The Art of Selling Online Courses

270 How I Fund My Boat Business With Online Courses

• John Ainsworth • Season 1 • Episode 270

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I sat down with Dan Lee, a self-taught wooden boat builder based in the Cotswolds, who turned a lifelong obsession into a full-time business, funded almost entirely by online courses he runs from a farm workshop. It's a genuinely great story.

Dan started building model boats at eight and full-size ones at seventeen. When COVID hit and his previous business, making tree-shaped bookcases, looked like it was going to collapse overnight, he decided to go all in on something he'd always wanted to do. He built a website, started modernising old wooden boat plans using CAD and CNC technology, created his first online course on varnishing, and never really looked back.

What I found fascinating talking to Dan is how clearly he's thought about why online teaching actually works better than in-person for hands-on crafts. The camera angles, the controlled lighting, the ability to overlay animations showing wet edges drying in real time. It's not a compromise on the in-person experience, it's genuinely better for teaching the foundations.

We also got pretty honest about where Dan's business has room to grow. He's doing well with Facebook ads and his courses are covering his workshop overheads, but his email list is sitting mostly untouched. We talked through what that could mean if he actually started using it properly, and the numbers are exciting.

If you're building a course business around a physical craft or a niche skill, I think you'll get a lot from this one.

Check out Dan's work:
🌐 http://www.danleeboatbuilding.co.uk
📸 https://www.instagram.com/danleeboatbuilding
▶️ https://www.instagram.com/danleeboatbuilding

From Paid Jobs To Passive Funding

SPEAKER_01

We actually don't take on any paid work from any customers, it's all funded digitally. I said, by the end of the year, I want the business to be fully funded by Passive Income. And we did it. It's me like sweating away with a huge queue of work in that I can't physically build more than two of these a week ever. Right without having a huge team, I think I've just planted the seed in my head that's like right, what can I do? I could see a tall passive revenue stream that's gonna bring in enough money to make this happen.

SPEAKER_00

Hello

Meet The Modern Wooden Boat Builder

SPEAKER_00

and welcome to the Art Selling Online Courses. We're here to share winning strategies and secrets and top performers in the online course industry. My name is Don Endsbutt and today's guest is Danley of Danley boat building. Now Dan is a self-taught wooden boat builder based in the Cotwalt here in the UK. And he's done a bit of a mission. He's trying to drag a centuries-old craft into the modern age using 3D scanning, CAD, DNC cutting. His story starts early. He was building model boats by the age of eight and full-size ones by the time he was 17. And then when he was 35, he decided to turn that lifelong obsession into his full-time living. He set up a shop in a farm workshop in the Cotwalt. And the clever of it is it isn't really a traditional boatyard, it's a multimedia craft workshop where building the boat is only half a picture, and the money is also coming in online as well. And it's worked. Dan's YouTube channel has grown to around 55,000 subscribers and about 7.7 million views, with his most popular video passing a million on its own. It's been featured in Wooden Boat Magazine, guest tutors at the Boat Building Academy, and it's built a whole catalogue of online courses: varnishing, painting, CNC woodworking. Had to look up what that meant. Marine Electrics, all run out of that one workshop. Dan, welcome to the show, man. Thank you for having me. Nice to be

Who Buys Boatbuilding Courses And Why

SPEAKER_00

here. So who are you helping? Who is it who's who's buying courses and watching your videos and kind of learning from you?

SPEAKER_01

Um I think primarily kind of boat owners and enthusiasts, um, although that does also extend through to professional yards. I was quite surprised, particularly with my varnishing course, which was the first one I created. Um, we've had a lot of um actual professional yards that really struggled to nail this process, and they've sort of got in touch and said, Is it okay if we use this course to train our staff? And I was like, Yeah, sure. Didn't really think of that, having you. That's amazing, dude. Yeah, it's it's reached out further further than what I initially expected. Um even a lot of super yacht captains that will will buy the course for their yacht, and then all of their staff get trained maintenance-wise on the course. So um yeah, initially aimed purely at the guy at home or with a boat who wanted to do varnishing paint work, but then as it sort of evolved, um reached out into a much wider audience.

SPEAKER_00

The guy, I'm trying to find his name now, he came on the podcast and he teaches people how to get work on a on super yachts. Oh, okay. That's interesting. Which is like that's niche, isn't it? So he's a captain of a super yacht, right? And he um he started out by uh some friend he'd met at some hostel or something and said, Oh, I'm going off to do this job, like three months working on this big yacht. Um and he was like, Oh, that sounds interesting. And he went off and he got a job there and he kind of worked his way up and eventually became a captain of one. And now he teaches people how do you get these kind of jobs because it's like it's not but most people don't even know it exists as a thing.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I should put you guys in touch. Here it is. Uh Hugo Ortega, episode 201. Um, I'm gonna make a note and I'll connect you guys afterwards. Yeah, cool. Yeah. So okay. So that's who's getting it. And then what's the what's the issue you're kind of solving for them? Is it they don't know how to do this this particular skill at all? Is it that you're showing like the nuance and the intricacy? Like, are you working with beginners or are you working with advanced people and helping with kind of refinements to details? I think it's actually both, really.

