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The Art of Selling Online Courses
The Art of Selling Online Courses is all about online courses.
The goal of this podcast is to share winning strategies and secret hacks from top performers in the online course industry. We are interviewing successful business owners, asking them questions on how they got to the point where they are right now, and checking how their ideas can help you improve your online course!
The Art of Selling Online Courses
228 Here's How You SELL Courses (Even If You're Not A Marketer)
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🔥 Grow your course revenue up to 30% in 7 days - no paid ads, no sales calls 📈https://datadrivenmarketing.co/roadmap
Here's something I hear all the time... course creators telling me they feel weird about selling. They got into this to teach, not to become marketers.
Kerstin Cable gets it. She's been at this since 2013, runs a language learning business, has recorded over 240 podcast episodes, and recently started AI Language Club.
When I asked her about marketing, she literally said "but John, we're not marketers." And honestly, that's what makes this conversation so good.
We dig into why selling courses has gotten harder post-COVID, whether social media is even worth the effort anymore, and how Kerstin promotes her stuff without feeling sleazy about it.
Her approach is dead simple. Talk about what you know, then make an offer. That's it. But the way she explains it actually made something click for me.
We also talk about the mindset stuff, why so many of us hold back from promoting our own work, and what changes when you reconnect with what you actually believe about your course.
#OnlineCourses #SalesFunnels #CourseCreators #DigitalMarketing
Connect with Kerstin:
🔗 https://fluentlanguage.co.uk
🔗 https://AILanguageClub.com
🤝 Get In Touch
If you'd like to talk more about how you can grow your course business, email me at john@datadrivenmarketing.
Selling Without Feeling Slimy
SPEAKER_03There is always that element in a lot of us, teachers, teachers from the heart, the vocation, blah di blah blah, women even worse. It's a little bit like I'm not allowed to we're totally allowed to to sell and we're allowed to promote. Just tell people what you know. Literally, talk about what you know and then make an offer. Talk about what you know and then make an offer. If I go back to what's in my course, what do I really believe about this? It's exactly like you're saying. I change. My energy changes, my enthusiasm changes, my wish for you to know this changes. But John, we're not marked.
Say What You Know, Then Offer
SPEAKER_00We do not exist in a world where there are only two options. Where it's like either be gross or don't run promotions. There are other options. For example, run good promotions. Everyone's been doing and I apologize to everybody if it's upset you, but everyone has been doing an absolutely terrible job at selling their courses. Awful! The sales pages are bad, the checkout pages are bad, the email promotions are bad, the options are bad, like everything's bad. Do it better. Yeah, the market got harder. So what? So do it better. You've been in the industry longer, you know more, you're further ahead than the people who are starting now. You've got these great courses, you know your audience, you've got an audience, you've got an email list. Just do the other stuff better. Make better courses, make better funnels. Hello, and welcome to the Art of Selling Online Courses. We're here to share winning strategies, secret hacks, and top performers in the online course industry. My name's John Ainsworth, and today's guest is Kirsten Cable. Now, Kirsten is a language learning coach, speaker, podcaster, and of course, an online course creator. She's been working with language learners for over a decade and helped people find success without having to join a full-time class. She also runs AI Language Club, a community design for generates and cover tutorials, learning ChatGPT as well. She speaks four languages fluently and has studied over ten. She is a passionate podcaster and she's produced over 240 episodes herself. And today we're going to be talking about why social media is overrated, why we can have the life we want right now instead of waiting until we're rich. And of course, we're going to talk about funnels. Kirsten, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_03I shall uh be an open book about my secret hacks if I can possibly think of any. You're welcome to them.
SPEAKER_00All right. So give us a give us a breakdown. Who is it that you're mostly helping with your courses?
SPEAKER_03The majority of people who get my courses are, I would say, well, they're independent adult language learners. That's kind of the main thing. So um there are actually a lot of English native speakers because I teach fruit and medium of English. Um, and I don't I've got a few courses that specifically teach a language, right? So I've got like a a German pronunciation and accent masterclass because my native language is German. So when I was doing more one-to-one tutoring, I don't know, I didn't want to be in English as a foreign language teacher because I'm ever so contrary. So I've decided to be German um and teach German, um, which is why I'm online. Anyway, I'm I am veering. So um independent adult language learners. Um, I um this year I'm gonna produce more stuff for teachers as well. And this is the kind of person who I always say I've never really spoken to a person. I honestly believe this. I've never spoken to a person when I've said to them what I do or who I work with who doesn't in within like two minutes go, I've always wanted to learn blank. Everyone, everyone's got like a language that they wish they could speak, right? And I I've always been into language learning. It's the thing I was good at in school when I was rubbish at most other things. And um, I love it. I love what it gives us, I love what it tells us about ourselves, and I love sort of modern pedagogy. So a lot of stuff that I teach is partly about how to organize yourself, how to set good goals, but also really effective, like um science-based and proven um methods, but maybe with a creative fun twist uh for memorizing your vocabulary, for learning more than one language, more than one language at the same time. Um a lot of people really get ambitious. So my people tend to be a lot of them are high achievers because learning a language as an adult is challenging. So you're not actually in this. You might start coming into this because you like going on holiday to Spain, but you're staying in it because there's something about the challenge and the proving yourself that also pulls you in. And I like kind of pulling that out of people and showing them that this is really cool, what they're trying to do.
