at https://levelupmvmt.com
🔗 Connect with Erika on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/erikaquest

#onlinecourses #SalesFunnels #CourseCreators #DigitalMarketing


🤝  Get In Touch
If you'd like to talk more about how you can grow your course business, email me at john@datadrivenmarketing.

SPEAKER_00:

I began level up movement by scraping together 167 email addresses that were sitting on my hard drive somewhere. I realized very, very quickly that I built in under a year's span of time a six-figure side hustle.

SPEAKER_01:

Said you got 5,000 people on your email list and 3,000 paying customers. That's not the normal kind of proportion.

SPEAKER_00:

I believe that loyalty is a relationship. People that interact with me and level up movement still desire, want, and expect that they are valued, that they are heard, that they are understood. At this point in time, there is no bot that can my 2026 calendar is already fully built. No ad promotion, nothing. That's how we do our organic. You do not need to be the Albert Einstein of your modality or your topic. Like Target.

SPEAKER_01:

Hello and welcome to the Art of Selling Online Courses. We're here to share winning strategies, top performers in the online courses. My name is John Antber, and today's guest is Erica Quest. Now, before she was a course creator, Erica used to sell cheese. She was a corporate marketer in the fast food business, but she left that in 2005. And she has worked in the international fitness, wellness, and quality certification business for the last 20 years, traveling and speaking worldwide. As the founder of Level Up MVMT, she helps instructors level up their programming, their movement, and their coaching skills. We're going to talk today about how she got started, who she helps, how she helps them, and her approach to business. Erica, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00:

Hey John, thank you so much for having me. And it's so funny because Level Up MVMT was my answer to trying to stay in the millennial category and have a cool terminology for movement. So it's level up movement.

SPEAKER_01:

Is that how you say it? Level up movement.

SPEAKER_00:

And that's actually partially because levelupmovement.com was probably already taken. So I had to get slick on how I was going to develop a URL. So there you go.

SPEAKER_01:

I had at one point, uh Do you remember the the MTV show called Pimp My Ride? Do you remember?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, totally. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01:

So at one point I came up with the idea of Pimp My Funnel. And I went to buy the domain and I found out that Russell Bronson had already bought it like 10 years earlier. I was like, God damn it! I thought this was an original idea. So I bought Pimp Your Funnel instead. And uh have to kind of keep constantly if I'm if I'm doing that webinar where I'm talking about it, I have to be like, it's Pimp Your. Make sure you go to Pimp Your funnel. I don't want to send people off to Russell Bronson's page.

SPEAKER_00:

I get the question quite a bit, but there was at the time, and maybe they're still around, maybe they're not around, there was a watch brand called I think MVT, or it was like some acronym. And I thought, oh, well, that's a great way to actually shorten the name Level Up Movement, anyways. So that is it. LevelUpMovement.com is where we're at. So but I'm stoked to be here. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01:

You're very welcome. So talk us through a little bit. I I mentioned briefly, but who is it that you're helping with your courses?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh we really are a continue, an online continuing education platform for the movement and the fitness industry. If you want to niche us down, the bulk of our users are from Pilates. And we are finally in my industry that I've been in for over 20 years, having our moment. So Pilates is actually on the map. We made it on SNL last year, which I think is a big uh ta-da for our entire industry, but we're definitely blowing up in the world. And uh, but I've been doing this for a very long time. So our audience is primarily movers, instructors from all over the place, but they are uh in general Pilates instructors and they want more information, tips, tricks, hacks on how to work with their clients.

SPEAKER_01:

And so when you say work with their clients, is this all focused around how they can help their clients to get better results? Or is it also about the marketing and the business side of running a Pilates?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh right now it is pretty much all on a special topic. So, as of for instance, if they have a client that has arthritis, whether it's in their knees or their spine, they can come to us and they can take a short format course, whether it's live or whether it's video on demand, they can get their continuing education credits, they can get, you know, some great tips from an expert in the field to help them work with their client with arthritis. I do, as you mentioned, have a robust relationship marketing background. I do some business coaching myself for the boutique Pilates and Group Fitness Studio industry, but that's not a huge revenue stream I focus on. I primarily focus on continuing education.