SPEAKER_01

I wanted the course to to start from right down low. So if you've never even opened a tin of varnish before, um you've you don't know what most people know what sandpaper is, but like no idea what grits to use, what to start with. I wanted it to pick up from that level, but then also be a kind of top-up for people that have done this for I mean there there are people that have taken it and and got in touch with me and said, I've been doing this for 20 years, which is longer than I've been doing it, ironically. And they've said it's still filled in gaps that I just didn't quite understand about how the product behaves or whatever, and it's kind of taken them to the next level. So it kind of um does both, really. Nice.

SPEAKER_00

That's amazing. Yeah.

Revenue Reality And Hitting 2025 Goals

SPEAKER_00

Can you give people some kind of idea of the size of your business, like uh revenue if you're happy to share it, for the online courses and the from the from the boat's point of view?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so it's kind of evolved really. Um so the business has only really been uh actually boat building for probably five years or so, I would say. Um and it started out being restoration work, so taking in boats for people, restoring them, and I was always very conscious of the fact that that wasn't what I wanted to be doing for the rest of time. I really wanted to be building new wooden boats, but it's a hugely reputation-based industry, and you know, nobody's gonna walk through the door and just commission a new wooden boat. So, really, the reason for looking at online courses was like, okay, well, if nobody's gonna commission a new wooden boat, I don't want to be stuck doing restorations for the rest of my life. How can I earn a living and sort of forge out into that path, you know, another way? So that's the reason I looked at online online courses and creating them because I could see a sort of passive revenue stream that's gonna bring in enough money to actually make this happen. Um, so it's kind of evolved a little bit. It started off off with with restorations and then I sort of pushed out into this direction, and now we actually don't take on any paid work from any customers, it's all funded um digitally. So um, so yeah, it's it's shifted a little bit, and initially that was quite hard because you know, building the courses and I only had one course initially, it was like, you know, probably a thousand pounds a month, maybe I would say, um, to begin with, and then it was like, okay, I'll also make a painting course and we can bolt those on and kind of grow things a little bit. Um and then so at at that time we're kind of we're sort of winding courses and digital stuff up as the sort of invoiceable work is winding down. Um but revenue-wise now, I think we're kind of with the we're sort of with three online courses, we're probably average sort of between five and ten thousand a month in course sales.

SPEAKER_00

Nice.

SPEAKER_01

Um so it's kind of at the point now where that pretty much covers overheads. So just to bear in mind within that figure, there's there is a full-blown workshop sat here, which is kind of you know, so I'm footing the overheads of you know, renting a workshop, electricity, heating, all the stuff that comes with a fully functioning woodworking shop. Um so I had to kind of get that passive revenue up high enough to be able to cover those overheads, it's not just um a wage in my pocket, really. So um uh so yeah, we're just about at that level now where it kind of covers its costs. Um and and actually this was my New Year's resolution for last year, um for 2025, I think it was. I said by the end of the year, I want the business to be fully funded by passive income, which is like a combination of YouTube, um, but most, you know, the courses do most of the heavy lifting with that really. Yeah, yeah. Um and we did it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Nice. Well, congratulations. Cheers, thank you. Not many people get to say they actually did their New Year's resolutions. Yeah, I think that's the only one I've ever actually properly achieved. I still smoke, I still drink, I still gotta stay up too late. Yeah. Haven't been to the gym enough, but I've made the business full-time.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. What was it that tipped you into doing this full-time? Like, not the the the online courses, but I mean, but like you you'd been building these boats since you were a kid, but you went full-time on this like whatever five years ago or something. What kind of was the tipping point for

COVID Pivot And Digital Boat Plans

SPEAKER_00

that?

SPEAKER_01

It was COVID, really. It was that period period of time where everybody just had a re-evaluation of everything they do.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Um, and so we ran another business here. We used to make tree-shaped bookcases quite creative wall feature stuff. Um and that was the business that we ran, and that's what got this workshop and bought all my machines and tools and kind of established my setup. Um, and then when COVID happened, I was like, nobody's buying tree-shaped bookcases because the world's ending. So like I thought I was gonna lose the business almost immediately. Right. Because when it very first happened, sales just like switched off and it was great. Now we're now we're in trouble. Um so up until then, boats had just been my hobby, so I was building them in the evenings and messing around with them for years and and stuff like that. Um so it was then that I kind of realised it was both me and my wife, and we had some staff as well working for the business, and I thought, if we lose this, like that's everything gone. And we've got no kind of backup. Um, but I'd had this idea in the back of my mind all the time about a boat building business, just had no idea really how to start it or what to do. Um, and I'd had this idea of kind of modernising digital boat plans, so taking old books like you can see there, and putting them into CAD and modernizing them for like the C and C cutting process so that people could download digital files, take them to a C and C shop just up the road from them, get a kick cut, and then build a boat and just moot like sidestep all of the lofting process, which is where you've got to kind of loft, draw the whole boat out on the floor and make patterns and things. That's the bit that daunts a lot of people. Yeah. So as soon as COVID happened, and we had that lockdown thing, I was like, Well, I'm not sitting at home doing nothing. So I took my computer home and immediately began modernising boat plans and set up Dan Lee Boat Building and built a website and launched that kind of thing. Um, so that was really the catalyst for it. Um it was a bit of a shit moment because it was kind of like we're gonna lose our business and you know, what else have I got to fall back on? So it was a bit scary. Um as it transpired, as soon as people realised that they were gonna be at home throughout COVID, everybody decided to renovate their houses. And so we actually had the busiest period we've ever had with the shelf business. Right, right. Um but I was already. Was it? Yeah, the website was built and I was committed and and um yeah, I was didn't want to turn back then. And I wasn't particularly enjoying the other business anyway. It was it wasn't really. Is it still going or is that all shut down? It's pretty much gone now. Yeah, we um so one of the guys that used to work for us, we sort of licensed all the designs to him, and when he left, he kind of carried on doing it for a little bit. Um and we again we steadily wound that down as the boat building business wound up. So I would do like two days a week on boats, three days a week, and you know, it was quite a sort of steady, safe handover. Nice.

