The Art of Selling Online Courses

264 You Don't Need New Courses. Sell What You Have.

• John Ainsworth • Season 1 • Episode 264

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Most productivity coaches tell you to do more. Carl Pullein built a business teaching people to do less, and better. And it's working to the tune of around $300,000 a year.

I sat down with Carl recently and really enjoyed this one. He's a British productivity coach based in Seoul, South Korea, with over 150,000 YouTube subscribers, 17 million views, and an email list of 25,000 to 30,000 people. He built all of it over ten years, one video a week, around two proprietary frameworks he developed himself.

We talked about who he's actually helping, how his business breaks down between courses and coaching, and what's driven his growth. But honestly the most interesting part of the conversation was watching Carl work through some things in real time. He knew he was leaving money on the table with his YouTube promotions and his email list growth, and we got into the specifics of what he could change and why it would make such a difference.

He's also thinking bigger. He wants $500,000 this year and $10 million by 2030, and he's got a clear idea of how corporate training fits into that picture.

Carl's a thoughtful guy who's built something real, and he's genuinely honest about where he's been too relaxed and what he's going to do about it. That combination makes for a great conversation.

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.


Check out Carl's work:

🌐  http://www.carlpullein.com

▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@Carl_Pullein


Money Goals And A Quick Tease

SPEAKER_01

We're making between $250,000 to $300,000. By the end of the decade I want to be $10 million. I can guarantee that when I wait up on 30 morning it'll be a smile on my dad. Instead of moving out, I have a process. It works. It's working, never let me down.

Meet The Productivity Coach Behind COD

SPEAKER_00

Hello and welcome to the art of selling online courses. We are here to share with Intrusted for Hack Top Performance and Online Courses. My name's Don Swartz and today's guest is Carl Clean. Now called a British productivity coach, based and sold in Talk Career, and is the founder of CalClean Informatics. Started out with a law degree from Leader and moved to career in his first career running corporate training programs with some pretty serious clients. But the work he's known for now started over 10 years ago, and he uploaded his first video for a new YouTube channel about time management. Now over 10 years and 1,300 videos later, that channel has grown to over 150,000 subscribers, more than 17 million views. And it powered a business built around two of its own higher claims markets. The COD system, which stands for Collect Organizing Do, and the Time Status System. And his free COD course has been taken by more than 15,000 people. His email list is over 30,000 and he runs a weekly podcast answering subscriber questions. He has helped hundreds of thousands of people worldwide to time management and more focused on what people. He also coached companies and individuals globally with one-to-one coaching program, an online training program, five books, the latest of which is Your Time, Your Way, Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived. It's a step-by-step guide to revolutionizing your time management that puts you in control of your time and your life. It was also voted 2024 World Top Time Management Professional. Carl took deep expertise and productivity and turned it into a YouTube channel, a podcast, a course catalogue, a coaching practice, and a membership, which is exactly the journey that I know a lot of you are on right now. Carl, welcome to the show. Well, thank you for having me.

Finding The Right Audience By Testing

SPEAKER_00

Talk us through who is it that you're helping with your courses? Who's your target audience?

SPEAKER_01

Okay, that that one now there's a bit of a story here. Um I I've had a passion and love for time management and productivity since I was in middle school. I it sounds crazy, I know. I was one of these people, and this is before computers. So I was the one who was writing out revision timetables for my O levels and A levels and stuff. And I was superb at that. I just wasn't very good at doing the revision or taking exams. But but that that kind of that kind of ignited my love of like time management and productivity and all things related to that. And so when I first started, and I I you know, I'd followed Tony Robbins and and and Gary Vaynerchuk, and I knew these people, and I'd followed and watched all their videos, and I've even been on I've been to Singapore to do U UPW, Unleash the Power Within with Tony Robbins, and I know he talks and talks about identify who your ideal customer is. And I thought, well, I don't know. I'm just gonna, you know, I was gonna use the the full word for that, beginning with S and ending with T, but I'll I'll change it to throw enough mud at the wall and you'll figure it out. And that's precisely what I did.

SPEAKER_00

Swear away if you want to.