SPEAKER_01:

And give people some idea of the size of your business revenue if you're happy to share, but if not, like number of students or something like that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. Well, I I mean, I'm I'm pretty much an open book because I think that it's important for other people to have aspirations that are just getting started in the course creation industry. And so I went into this four years ago in a time that, yes, we all know what was happening uh in the world with COVID, but it was a dream of mine to actually have an online platform, but I was just traveling the world way too much and I didn't have time or effort to put something into uh whether it's a membership-based platform or an a la carte platform. And so I say this because I want to uh hopefully the people that are listening to this are like, I could never do this, uh, will get inspired by this. So I built this really as a passion project. I built this as a resource for kind of myself. Originally, Level Up Movement was called Quest Academy because I was only gonna put my own content on the platform. And um, I realized very, very quickly that I built in under a year's span of time a six-figure side hustle. And so I had to really nice laser focus my eyes and my attention to the fact that wow, this is something and I should really focus on it. So I don't really know. I mean, we have probably about 2,000 to 3,000 students that interact with the platform on any given time. We are not a membership-based platform, so I can't give you like general ongoing revenue membership-based streams. Not that I don't uh like membership-based platforms. It's just a very, very saturated market, and I have known since day one that I didn't want to play in those waters.

SPEAKER_01:

Gotcha. And what's the main traffic source for you?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh I would say email marketing. We have a very strong email marketing uh source of income and revenue. Uh, because of my relationship marketing background, you may hear me say acronyms from that time frame in my life. And I used to do a lot of looking at audience and audience segmentation and moving the needle on what we call the path to purchase, which is how do we get somebody to try something and move them along the path to purchase to loyalty and retention as quickly as possible? So our audience on the email marketing side has a very H-U-H-L uh niche to it, which I would define as a high user, high loyal. So people trust us, they believe in us, they really want the content that we're serving up and offering, not only because we're providing it, but they are suggesting it. And so we have a very, very high repeat purchaser.

SPEAKER_01:

Where have you built the email list from? Is it have you got a big following on Instagram or like what's the Again?

SPEAKER_00:

I really hope that this will be exciting to a lot of your users that are just getting started, because that's part of my business coaching is to just get started. Uh, when I began Level Up Movement, and mind you, I had been traveling all over the world teaching continuing education, speaking at fitness conferences, and at zero of those conferences did I procure an email list from the students that took my classes. So I began level up movement by scraping together 167 email addresses that were sitting on my hard drive somewhere, somehow, and I invited them in to be a part of my platform or to opt into being part of my emails. And it began from there, and then it really has become word of mouth, and it has grown to um my my MailChimp, my my MailChimp uh email database is probably sitting at about 5K now. And my student interaction through the platform that uh we use for our back end, which is teachable, is sitting at close to 3,000 students. So it's uh it has grown organically and through word of mouth and trust in the industry and just spending time nurturing. And when I say nurturing, doing it through high-touch customer service and reaching out to people versus having an automation.

SPEAKER_01:

All right, this is very interesting. So you've got so you don't have like a big Instagram following or YouTube or anything like that that's driving this, it's mostly through word of mouth. And you said you've got 5,000 people on your email list and 3,000 paying customers. That's not the normal kind of proportion. So that's very interesting. So talk us through a little bit about there's obviously something you're doing that's that's uh working really well here. So talk us through this idea of the high-touch customer service. Like what is it?