SPEAKER_00

What I've noticed is all of the the really smart, capable people I know who've had something just go horrifically wrong for them with business. When I see them again two years later, they're always doing better than they were with the previous business. Really? What they were doing before. Like I had the friend who he ran like a some kind of travel business, some kind of tourism travel business, and then COVID happened and it all went to shit.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And then I saw I hadn't seen him in a while, and I saw him uh at a conference in Mexico the other day, and he's doing a a million dollars a month in his current business. And I'm like, dude, that was not what you were doing before. What what on earth? And I hadn't seen him since since you know, uh four or five years or whatever. Yeah and then another friend who he'd sold his business, he'd built up a business for like 10-15 years, um, and then he'd sold it, and the guy I'd sold it to stopped making the payments and also had like taken loads of like loans from the business in some weird, convoluted financial way that meant the business wasn't really worth anything and was running it all into the ground and was taking loans out against the business, all of this. So at the end of all of this, he had to go through courts and stuff, and he got the old business back. And but he was in real financial trouble because he was dependent on the the money that was coming in from the payments the guy was making. He didn't like pay all the money up front.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And he was it was hard. He was in a bad way. And I saw him the other day and he was doing a million dollars a month in his new business. And I'm like, what is it? Maybe I need everything to go wrong with my business. Yeah. Where do I start the fire? Yeah. But maybe there's something about it just puts a fire up your ass or something. I don't know. But I mean, these are guys who they were already doing really well. They were already doing like maybe a million in a year or something, but like but they weren't doing a million a month. I mean, that was crazy.

SPEAKER_01

That's serious, serious turnover. Yeah. I guess it's that kind of fresh start, isn't it? And you you build on everything else you know. I know for me, starting the boat building business, the reason I looked down the the digital boat plans was because every now and then I would buy digital files for the other business. Um we had this little set of um bird decal stickers that we used to send out with a tree so people could make like a wall mural thing. And I remember buying that file, it was only like four or five pounds, and I just thought to myself, the person that's designed that file, they could sell that a thousand times today, and they're gonna be no busier than if they sold it once. Wild, isn't it? And here's me like sweating away with a huge queue of work. It's like, you know, I can't physically build more than two of these a week ever without having a huge team. I think that just planted the seed in my head.

SPEAKER_00

It was like, right, what can I do that's that? This is when I got into marketing online courses. This was kind of part of my thinking was I I uh I used to work doing marketing for um like gyms, yoga classes, martial arts studios, fit fitness stuff, right? And what would happen is I would fill them up and then they didn't need me anymore. And I was like, Well, that's not ideal, is it? It's like you do so. I was like, do I do a slightly worse job so that they keep needing me just a little bit every month? Yeah. Well, what do I do here? And so I was like, what could I sell where if I sold enough of it, they're just still happy because you could just sell more. It's like an infinite supply. And I was like, is it e-commerce? Yeah, which kind of is, but like you know, if you've got to order stuff from China, then you sometimes have troubles with inventory and scaling that's harder. Um software, which definitely does fit that, and online courses was the other one, and I kind of worked trying all three, and I found online courses was just like, oh, people in online course space need the stuff that I do around like funnels and email marketing or what have you so much because people just aren't doing it like at all, you know? Um and I really like I just I've taken so many courses that I got so much value from, and it would blow my mind. I'm like, I spent a hundred dollars on this course, and it taught me what it took this person 10 years to learn how to do it, and they filmed it beautifully, and they really thought about how to explain it, and it and they've given resources with it. I'm like, how is this possible? So to me, online courses is just like this incredible value that you get for it, and it's got the infinite supply, so that's how come I kind of got started with it.

Teaching Hands On Skills Online

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I see.

SPEAKER_00

I want to ask you about you said that a lot of people assume hands-on skills like varnishing can't be taught online, but you think you can teach the foundations better and faster online than you could in person. Can you talk me through that?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that's an that's an interesting one, and I would have initially thought the same. I would have thought it's easier to teach somebody to varnish when you're stood in front of them. And I've actually taught this in person because I guess tutor down at the boat building academy once a year, and we teach paint and varnish as part of that course, and it's incredibly difficult to teach that with a group of people. The probably the most noticeable thing is that when you've got a room of ten people stood around a boat and you're varnishing something, probably at best, only one of them is actually seeing what you want them to see, you know sort of they're catching the the right angle of light in the varnish as you run the brush through it so they can see what it's doing.

SPEAKER_00

That's fascinating. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because if you've if you've got something practical, you would think, oh well, the person needs to try it themselves. Yeah. The hands-on part is so important. But if you can't see what they're doing and they can't see what you're doing, yeah, then how the fuck does that help?

SPEAKER_01

And they've just and you've only got one person in the room that's actually seeing and in actual fact, I'm the only one that's really seeing it, because I'm downloading it. You know what you're doing. I know what I'm looking for.

