Hate Marketing? Wish There Was a Better Way?
Give me 8 minutes and watch this video.
This Course is Now Closed.
Standing Room Only is no longer available. Please connect with me over at www.davidduchemin.com.
You didn't follow your heart into this to "sell your art" or "market yourself." You want to make what you make and to put it out into the world. You believed your art (whether you're a photographer, painter, musician, writer, or otherwise) would speak for itself. The problem is, everyone else's art is speaking for itself and it's getting really noisy. The pressure has never been greater to turn up the volume, jump onto every social media bandwagon before others do, and get your work out into the world in hopes that someone—anyone!—is listening. I think we can do better: not louder, but deeper.
I'm David duChemin. I'm a writer, humanitarian photographer, podcaster, speaker, and before all that, I made my living as a professional comedian for a dozen years. I've been learning to gather audiences around my creative work for 30 years. I don't think I need to "sell" my audiences on anything. Rather, I get to delight them. Connect with them. And invite them to experience more of what I make for them.
Standing Room Only is an online course designed to teach you to gather an audience around your work and invite them to experience it more deeply. To see it, listen to it, learn from it, and yes, to buy it. I created this course to give you hope and the tools and strategies to make a living as beautifully as you make your art.
This is not a course for the curious or those looking for the magic bullet. Your audience deserves better than that, and building an audience of real people and serving them without relying on gimmicks takes time and work. It takes a change in the way you think about yourself and others, and how those fit together. It takes a change in the way you use the incredible tools you have, especially if you've been relying on social media to do the heavy lifting for you.
Standing Room Only is a 12-module course (+ 2 bonus modules), each of which begins with an audio lesson (including easy-to-print transcripts) and robust worksheets. Each module will be released a week apart to give you time to do the work without being overwhelmed.
Module 01
The Hope: An Audience That Wants More
A powerful, achievable paradigm for artists & creatives to create more impact and earn a living.
Module 02
What Makes You Different?
What sets you apart? Being clear about what differentiates you is where it begins. This is the foundation on which every great brand was ever built.
Module 03
What Difference Do You Make?
Module 04
The Avatar: Your Ideal Audience
The better you understand your ideal audience the more you will be to serve them and give them more of what you make in a language they understand.
Module 05
The Borrowed Platforms
Using social media to gather a crowd and bring them to a platform of your own where you connect & engage with them on your terms, and to their benefit.
Module 06
Collaborative Platforms
Learn to find and use the platforms of others to find your ideal audience among theirs, and invite them to experience more of you on a platform of your own.
Module 07
A Platform of Your Own
Every point of contact on other platforms is a chance to invite your growing audience to your own website or online home and give them more of what you make. Here's how.
Module 08
Building The VIP Room: The List
Begin to build a list of truly loyal and invested people who you can reach out and offer more of your work to whenever you want.
Module 09
Filling The VIP Room: Invitations
Learn the practical steps for getting people who want more of you onto your email list in ways that are not only honest, but truly more productive.
Module 10
What's The Gift?
Emails That Engage
If you're not getting thank-you notes for your emails, you're missing the most powerful benefit of engaging your audience by email. We'll change that.
Module 11
Writing Emails That Get Opened
The best emails in the world accomplish nothing for you or your audience if they aren't opened. Here's how to get them not only opened, but acted on.
Module 12
Sharing & Engaging
You're communicating compellingly with an audience that loves you. Now it's time to make it easy for them to engage with you, be your greatest advocates, and share you with their world.
Bonus Module 01
DIY Audience-Building Audit
Putting yourself and your work into the world is an ongoing effort. This do-it-yourself audit is a powerful way to stay on track with your marketing and keep yourself motivated and moving forward for years to come.
Bonus Module 02
Selling: Value for Value
I know, you hate "selling." What if you could change the way you look at how you offer what you make to the people who love it? You'd do it more easily, more often, and with much stronger results.
Hosted on its own dedicated online platform, a new module of Standing Room Only will be released every week for 12 weeks, with a one-week break every 4 weeks so you can absorb the lessons, complete the exercises, and implement the ideas you're discovering. Once the course is completed, the content will always be yours and can be revisited as often as you like. Every audio lesson, transcript, and worksheet is downloadable, and if it's the personal touch you're hoping for, there will be 4 Office Hours sessions, held for 2 hours each over Zoom, where I'll answer questions and discuss specific challenges with those who attend. Those sessions will be recorded and also available to download.