SPEAKER_01

Um so I threw a lot of mud at the wall um just to see where it landed and to see who who was you know responding. And that gave me the insights to who my ideal customer is, if you like. And that turned out to be you know a knowledge worker um who is aged between say 35 and 55. Um and that got backed up because as my YouTube channel grew, the analytics starts popping in, and you know, Google are collecting information all the time, so I was able to check that against what my YouTube uh viewers were. And it just turned out to be they they are pretty much uh knowledge workers. There are some like edge cases, so I've I've had in my coaching program, for example, I do have some like stay-at-home mothers, for example, who are just I mean, I didn't even think about that when I first started, but now I you know I've learned a lot about managing a home uh with kids running around, and you know, in the US they do homeschooling. So that's the one where I found where a lot of people are really struggling. So stay-at-home parents who are doing homeschooling, so they've got all the usual stay-at-home jobs to do, but now they've also got to organize the schooling of their kids as well, and it's just crazy. So that's kind of an edge case that's sort of come in, and then recently, particularly in the last say maybe two years or so, um I'm I've got quite a few people who are just going into retirement. Um, and so I've been doing a lot of research on that over the last six, seven months to because I've just launched a program for people in retirement. Um but it's all it all around time management and productivity.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. So is people's what's the fundamental problem, do you think? Is it that people have got more to do than they have time to do it? Is it that they don't know what the priorities are? Like what is it what is it that you're really helping them

Why Technology Breaks Modern Time

SPEAKER_00

with?

SPEAKER_01

Well the problem the problem is technology, but it always has been I'm not saying that that's just that's something new, it's it's always been that case. Um I think when we moved from the factory into the office, that's when the problem started. Um I love contemporary history, and I don't know if any of your um listeners have have read uh Dominic Sandbrooks, he's the one of the co-hosts of uh The Rest is History, but he wrote I think it's four books on British contemporary history from 1956 to 1982, and he just covers everything, not just the political situation, but also the cultural, the social. And I read those books a couple of years ago or started reading them, they're very big books. And it it dawned on me when I was reading those books clearly what had happened was we had really kind of solid, yeah, conservative with the small C structures, like you know, the husband would go out to work, he'd work from like nine until five, probably in a factory. Uh, this is the 1950s and sixties. Um, he'd come home, have his dinner, probably go to the pub, and on Saturday morning they'd work, and then in the afternoon they'd go and watch football, or if they're from the north of England, like Yorkshire where I'm from, we'd go and watch rugby. Um, and my grandfather did that, and you know, I was talking to my dad about it, and yeah, sure, that date was all very structured. So we didn't have that pressure on our time because it was kind of fixed. We went to work, we went to the pub, we had, you know, we we chatted with our kids, had dinner together, all that happened, and then slowly, probably from about the 1980s onwards, technology's come in, it kind of oblit TV came in, it obliterated everything. And now, whilst we didn't really get as much leisure time back, we ended up getting lots of more stuff to do. And then, of course, the mobile phone meant that now the office could communicate with us when we weren't in the office. Um, and then you know, iPads and smartphones then came out, and now we're doing outside of the office. I was lucky when I was working in the UK, I was on the transition between letters and email. So it's like late 90s, early 2000s, and it was great back then because I left the office at 8, 5:30, got on the bus to go home, and tough, there was no way I could do any work. Yeah. Couldn't take files home with us, there's no access to email, no access to the mail. Boss would never call me. Um, so Friday night, 5:30, I didn't have to worry about work. And that's all changed now, of course. Um, you can't escape. So it's partly technology that's just means now that we've got this overlap um into our social lives, and it's now just and then of course you've got social media and instant access to information that we never used to have either. So all that is just it's just applying more and more pressure on our time. Interesting.

SPEAKER_00

I read um I can't remember what book it was from Cal Newport, maybe Deep Work or something like that. He was talking about the idea of Everybody knew that computers increased productivity, and they did in factories because it made things run more efficiently, kind of behind the scenes. And then they c it c came in for knowledge workers, everyone got email, and all of a sudden there was so much communication, and it was so easy to have lots and lots of messages going out that it actually has not been proven. He he uh hypothesised that it actually helped increase productivity at all. He's like, GDP doesn't seem to have gone up in the way that you would have expected to if this actually was that useful. And I was just like, oh. I the way I've taken it is it's very hard to get hold of me. I'm lucky because I'm like running the business, right? But it's like it's if you email me, it could be days before I'll reply to it. It's just like and and nothing's nothing's no things have burnt down, no one's dying, no, it doesn't matter. Everything's fine, it's all okay, you know, it's just totally fine. And it's probably really annoying for a bunch of people. But it's like, that's all right. Well, that's the thing.

SPEAKER_01

People

Building Communication Rules That Work

SPEAKER_01

think it's really annoying, but it isn't because they're so overwhelmed with all the other messages coming in that they don't really notice that you haven't replied. And actually, I've noticed when I'm talking to quite a few of my clients about this, they say the people we really hate are the ones who reply very quickly. Yeah. Because now I've got to deal with their reply.