SPEAKER_00

I w I was interviewing yesterday a lady who teaches violin. Right. And she's got a YouTube video she put out like ten years ago, something like that, that was teaching people vibrato. So vibrato is the bit when you make the the the note kind of like um vibrate back and forth, and it's uh it's a very common thing in violin, it's common on guitar as well. Um and it's really difficult for someone to see what you're doing because you move your hand really fast. So she'd filmed it in super slow-mo. Okay.

SPEAKER_02

And then played it back.

SPEAKER_00

And then when you play it in super slow-mo, there's no sound. Yeah. The super slow-mo doesn't catch the sound. Or if it does, it reduces it goes, you know, it would like change the tone, right? Yeah. So she had like two sides of the screen, one showing her hand going super fast in the sound, and the other s high side showing like going like really slowed down exactly what she was doing. Yeah. And I was like, oh yeah, that's that's so much better. Yeah. That's so much better than teaching it in person. It's crazy. Yeah. And you just can't do that in person, you know.

SPEAKER_01

It's like you you can't show it at a fraction of speed because it doesn't do the same thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So with your stuff, you can get the camera at the exact right angle and the perfect lighting and like work on that and try it 20 times until you get it right and go, that's the take. And then they include that.

SPEAKER_01

And everybody sees that same shot. Right. Everyone that takes it sees exactly what I want them to see to understand what I'm talking about. So that that is a a big thing. The other thing is I do some stuff where there's kind of animations over the top of the video. So there's a thing with varnishing called um maintaining a wet edge. So as you paint or varnish an area, it immediately starts to dry. So what you've got to do is evolve through the surface to make sure that the sort of edges that you've painted up to are never left alone for too long. So you've got to sort of you do that section, and then it's like this is a wet edge. So you want to do this bit next before this starts to dry too much and leave this alone and evolve through the surface. So but when you're doing a boat, you can't necessarily do both sides, so you've got to dot one side to the next. So I've got this video which is looking down on the deck of the boat as you varnish it, and over the top of it are lines that I draw to show where all the wet edges are. And they start as yellow and then turn to red over time. So it says to you, right, these are two wet edges, you know, this one has been open the longest, so it's turned red. This one you've painted over, so that's okay. Now you need to come back to this one. It's like, how can I explain that even in person? But with a with a an animation overlaid over the video, it makes you conscious of what's going on. Um so there's things like that, but it's just like I I can't do that as well in person. Yeah. Um what I think is that the course teaches the first kind of 40-50% of the foundational knowledge way better than I can and way quicker. You know, you can learn the basics very quick. I think the only time that in-person tuition takes over is when somebody already pretty much knows what they're doing, but they've they need to do it, and you've got to stand there and go, Oh, hang on a minute, this is what you're doing. You're you're just doing that a little bit too slowly or a bit too heavy-handed, or and kind of and that takes them to the final sort of hundred percent.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense. Yeah, I play bass, and it's like I um I started out by taking courses online, and so for learning the basic stuff, that was great, and I could learn the scales and the arpeggios, and I could learn various songs, whatever. Yeah. But I was like, I'm pretty sure my fingering is terrible. And I'm I'm like, Oh, I've got my finger somehow in the wrong place, but I don't know in what way. So that needed to be so then I started doing like in-person lessons and the guy was like, Oh right, okay, yeah, yeah. We need to change this. Who was your um who was your bass tutor out of interest? The in-person or online? Oh well, either actually. So online is uh Scott's bass lessons. Okay. Um guy teaching bass online, and uh friend of mine now, by uh separate chance. And um and uh in person it's a guy called Kevin, he's in a band called Who Who No Hunami. Okay, cool. So though it's not like well known or anything like that, but um he is becoming more so, he's getting play radio play now for their band. Oh nice. He's very excited about it, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

It's cool. Yeah. A friend of mine teaches online bass guitar, I think he's called online baseguitar.com. And he's got a YouTube channel and um teaches and he plays um he does a lot of like um like musical stuff, like he did the um the Beethoven tour, things like that. And um I just thought wouldn't wouldn't that be a small world affair if he was the guy that taught you and you'd actually spoken to him. But I used to play with him in bands in Sarasia. When he was younger and he used to live here, but he's in London now.

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Uh Hugh Richardson is his name. Hugh Richardson.

SPEAKER_00

No, okay. Don't know. I've interviewed a lot of people a few people at least who play bass in the podcast. Uh so I was wondering if it might be someone I know, but no, I don't. But I'll ask you about it afterwards because maybe we'll uh if he's got a big YouTube channel, I might get him on. Yeah. Invite him on at least.

YouTube Views Email List And Ads

SPEAKER_00

Um I want to kind of get into your the business side of things a little bit now. So like what's the um your I know your YouTube channel's at 55,000 subscribers and you've got like seven odd million views. How many views a month are you getting nowadays? Do you know? Quickly. As with YouTube, it's kind of spikes and troughs, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01

Um so views for the last month, 111k. Okay, sorry. Um but it's kind of you know, there's times when you neglect it a little bit and you know it sort of tails off. Um there's times when obviously one video does really well and it's like, yeah, this is good. Revenue's nice and views are high.

SPEAKER_00

Um But uh yeah, that's current average for the last month. Okay. And then what happens next from there? Do you like do much work to get those guys onto your email list? We are terrible really with our email list.