SPEAKER_00:

So, because of my relationship marketing background, I believe that loyalty is a relationship, right? So there is a beautiful thing happening in the world and in the world of online sales, but also I think something that people need to lean into and away from and use it in a sparing way that suits their business or their businesses well, but not entirely. And that is automation. It's not that I don't believe in automation, it's not that I don't believe in bots and tech or analyzing statistics, but I believe, especially in my industry, because we are typically working with human bodies and that we are using oftentimes tactile cueing in our studios and in our boutique fitness studios, that people and people that interact with me and level up movement still desire, want, and expect uh that they are valued, that they are heard, that they are understood. And at this point in time, there is no bot that can do that. And so I am, I do not spend hours on my customer service, so let that be known. But the people that we interact with, if they email me, or they email my assistant or my partner in the company, they hear back from us directly and they very much appreciate that.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay. So you're doing anybody who messages is is hearing back directly from from one of the two of you. And then how is that working in terms of like what what do you think it is that's then causing people to become so loyal? Could you kind of give us some like really practical examples that maybe listeners could learn from?

SPEAKER_00:

It's trust in me, I believe, first and foremost, because of my experience in the industry and the relationships, again, that I've made throughout the fitness and the wellness industry and Pilates specifically. I'm very fortunate that I've had the uh access and the joy of training with a lot of esteemed teachers, mentors, presenters in the industry and gotten to know them. And so I've built a lot of trust with people in the industry who also are excited about what I'm doing with the platform. And they may not have an outlet to put their content out. So I use my marketing background to help said person in the industry an expert. Let's just stick with the arthritis theme, an expert on arthritis and joint pain to be able to produce their content, put it out there, pay them very well, and be able to share their voice in the industry outside of just my content and my voice.

SPEAKER_01:

Got it. Okay. So that's the second thing you're doing that's different to most of the people listening is that you're selling other people's courses as well.

SPEAKER_00:

Correct.

SPEAKER_01:

How does that work in terms of like splitting the revenue? How does that kind of part of it work?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh we have a talent agreement. And so what we do is we we develop a talent agreement for said presenter, and that uh we take the on the level at movement side, we take the lion's share of the live event because we will run it live, a live stream event, um, and deliver continuing education credits the first time. So we basically produce everything. We do the graphics, we do the website, we do all the email marketing, we do the social media marketing, uh, all the sell-through the paywall stuff. So they can be totally hands-off. They don't have to deal with any of that. It is encouraged that they help support and promote it because they're gonna make more money the more that they promote it to their audience. So there's a web. I believe collaboration is cool, and this is how we all work in the industry. It's also why I'm sitting in front of you on this podcast right now, because uh this is how we support each other in an industry and we grow our networks and we grow our databases. And then we produce everything, they just produce the content. They come on, uh they do the live event, and then we turn the course over into video on demand with distance learning CECs from there. After that has then happened, they then the contract agreement flips to their uh advantage because our customer service has gone down to next to nothing, and they make the lion's share of any residual video on demand sales from there.

SPEAKER_01:

Got it, got it. We did actually another uh I did an episode with someone else who's running a similar kind of business model where she's selling other people's courses as well. Started off with just her, and then she had other people doing it. And she's completely different industry. She's uh a professional mosaic artist and teacher.

SPEAKER_00:

Amazing.

SPEAKER_01:

Out in Santa Barbara. Is Santa Barbara out your kind of way?

SPEAKER_00:

Santa Barbara's close to me, about three hours north of where I'm at, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, cool. So that's for anybody interested in that one, that's episode 208 uh with Tammy. Okay, cool. So what you started out, if I understood right, you were doing all of the courses yourself, and then you started getting other people's courses on as well. What was the thing that caused you to do that? Like, was there a sudden moment of insight? Did people keep asking you, could you promote my course as well? Was it your audience? Like, how did that happen?

SPEAKER_00:

So the background on this is this this has been kind of a big dream of mine in general. So I had the idea that if it would cap happen one day where I could produce other content and promote other people, uh, I realized during COVID, even with my marketing background, and even though I do like to be on stage and present on stage in front of people and share my own content, I make a really good backup babe. And so I realized very quickly that my backup babe can help a lot of people in this industry that could use that skill set of mine. And so I just really leaned into it. And it's been great. I mean, I am now headed into 2026. My 2026 calendar is already fully booked with my talent. So I'm already looking a year in advance on talent. And I could uh I could literally, if somebody slides out of 2026, fill that spot without fail.