12 Powerful Modules
Finally, a course that talks about identifying, locating, gathering, and engaging audiences of real human beings rather than "tactics" and "target markets."
Insightful Worksheets
Every lesson comes with practical exercises designed to help you clarify your thoughts, and nudge you into new territory as you grow and serve your audience.
+2 Bonus Modules
The DIY Audience-Building Audit and Selling: Value for Value bonus modules will give momentum to your ongoing efforts and help you create stronger calls to action.
4 x Office Hours
Four times (roughly every 4 weeks for the duration of the course), we will get together as a class for a 2-hour Zoom call (recorded) to discuss ideas & answer questions.
Standing Ovations for Standing Room Only
Everything I didn't know I needed!
Gave me so much more confidence.
"Standing Room Only is so valuable, supportive and encouraging. It gave me so much more confidence in building real connections with my audience and in sharing my creative work in an authentic way. This is a wonderful course for creators who have difficulties sharing, marketing and selling their work. Five stars from me!"
~ Sandra Rohde, Germany
This course was a welcome GPS.
"David teaches you how to deserve your followers. This is a realistic and genuine education on how to better serve your audience, to learn to get out of your own way and recognize the potential for your creative work to reach the people who want to follow and support you. I wish I’d had this information and insight ten years ago. It would have prevented so many mistakes and wrong turns. But I’m grateful I have it now. After driving around in circles for years, this course was a welcome GPS."
~ Patrick LaMontagne, Alberta
Ridiculously good value.
"Standing Room Only gave me the confidence to lean hard into my own niche, to express myself as fully and authentically as possible, and to shift my focus from what makes me different to understanding the value my work has to my audience. Within the first few modules I began fundamentally redesigning my online presence and marketing plans. David has done a tremendous amount of work to bring this course to us, and has the business creds to back it up. This course is ridiculously good value for the knowledge he’s offering. Highly recommended."
-Jeremy Johnson, Washington
A massive difference to my income.
Like having a personal business coach.
"Standing Room Only is like having a personal business coach at a fraction of the cost. The course content is detailed and practical. I will return to the worksheets again and again to keep on tailoring my work to serve my audience. As a visual storyteller a year into launching my own business, this course came at a perfect time. I’ve already incorporated several of the lessons and upped the engagement with my readers. Integrity and generosity are important values to me. SRO taught me tips, strategies and tools to help me get my work out into to the world in a manner that is respectful and successful. Five stars!"
- Kathy Karn, Ontario
I'm a big fan of making things to solve a specific problem for a very specific audience. So in that spirit, Standing Room Only is for you if:
What if I have no audience at all yet?
How is this course different? What difference will it make?
These might just be the two most important questions you could ask. It's true, there is no shortage of material out there about marketing, though there is less of it specifically for artists and creators. What many of them share is a focus on the geek stuff: how to optimize SEO, how to beat the algorithms on social platforms, post more content, and sell harder. I made Standing Room Only to focus on the longer journey of building a sustainable, ethical, soul-felt way for people like you to get your work into the world. That's the first thing. It's different because artists and creators have different needs, different time constraints, and different budgets than the folks out there that want to be full-time marketers which, I'm guessing, you do not. Neither do I.
It's different because it focuses on people and the relationship between your eventual ideal audience, and you and what you make.
It's different because it was made by someone who cares deeply about the artists and creators he knows and loves. I know how much the ideas and practices in this course can change your life because they have changed mine, taking me from being a bankrupt juggler to a photographer and writer with a very healthy six-figure income that is earned in way that I am proud of and doesn't require that I compromise my values, my integrity, or my art. You can make a living as beautifully as you make your art. I made Standing Room Only to help you do that.
My hope is that this course will change the way you think and feel about marketing. If you felt differently about it, if you didn't feel a little piece of yourself die when you thought about "promotion" or "selling," wouldn't your efforts be more enthusiastic, more creative, more "you"? Wouldn't they become more frequent, more personal, and more compelling? I believe so. They did for me. This course is different because while it is extremely pragmatic and full of great ideas and actionable steps, it is also full of heart, because if we can't engage with our audiences whole-heartedly, they won't engage that way with us or what we make.
Is it worth it?
That's a hard one for me to answer for you. I wouldn't offer this course at this price if I didn't think it was worth much more to you. But we all measure value differently. When I think about how long it took me to learn many of the principles and practices in this course, and how much I would have paid to get straight to what I know now, then the answer is yes. Resoundingly. Your time is worth something. The sooner you lay a strong foundation, and get comfortable with growing and engaging an audience, the sooner that audience can take you up on your invitations to experience more of that work, and share you with their world.