SPEAKER_01

We just don't leverage it. It's kind of it just sort of sits there for another day. It's like, yeah, oh what and we do do emails, like Sasha, my wife works for the business and and she sends out emails, but we use it more as a kind of newsletter thing. Um, you know, something news happening with the business. Um occasionally we'll we'll sort of push something like Black Friday sales or whatever, but we really don't leverage it as well as we probably should do. Um we don't do anything to to actively try and um get people to sign up other than it's a tick box on the on the checkout when they buy something. Uh so is your whole email list all past customers? Pretty much, I would think, yeah. There is there is a box on the I think on our contact page where you can sign up to um the mailing list. Um but I would imagine most of it's probably past customers.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, okay. That'd be quite a powerful list then. Okay. So you that's about like two and a half thousand at the moment, right? I think that's about right, yeah. Okay. So I would estimate that if you did do everything uh if you if you like made a bunch of changes, and I'll send you details about these afterwards, um, if you made a bunch of changes to the way that you're getting people onto the email list, you could probably be adding about two thousand people a month to your list every month. Yes, really. Yeah. If you're getting a hundred thousand views a month, like two percent opt-in rate on YouTube is realistic. Is it really like you've got yeah, so like one percent is a is totally doable, and so that'd be a thousand a month, and two thousand two percent is like if you really optimize it, refine it, what have you. So um I'm gonna connect you with Josep afterwards, he's like my head of funnest strategy, and he's gonna help you figure out like okay, for you we'll talk through it on the podcast, but like again to send through afterwards like some questions and some advice and whatever and help you figure out exactly what you need to change because you could be at least doubling your revenue for what you're doing now, yeah. And probably a bunch more. Because if you look at the way that people make money with online courses, 80% of the potential revenue is in the email list, is in promoting regular to the email list. It's like building a big email list and promoting to them. Um the percentage of people who will buy directly is really low. So the fact that you're already doing well without doing that means that there's almost definitely massive potential to increase it. Like we've had people five times their revenue before. I'm not saying that's definitely right for you, I'm just saying it's like to give you an idea of the the the kind of range that we're talking about, but definitely doubling it. That's totally doable. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_01

I mean that would be pretty awesome.

SPEAKER_00

Be dope, right? Yeah, I'm definitely on board with that. Now, one of the things I think you'd said is that you you don't actively drive people in terms of course sales from YouTube, that most of the course sales come from Facebook ads. Was that right? I would think so. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. I mean, I I I've got obviously on my YouTube channel videos about varnishing. I've done kind of sponsored ones for varnishing companies where I've basically just cherry-picked their products and I do a sp product-specific guide. So I think that organically leads to people then wanting to take the course. Um, but I wouldn't think it's the majority of our sales, it's gotta be at most ten percent organically, I would think.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Um and we kind of we kind of know what orders come in through the sales funnel, which is the only place that the Facebook ads point to. So if it comes from outside that, we we know it's probably an organic sale. Okay.

SPEAKER_00

So what are you spending a month on ads at the moment then? About two to two and a half thousand. Okay. And then you're making the f most of the five to ten K back from that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. So our return on ad spend's gotta be four to one at best.

SPEAKER_00

Probably realistically worth it. Well, that's amazing. So here's something that a lot of people don't realise with ads, and like just so this is uh this might I know I know some people are gonna find this a little bit hard getting their head around, but um the that you don't need to actually make money with the original ad spend to have an incredibly profitable business from ads because you've got a bunch of other courses, you've got other things that you can sell to people. So as long as you get somebody signing up and buying at even break-even, now you've got a customer. And now, if you can sell any percentage of those people more stuff, well now you're making profit on all of that extra. And at the moment, because you're not really doing email marketing to people, you're not you're not getting all of that extra money. So you have to make all the money up front. So the fact that you're doing four to one is fucking brilliant. Like that's fantastic, right? So it's a gr I mean like amazing, it's a great start. That's way higher than most people would get. Right. But people I know people who are making 0.7x return on ad spend in the f in the first sale, who are then making millions off it. Because over the first they've got a whole sequence over the first month that sells something else, something else, an upsell, a cross sell, another offer. And that gets them to to break even after a month, and then they've got other things that they sell that all add up when the whole customer becomes worth a lot more. So you're in a great spot.

SPEAKER_02

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

You're in a really great spot. If you're doing four to one, you know, two to one, four to one, whatever already, then that means that you've got the opportunity to add the back end on. The back end is normally in most businesses where all the money is made. It's not the front end, the point of the front end is not really to make money. The point of the front end is to get customers. The back end is where all the profit is. So if you build that, then that will mean you have extra money that you could put back into ads to spend more on it to get more people in. And then it kind of snowballs, right? It kind of goes over over and over.

SPEAKER_01

And I suppose the email marketing is there is a cost to it, but it's much less than a cost of like retargeting.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I mean the actual cost of whatever MailChimp or something sending out the emails is almost nothing. Yeah. Right? It's a hundred a month or three hundred a month or something. Very, very small. The cost there more is uh getting ri writing your time or somebody else for you writing really good emails that will then not cause people to unsubscribe because they're just annoying, or and also at the same time get them to go and buy. Yeah. Because if you don't have those two, then it's like you've got to have both of them. It's got to be good quality emails and um as in people don't unsubscribe, they like getting them and they then go by. And if you don't have that, then you're not achieving the outcome. But like that that's that's the cost is doing that part. Okay. And I have lots of uh podcast episodes explaining about that. And I'm gonna get Yosip to kind of help you with some resources around that as well. Awesome. Because at the moment you are doing a promo one promotion a year, right?