SPEAKER_00All right. So for anyone listening who also didn't know what the word pedagogy meant, it's the method and practice of teaching, especially as an academic subject or theoretical concept. So it's like the actual practice of how you teach something rather than uh just the teaching of it. So, okay.
SPEAKER_03Yes, because teaching is not just I tell you what I know and then you magically know it as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Do you know Lydia Marachova?
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_00Because what you're talking about is kind of similar. Yeah. Like not the same, obviously, but it's so if anyone hasn't listened to this episode.
SPEAKER_03I remember before Lydia did um when she first started in Slovakia, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yes, I remember when she first started, she gave a talk at the Polyglot gathering in when it was in Berlin. This is like um a while ago. And um yes, Lydia and I I think have a very similar approach and perspective on teaching, and I thought it was really innovative what she was doing. So it's really cool.
SPEAKER_00So Lydia came on just the other day. She started doing something with uh AI recently. She stopped selling courses and just started selling an AI tool. And I'm gonna find for anyone listening who's interested, it's episode 215. Um we had Lydia on the show again.
SPEAKER_03Oh, hi Lydia!
SPEAKER_00She's been she has been on another time, but I can't find right now that episode number. But anyway, 215 was the most recent ones. The thing that's in common, for anyone listening who's like, who is this Lydia woman? Is the thing that's in common is it's about how to learn a language, not teaching a specific language. So there's lots of people out there who are teaching English or Spanish or German and what have you. And we've interviewed lots of them on the show. Like there's lots and you know, I work with lots and lots of uh language course creators. But this is more about how do you learn any language. Is that correct, if I understood properly?
SPEAKER_03Yes. Yes, and when you know how to learn, you are so much more it's the leaf, this is Abraham Lincoln. There's a quote about if you're gonna go chop down a forest, you better, you know, work on your axe first to make sure that your axe is sharp, and it's that, right? Because you can get Duolingo, and that's the equivalent of, I don't know, having a pair of scissors and you're in the forest going whack, whack, whack, whack. So if you if you've got a good approach for how to learn, which school won't have taught you because you never needed to, right? Independently learning is very different. Uh, you can learn so much more effectively, you can achieve great results, and you will understand how to stick at it, which is the key to success.
SPEAKER_00And give people listening some kind of idea of the size of your business. Revenue, if you're happy to share it, but if not, number of customers or whatever you're happy to kind of tell people about.
SPEAKER_03Oh, uh, number of courses, I can say, and sort of when I started, I have been doing this since so I started with a little thing that was actually a YouTube series and was just me messing around on YouTube. At some point I realized, oh, if I put this into a curriculum, I can build a curriculum. Um, and then I put it on Udemy. So it's actually I've got some presence on Udemy, and that is 2013. So I don't I know my annual turnover, etc., is not huge, but I can live off of it in a you know, in a two-income household. Um, I would I've got my list size is round about 3,000, and then another bunch of teachers, which are separate at the moment, and um it's so difficult because I am like I don't know, 90 million percent of us, I've got ADHD. So I shop and change a little bit, and I've done lots and lots of different things. So in the past, I've run masterminds, I have uh run retreats, I used to run like German learning retreats, etc. And I've but the courses have always been like the strand of my business, it's kind of been there. Um and I've had a I've had an interesting maybe year or two, um, partly so you're catching me at a funny time because I'm almost coming back in 2026 to languages and I've spent a little bit of time working with um not course creator, but like coaches essentially, um, and going into coaching. So I'm coming back to courses. Um, courses typically used to be about 40% of my revenue, and last year it was 20. So it's difficult to say, but in terms of and I never count my student numbers. I'm I'm an absolute mess when it comes to that. I'm not you might be able to tell that I'm not the most numbers motivated one of your people course creators are.
SPEAKER_00So it's like it's totally totally normal. Like nearly everybody that I talk to, and uh I ask about people's numbers because it's like the this is the way that I think. Like I think in like I've got a uh maths degree and I think in in funnels in numbers and everything's in spreadsheets, and like everyone who I have hired in the in the agency is like an engineer or uh uh you know, used to be a um uh software engineer or used to be a what did Eva used to do? I'm trying to remember. Some kind of like a um what's the one kind of like an architect, a structural engineer or something.
SPEAKER_03I was just saying like a civil engineer.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that kind of thing, right? And it's like everyone's like they've got that mentality. See, I'm I'm humanities. Yes.