SPEAKER_01:

So do they like it when you call them talent?

SPEAKER_00:

I don't know. That's a very good question. It's just what I hope so.

SPEAKER_01:

I uh I was working with a guy who was helping me with the YouTube channel, and um he he used that expression. It's something uh definitely from like the the like TV industry, right? The people say talent. And he was referring to me in that as the as the talent. And I was just like, oh, look at me, you know.

SPEAKER_00:

No, I just call them talent. They're experts in their field on what they talk in, whatever it's, you know, whether it's movement, whether it's fitness, whether it's biomechanics, whether it's uh neurobiology, we have it, we have it all. We kind of cross uh we cross a lot of different areas of movement in Pilates, and I think that uh they're very talented in what they're speaking of. And I believe as somebody who loves to continue my education, when you stop learning, stop teaching. And so that also was part of my impetus in opening up my platform to other people because I am so interested in continuing my education.

SPEAKER_01:

Hmm, that's a really interesting point on it. Okay, I like that. Now, if someone else is thinking, I wonder if I should do this as well, what's any of the like pros and cons with this approach? Do you is this something you think, oh, all course creators should be doing it? Or is it like, uh, it kind of depends on a few things, you know?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I think it depends on a lot of things, quite frankly. You'd need to have the network to be able to pull something like this off if you wanted to have, you know, regular experts in the field or that field. Uh, I think also, too, one of the cons is that because I got so busy so quickly, I had to stop sharing my own content. And so people are still asking for my content. I do a lot of content in the uh active aging market, meaning strategies on how to train an older adult or training for a longevity. And so the original impetus of the platform was to put up several modules of my courses, and only one has been put up there in the last four years. So that's a uh because I haven't had the time to dedicate to actually producing my own content. So if you're really passionate about your own content, I would suggest produce your own content first. Uh, but the the pros for me have been continuing to build relationships with really incredible humans in the industry. And I have a deep spirit of service. So being able to help people and use a skill set that is from my past in marketing that can really bode well with my present feels like I'm kind of like doing uh the work that I was destined to do when I was selling cheeseburgers. Because yes, my clients in the past were the fast food industry. So I used to work for big, huge brands in my 20s, and I was managing$26 million budgets and doing, you know, Pokemon toys and and uh and shot glasses and and and all the relationship marketing strategies for huge brands that I won't mention here. Um and so now I get to do similar but more intentional things for an industry that I love and I'm very passionate about. Nice.

SPEAKER_01:

I like that. One of the one of the things I've been chatting with somebody about recently, there's a friend of mine, Jack, and he teaches banjo, and uh he sometimes listens to the podcast as well. So Jack, if you're listening, hey. Um and in the banjo space, there are a lot of people who are amazing, amazing banjo players, but they haven't kind of got the hang themselves of like making online courses, building an audience, YouTube, all this kind of stuff. And he's made friends with some of these people because he's reached out to them, you know, he's seen some of the, you know, they've put maybe a couple of YouTube videos up, but they haven't worked at it to build an audience there. And he's he's then been stunned because they've replied and they're talking to him, you know, and it's just like this is cool. You know, this person much better than me at Banjo, but but they don't they haven't done this thing. I'm like, man, you need to do something with those guys. You need to like make a make a deal, do a master class for your audience, do a uh a course together and split the revenue or something, you know. And I'm like, I don't know exactly what you should be doing, because there's a lot of options, but you should be doing something to take advantage of the fact that in your particular Industry, these people who are phenomenal are making like 30 bucks an hour teaching one-on-one lessons. And you could make you could pay them more money and get more out of it yourself. And it's kind of like I don't know how many industries there are that kind of a mixture of things where someone's like the expert in something, but they're making almost no money from doing it. You know, like if you're teaching English, as you're if you're selling courses about teaching English, are there sele are there like kind of celebrity English teachers who aren't making money from like I don't know if that kind of thing exists, but in music?