SPEAKER_00

I've got to reply to their reply, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

The other one that I do is um, well, like you, I do make it difficult to contact me, but I I to I push everyone to email because I have a process for email. I don't have a a process really for WhatsApp or Teams or mess or or um Slack. I just don't really have a process for that. So I just don't use them. Uh and I just say, if you want to contact me, here's my email address. Because I have a system for that and it works, and it's worked for 10 years and it's never let me down.

SPEAKER_00

I got a friend who, if I WhatsApp him, he emails me back. This is like this is this is how I I will see your message, but I am not going to reply to you there. I do not accept this WhatsApp thing that you are using. And I'm like, all right, fine. Fine. As long as you then accept that I only see email every three days, then we're good, you

Revenue Mix Courses Coaching Workshops

SPEAKER_00

know. Yeah. Um talk to me about the the business. What's the kind of uh size of the business revenue-wise, and what's the kind of breakdown of it from like online courses versus any coaching or other things that you're selling?

SPEAKER_01

It's funny you asked that question because I had to look at that today. So I was running at uh it was around about 70% online course revenue, 30% coaching revenue. But I noticed today that actually that's that's changed a little bit. It's now 60% online course revenue and 40% coaching revenue. Although actually, with the coaching revenue, that's also including workshops. I do four workshops a year, and that they've they've been added over the last two years, so that might be what's causing that. Um so we may as a business, we're making between 250,000. This is dollars, so it's um $250,000 to $300,000. I think last year was $282,000 or something, dollars uh coming in. Um so yeah, it's it's pretty good. I mean it it covers the costs. But I really do want to get it up to the uh because I was I was um Tiago Forte, who does um Build a Second Brain, uh he did a I think he did a podcast or he did a YouTube video where he mentioned that his revenue is at six, seven million dollars a year. And I'm going, okay, I'm missing something here. I need to that's where I should be.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, definitely. Why not? What's the what's the kind of setup? Is it just you? Do you have a team behind you in the business?

SPEAKER_01

I have a team now. I have a marketing manager and I have a video editor. Although be we kind of share the video editing. So I will do the the initial pass. So I'll put all the videos in and then put the the B-roll, because my B-roll is gonna be screenshots or screencast type stuff. Then I send it to her for the polish and the the animations and stuff like that, because I just don't have time to learn all that. Um so she does all that for me. And she does the shorts as well. So um and I'm my marketing manager, she just takes care of the social media and is working on the designs. Like we tend to go back and forth on thumbnail designs and stuff for new courses and stuff. And how big's your email list now? Uh we're at uh I'm gonna say about twenty to those a good question that. It's it's about twenty-five thousand, twenty-five to thirty thousand people on the email list. Do you know about how many people you're adding a month to that? Okay, that's a good question. I th Okay, so when somebody signs up for my uh funnel, they automatically get added to the newsletter. And so and then there's just the the random stuff which I call my weekly newsletter, which is just all my content basically that I produce that week. So if I had those two together, we're looking at probably around about 150 to 200 a month. Okay, okay. But I'm not looking at how many people who sign up in the funnel who drop out once they start receiving the emails, because I think it balances out at the end of the month. So, you know, you've got plus, say 150, but you might have minus 40 or 50 because some people just sign up, take the course, and then just immediately disappear. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, fair. What's the um what's the main lead magnet?

Lead Magnet Funnel And List Growth

SPEAKER_00

So you got the the COD course, right? Am I pr am I saying?

SPEAKER_01

So the yeah, so yeah, so the COD course is is like by it's if you like it, it's my lead magnet. So that's that's just a 45-minute course. It's really the foundations, so it's you know, collect stuff and you you need to a trusted system to collect it, organise it and then do the work. So a little bit, a few little Easter eggs in there, like managing your calendar, um, and the daily planning sequence that I throw in there. Um that then kick starts a for email um what do you what would you you call it your funnel, don't you? That's what you call it. Yeah, so you've got the welcome, thank you. Then there's a here's a quick bonus. Um then I think it's the third one. I give them a little workbook, I think it is, if I remember correctly. And then the fourth one is um, okay, go for my time and life mastery course. So it's the call to action if you like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_00

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

I'm looking at that. Do you know about what how many views you get a month on YouTube? I don't because that's not a number I actually look at. Okay. I I measure the subscriber numbers. Um, because that tells me if the subject I'm using at the moment is resonating because the numbers, you know, the subscriber numbers go up. Um so right now what I've been doing is I've been focused a little bit more on the tech because I've been doing that more for my coaching clients, because I get a lot of questions. I thought, oh, I can do a video, and then when I write their feedback, I can link to that video. Um and that that drops the numbers down. So my subscribing, like it's it's averages around about 40 to 60 at the moment. But when it's running well, like when I'm doing a variety of topics like pen and paper productivity or something like that, then it'll jump up to a hundred, hundred and fifty subscribers a day.

