Kajabi's 10bn Milestone + Dominique Broadway’s Secrets to Building a 7-Figure Creator Business

0:00Ian Shepherd:Behind the scenes of the creator economy, there's a platform quietly powering some of the biggest creators, Kajabi. With more than 10 billion paid out to creators, it's a force you can't ignore. On the business of creators, I dive into the surprising data that shows just how creators are scaling on the platform. You only need to have around 10 ,000, 1 to 10 ,000 followers, 4 ,000 people on your email list and 300 people paying you to have a six-figure business because you're exchanging value. Lee Fernando, VP of Marketing at Kajabi, explains what it takes to be successful. They don't think of themselves necessarily first as creators.

0:35They're in the mindset that they're a CEO and an entrepreneur.

0:38Ian Shepherd:We're also joined by Dominique Broadway, one of the leading creators on Kajabi. We did about 66 sales in about 12 minutes. And it was about$1 ,000 a pop. So it was about$66 ,000 was our very first launch. After that, we went on to, you know, continue to our biggest month. I think we did about$1.2 million in a month. Dominique lays out some invaluable tips for creators. If I was brand new starting from scratch, I would definitely lead with communities. From product to pricing, we cover it all. If you're serious about growing as a creator, this is one episode you can't afford to skip.

1:19Ian Shepherd:So Ali, Kajabi creators have collectively earned$10 billion. What makes Kajabi so successful? Yeah, we are so excited that we just in the last week announced that Kajabi creators have surpassed the 10 billion in creator revenue mark on the platform. And it's been an awesome celebration. I will say that, you know, to your question around like, how have creators had so much success on the platform? I really think that we saw this shift, especially during the pandemic and during the COVID years of people turning online and thinking about how can I turn my knowledge, experience and expertise into a product that I can sell to my audience.

1:59And so over the past five years, but really Kajabi's been around for almost 15 now, we've really seen creators embrace this sort of ownership model, as we call it. And they are shifting to wanting to own their audiences, both on social platforms and on platforms like Kajabi, and figuring out how to monetize that with digital products. And when we say digital products, we mean things like courses, membership sites, communities, podcasts, newsletters, coaching, really any way you can package up and sell your knowledge online, you can do that on Kajabi. And so I think what has been really interesting and we've noticed this kind of trend over the last couple of years and why I think we've seen creators reach the 10 billion mark is not only are they getting smarter about digital products as a whole, but they're also thinking about new revenue streams like communities specifically.

2:51We've seen a huge shift in the market from just online courses to thinking about things like subscription services and how creators can continuously earn through valuable products like communities and memberships. And so I do think that we're going to be seeing more and more of that as the years go by, especially as AI enters the chat, if you will. We're going to see creators really leaning into community and thinking about how they can create valuable experiences for their audiences and continue to exchange value through that medium.

3:23Ian Shepherd:That's great. Well, I'm really excited to get into some of the detail of that. Now, Dominique, you've built a powerful business teaching finance on Kajabi. What first made you choose Kajabi? So originally what made me choose Kajabi, I had a few friends that were on Kajabi. And then as I was starting to build out my course, I had launched it on another platform. And as we were building out the course, we realized that the functionalities that we needed, which was making the course easy to go through, having quizzes, just easy to follow, other platforms didn't have and Kajabi had that. So that was really the initial reason outside of the affordable cost, which was great.

4:00So like those two things combined is what made us pick Kajabi and leave the previous course platform that we were on.

4:06Ian Shepherd:That's great. I'm really keen to learn more about your business. Can you share what sort of business model do you have on the platform? Is it courses or memberships or coaching? Yeah. So our business model is primarily membership and courses. So we don't really do as much like one on one coaching. In our coaching that we do, we consider it more groups. So we don't necessarily, like I said, do the one-on-one. It's more in the groups and the memberships in the community. So all of our online courses and digital products are hosted on Kajabi. And so when we first started, it was really just selling kind of like the one-off courses and not necessarily as focused on the membership.

4:43It was more of a cohort model versus now we're kind of leaning more, just like as Allie just said, we're leaning more towards that ongoing membership and community model.

