I started my career as a school district social worker and eventually became an administrator for a large school district in California. But when my family decided to move to the Netherlands, I knew it was time for a change. Transforming schools by reducing problem behavior and increasing student and teacher wellbeing had been incredibly rewarding, but it was also intense, and I felt I needed a break before deciding on my next steps.

Soon after moving, I started getting requests to train other school districts to do what we had done in my district. With my experience, I decided to try education consulting with the goal of making enough to cover our kids’ international private school and a few trips home to visit my mom.

My business took off, but I was traveling internationally five times a year and doing webinars on California time, which was 3 am my time. I wasn’t sleeping, and it was really taking a toll on my mental and physical health.

One day, my husband said, “Laura, you can’t keep working these late nights. This is killing you. Let’s look at the online course world.” 

I was nervous because, over the last 5 years, I had already created a few courses, but they were just sitting on my website. I hadn’t learned the art of marketing and selling them.

I had been listening to Amy’s podcast for several months, so the next time she launched Digital Course Academy, we enrolled and went through the course together. My husband did all of the back-end tech stuff, and I created all the content. I made a commitment to him and my mother that if this course did well, I would no longer do those 3 am webinars.

Well, it totally worked. I had tried for 5 years to do the online course business on my own, but after implementing what we learned in Digital Course Academy, we made $60K in our first launch.

DCA helped me discover who my ideal client really was (I thought it was teachers, but it turned out to be principals). It taught me how to confidently sell in a webinar, which I had never done before. Amy truly over-delivers on every single thing she does.

I stopped taking one-on-one clients and directed them to my course. The next time I launched, we made $90K.

I’m no longer losing sleep (literally) over my business these days. I wake up without an alarm, savor slow mornings, and both my husband and I have been able to leave our day jobs. Best of all, I can now reach people all over the world — far more than I ever could in person.