SPEAKER_00

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

But I when you talk about views, I do look at the okay, so I look at the average of after one week. Okay. Because then so I was looking at it today, so last week's video has gone to thirteen thousand. The week before was about seven thousand. Oh no, it's eight thousand. So I'm going, ha ha ha ha, okay. Um that gives me an indication of then what are people are interested in. But if it's got to twenty what I'm looking for is twenty thousand after a week or higher, of course.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, okay. Well I'm just looking at is basically it sounds like so the number that you mentioned in terms of new subscribers, that was per month, or was because then you just mentioned something per day a second ago. Hang on. Oh, you meant you meant new new subscribers when you were saying it just now when you said perhaps. Yeah, YouTube subscribers.

SPEAKER_01

But what I'm looking so when I talk about per month, that the the newsletter is per month.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

YouTube CTAs That Drive More Opt-Ins

SPEAKER_00

So I was looking through your YouTube channel before we jumped on air. And I think that you could probably grow your email list at least three times faster, and probably more than that. Maybe like five to ten times faster. Um the thing that I'm seeing is like I watched one of your videos and you promoted at the end of it the a course directly. And uh like a paid course. And in my experience, generally, you make a lot more money if you promote a lead magnet from the video and then promote the paid course just buying.

SPEAKER_01

It's kind of funny because I've I rarely promote anything in in my videos, it's just that when I launch a course, which I've just done. Oh, okay, okay. Yeah, I will mention it because it does tend to boost the sales a little bit. I can tell because obviously when the video goes out in that first few days, the sales have boosted a little bit. But I think that's partly because there's some loyal subscribers in my YouTube channel who probably don't read emails, and so um I suspect that's but I don't do that. I uh I keep meaning to, I just forget. And then I've gone and recorded the video. I've recorded the video and I go, oh shoot, I didn't I go, oh well never mind, I'll do it next week. But also it's kind of deliberate because I don't want to come across as being overly salesy. Um and and I you know the YouTube channel was created as a as a marketing tool, that's why I started it you know ten years ago. Um and so it wasn't necessarily there to to promote courses. I do that now, but it's it's very maybe every two months uh there's there's maybe one or two videos. There's a video a week, so out of eight videos, probably two will promote a course. Okay But funny enough you should mention that because if you men if I do do the free COD course, you're absolutely right.

SPEAKER_00

Daily subscribers go up. Yeah, yeah. And the way that you're promoting at the moment, so you've got from from the videos where I that I saw where you were promoting the COD course, you promoted it at the end um and it was linked in the description, but it was quite a long way down. And I think it was a bit.ly link that you had there. So what I've found, if you want to increase the number of of opt-ins you get, is if you promote the lead magnet, probably like after point one of the video, because that's when you've got a lot of people still watching the video, because not everyone makes it to the end, right? And but you've given, you've done your intro and you've done point one, you've g already given them value, so it's not like two, it's not like doing it in the first 30 seconds and then your your um subscrip you know viewers drop off. And then if you put it in the description but above the fold, so like before they hit more, uh have it as like the first line, those two things make a really, really big difference. Um and I think that would grow your your email list a lot faster from what I'm from what I'm saying, and just from what I've seen with everybody else as well.

SPEAKER_01

Making me laugh because I I I so I read somewhere many this is years ago as well. Yeah. That if you're gonna promote something, do it in the first four minutes. Yeah. So but your point about doing it, make give some value, then promote. But it and I keep meaning to do it in the first four minutes, and then I get I get carried away with my story. Then at the end I'm just going, comes, I'm supposed to So it is completely my fault, and I I know what you're saying, and I think but I'd I'd heard like do it in the first four minutes. Your point there about doing it, give some value and then do it, I think makes more sense. Because if I feel that I have to do it in the first four minutes, I'm gonna feel rushed. Whereas if I feel and actually when I look at my average, you know, because YouTube tells you your average viewer time, yeah, it's anywhere between four and a half and seven minutes is my average viewer time. So yeah. Um so I know that in that first, let's say, let's call it five minutes. And that should and I should just kind of just relax a little bit, get a point in there early and then promote card.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, how

Recording Workflow And Not Forgetting Promos

SPEAKER_00

do you do your um your videos? Do you do it completely off the cuff? Are you doing it from a script? You got bullet points? Like what's your what's your approach to it?