4:52Ian Shepherd:Excellent. Cool. Well, Ali, I've seen some really fascinating data from Kajabi recently, so I'd love to get your thoughts on this. Apparently, the average six-figure Kajabi creator has between 1 ,000 to 10 ,000 followers, email lists of 4 ,000 people, and just 309 paying customers for their digital products. How should the listeners think about the difference between a Kajabi creator and a more traditional creator? Yeah, totally. Aren't those numbers just mind blowing. I think I hear it all the time from creators who have never launched a digital product that they think, oh my goodness, I need to have hundreds of thousands of followers or millions of followers to make a substantial living on social media.

5:33And while that might be true for things like brand deals, AdSense and affiliates, it's certainly not the case for digital products. And so when I think about how Kajabi creators and Kajabi entrepreneurs are different than a traditional creator, it's that they don't rely on those monetization mechanisms. And I mentioned this phrase earlier, but they really are in the business of ownership. And so we kind of think of this idea of building your audience on social and building your business on a platform like Kajabi. And what that means is social media, just like any other company in the world, is a top of funnel audience generator for creators to build relationships, camaraderie, and build value with their target audience.

6:18And then the way that our creators have been able to make six figures and beyond is by moving those people from social, just like passive social media followers into engaged social media followers into an email list that they own. And then they can sell a digital product of any size or value to that engaged email list. And so I really think that the like key shift for creators from the like traditional brand deal affiliate AdSense model is a model of ownership and also thinking of themselves as true business owners, CEOs and entrepreneurs, whereas the traditional models of monetization are all about eyeballs and getting as many eyeballs as you possibly can.

6:59Hence why people think they need millions of followers to make revenue. This model is more about value. And so it kind of shows in the data that you only need to have around 10 ,000 1 to 10 ,000 followers, 4 ,000 people on your email list and 300 people paying you to have a six figure business because you're exchanging value.

7:18Ian Shepherd:Makes absolute sense. And another piece of data I saw were that the average six figure earners, they have five revenue streams and bundles earn four and a half times more than single offer creators. So why is bundling so effective? Yeah, I mean, even take someone like Dominique, like when you think about as a creator, like you're trying to find product market fit, right? And so you launch a first product. And let's say it's a course, and you launch it to your most engaged followers who are on your email list. And it probably goes extremely well. And then you think about how do I continue to support those and future audience members in a journey.

7:54And so we think of it as what we call like a customer value ladder. And so you might have, you know, started out with a course, but then how do you take those people who took your course and either sell them another course that's solving a new problem, or maybe it's those members who have taken a course are dying to connect with other members who have also taken the course. And so maybe you think about launching a community, or maybe you have a community and a course and your audience really wants to hear more from you on a regular basis in a different format, like a written format. And so launching a newsletter might be the best next step.

8:28And so it's really about like I think the creators who see the most success it's maybe not necessarily just because they have five revenue streams or they have bundles of products but it's because they're listening to their audience and what their audience wants and they're creating new opportunities new products new services to meet their audience where they are and so what that means is they end up with you know four or five digital products but really it's because they're answering the call that their community is putting out.

8:56Ian Shepherd:Got it. Got it. And Dominique, when you're launching a new product, how do you think about the pricing of that? Yeah. So there's a couple of things that go into play. You want to think about like the value that you're providing, right? And I think that's, you know, the biggest piece is like, hey, we're providing this amount of value. And if people actually come in and do the things that we're telling them to do within the course, how much could that impact their lives, right? Sometimes we may do a simple calculation saying, hey, if people come in, let's say with our investing courses, and they're starting to invest even$1 ,000 a month, which ends up being$12 ,000 a year into their investment account, and they're seeing X, you know, 20 % return, these people could, you know, have my math is gonna be wrong, but like, you know, they make 15$20 ,000 extra in a year, if not more, when they learn to trade, we have students who come in and are making that in a month, you know,$10 ,000 in a month.

9:50So if we're pricing our course, we think about, well, based on the value that we're bringing and how much they could actually even make and not just them, but their children and how all that, you know, kind of trickles down once they learn these strategies, they were saying, well, what would be a good price for that, right? So even if it's, hey, we're charging, you know, 10 % or 20 % of what they could even make, a lot of times we're kind of breaking it down that way. So when we're creating that value ladder, like saying, hey, you're going to get this, this, this, this, but it also can equate to you bring in X amount of dollars every month.

10:21This could equate to your children becoming a millionaire by the age of 21. Then if we're throwing out a price like a thousand bucks a year or$5 ,000 a year, that's nothing, right? So that's how a lot of times we are calculating and determining the best price for our products.