SPEAKER_00:

No, it resonates with me. I think that also, too, one of the misconceptions in the course creation industry is that just because somebody else is better than you andor quote better than you, or maybe has been doing it longer, that you should not put your own content out there, right? So I think that there, you know, if I sat there and thought, well, oh my God, like there are so many people at the International Council on Active Aging conference that just know so much more than I do, or they niche out in a different um area of this content, or I don't know as much on the brain than they do, but they uh then I would have completely my imposter would have gotten the best of me and I never would have gotten started. So my best um recommendation for those who are considering putting their content out there is to just get started. Like you do not need to be the Albert Einstein of your modality or your topic. Like just get started. And that's the other thing, too, in the world of online creation is that I have found that even though I film for platforms that do have the three cameras that fly in and they switch cameras and they zoom in and they want all these angles on my bodies for the end user to see it. Really, at the end of the day, people that are buying your educational or what I call edutainable content, they want you. And so the more that you can be you and share you and what you can provide, the better. So if there is simple simple inspiration and simple advice that I can give to any content creator or aspiring content creator out there, is tell your impostor whatever their name is. And if you have not named your imposter, please name your imposter. My name of my imposter is Cassandra Sugar. So when Cassandra Sugar is talking to me like you're not good enough, you don't know enough on enough on that topic, blah, blah, blah, I tell her to be quiet and shut the F up and I just get started. So to anyone out there that is fearing uh that they don't know enough, that they're not good enough, I'm gonna tell you right now that you are and that you need to just get started.

SPEAKER_01:

Nice. So one of the things you told me before the before we got on on to talk today was that you're doing three promotions a month. What does a typical promotion look like for you? Like how many emails is there? Is it just selling one course? What is uh what is that kind of stuff?

SPEAKER_00:

It's a good question. So it our business strategy is such that we do monthly, we run monthly events. Um, those monthly events I have called clusterminds. And so they're short format, 90-minute uh mini workshops because even during the pandemic, when people were like, oh my God, I have nothing to do. I'm gonna sit online for 16 hours and do this course. I knew that I did not want to produce content that A was that long, and B, uh, I was exhausted sitting in front of a screen that long. And I quite frankly did not remember uh much of what I was learning. So my impetus with level up movement, and I'll circle this back to why we run our promos the way that we do, was to do short format content, kind of like this is me aging myself, but kind of like the cliff notes, at least that's what we have in the US, of um of books, right? So you could go to this 90-minute course, two-hour course, you could get your continuing education credits and add those to your uh your bank for what you need to renew every two years, or if you don't need to renew credits, you just get it good information. And people are gonna give you probably their top tips on a specific topic, or I'm gonna give you my top tips on a specific topic so that when you go back and teach the next day or the next week, or you go into your studio and you see the client that has um spinal stenosis or osteoporosis, that you have some ideas and some things that you can actually use as action items versus such super, super deep dive content. Now, I lead people to the water of the deep dive content on people's other platforms if they want to go deeper. Um, so what we do is monthly live events that are between 90 minute and two hours long that are called clusterminds. I started the um the what I call the double dip plan in the pandemic, which is people wanted to be live. So we run them live. But if you can't be there, we send you out the recording, we send you all the things afterwards, and it stays on the platform indefinitely for people to access. So once they've purchased it, they have access to it indefinitely. Um and in those monthly clusterminds, we usually do a three to four email campaign, which is our heavy hitter um promotion. I also support it on the level up movement Instagram. I sometimes support it on EricaQuest. EricaQuest is the big Instagram. My Instagram has about 30,000 followers. So sometimes I'll promote it over there as well if need be. But I'm trying to lean more towards keeping it brand specific on level up movement these days. Um, and between email campaigns, a little bit of Instagram, we put up some shorts on YouTube, but we really don't have a YouTube following or channel. And uh a little bit of Facebook, but no ad promotion, nothing. Uh, that's how we do our clusterminds, and it's all organic.