SPEAKER_01

I I do it off the cuff. Um I do I do it I do plan out on paper. I've been doing that today because I record on Wednesdays. Um so this evening that's what I've been doing. I've been just planning out the video I'm gonna do tomorrow. Although I should point out that now that we've spoken, I'm just gonna make a big red mark the first point I say promote COD.

SPEAKER_00

I used to have this big like uh uh there were certain calls that I was supposed to record. I mean like the podcast obviously, right? But like uh but other ones where in the in my document for it, I would have like in like 72 point bold red hit record, John. Because it's like, for God's sake, how many times can you forget to do the thing that you're actually supposed to do?

SPEAKER_01

I've done that on a I've done that on a workshop once I promised that it would be a recording. Uh went through the whole workshop and then zoom because it was a zoom thing, and at the end, Zoom didn't say uh converting. I'm going, why? And went, crumbs, I didn't press record. Oh no. And so um so now I I I put a post-it note on the middle of the screen the night before. Right.

SPEAKER_00

So that when I come through, there's a post press record. Once someone's uh the next thing I want to ask you about, once someone's onto your email list, you've got your four email welcome sequence and then you've got your newsletter that you mentioned. How often

Weekly Emails Community QAs And Value

SPEAKER_00

does a newsletter go out? Is that every week? It's weekly. Weekly.

SPEAKER_01

Well, there's okay, I've got two newsletters. One goes out on Wednesday. They people can opt in for both, or one is up to them. One goes out on Wednesday. I call that my learning note. And that's a reminder to me that in each of those there needs to be a learning point. So it's usually about three hundred and fifty two at tops will be five hundred. I would say averages at round about three. 350 to 400 words and it's a tip. And then underneath that will be something, you know, a promotion of something. Because there's always something going on. So one of the changes I've made this year is I've on a few of my courses I've added a community and we do monthly QA's. And I I did that purposefully because I thought, right, what normally happens is I'll I'll update a course or I'll do a new course and that'll promote that for a month or two and then then I I just get bored of it. Moving on to the next one. Exactly. You just get bored of it. So you're you know, trying to come up with new ways of saying this is the course you should be taking now. So I thought, but if I add in monthly QA's, that gives me an excuse every month to promote one or two courses. Now I don't want to be doing this for all courses because some of them are what I call my mini courses that are quite cheap. Uh but the more expensive courses I want to do that with because I enjoy it. I I really enjoy those QAs. Um it it it gives me feedback on where I can improve the course in an update, I can add extra videos. There's so much I can do. So um I realize that this is and it also adds value to obviously to the participants.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, of course. Like you've spent hundreds of hours probably making each of these like amazing courses, and then if nobody knows that they exist, then it's kind of robbing them of the opportunity to go get them. The um Well, I had a client once who was he was selling courses about how to set up a home recording studio, and he was worried that he was being salesy, um, and he was wondering about what courses he should make, and he surveyed his audience to find out what courses they wanted, and it turns out that some of the courses they wanted were ones that he had already made, but they just didn't know that they existed.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I funny enough, I had a YouTube, I was doing my YouTube replying to YouTube comments this evening, and I I somebody asked, Would you be able to do something for retired people? I thought, Well, I did that two months ago. Yeah, how did you miss that? So but you know, it's an opportunity, so I put the link in and said, I've done it, I've done it, here you go.

Sales Calendar Discounts And Email Volume

SPEAKER_00

How often do you do like a a bigger promotion rather than like mentioning something in the the QA or mentioning it in the the newsletter? Do you do like you know a multi-email promotion of I've got this new course or here's a course I did before that you could buy?

SPEAKER_01

Now, I always do that with new courses, although I'm Okay. Uh I always do that with new courses. So what I will do is I'll do a separate email, usually Sunday night, Monday. So because I've got two mailing lists, so to speak. Um so one goes out Sunday, the next one goes out Monday. It's slightly different because some quite a few people are are subscribed to both. So it's always a little I might move the image up or down, or you know, just to make it look different. Yeah. Um so I always do that when I've got a new course on the go. Uh twice a year I do a sale. So I'm we're just we're gonna start one on the 15th of June, which will be the summer sale, and then we do the Black Friday. Oh no, it'd be three because I do an end of year one as well. Uh they are superb. Um I I love doing them. The only problem is that some of my longer term students now know that three times a year I'm doing sales. Uh so they they hold off, but not everyone knows, so yeah. But they are usually very good.