One of my first students, Helen Hooker, is a musician in England. When I asked her about the value of this course, this was her reply: "My initial reaction was "That's a lot of money!" However, having worked through the course, it's absolutely worth every penny." Helen also added, "David's ideas have made a massive difference to my income."
I think if you found just one or two great ideas in Standing Room Only, ideas that changed how you put your work into the world and offered it to your audience, and these ideas allowed you to be more compelling in what you offered, and command higher prices, this course would pay for itself many times over.
But the best way to know this is to enroll, put your back into it, and if you're still not convinced, just let me know within 60 days and I'll happily refund your tuition. I believe the ideas in Standing Room Only can change your life because they have changed mine.
Is this a course about email marketing?
No. It's about a much larger strategy that uses email as a foundation. I believe email is the most powerful, and effective means of engaging an audience, short of being face to face with them, and is one of the best means for inviting that audience to experience more of what you make.
Social media reach is plummeting and converts poorly to action. That doesn't mean it can't be used effectively, but Standing Room Only is first a course about changing your mindset about how you build and engage with a growing audience, and second about using various platforms to draw that audience to your work (and ultimately, to your website) and then your mailing list, so you can connect with that audience on your terms, when you like, how you like, and with dramatically more effective results.
This is a course about using every tool you care to use to get your audience onto the most powerful and personal platform possible for the relationship between that audience and you, so they can experience more of you and what you make for them. If you are not open to the possibilities created by building an email list and using that list to serve your audience, Standing Room Only will be of much less use to you.
When are the Office Hours Zoom Calls and what if I'm away for a week or two?
Great question. First, the Office Hours Zoom Calls for the 2023 course are scheduled as follows: February 11, March 25, April 15, and May 06. Created with time zones in mind as best as possible, all of them scheduled during the weekend, the Office Hours Zoom Calls will be at 12pm Pacific Time (GMT -7) That's 3pm in New York, 7pm in London, 6am in Sydney (+1 day), and 8am in Wellington (+1 day). Office Hours calls will be recorded and made available immediately after the call.
The course will be released as one new module per week with a one-week break after the 4th and 8th weeks to allow you to catch your breath a little. Once it’s over the materials are all yours, and access will never be revoked. So the only thing you might lose by going at your own pace or being away for a week or two are the 4 two-hour Zoom conference calls. Otherwise you’ll always have the full course available to you (and the recordings of those Office Hours sessions on Zoom). The only thing you can’t do is fast forward through the course because of the weekly lesson release, which I did to encourage a more thoughtful approach and discourage skipping the parts that are more foundational or more challenging.
How long will the Standing Room Only Course take?
Will Standing Room Only be offered again?
Is there any fine-print on your money-back guarantee?
None. If you give this course a fair shake, and enroll in good faith, and it just isn't for you, talk to me within 60 days and I'll happily refund your tuition. No awkward questions, and no refund-shaming.
How do I pay? Are there options? Is it secure?
Wait, aren't you Canadian? Why are prices in USD?
Indeed I am. Sorry. Because the majority of my audience comes from around the world, USD is more easily understood by more people. Also, when I charge in CAD, people start asking if they can just pay with maple syrup, beaver pelts, or canoes instead, and my wife says if I bring one more rack of moose antlers into the igloo there's going to be trouble, eh?
Anything else I should know?
There sure is. I hate small print. But with anything related to money, I need to remind you that while I make every effort to accurately represent this course and the value I believe it represents to you, there is no guarantee that you will earn any money using the ideas, principles, or techniques in this course. Where I have presented revenue and sales figures I am showcasing exceptional results, which do not necessarily reflect the average experience. You should not rely on any revenue, sales, or earnings information I present as any kind of promise, guarantee, or expectation of any level of success or earnings. Your results will be determined by a number of factors over which I have no control, such as your financial condition, skills, experiences, level of effort, education, or changes within the economy. Running a business of any kind carries risks, and your use of any information contained in this course is at your own risk. Subject to my 60-day money-back refund policy, I provide content without any express or implied warranties. By enrolling in this course, you agree that my company and I are not responsible for any decision you might make about your own business.
Do you have other questions?
If there's something I haven't explained well, or there's something I can clear up for you, please don't hesitate to ask. Hit the big red button below where it says "More Questions?" and my team or I will do whatever we can to help.
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