SPEAKER_01:

Nice.

SPEAKER_00:

And we've grown our attendance. I can give you some numbers on that. Like for me, I used to have I don't know, we started with like maybe 20 or 30 registrants or attendees that had interest. And uh in October, we just ran our biggest Clastermind, which hit nearly 200 ticket sales for live attendance and then kept selling thereafter, which is great. So in four years, we've grown our students and grown our ticket sales exponentially.

SPEAKER_01:

And what was that? How much was the cost of the Cluster Mind?

SPEAKER_00:

Or the Claster Mind sits at about$55 for about 90 minutes to two hours of someone's time.

SPEAKER_01:

And then is there like an upsell at the end of that into getting the whole the main thing?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so there's not a main thing, but there's always upsells. And um, now that we have so much content, I think that we have published over 60 courses on our website and some some repeat course providers because their topics are exponential and they have so much to talk on. What we do inside um the live courses as well as the other courses now is we will upsell uh complementary content, their other content, and uh and usually we discount it a little bit if somebody hasn't seen it or we're bringing something back from a few years past, uh, or if we want to bundle something together. So now that we have a nice library, we'll we're able to create that spider web.

SPEAKER_01:

That's right. And what's the vision for you for the next year? So you've got the plan already for 2026. Like, are you trying to grow the revenue of the business? Have you got other goals for it?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I mean, of course. Scaling is a big um thought bubble in my head. And we do do other things outside of these monthly live events. We do have a longer format. Those are usually more exclusive, invite-only products that we sell. Uh, we sell those through a waiting list. I also have a a large group of students that comes from a franchise uh in my industry called Club Pilates. And so I sell specific to that niche of a customer, uh, which is not not for public sales. So there are other scaled things that I've done that have been sort of under wraps. But for me for 2026 and 2027 is to keep growing organically and not fatigue my current purchasing power, which is I think I think a big thing, right? I don't want to create purchasing power fatigue in my current network, but also offer other goods, services, and products that they might be interested outside of the monthly clusterminds. Uh, and going back to what we talked about and the relationship standpoint in the very, very beginning is that I take what my students and what our students say very seriously. So if a student comes to me and wants content around, Erica, how do I coach my clients to not use their hip flexors so much in these exercises? I need help. I will save that topic. I will wait for an expert in the field or find an expert in the field to speak on that. And then I will create or help create content around that topic. And so I think that scaling for me really is still leaning into my current audience, my current students, and helping them uh grow more, get better, and scale in a way that is meaningful. Because in my industry and probably in many industries out there, I believe that there is not a product market fit. That is a very kind of like generized term in any industry as far as product market fit. I believe that I am in the industry of product meaning fit. So the more meaningful I can be in my marketing and in how I build relationships, the more level up movement will have high quality touch points and scale as organically as I want it to.

SPEAKER_01:

Got it. And you said that you're looking at creating an automated drip campaign for new purchases. Is that something that you uh have got anything in place at the moment?

SPEAKER_00:

No, that's why I said I need to listen to your other podcast. So if all of you on that are listening to this podcast need help, then we need to go and search uh John's other podcasts in this world because I don't have anything automated created. It's something that I need to do.

SPEAKER_01:

Let me see what I've got. I'm almost sure that I will have recorded the podcast episode at some point about welcome sequences. There's a guy who does copywriting for us sometimes called Kyle Jordan. Episode 70. He came on the podcast to talk about this, and he uh did episode how to convert prospects into buyers using email onboarding.

SPEAKER_00:

There we go.

SPEAKER_01:

That's the one there. Now, I'm almost sure that got some resources on that, but I don't think we've got it available as a as a download. So if you want to get details about for anyone listening, if you want details of uh the structure for that that onboarding sequence, I think we've got a PDF of it somewhere that I can just email to you. So just drop me an email, John at datadrivenmarketing.co. And then Erica, what I'll do is I'll connect you with Josip. He's our head of funnel strategy.