SPEAKER_00

And um all of your courses when you do those?

SPEAKER_01

Used to be, but I'm getting I realized last year in the New Year sale that actually if I get picky, I can promote the bundles, which are obviously bigger value. Um and I I can promote some of the more expensive courses. Um so not the not the lower priced ones, because they're already low, you know, they're fifty dollars or something, the you know, the mini courses. So um, you know, I don't need to really need to discount them or anything. So um I'm now being a lot more picky than I was.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. Okay. And what kind of boost does that make in sales? Like how much revenue do you tend to bring in with those?

SPEAKER_01

That'll bring that can bring in anywhere between ten well, the the summer sale will probably bring in about ten thousand dollars extra. Um Black Friday and end of year, yeah, that that's gonna be like a can because revenue will shoot up to like forty thousand. Um, so it's those those I wouldn't miss because the value, you know, they're just superb. I think it's probably because in at Black Friday everyone's ready for sales. Yes You know the credit cards get itchy.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um and how many emails are you sending out as part of that promotion? Is that just one email or is that you've got multiple different emails going out?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, see, this is where I'm probably quite bad because I will send out Actually the Black Friday one I gear up for. So actually that one I'm probably sending out in one week I'll probably send two or three emails plus the regular ones. So, you know, because they go out Wednesday night and Friday night. So those are pro obviously the the regular emails are promoting, but they still have their learning point in them, whereas the the unique ones just promoting the sale don't have a learning point in. I would say what I'm trying to do is just not um I'm I'm trying to back off a little bit at the moment because um you know everyone gets a lot of emails and if it's always you know if I'm always sending emails like I don't do you know Charles Tyowit? The shirt you mean the shirt yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I mean they send out emails every single day and it's like a blur to me. Um because I don't need to buy shirts every week or even every day.

SPEAKER_00

I listened to a podcast episode with a guy who who started that um whose whose name is kind of Charles Tirrett. It's his that's like his middle names, it turns out. So anyway, he he was describing it, he was like, Well, the last thing because they also send out um I mean I used to get their their catalogues through the post and they send them out very irregularly. And it's just like those, yes. They still do them, yeah. And it's like, well, the last thing that we want is to annoy our customers. But people would say to us, well, I only buy shirts every six months. So we tried sending out the catalogue every six months, but then it turns out, well, they'd actually bought it this time after five months. Or they weren't ready at six months, they wanted it to date, and so they've forgotten about us again. So that so he just found, you know, you had to be sending these things out regularly all of the time in order for it to kind of be effective. What

Re-Promoting Older Courses Without Confusion

SPEAKER_00

I found with courses is you can do a promotion of a course about once a month, like of an of a different course, you know, like and even though it's a to you it's like an old one, right? You're bored with it now. But a whole load of people who joined your email list in the last six months have never heard of this course that you did a year ago. They have no idea it exists.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So I gotta I have a I I only put my email funnel for you know the four-stage email funnel in in January this year. Um and what I noticed was is uh because I'm I'm using like a connection with um it not if this um Zapia. So I'm using a Zapia connection to my to MailChimp, which is the emailing list that I use. Um and so Zapia was telling me how many people were signing up, and I was going, Whoa, there's a lot of people in January, and I guess oh it's January, that's why there's a lot of people.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Um and I I looked at that, I thought, wow, so then I'm looking at the numbers, and again, I had to look at the numbers today, and I was thinking, wow, there's about 2,000 people have signed up this year. It's 2,000 new people who've never heard of I I mention it sometimes in my emails, but not promote it, like the time sector system or time and life master. They know about time and life mastery because that's the the the call to action from the funnel, but uh they don't know about the you know some of my other courses. So I thought, ooh, yeah. So what you were saying there is something I'd actually thought, oh, maybe this is something I should be thinking about.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's the I think most course creators have this. It's like that they will promote a course when it's new, but then it's it's no longer new, it's no longer exciting. Of course, everybody knows about it, and your audience has no idea about it at all. And if you do another promotion, you know, if you did like a a one week of promoting, building up to and promoting the you know, a course that you did a year ago, you'd have a big spike in sales. Like I could easily imagine it would uh it would give you another ten or twenty thousand that month.