10:35Ian Shepherd:Okay, that makes absolute sense. And do you remember your first customer? It must have been a good feeling. Yeah. So my first customer, but I'll say on the Kajabi platform, well, we had originally had, like I said, launched our program that we originally put on Kajabi on another platform. But we were literally on this other platform for like two weeks before we moved to Kajabi. So we literally moved all of them over. We're like, this isn't gonna work. We did about 66 sales in about 12 minutes. And it was about$1 ,000 a pop. So it was about$66 ,000 was our very first launch. After that, we went on to continue to our biggest month I think we did about 1.2 million in a month.

11:14But yes, the first customer, I don't know, because they kind of all rushed in at the same time. But that first cohort, we call them cohort one. Every time, even sometimes on social, they're like, hey, it's cohort one checking in. It's always really cool just to see those people. And outside of that, because it's been, I guess, maybe five years now, Allie, I believe, since I've been on Kajabi, the stories and testimonials that we're hearing. Cause it's not like, oh, I bought your course a week ago. Some people are like, I bought your course five years ago and I was able to put my kid through college.

11:47And I met, so I was in the hair salon recently. She's like, this girl, she's like, oh my gosh, I didn't want to say anything, but I bought your course and went through everything. And I bought my first house a year and a half later. So we're hearing like real, real testimonies of like the work and seeing by-product of the courses, you know that we're putting out so that's that's really cool to see that's lovely to hear and what

12:10Ian Shepherd:do you think's been like the most important feature that scaled your community on Kajabi say I think just having the courses laid out nicely honestly I think that Kajabi allows you to really truly have your courses laid out in a way where it's kind of sticky you want to come back you want to see yourself making that progress also having being able to have what I like to call And I feel like they don't necessarily taught this feature enough, but kind of having like that customer client CMS all there, right? So I can go in, I can see, you know, Allie, if she bought a course, what she bought, how much she's completed, how many of my courses she's purchased, the lifetime value of her, how much we've made from this one person over time.

12:51And it's been really cool as we're looking right now, we are restructuring the business. We can literally go back and see from the very first live free webinar or freebie that they took. We can see all the tags, right, from all the years. And we can see like, wow, this person has opted into, you know, 15 of our free webinars and has not bought. Or maybe we need to figure out what type of offer can we make for this group who's taken all these webinars and have not. So I've really enjoyed that a lot within the platform. But outside of that, I think really just having all of the tools in one place.

13:23I know they have the community feature now, which we're actually excited to start moving our students from an outside kind of community place that we had into the Kajabi's community. So being able to have everything in one place is going to be even more dynamic for sure.

13:38Ian Shepherd:That's super interesting. And Ali, I want to jump back to another data point. So apparently nearly 1 ,800 Kajabi creators have hit millionaire status. what do you think separates the ones that do six figures to seven figures and i agree what an amazing stat that is yeah yeah and then i think we also uh mentioned that over 70 creators have earned more than 10 million dollars and a few have even gone over 100 million which is just mind-blowing huge it's my next goal the 100 million that's what i love the 51st and there you go there There you go. I honestly like it kind of piggybacks off of what Dominique was just saying, which is I think the creators who have who find the most success on Kajabi are, and I've said this already, but think of themselves as business owners.

14:26They don't think of themselves necessarily first as creators. They're in the mindset that they're a CEO and an entrepreneur. And what I think that means is they are very data driven. in. They are data oriented, they are thinking about the offers that they're making to their customers, the funnels that they're building, the email sequences that they send out. It's a lot of the things that we try as a brand to educate creators on because I think there is a gap in the market right now where creators are so focused on the content that they don't even know that this side of the business exists. And no one is bridging that gap for them.

15:02No one is telling them like, hey, actually, like, yes, you can be super great at the creator side of this and the content side. But there's also this whole other world that will help you generate cash flow to be able to go back and invest in the creative side. Because, you know, we know a lot of people want to just do the content, but they need capital to be able to do that. And so I do think that the people who go from six figures to seven figures and beyond on Kajabi are the ones who are thinking about the data, the analytics, how they're kind of taking their customers on a journey. And maybe it's not the creator themselves thinking that but they know I need to think be thinking about this so I'm going to hire someone who can think about this um that's also something that I've I've seen historically Dominique you don't know this but I quote you all the time um because I mean I get the tags all the time because uh I always say like you were talking at we were at South by Southwest I think a couple of years ago and you were on a panel for us and you said this thing that just It's literally so profound.