SPEAKER_03And humanities is like, oh no, I'm skeptical. The numbers I'm gonna tell you are just gonna be vanity numbers. This is just like I can tell you my podcast has had a million downloads, blah de blah. And it's like, great, I've told you a number, it doesn't mean the same thing to me. So I find it difficult. Yeah. And I try not to actually, even when I've worked with business owners, this has been one of my hurdles, is that I don't love to quantify my things. Like I've had whatever, like five-figure course launches, etc. And it hasn't, I don't know. It's just, it's not something that I then take with me and save in my heart. It's more about I've the people I've helped, and when people send me a great testimonial, that's what I want. And what what I'm proud of is I have people who have been with me for over a decade who still buy, you know, every time I come out with something new. I have people who say, I love all your stuff, that's why I'm buying.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And so what the way you're talking is it's maybe a slightly more extreme version than most people, but like virtually all course creators are more creative. They're more about building an audience and they care about the audience, and how do I make great courses that people really love? And to me, the the slight problem with that, and I understand like I think it's great. This is why I work with course creators, because course creators are almost exclusively great people who've got an expertise who are trying to help their audience, is like, okay, cool, wonderful, that's good people to work with. The slight downside is if you're not tracking and you're not working on your funnels and you and and five-figure launches don't mean anything to you, then you don't get as much money. And I'm like, cool, dear course creators, let's try and get you both, right? Let's try and you can help people and be lovely and wonderful, and let's just make you a little bit richer as well. Let's see if we can't allow you to keep that philosophy that you've got, but then also just make more money. So that's like my kind of that's why you know why I started.
SPEAKER_03It's true. I do, I do have more, I will say, and it's partly because I have a business partner in AI Language Club. Um, and some of the other stuff I've done in the past, when I work with somebody, um, it's great because they can bring that side a little bit. Um, it's not that I just yeah, I find it difficult to to quantify goal setting.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03All of my goals for this year, I again they're just not numbers, I find it difficult. Um, but when somebody else works with me. So I do know, and I actually know my ambitions for AI Language Club, and I will tell you that they're numbers.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Well, that's cool.
SPEAKER_03But when he says, like, oh, AI Language Club has made this many grand now, and I say, Okay, cool. Yay. But when I think about how many members we have, it's like, yeah, it's better.
SPEAKER_00Talk to me about AI Language Club. Because you've got a load of courses, right? I've been through your site and had a look, and you've got courses at the same kind of price point that a lot of people listening will have, like$97,$159. You've got some coaching in there as well. AI language club's$9 a month.
Meet Kirsten And Her Learners
SPEAKER_02It is.
SPEAKER_00So what's the kind of idea with that? Why are you doing something so low? Ticket, what's the how's that working out? Tell us about it.
SPEAKER_03Uh, AI Language Club being$9 a month. When we first came up with the concept of AI Language Club, we thought, oh, let's do a fun workshop together about AI and language learning. And then quickly realized we have got ideas for the next century. Because both me and Josh are quite creative, idea-driven people. We're always coming up with new things. Um, and the concept of AI Language Club is great. What I wanted to create and what I had capacity for, especially at the time that we started it, was I wanted a light touch membership, something that brings people in. And we didn't start with$9 a month as the core concept. We started with$99 a year, which is still low ticket, etc. But actually, if you're a course creator who is used to selling one course,$99, and giving ongoing access, which typically is what I've always done, then you're already winning if you're doing$99 recurring, even if it's just a year, you know. Um but also we are in a niche that isn't um particularly, and then again, we're in a sort of hobby-ish niche, and then I don't need to do this niche where we're also competing with a lot of software, and we didn't know at the time if the if the concept was really gonna fly. So there's also an element of you know, let's you know, we're two years in now, we know it's it's flying very well. Um but there was all that, and there was a strategy to the nine dollar pricing around it being something that is really easy to say yes to, really easy to stick with, so we're reducing churn, right? So our idea was we're gonna get people in quite easily, hopefully, because nine dollars is an easy yes, and we are going to have the opportunity to retain people, and then we do do like for the members, there's a lot of stuff included in terms of challenges, etc. But we create additional courses, we've done a prompt pack out of you know, sort of AI language club related stuff. Uh, my business partner is actually really good at kind of thinking how we can put things together. So increasingly there are courses that are under the AI Language Club brand that go together. Um, and we know that training can come for that. We might look at licensing for educational institutions, etc. So I don't think the nine dollar price point needs to be the be all and end all. On the other side, and and I know also now this what we give. So also that another thing was that it didn't feel make me feel under pressure to do a big community with lots of live kind of stuff, right? We wanted I didn't I didn't, again, capacity-wise, etc. I wasn't ready for that. And I think that would have been a higher priced community. Um but it's not what the vision of it was. So we're there. We were looking at, I don't know if you're aware of uh Liz Wilcox, but we were looking at her email marketing.