Black Friday Offers And Smarter Bundles

SPEAKER_00

The Black Friday by email? Yeah, that's pretty much it, really. Okay. Talk me through that. Like how many emails do you send? How much more money do you make when you do that?

SPEAKER_01

Um we probably did two emails, I think, last year. I can might be able to just get that up and show you. It tends to be quite a big influx, which is I guess typical of Black Friday, really. Um but then followed by a bit of a lull. So um it's like a big influx at a really cheap price, and then followed by a lull. So I don't know really if it's any better long term. I just kind of feel like we should be doing it, so that's what we do.

SPEAKER_00

It's like everybody does Black Friday. So Yeah, no, it's a great idea. I mean, like you see when you see that and you have that big influx, it's so it depends how you do Black Friday. There's like there's there's a lot of uh nuance and detail to doing it really well. And I it's I know people are gonna think when I mention Black Friday now, I'm recording this in June. I don't know when the episode's coming out, maybe in July. But start having a think about it and go and listen to episode 195, which is watch this before planning Black Friday 2025. And then episode 153, our clients did $400,000 on Black Friday as well. So uh that's from a little while ago. I think we probably did about a million with them last year.

SPEAKER_01

Um I've just got my MailChimp campaign up. So we did one email on Black Friday 2025, um, to just over 2,000 in revenue.

SPEAKER_02

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01

Um which like for the emails we normally spend send, um, that was pretty good, really. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

But I guess by your by your standards, that's like hmm. Yeah, you've got a lot more potential. So there's a few things, right? Your email list isn't as big as it could be given your YouTube channel. You're not sending um enough of those of those emails, and it might it's also really important what you make as your offer on Black Friday. Because if you just give like 50% off everything, then everybody who was going to buy anything buys it now at a discount and doesn't buy anything next month, whatever. So we generally tend to do bundles to Black Friday so that you're selling a large amount of everything. Right. So you're taking your most expensive. I think you've got a bundle that's like what, 500 pounds or something like that? Yeah. So if you did a discount off that, well, okay, you might only be making whatever it is, 350 or something per person who's like it's a big discount per person, but the total amount is so much higher that the amount of revenue you make from that is is substantially more than if you do just buy whatever you like, and then you don't see sales go down as much the next month because everyone who just wanted one course is still available to go buy something. Yeah. Yeah.

Lead Magnets And Nurture Promo Emails

SPEAKER_00

Um okay, so I'm gonna do a little summary um of what I think would kind of make the difference for you. So from your for growing your email list, what's your best uh lead magnets? You've got like the free CNC handbook, you've got a free tutorials page, is there is there any other things you've got as lead magnets?

SPEAKER_01

Um so there's a few ideas that I've had, which is kind of like uh this is what we should probably do one day when we get time to to get people to sign up. Um so there's things like through the CNC course, there's this um feed and speed calculator, which is a little calculator like app thing that I came up with, which is really helpful for to just doing quick on-the-fly calculations for how you need to run your machine. And that's free for all students, um, you know, once they've signed up for that that course. Yeah. So I've always thought we could do a thing that's like, you know, try it for seven days or something. Um, or you know, just sign up to the mailing list and and try it and then that kind of lead that in. Um so I thought that would be good. I've we've kind of loosely done a thing that's like five varnishing tips, that's like a a sort of short landing page with like, you know, top five tips, this is the things you're probably doing wrong, and then use that as the like sign up to the mailing list to watch it kind of thing. Same with the painting course. Um we could do the same kind of thing with um the C and C course, and then we could do a five boat building tips.

SPEAKER_00

So there are there are a handful of things that I've sort of thought in the back of my mind we could do that, but it's just you haven't kind of like you haven't made any of those yet available. No, okay. And to be on C handbook, that is available for free, is that right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, but it there's no like sign up to the mailing list to view it, it's just sat there for free. Oh, it's just for free. Just dishing it out for free. Okay. It's very generous of you. Okay. Yeah. Well, it's the I think the probably the biggest thing with the business is it's just at the moment time to sit down and like it's so hard, isn't it? And do all this stuff. Because you know, Sasha, my wife helps, but it the buck normally stops with me when it's like, oh, we need a video for that thing, and then I've got to find the time to do it when I'm doing a million other things. Yeah. Um but it's like at some point we've got to say, right, let's just take a week and let's do all of those things that we need to implement to kind of take the business forward, really. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

The way I think about it, so I totally I totally feel you on that one in terms of the the amount of you know, like how hard it is to try and do it. It's so hard starting a business because you've got to do basically everything. Yeah. You know, yeah, you can't afford to hire any other people, yeah. And you're like, you don't know how to do any of the stuff, so you've got to learn how to do it and then do it, and then like, oh my god. So no no criticism at all from my point. Um I'm just like, man, I can see that you've got this potential to like make a whole bunch more money, and I really want it for you. Um in terms of the what I think the starting point I would do is take something you've already got, so maybe the CNC handbook, just because that's kind of available, and then put that behind an email opt-in and then just put that in all of the videos. Like put it in the and put it in the description of the videos ab above the fold, and by above the fold I mean, you know that bit where someone has to click more to see the full description? Yeah. Before that. So it's just like it's in there, it's right away in their face. And the CNC handbook isn't perfect, right? Because if like if you're doing a video about varnishing and the the the hand the the lead magnet is about CNC woodwork, then it's like, well, that's not a perfect match, but it's something. And then if you had something up, you're gonna get a percentage, whereas at the moment you're getting zero. Yeah. Because there isn't anything. So if you've got something like that, and then later on you can go back and go, right, now I'm gonna make a varnishing lead magnet, and I'm gonna make a a different CNC one, and I'm gonna make a whatever else, you know, whatever other kind of topic, main topics you've got. Um, but have something to start with. So that would be my first thing, and that would just kind of get you going.