SPEAKER_00:

Perfect.

SPEAKER_01:

He is like all over this. This is what he's doing, you know, he's working with clients all the time, kind of setting this up. So he'll be able to kind of give you some tips, point you to the right resources, specifically around that onboarding sequence.

SPEAKER_00:

That would be wonderful. CRM is my one of my passions, but I'm definitely not an expert in it because of the fact that back in the day when I was working for some of the brands I was uh managing budgets for, you know, we were still faxing and we were still sending hard direct mail uh coupons and upsells.

SPEAKER_01:

So I used to get I used to uh work in an organization in London called Sport England. So our job was uh like the government organization for sport. And so I was the campaigns manager there. And we hired a whole load of different um marketing agencies, you know, ad agency, design, all that kind of stuff. And there was a network of them in London, I think design agencies in particular, who they had drinks, one of them, one of the organizations, one of the agencies, would organise drinks for everyone to go to on like the second Thursday of the month, something like that. And they would have everyone's fax number and they would send a fax round telling you where it was the drinks were gonna be on the day of it. It was like it was right at the end. I think I caught the very end of that, and then it and then it just moved over to email. But they were like, I'm holding on to it. They're like, let's stick with doing it by fax, because this is so old school, you know?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I'm I'm okay at it, but I'm not great at it, and I know that I could probably still pull together, and Kyle, if you're listening, a meaningful drip campaign or something automated that would still be from my voice, from my tonality of the brand, uh, where it's worthy of me considering. But up until this point, I have not abstained from it just because I don't want to. It's just simply because I haven't been able to dedicate the time to it.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I know there's like a whole I I can't remember off the top of my head. I'm trying to see if I can find um the structure somewhere in our files. But there's like a very specific, like ideal onboarding sequence structure. So it's these six emails, I think it is, and they're like, they each go out with a different, a different goal in mind, and it ends up with the sale, but it's all about like getting people to buy into your philosophy to start with, you know, and like how you see the world and why this approach is the right one before segueing into um into helping them. But I can't find that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, the why also is very important, you know, for your listeners who are just getting started, is like I always go back and think about my value statement every single year uh for the brand and for my mission just in general in the industry, because that truly helps you keep your blinders on because there's so much noise all over the place, right? It's like, should I have a YouTube channel? Should I try and grow my Instagram? Is email marketing gonna be it? You know, you're constantly comparing yourself to other people. And I always say comparison is the thief of joy, which is a famous monk's quote. And so to really hone in on your value statement and why you're niched in the industry that you're in helps exponentially because I believe that that will then inspire you along the journey for everything that you put out there, whether it is a YouTube channel, whether it is an email drip campaign. Um and so for me, everything has to come from the heart and has to be meaningful. And I will automate as long as it has a meaningful tone to it.

SPEAKER_01:

Nice. Okay, this has been awesome. Absolutely love what you're doing. My pleasure.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01:

Great passion for the sport and fitness space. That's what I did for many, many years, like 15 years, I think. I was working in that kind of uh that space before I started this business.

SPEAKER_00:

So we're having a concentric moment together, which is great.

SPEAKER_01:

If someone wants to go check you out and see what you're up to, where should they go? Like what's the website or what's the Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_00:

Come find me. You can find me all over the web. Uh the website is levelupmvmt.com. The Instagram is I think level.up.mvmt, or you can find EricaQuest at my name on Instagram as well. Uh again, we're niche primarily to the Pilates industry, but we do span into other general fitness categories, wellness categories. Again, we did a we have a lot on brain health, on how to really train the body functionally from a uh a neurobiological standpoint. So yeah, I hope to see some of your listeners and users if they're interested, and also to continue to support you and what you're doing, John.

SPEAKER_01:

Wonderful. Erica, thanks so much again. And dear listener, thank you for coming on. And the episode number was 70, 70 for that one with Kyle Jordan. Fabulous.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you for having me.