SPEAKER_00I was just thinking about Liz, because she came on the podcast and talked to us about how she's doing something so super cheap. She was episode nine on the podcast, so back in the day. Yeah. And uh she's a proper laugh, she's really great. Um I should talk to her again actually and find out what's going on. I have talked to her since, but not just not on the podcast.
SPEAKER_03Liz is Liz is amazing. I've I'm a big like Liz Liz advocate, customer, affiliate, whatever you you ask me. I I recommend her so much. Um I've been an email marketing membership for a long, long time. Even if I don't always need it, but there was sort of something about that. I found it very inspiring. And she's actually somebody who I think marries the creativity and the values with a healthy, a really healthy business attitude as well. Um so I think she is somebody that I look to when you're telling me about like you should care about the numbers. I'm like, Liz cares about the numbers, it's fine to care about the numbers.
SPEAKER_00Liz might like making money. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00No, she's not like all about that. She's very creative, but she does like making money, you know. And it's allowed. You're okay.
SPEAKER_02Everyone likes making money.
How To Learn Any Language
SPEAKER_00So um one of the things you'd said, I'd asked you some questions in advance of the podcast. One of the things you'd said was, you know, it's alright sometimes to not make a new course. And you sell an affiliate thing or whatever, resell something you've done before, or redo something you've done before. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. And then I had a look through your your list of courses, and I was like, oh, you're talking to yourself because you're addicted to making courses.
SPEAKER_03You asked what is the most contr what is the most controversial thing. I was trying to come up with something controversial. That's funny. Um okay, look. I don't understand how somebody cannot have seven million ideas and want to make seven million things. It's just how I operate. I haven't stopped. I I could I could make courses till the cows come. I enjoy it. I enjoy putting together the curriculum, doing I like it. I like it a lot. So there is an element of that. And yes, I am talking to myself. I am talking to myself genuinely. And I'm I don't think I'm the only one. I think there are a lot of people like that.
SPEAKER_00Oh, there's loads. Yeah, exactly. Everybody, yeah, all the cool creators.
SPEAKER_03And the there is what I've learned over the years, this is really learning from experience, is that sometimes you feel like you can't do a new idea because you feel like you've covered this before. Or you feel like you know, or you are discarding good ideas because you want novelty and you forget that your people, your customers, actually what you don't what what you don't find shiny and new and exciting, what you find a bit boring, is exactly what they want and need. You know, like 10 years in, if somebody asked me how to learn, I uh the amount of times that I could go, Oh my god, oh my god, how do you mean you don't know how memory works? Oh my god, like why do you think you learn grammar like that? It's because they've never thought about it before. They haven't been waffling on about it for 10 years, they haven't been reading the re whatever, the research. So you need to, I think, as a one-person course creator, find a way to get excited about selling what your people want and need. And sometimes I find that hard because it's not to me the new thing. So if I but when I actually go back and look at what I created, and I think this is something something a lot of us have in common, I remember the approach I brought to it. I remember the systematic thinking, I remember how I talked about it in the past, and I see gaps and things that I want to add and change and improve. So going back, updating an existing product makes the product better, keeps your existing testimonials current, etc. Right? Because they're about that thing. So you've got the and your audience already knows this product. And so I don't really work on like the I think this is clear now, uh the kind of volume refreshing your audience, bringing in endless amounts of traffic. I try to, you know, like I I build a relationship with my audience. I still bring in new people, of course, but they tend to hang around. That's my hope. Um so you've got all that. You might have mentioned something last year and then gone, oh well, that didn't sell, or that didn't sell as much as I wanted it to, but you've only introduced it for the first time. If you are doing it this year, you've got all those people who had the tab open last year and they were thinking about it, but then they didn't. And they might just this year say, Oh, okay. Oh, and now she's talking now. She's added in a little AI training. Now she's added in something about content. Now she's added in, ah, this that answers my question about this. I'll give it a go, right? So that's that thing about iterating and improving your existing products. Yeah, I'm talking to myself. But it it really is about um when people say do what works, I think it's a way of making do what works work for me and exciting for me. Um, and sometimes it's just I don't need to make every single thing that's ever been made. If I already know something great exists and the affiliate deal is good, then I don't think there's any shame in having a wonderful partnership running.
SPEAKER_00One of the things you'd mentioned to me just before we started recording was that you were curious. Like, what is it that's working at the moment? Um how are other people's kind of course businesses going? Talk to me about that. Why did you I said let's talk about that on the show. So, like I gotta cut you off because I'm like, oh, that's an interesting topic. I bet a lot of other people are thinking that. So, what was your thinking when you said that? What was the what's your experience been?