SPEAKER_02

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Second thing Um is then create a um is start emailing people, like sending out email promotions to that list. And when it's two and a half thousand, that's you're gonna get much lower results than when it's like when you start to get up to it being ten thousand or fifteen thousand. But it's like it's two things. One, you'll make money from it right away. Yeah. And two, you start to get better at doing this. The more you practice it, the better at it you're getting. Yeah. I'm gonna find, I'm gonna connect you with, like I said, with Yosip afterwards, he'll give you some like resources and tips about this. But for everyone listening, I want to make sure I've got some um podcast episodes to uh to go check out. They're gonna take you through how to send good email promotions. Because most people, most course creators, worry about sending email promos because they're like, if I send these, it's gonna annoy everybody that go unsubscribe.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's definitely my mindset. And the the there is a possibility of that, right? If you send bad emails, people won't like getting them.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So what you've got to do is learn how do you send emails that are helpful and useful and move people towards a sale. Yeah. Which is not necessarily the easiest thing to do, but there's a system that we've developed that's specifically for course creators that's very repeatable, um, that exactly helps you to do that. We call it nurture promos. Um see if I can find the uh the right podcast episodes about it. So the basic idea of it is you do three emails that are that are warm-up ones, and they don't talk about the course at all, but they talk about the topic of the course. So let's say it's varnishing, right? So you have the through these three emails, it's pain, agitation, solution. So the pain email, you talk to people about what is the problem that they are currently facing. And so what you're trying to do is help them feel seen, because you're like, you might be feeling, and I'm gonna get this wrong because I don't know anything about varnishing, right? But you might be feeling so pissed off because every time you start doing it, you've got the the the edge that ends up drying out before the other one's done, and you start to you kind of can't ever quite get it right, and so you've got these lumps in your varnish, and it never looks exactly the way you want to, and you've tried watching people doing it, but you can't see it properly, and isn't that so frustrating? And they're like, oh, it is! Yeah, thank God somebody understands me, right? So that's the point of that email. So then the agitation one is you then show them how is that affecting their life in ways that they might not even realize. So what this means is your boat never looks quite as good as you were hoping it was going to. You never feel as proud of it as you're going to, you don't get the comments that you wanted to from other people about it. And I don't know if there's any structural issues with like if you don't do the varnishing quite right, like maybe you you're also getting, you know, water into the boat and it's like affecting the structure of it, whatever it is. And they go, Oh shit, I hadn't never thought about that. You're absolutely right, Dan. That is that's a that's a major issue. And you've not talked about the course at all at this point. And you say, in the next email, I'm gonna give you a tip about how to do that better. And then you're gonna explain that. Was it called the the wet edge? You said earlier. You explain that you explain about wet edge, and maybe you have a little clip from the video that you include and they can kind of see it within that email or click through the video. And you say, if you want to solve this problem properly, next week I'm gonna be putting my course on sale. Yeah. So that's all you mentioned in that third email. So that's the whole first week has just been getting them thinking about varnishing. Yeah. Then week two, you actually put the the uh the course on sale. And so the first email is gonna be your you're telling them about all the stuff that's included in the course and why you included it and why that's so great. And what you include in this one is a link for them to unsubscribe from this week's emails if they don't want to hear them. So if you're not interested in buying a varnishing course from us, if you're not interested in learning varnishing, we're gonna be talking about it a bunch this week. But don't worry, just click this link and you will still be on the email list, but you just won't hear any of the stuff about the varnishing course. That's interesting. I don't know. So you don't need to do that. Yeah. So now you haven't got the risk of pissing off the people who never wanted to hear about varnishing in the first place, but the ones who do get to hear about so then that's the first that's the the the gain email. So it goes gain, logic, fear, um, fake hues, frequently asked questions, going, going, gone. So it's quite a lot of emails go around this week. The logic one is more explaining all of the logical reasons why solving that problem is a really big deal. So why varnishing is logically really important as opposed to emotionally. And then the fear one is the emotional side of it. Like here's all of the emotional reasons why you should be solving this problem. And by the way, so that that's not about your course, that's about the problem. And at the end, don't forget, the course is on discount this week. So you're finding different ways to talk about the thing that they need to solve to get them thinking, I need to solve that. Yeah. And then at the end, you're helpfully mentioning, and if you want to solve that this week, it's on 30% discount. Okay. Get it this week. Yeah. So then the uh the next one is an incredibly clever email. Um, it's called Future Casting, that I learned from a webinar that was done by uh Deadline Funnel, who's like a software uh software company in the course course space. And the idea of this is you are showing people what their future could be like. So if you take if you buy this course and then you follow what it says to do, in a week, in a day, you're going to know this. In a week, you're going to be already practicing this and you're going to be achieving this level of skill. In a month, you're going to have your boat completely varnished perfectly and it's all going to be fantastic. In three months, you're going to be getting compliments from people on a regular basis about how beautiful your boat looks. You're going to feel proud about it. You're going to be like, you know, out on the water with it. Isn't it going to be a gorgeous day? Whatever. You're seeing what you're showing them their potential future, which they can't see. Yeah. Because they're they're they don't know what you know. They're stuck in their current state, right? Whereas you can see this is how good it is. I know what it's like when people get really good at varnishing, and I know how much they love it once they've done it. Um, and then the last few emails are more like uh um straightforward promotion. They're saying that basically urgency. It's like the dis this discount is going away. Yeah. That's the going, going, gone ones. Um and uh I'm just gonna see if I can find a podcast that we can point people to for this. Uh we made 800k in one month. Here's how. That's uh episode 217, and that is basically explaining um how to run great email promos if I'm if I've got the right episode, so go check that one out. Awesome. Um so that's the basic idea with the email promos. They work great. The unsubscribe rate is generally goes down rather than up versus regular emails because a lot of work has been put into this, and like there's there's a lot of more nuance than I've been able to go into today. Um I'll get Yosip to kind of send you through some stuff around all of this. But that basically allows you to run a promotion for a course pretty much if you've got enough courses, you can pretty much do one every month without without annoying your audience too much. We've tried two a month, it's too much. We've tried every two months to see does will you get lower on maybe people would not like to have so many email promos. Uh we do one every two months. The amount you make goes down because you've only done one instead of two. Right. And the email list hasn't stayed bigger enough for that to be worthwhile. Yeah. So if you combine all of that together, growing your email list, sending great email promos, having all these different offers, I would be shocked if you couldn't double your revenue. Shocked. I would be stunned. Yeah. Well, that sounds good to me. Yeah, wicked.