15:58I seriously quote it all the time, which is you said, I am not a creator. I am a salesperson and I have a product that I know will change your life to all the amazing stories you've just talked about. You said, I have a product that I know will change your life. And so I'm going to do everything I can to show you the value of that product and get you to purchase it because I know it's going to have an impact on your life. And I think if more creators thought like that, like I have value to give to the world and I want to change someone's life through this value. Therefore, I'm going to learn how to sell you this product.

16:30They would be so much stronger business owners and they would start to like really wrap their heads around this whole entrepreneur side of things. And so, yeah, I love that quote. You're like, I'm a salesperson. And yes, I create, but I'm also a salesperson. Yeah.

16:44Ian Shepherd:I think I was actually at that panel as well at South by Southwest. I do remember it too. But they're phenomenal stats, Ali. And what are the fastest growing categories on the platform? Yeah. So we have our big three, which are health and wellness, business finance and personal finance. So Dominique falls right within that category. And then personal development as well, which are, you know, the big three big buckets. I think it's like each one has done 1.3 to 1.9, maybe billion in each of those categories. But what's more interesting to me is the long tail of niches that we have is crazy. Like if you can think it, there is a digital product for it.

17:21We have six-figure creator teaching mushroom foraging. We have a seven-figure creator who she's called the Doodle Lady and her business is called the Doodle Institute. And she teaches people how to creative note take. We have Pink Posey, which is a paper flower making course where you can learn how to make paper flowers. Just like such fascinating. The other day we had a dinner and there was a guy who's made so much money on Kajabi and he teaches people how to make uranium investments. Just like very niche, very interesting. And yeah, so I really love that. Like it doesn't matter how big your industry is or how small and verticalized it is.

18:01There's a path for monetization. Yeah.

18:05Ian Shepherd:And Dominique, I'm curious, if you were starting today, what would you do differently? Good question. So if I was starting today, I would probably, I think I would do a lot of things the same. Honestly, I think the one thing I would do completely differently was think about my business from a community aspect in the beginning. That's the one thing I would change. And because I think originally it was like we're providing value, we're selling courses and not even thinking about the community aspect. And I feel like over time, the community just started to grow naturally from what originally for us was cohorts.

18:42So if I was brand new starting today, we're actually restructuring. But if I was brand new starting from scratch, I would definitely lead with communities. And the interesting part is when I very first started my business, like 11 years ago, like originally started it, my business, I would host in-person personal finance or financial happy hours because I'm like, I have to find my audience where I am. And I'm at happy hour Monday through Friday and I'm at brunch on the weekend with my friends. So I need to find people where they are. And I think the interesting thing now is a lot of businesses are going back to that.

19:15So that's another thing that if I was starting now, I would be doing that again, getting people out from behind their computer and in person to create that that in-person engagement and community. So those are probably two things that I would do like kind of the same, but the same, but differently as well if I was starting from scratch.

19:32Ian Shepherd:Amazing. Very wise words there for emerging creators. And what's next for you? Ooh, what's next? So we are kind of revamping our entire finances demystified brand. We're expanding. We just went from not just demystifying finances. We actually just launched our new AI demystified product. And I'm starting to partner with a lot of other experts, which I'm really excited about because I don't want to be the main expert behind our business. So bringing in other experts that can come and help us create dynamic content and reach new audiences and new topics. In addition to that, with our talking about mentioning bundling earlier and listening to audiences, we also launched a AI driven, I guess you call it signal or hint platform.

20:17And so it gives people buy and sell signals to tell them when to buy and sell their investments. And it's been a great additional just kind of piece that we tack on in addition to like, okay, we have the courses, we have the education, but we have the tech piece as well. So those are a couple of the things that we have coming down the pipeline amongst a few others. But yeah, those are a few.

20:38Ian Shepherd:Amazing. Ali, it's 2025. I can't ask you, not ask you about AI. What could you be doing around AI? Yeah, so our philosophy around AI is quite simple in the sense that like, we believe that AI should be the undertone for how the platform supports creators. And what we mean by that is we are in the business of just launching a shiny new feature and slapping AI on it and marketing it as that. We would actually rather create a platform that is fully integrated across the board, utilizing AI technology. And so to the creator, it's like I press one button and magic happens in the back end of my business so that I can free myself up to go think about the strategy, the content, all the things that sit on top of the platform.