Business Size, ADHD, And Offers
SPEAKER_03Current course selling environment is different from what it has been, from what it was. I think a lot of people started during COVID. Like I started before COVID, and you know, my income streams are always changing. Like I said before, I've I've run retreats. In a year that I run retreats, I don't push courses as my number one thing. I just always have this sort of income stream. And I've noticed that now when I don't focus on courses, the kind of I feel like there's a kind of more like everyone is buying like how I buy. I've always been the kind of person who's very hesitant to buy and needs to talk myself into it, etc. And I feel like everybody's like that now. Whereas before, and I think it's because America might be in a recession, unclear. Um, before you had people who would jump in a little bit quicker. So from what I have seen, it's difficult because I don't do the same thing every year. So I can't tell you, like for like for like, but also from what I've heard in terms of rumblings, a lot of people have been saying, gosh, it's a hard time at the moment to create and sell courses. And I don't think it's impossible at all. But for me. I have had to come back to being more intentional and clever about it and think, I'm gonna use a funnel word, you'll be so happy. So um, for example, think about making an offer and then offering a downsell the week after, you know? And then the downsell was successful. But that sort of idea of like really thinking about I need to warm my audience up, I need to, you know, like I need to treat a launch like a launch. I think we've we've had it easy in many ways. And now I don't want to say like things are so hard because that's not a helpful entrepreneurial approach to anybody. Um, but certainly you're gonna have to if you've been in this for a long time and you think your stuff is working, certainly what I've seen, like I had a a running funnel with a whole deadline funnel thing that just went dead in the last two years and no tweaking was was working. So it's interesting because I am interested in what works now, and I've also noticed that social media as a marketing channel has changed so much because now there are people who are full-time creators and you're competing with them for attention, so it's a whole different thing to five years ago. And bear in mind I'm an old woman who started as a blogger. It's a really interesting time. So that's kind of where I'm at, and I'm I'm curious to exchange and to hear from you. Um, and please do share. Not just, oh, you know, if you do your funnel right and da da da this works. I know, I know, we all know, but genuinely, like how how long have you done this? And how do you think the landscape is feels different?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think what's basically happened is that the online course space was kind of the same-ish for a number of years. And people were just making courses and building an audience and they were making sales and they were happy with it. And then COVID came.
SPEAKER_03We had like a blueprint-y thing, didn't we?
SPEAKER_00How do you mean?
SPEAKER_03Like we had a way of doing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00The same thing basically kind of worked. And if you did a good job, then you were miles ahead. But if you did a terrible job, it was fine. You know, you just didn't need to worry about doing a good job with how do you sell these things, how do you make sure that what you're creating is is uh is perfect and whatever, because it's like, oh, it's just kind of easy and you could just kind of uh meander along and it was it was fine. And it was still a lot of work, right? But it was work that people who are course creators like doing. So the people who liked creating a lot of great content, they liked creating YouTube videos, they liked blogging, they liked podcasting, whatever, who managed to build an audience, they liked those tend to kind of people tend to also like creating courses. And so they create these great courses and then people would buy them. And they weren't, you know, making as much money as they wanted, some of them. Um, but people were doing well. And then COVID happened, right? And it got easier. And then everyone got a bit spoiled, right? Because all of a sudden it was like, oh, this is even easier. And then after COVID, it got harder. There was almost like a um a a whole lot of the people who were gonna buy something have bought that, and now it's got it's gotten harder slightly than it was before COVID.
SPEAKER_03And then it's kind of people didn't want to spend their money on a screen anymore.
SPEAKER_00After COVID, yeah, a little bit. Yeah. And also a whole load of people, like you mentioned, started course businesses during COVID. So now there's more competition, right? Like the number of people who in the language space who do language with person's name, you know, German with Anna, French with Kirsten, whatever, is just like enormous, right? There's tons of people who are doing that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so that made it harder as well. And then AI's come along, and that's for some has has maybe made it a little bit harder as well. It's hard to say for sure how much difference that's made because it's like, well, me and all my friends all are using AI for everything, but that doesn't mean that the average punter is doing. So I don't know how much is that, right? And people have maybe got a little bit more like uh skeptical about buying courses. So a bunch of things have all kind of happened, right? How what percentage effect each has had, I don't know exactly. But things have gotten harder. And what that means in my mind is like, yeah, well, that's that's the world. Business like the market changes. Of course. Courses wasn't going to continue forever, exactly the same as it was. Like back in 2010 or 2013 or something like that, if you ran niche sites, you could rate, right? Yeah, you create a site on a tiny little niche, it ranks well in Google, you run ads on it, and Google would, you know, whoever would pay you money for having the ads on there, and you could do really well. And then it gradually, gradually got harder and harder and harder. Now, the next one then was Amazon FBA that everyone was raving about. And if you started that in 2015 or 2014, you did great. And it's got gradually harder and harder and harder. All of this always happens, right? All industries, it starts off easier, but nobody kind of knows how to do it. And if you get in early, you've got to figure it all out. But the stuff that you do work better. You take Lydia, right? She's selling in Slovakia. It's easier to sell to people in Slovakia because they haven't seen all the tactics that have been seen in the English-speaking world. There's less competition, there's less marketers there. So even though it's a smaller industry, a smaller market, stuff worked better for her there. So she would run the same webinar basically in English, so the English-speaking market, and then in Slovakian, and the Slovakian one did like five times better.
