Kim Garst, an international best-selling author and a Forbes Top 10 Social Media Power Influencer, has been leading the way in marketing strategy for aspiring entrepreneurs.
Kim boasts more than three decades of experience as an entrepreneur, best-selling author, marketing strategist, and sought-after keynote speaker.
Throughout her journey, Kim encountered various challenges and market shifts, prompting her to explore different business models — from running a done-for-you agency to creating tons of low-ticket offers and freebies to try to attract customers.
The real shift for her business happened when she discovered a hybrid model and started organizing her content with AccessAlly, enabling her to achieve consistent $20K+ monthly revenues through strategic shifts in her approach.
Want to watch our interview with Kim on how to leverage courses to reach $20k months? Click here!
Making a business shift requires the right tools
In the early stages of her online journey, Kim was motivated by the desire to work from home and balance her professional life with motherhood. She embarked on building multiple online businesses and achieved both six and seven-figure success.
Despite her accomplishments, maintaining steady and substantial revenues proved to be a challenge. The dynamic nature of the online space, coupled with shifts in customer preferences, called for a new approach to achieving consistent financial growth.
“The fascinating part about the internet is the changes,” she says. “What used to work doesn’t work as well anymore… my business models have shifted over the years because that’s no longer working.”
Her previous approach primarily involved selling low-priced products and standalone courses. While she achieved some success, this strategy fell short of generating the consistently high revenue months she craved.
“[At the] beginning of every year we evaluate the business for what’s working and what isn’t,” Kim says, “and this past year we looked at all the video views from our courses — I mean I’m creating a course a month and nobody’s watching this content! I’m killing myself to create all this stuff and then nobody’s going through it. I’m like whoa. This model is broke.”
Recognizing that delivering genuine value and transformation to customers required a more robust approach, Kim set out to reevaluate her business model and pricing strategies — and that would require a new way of organizing and providing access to her content.
Full content control — at every level
Rather than freaking out, Kim embraced a huge shift in her business, transitioning to what she coined the “hybrid model.” This approach centered around a comprehensive package combining what she calls the three C’s: curriculum, coaching, and community engagement.
“What I’m seeing right now is a shift,” she explains. “[It’s time to] stop trying to sell seven-dollar things… The shift today is creating a hybrid model: curriculum, coaching, and community, and then sell it for a ticket price that is worthy of your knowledge.”
She harnessed the capabilities of AccessAlly to create a well-structured and interactive learning environment, ensuring a seamless and engaging experience for her audience. With its intuitive interface and backend setup, Kim could effectively organize and deliver digital products and membership content.
Kim initially sought AccessAlly as a solution to a specific problem: She needed to control access to her membership content based on the timing of enrollment. AccessAlly could easily handle this where other Learning Management Systems (LMS) couldn’t.
“The reason that we decided to check out AccessAlly and haven’t looked back is something that was kind of very specific,” Kim explained.
“Our problem at the time was that we had a membership, and people would come in at different times and we couldn’t control when they got access to it based on the date. And then, like I said, we have not looked back. It has been such a smart decision on our part. We didn’t even really realize some of the benefits we were gonna get when we initially moved.”
The customization features of AccessAlly allowed her to create unique and personalized learning paths for her customers, enhancing the sense of community and interaction within her membership programs.
Creating an immersive and personalized learning environment for her students was a top priority for Kim. She needed a plugin that was adaptable to her aesthetic vision and quality benchmarks.
Kim praises AccessAlly’s customization features: “Being able to custom create the look of the experience that my students have is very powerful. And you can’t necessarily do that to the degree that we have done using AccessAlly” with any other system.
As a visual thinker, Kim sought a LMS plugin that could cater to her creative side without confining her to a predetermined structure. AccessAlly fulfilled this need as well.
Kim explains, “I’m just a visual person, so I’ve really appreciated that I have so much functionality or I can use so much creativity. Versus being forced into a box on some of the other platforms. So those are kind of my big reasons for why I love AccessAlly.”
In addition, one of Kim’s fundamental criteria in selecting a learning management system was having full control over her content.
She found this control in AccessAlly. “It gives me complete control of my content,” she says. “I don’t have to worry about it being somewhere else. So like, you know, there’s this old saying, never build your house on somebody else’s land. And I feel like that’s kind of what we’re doing.”
With AccessAlly, Kim can ensure that her content is her own, which aligns with her core values of ownership and empowerment for entrepreneurs.
Kim made the strategic decision to focus on higher-ticket offerings, positioning herself as a solution provider rather than merely a course creator.
Increasing enrollments and engagement
AccessAlly’s features have not only resolved Kim’s initial problem with granting access to her courses but also opened doors to new possibilities. With complete control over her content, customization capabilities, creative freedom, and content access management, Kim has seen a surge in student satisfaction and engagement.
Furthermore, AccessAlly’s seamless user experience has contributed to an increase in enrollments and has fortified Kim’s position as a leading figure in entrepreneurial education.
Kim Garst’s journey with AccessAlly shows exactly how the alignment of a platform’s capabilities with a visionary’s needs can produce phenomenal results.
By providing the tools necessary for content control, customization, creativity, and precise access management, AccessAlly has proven to be an invaluable asset in Kim’s mission to empower entrepreneurs. Her success serves as an inspiration for educators and entrepreneurs alike.
Want to see how AccessAlly could work for you? Take our free, on-demand demo so you can see AccessAlly in action!