SPEAKER_01

Well, you know, it's funny you mention that. I've just done that with one a course I created last July. I've just I updated it by adding four videos um and just going through the whole programme myself just to see, and I I picked up there was a a worksheet in the wrong place. Nobody ever told me about this. Anyway, I picked it up and I've now moved it to the correct place. I added a couple more worksheets and redesigned some of the ones that ooh, they look a bit tatty. Um so I redesigned those worksheets. Um and then I also changed the name because I did a bit, I used AI and said, is this a good name, or do you think this should, you know, what would you recommend as a as a an alternative given the the marketplace today and so on? And it gave me a different I thought, oh I quite like that one. And so I passed it to my marketing manager and she said, Yeah, yeah, yeah, this works better. Um and so I changed the name. I'd everyone who had signed up for the original one still, you know, it's just a new name for them and an update. So I'm not charging them again or anything. But yes, you're right, it's spike sales. So it wasn't a lot, it wasn't a tremendous amount of extra work to put in it. It's more like I just gave it a really good polish because there was a bit git at the edges.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and I think that's like that's I mean, that's been my experience. That's the model for course creators. It's like when you've got a whole load of courses, just every month re-promote something that you did a while ago. You know, if you have a new course coming out, great. But otherwise, do you've you've got how many promotions do you think you've got a year? You've got your three discounted ones that you're doing, your three sales. How many new courses do you have coming out a year?

SPEAKER_01

Well, this year I've done two already, and that will be it for new course. Oh no, there's one big one coming up because I I told you about I found that August, September are really tough months. Um so I thought, right, this year I'm gonna put the big new course in. I'm gonna launch it at the end of July. Um so um that gives me time to actually do it as well, right? Yeah. I realize I've only got about two, what, two and a half, two, three months to do it. No, two months, two months to do it. So yeah, I've got to get on with that one. Um so this year there'll be three new courses, but normally there's two. But I should point out that you get to a point where adding more courses isn't necessarily you're just you're just creating more and more confusion. It's a bit like the Steve Jobs thing going back in at 19 in 1997 and just obliterating their model year and say, four. And that's something that I'm becoming increasingly aware of, thinking, okay, I can bundle up some of the old courses and use them as a bundle. I can and then just focus on my main I I wouldn't say premium. Well, there's a great channel um that I came across um called I think it's called Luxury Academy. Okay. Um it's a YouTube channel the company tra trains luxury um companies, luxury brands, how to sell and market and stuff. And I was watching quite a few of their videos and and one thing that they talked about, you know, the pricing like nine ninety-nine or ninety-five dollars or something. And I went to and he they say this doesn't work. Well, probably not in the luxury world anyway. So I went to their website and I saw, oh, they've got three main courses. One is three hundred dollars, one is two hundred dollars, and one is a hundred dollars. And I went, I actually quite like that symmetry. No, I just like that. So I thought, right, so three main courses, and then underneath I can have like little my little mini courses for people who just want to learn one thing. But then focus on those three main courses because I think yeah, when people go to you get that the paradox of choice comes into effect if you've got too many.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you go and look at I've got 13 courses to choose from, or which one should I get? Well, I don't know, so I just won't get anything.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so they just give up, yeah. So my thinking is I'm going to over the summer I will I'm gonna start streamlining it a

Targets To 500K And Corporate Expansion

SPEAKER_01

little bit.

SPEAKER_00

And what's what's next for you? How much do you want to grow the business? I know you want to like make sure you've got a good August and September this year, but like do you uh got like specific numbers you want to hit for the next 12 months?

SPEAKER_01

Well, this year, this year we want to get to $500,000, but by the end of this decade, and I started this in 2020, so by the end of the decade, I want to be $10 million business. I'm getting you know, now we're into 2026. I realize, ooh, hang on a minute, we're getting it's not that far away 2030 now. So it's that's one of the reasons why I was looking at like the course, you know, my my offerings and thinking, okay, I've worked, I've focused everything on B2B uh C to C. And um I think it's probably time that I need to start moving because I've had a few I've worked with a few companies, so I know there are companies out there that want this stuff, um and I know how valuable it would be for them. So one of the things that I will probably start introducing next year, because I need to check, you know, build programs for it, uh, is for going to to going into companies next year. Interesting. So to me, that's just an that's an untapped potential that again. I if I I use the uh Luxury Academy um website as as an example, you know, they've got that 300, 200, 100 as like courses that you and I can take. But when you look at their corporate side when they're selling to businesses, we're looking at minimum 12,000 pounds. They said that it's a British company, 12,000 pounds. I think their highest one is pounds. I was thinking, okay, that's that's quite a lot more than I currently charge for any one product.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah, you certainly can charge a lot more when you're doing corporate 100%.