SPEAKER_03That makes so much sense because what she the kind of stuff that she teaches is that yes, in the English-speaking world, it's so much easier for people to go, oh, I've heard that one before. You know. Um and that it is really good stuff, but people become a little uh more numb to it. Yeah, jaded. Exactly.
Low-Ticket Membership Strategy
SPEAKER_00So if you read if you go back and you read and I I don't expect you to do this, but but it's the kind of thing I'd do. If you go back and you read really seminal marketing textbooks, like the ones that have stood the test of time, everyone still talks about, like Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz from like 1961. He covers exactly this. He's like, there are five levels of market awareness, this many this many levels of um that's going to be a lot of people.
SPEAKER_03We're just in a more saturated market now, aren't we?
SPEAKER_00Right. So but it's fine because everyone's been doing an and I I apologize to everybody if this upsets you, but everyone has been doing an absolutely terrible job at selling their courses. Awful. Like the sales pages are bad, the checkout pages are bad, the email promotions are bad, the opt-ins are bad, like everything's bad. So it's like, okay, well, do it better. I was like, yeah, the market got harder. So what? So do it better. You've been in the industry longer, you know more, you're further ahead than the comp the people who are starting now. You've got these great courses, you know your audience, you've got an audience, you've got an email list. Okay, well, just do the other stuff better. Make better courses, make better funnels.
SPEAKER_03But John, we're not marketers.
SPEAKER_00No, that's all right though.
SPEAKER_03That's that's it. But I know because I feel like, I genuinely feel like what my business has done to me, when I look at the numbers, what my business is doing is hey, eyes here. That's what it's been doing. Because I too have probably been doing a terrible job because there is always that element in a lot of us, teachers, teachers from the heart, the vocation, blah de blah de blah, women even worse. Ah, well, but it's a little bit like I'm not allowed to, you know, but we're totally allowed to to sell and we're allowed to promote. And um, and we need to. So I think that's that's it. So I totally I think it's a really good analysis to say, like, we've been getting maybe getting away with just not being marketers, but having been in this business for a long, long time, it's like I've had to learn all of this so many times before, and it's a lesson that's gonna keep coming. Um, is I've got to be a marketer. I can't, and I think that's self-employment. You've got to market what you have. You just have to. Um, and the hard thing is that you are not because I used to work in student recruitment, which is kind of marketing. Um, but it's so much easier to promote somebody else's thing, and it's harder to promote something where you know the flaws and you know, and it's based on your mind and how you think, you know, because it's so much easier to see what's wrong with it. So you just have to, you have to really practice that detachment.
SPEAKER_00Well, but you know the flaws, but you also know what's amazing about it, right? And it's like if you No, no clue. If you believe that this approach that you're taking, there's a reason why you're teaching this way of learning languages, right? It's because even if you are not the perfect teacher that you would love to be, even if there are flaws in the stuff that you've made, you're doing it this way because you think this works better. You have seen it work better for people, and you can talk to people about that. And I think that marketing, it's a I think a lot of people have this negative connotation with it of just like, oh, it means irritating people and being too salesy and being too promotional, and just like, oh, you're like a used car salesman and I feel icky. It's like, okay, well, learn to do a good job then. Learn to do it in a way that it's the we do not exist in a world where there are only two options, where it's like either be gross or don't run promotions. It's like there are other options. For example, run good promotions, run them in a way that you're proud of. Like learn how to do that. And it's like a new skill. It's like, yeah, it's difficult to learn a new skill. And it's boring sometimes, whatever. It's like I don't want to, uh, when I'm going to the gym and like working on getting in better shape, I don't want to be counting my calories. I don't want to track exactly what I lifted on everything in the gym. It's like, yeah, but it's what works. It's like, all right, well, you know, how much do you want it? Do you want to do you want to succeed at this? So um I think that's a a mindset issue that like all course creators that I talk to need to really figure out like, well, how can I change the way I think about this so that it's easier then to go do the work that needs doing? We had a great podcast episode come out the other day, not because of me, but because of the the the guest. Episode 220 just came out, and I'm almost sure it's this one with Ashley, and she's really talking about I think it was her talking about why she loves selling, why she thinks it's great, how she got to that that point. Now, I might be getting mixed up in who it was. I'm sorry, I've uh uh after Christmas break, I kind of my mind's a little bit um uh I I can't remember exactly every every podcast guest we had, but we had one person who was fantastic. She said that the trick is when you're running um when you're running a course business, what you need to do is you need to run these great monthly promotions with great sales pages and great checkout pages, your order bumps, you upsells all of this stuff. And I'm like, yeah, everyone kind of knows that because I bang on about that all the time. I'm like, so what is it that allows you to do that? She's like, oh, I have done three things. I read a book called Um it was something like uh Make Fuck Off Money or something kind of like that. It's not it wasn't exactly that, but it was subwritten by a a woman. Um and then she's like, and I listened to Money Affirmations podcasts every day. And then there was a third thing as well. I think it was uh Brene Brown book. Um I'm trying to remember what it was. Do you know any Brene Brown Renee? Is it Renee Brown or Brene Brown?
SPEAKER_03There's there's a there's Brene Brown. Um and then there's actually um yes, Brene Brown is good. She's the vulnerability lady, so she used to be a researcher.
SPEAKER_00It might have been her. I'll see if I can find out what it was.
Inspiration From Liz Wilcox
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you might be you might be on about um I mean there's several, there's a lot of money mindset work which typically targets like it's again targets women. As women, we've got much way different hang ups about this because we're just not we're not socialized to be the provider, right? So it's it's right, right, right.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Right?
SPEAKER_03There's a whole it's uh that let me not get too nerdy feminist about it. Um but it's just it's just the way it is, right? So you're just thinking differently about money. Um Denise Duffield Thomas is a great resource, so you might have if you haven't heard about her, you're like that's that's a course creator who's making great money um forever and ever, seemingly. But she does great work and actually her marketing um advice, if we can call it advice, um, is just she's got this great way of bringing it right back to basics, um, which I hear in what you're saying it actually works for me as well. Um, and is how I how I changed um revenue trends last year, genuinely, um, is just tell people what you know. Literally, talk about what you know and then make an offer. Talk about what you know and then make an offer. And it's not, I think I'd gotten too far um into at times um trying to just make the offer really good and coming and and and making a great offer where I'm genuinely like, this is the best value ever, and then the sales aren't as big because I've only talked about the offer and I haven't talked about what I know because I've forgot that people don't people don't live in my head, right?
SPEAKER_00So but if I talk about it's funny saying it out loud, right? But it's easy, it is easy to do. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03But if I talk to you about, like I can tell you about, oh, I've got this great course, it's called Crack the Grammar Code. It's really great. Like it's so good and it's only this much, and yeah, yeah, yeah, it's got everything, it's got this in it, it's got that in it. But if I tell you, look, the first myth I cover in crack the grammar code, you're gonna understand this and you're gonna really understand it inside of you, memorizing grammar is bobbins, is a myth. You cannot memorize grammar in order to learn a language, right? And then we're talking about why correct doesn't always mean correct doesn't mean it's right 100%, and you need to get that out of your head. So it's a course, and I can't remember the second myth. By the course, if you want the second myth. Uh this was not a strategy, sorry, I genuinely can't remember. Um, but it's it's that if I actually tell you, if I go back to what's in my course, what do I really believe about this, it's exactly like you're saying. I change, my um energy changes, my enthusiasm changes, my wish for you to know this changes. I want you to know how great this offer is, but there's always a part of me that I don't really care, to be honest. Even I don't really care. And if you fall into the trap of ever discounting, you're gonna care less and less and less and less, right? Even if you're not money motivated, because you're making your work mean less and less and less. But if you go back to what your work actually means and what you're actually trying to do, and getting people out of get it out of people's head that they need to memorize a grammar rule, for God's sake. Um if you get into that and they understand it and they say, Oh, okay, right, tell me more, then we're talking. And that is the bit where I'm like, then I I do full circle and I land on exactly the same page as you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think that that selling well is a service to your customers. And you have to you have to treat it as such. You have to think, well, how I need to be able to help people to understand why they need this and why this is great. And and if you can get into that mindset, then the other stuff, even though it's new and it's difficult, learning how to write a great sales page and whatever, it's like it's easier because you're excited about it rather than feeling gross about it and like, oh, I don't like being in my skin. I found the list, by the way. So this is it was Ashley, the episode was with. It is uh episode 220, and here's the list. It's um send email promotions every month. Well, how do you do that? She read The Big Leap from Gay Hendricks.
SPEAKER_03Oh, okay, yeah. Classic.
SPEAKER_00Rich as fuck from Amanda Francis.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, Amanda Francis, classic.
SPEAKER_00Money affirmations podcast. And I was like, okay, well, what is it that allowed you to know that that was what you needed? And she said, decades of therapy. So I was like, okay, so here's the plan: decades of therapy, read those books, listen to those podcasts, then send email informations every month, and then number four, profit. So that's the plan, everybody.
SPEAKER_03You do have to, I mean, people say you've got to invest in yourself, right? But it is that thing of like one of the one of the biggest obstacles you have in a in your business, if your business is you, is you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. I've heard someone say, uh, there's no such thing as business problems, there's just um people with problems who run businesses.