SPEAKER_01

And I've done, as I say, I've done one with a coup uh I had done one with a Danish company where they bought I think they bought something like 50, they they asked me to put together a package um of of three courses, um, and then they bought fifty of them. And that was a nice little you know, oh, that's nice when that payment came through. Yeah, yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah,

Practical Next Steps And Growth Maths

SPEAKER_00

I'd say if you just from a from a financial point of view, if you if you improved your email opt-ins and you were getting let's say let's say four times as many opt-ins per month and you were growing that email list at uh a couple of thousand a month, then after a year, then that's another 20, that's like doubled your email list. And then if you did an email promotion a month and you like that adds probably already another 50% or so to your revenue if you have a double email list size and that's potentially getting you up to over fifty thousand a month. There's a whole lot of other things that you could do as well. But I think as a starting point, those two would would allow you to hit that 500,000.

SPEAKER_01

Uh yeah, that well that's the one that I was looking at, is like the email list is you know, I really want to get that up right now because that is you can see the spike the next day. And you know, an email goes out, like tonight or tom tomorrow night my learning note will go out. It is promoting the course that I've just updated. Okay. And I can guarantee that when I wake up on Thursday morning there'll be a smile on my face. Yeah. You know, because sales will be up. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but you know, last night, not so good, but then the last email that went out was Friday. Yes. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, things will just drop off very quickly. So um it's I but I don't want to be sending I don't want to be doing you know an email a day because I just think that would just be oversaturating myself. And um, so I think you're you're right. It's it's it it's it was something I was thinking, right? Okay, I need to build that up more, get a bit more consistency of peace. So really get it back to January's because January was really good because Zapia was telling me that I was getting very close to my limit. I thought, oh, this is actually well it's bad news and good news, but good news because it means there's lots of people signing up, yeah. Um and bad news because I have to pay for it. Yeah, yeah. Well as long as it's not a good thing. But it's not too much, it's not too much, yeah, it's not too much extra. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So for um what I'll do afterwards if it's useful is I'll connect you with Yosip, he's like the head of delivery over at the the agency that I own, and he's like in this stuff day in, day out. He's like the the the absolute master at it all. And I'll get him to like uh email back and forth with you and give you some tips about like okay, if you did exactly this, this, and this, and like give you the you know links to resources and whatever, then that's gonna help you to kind of grow the revenue. Because I think you've got massive potential to like I would say at least double your revenue and probably quite a bit more from what from what I'm seeing. I've we've only talked for like 45 minutes, but from what I'm seeing so far, what I'd gone through on your YouTube channel, it looks like you could be like three times or more your revenue with just just some relatively simple tweaks, I would say.

Resources For List Growth And Promotions

SPEAKER_00

Um for anyone listening, if you like, well, I'd like to know how to double my email list as well. I've got a guide called double your email list, uh, and you can get it from data-drivenmarketing.co slash guide and a couple of resources about the stuff I'd mentioned around the email promotions. There's episode 180, how I two times revenue in 90 days with these emails. And what I did in that episode is I went through with Dominic, who's one of the guys from the team over at the agency, he does a lot of the coaching. Um, I went through with him and he answered a bunch of questions from listeners about how you can actually manage to increase your revenue through these email promotions. He kind of talked that through step by step. So that was episode 180. Uh, so go check those out if you want to know how to grow your revenue as well.

Where To Find Carl And Final Thanks

SPEAKER_00

Um, Carl, if people have been listening to this and they're like, Man, I want to know about my my um how to manage my time and how to be more productive, where should they go to go check out your site and your YouTube channel?

SPEAKER_01

Well, I would always say go to my website, which is carlpauline.com, uh, because everything you need is there. Uh links to my YouTube channel, uh, links to the courses that we've been talking about. Yeah. Um, and there's you know, there's there's a lot of free resources in the download section as well. So I have a download section on my website that people can download. Like just free resources, it's just to help them guide them along the way. Perfect.

SPEAKER_00

And that's C A R L for Carl, and then Pauline is P-U-L-L E I N. Carlpoline.com. Go check it out. Carl, thanks again for coming on, man. This has been awesome. I've really enjoyed it. Uh, I think you've got a great business here, and I I look forward to to seeing you grow it even more. Thanks so much for it.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you very much, John. It's been a pleasure.