Stop Chasing Novelty, Iterate
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, there's the gentle there's the gentle coach side of me, um, who also feels like I I almost want to push back very slightly against the how much do you want it? Because that's sort of like there's an element of sort of the the hustle mentality in there. And it's like, how much and I don't know. There's there's so many people in the world who are really rich, even though they never did a thing, live never lifted a finger. And I I think we need to be careful not to go into like prosperity gospel or something like that. But I think it's it's not just how much do you want it, but it's how what is your goal and what does it mean to you, which is essentially what you're saying, but also like what is your way to get there, right? And what is a way that you feel feel good about getting there and what keeps you accountable. So we've we've got mindset, but we also have to have method. Because there's people out there who don't even know about like I started going to the gym last year. I didn't know what a barbell was. I literally did not know what a barbell was. And now my motivation is not my number is getting higher. We have a theme. My motivation is there's an 18-year-old boy over there, and I'm outlifting the 18-year-old boy, and that makes me happy. You know? It's the same. It's the same. My goal is still to lift higher numbers, but it's because I want to, I don't know, imaginary beat an 18-year-old rather than raise my numbers. So you've gotta, you've gotta like discovery's gotta be that thing where it needs to find your inner fire. And the more honest we are about what our inner fire is, because wanting to beat an imaginary 18-year-old is dumb, the more honest we are about what works for us, the the better it works, the better learning works, the better progress works.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. That makes sense. Is there anything from a from a funnel or email marketing or whatever kind of technical point of view that you are trying to would like to improve at? I know this isn't your main way of thinking, but is there anything there that you're like, actually, I know that this is something I could be doing better?
SPEAKER_03You say it's not my main way of thinking. It's like I've I've obviously read a lot about it, and you know, I haven't had the course creation business that I've had for as long as I've had it without thinking about marketing. I just I guess don't like talking about it as much. Uh oh, let me think. Okay, I like that with AI Language Club we have created a not high-touch, high-ticket community. We've created something light and low. Um if I'm thinking about funnels, etc., uh traffic is is a challenge because I'm not I've just never really become like a YouTuber or anything. Um but that that is an interesting thing to consider. So traffic kind of top top of funnel, I don't know what you call it, start traffic. Um and then I do look at conversion numbers, etc. And I know my numbers. God, I'm not contradicting myself. It's just, you know, like that's just being sensible in my opinion. Um the other thing that I would my goal is how do I translate what I'm doing online for individuals, having always targeted individuals and translate it into institutions and translate it into um clients, you know, like where maybe I can get a license, etc. So that is the kind of probably ways along which I'm thinking. Um my core kind of system is trademarked, and then I kind of trademarked it and left it. So I I need to do something with that. So for me, it's sort of I have my core thing. I have I have my like flagship. I think the way I'm teaching it at the moment is maybe not quite right for the attention spans and requirements of the learners of 2026. So there is a learning design question that I have for myself, um, which isn't funnel, it's not what you were asking about, but I think it is at the same time. So the question comes back to how do I improve my product so that I can then sell it. And a lot of course creators you'll have encountered will say, Do I take this apart? Put it into bits, no, it has to go together. If it goes together, how do I most easily introduce people to the whole so that they understand it without making them feel like they have to take 12 dip thousand different lessons? How do I walk people through it? So those are the interesting questions for me. And I think behind those, then automatically is like in marketing my product, I then kind of walk people towards it. Um so I think it might be time for another um go at a bunch of evergreen funnels. I have kind of sworn off the countdown timer method. I don't know if that's a good idea or not. I'm not morally opposed to them. I know you'd shake your head. Um, I might bring them back, I might not bring them back. Um so there's experiments that I can do, and it really is just a case of those things. So so my my most initial my most core questions, gosh, sorry, this is a very sprawling answer, is probably traffic for the stuff where I know how I wanted to convert and that converts. Um design and redesigning for courses that I've had for a long time that I think could have a new, could come with a different approach. Um, and scale in the concept of not more individual bias, but like licensing. Got it. Was that an answer? Was that the answer you wanted? I don't know.
SPEAKER_00I just wanted to know what you thought. Okay. Fascinating. Kirsten, this has been great. I don't have any answers to those questions. Uh it's too broad for me to answer, but I I uh I I think it's awesome just to kind of hear your your thinking about it. Um if people want to they're like, oh, this sounds amazing. I want to go learn a new language, where should they go to go check you out?
SPEAKER_03Yes, go come come over and sharpen your axe. Um and then you will also learn a language. The thing is, you can get language learning materials for free, but very few of them will really it's kind of like you you go into twelve different shops and each gives you a jigsaw piece, and I've got the picture on the box kind of thing. So come to me, I'll give you a picture on a box, it'll be easier. Um it's fluentlanguage.co.uk. And if you're interested in creative and very practical ways of using AI, it's alanguageclub.com.
SPEAKER_00Nice. So fluentlanguage.co.uk and alanguage club.com. Is that right?
SPEAKER_02That's it. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Perfect. Kirsten, thanks so much for coming on. Really, really appreciate your time. Um and dear listener, thank you as always for listening. We'll see you next time.