The Mission To Modernise Wooden Boats

SPEAKER_00

Um Dan, what's next for you? Once you get to the point where you're making more money with your with your courses, what else do you want to do? Like what's the cause? I think you've got you're kind of got these uh broader goals about like dragging the boat building industry into the future, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

It's always been a bit bit of a mission of mine, really. Um it's such an outdated industry. Um it's just there's there's a sort of divide really. There's either people that sort of embrace technology but they're entirely scared of it. A lot of boat builders are like that, or they're just completely feet in the ground, like this is the way we've done it for a hundred years, this is the only way. It's like, well, that only means you haven't learned anything new in the last hundred years, so it's not good. Um so yeah, yeah, I want to kind of modernise it, but also bring around like wooden boats back into the the forefront. You know, when fiberglass came out, wooden boats just got kicked to the side and it was like nobody wants a wood boat anymore. Um but you know, technology and products have moved forwards so that wooden boats aren't what they used to be even 50 years ago. You know, everybody just thinks maintenance, they leak, they're a nightmare to look after. Whereas they're not really. They're they're just as good as any of the fiberglass boats and can be. But it's trying to break that sort of mindset and and get people thinking, you know, maybe I do want a wooden boat again. Um so I'd really like to do that and and make it so that you know they can be built efficiently so that they're competitive price-wise. Um and just bring them back into the picture a little bit. Um that'd be quite a good good mission, really, if I can do that. That's cool, man. I like that. Yeah, yeah, it'd be quite cool. As you know, as a bigger picture of of what the business does, really, as a smaller picture, I just kind of want to build like sort of repeat what I'm doing. So the current series I'm doing on the YouTube channel is building a boat called Temptress, which is this 24-foot runabout, and it's really kind of exploring the modern ways in which we can build boats, and it's a bit of an RD project for what we can do here, how can we move it forward, how can we make this efficient? Um, and really I want to keep the business sort of doing that. Once that boat's done, let's pick a different boat and and see where else we can push it and how we can, you know, move things forward, um, and do a video series that follows it and and carry on with that really. How long does it take to build a boat? It depends really, because I'm trying to self-fund this one I'm doing at the moment, so it's kind of in a position where it's like I can do it when I can afford to do it.

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Um need to sell more courses so you can build more boats. Absolutely, yeah. That that would definitely will you sell it at the end? Yeah, well, I'm trying to sell it throughout its build, but as I mentioned earlier, it's a hugely reputation-based industry, and until that first boat is done and out there, and it sort of puts my mark on things, it's like, right, this is what you get when you buy a Danley boat. Until that first one is out there, it's very difficult to entice a buyer. So again, that's that's the sort of reason for looking down the online course route. It's like, well, how can I pay my bills first and foremost? Yeah. Um, to get the business to where I want it to be, which is building new boats. Um, so that was the sort of thought process, really, with going the route I've gone.

SPEAKER_00

I love it. This is one of the things I really love about working with online course creators generally. It's like everyone's no almost nobody started the business because they were like, oh, this is a spot in the market where there's a load of money. Yeah. They started it because they gave they really care about something, you know, teaching violin, building boats, making home recording studios, cooking, whatever it is, right? People really care about something. And they're like, but spent, I don't know, whatever, 20 years becoming an expert in that topic. And then it's like, right, how do we get this out into the world and and help more people? It's beautiful. Yeah. Dan, I love what you're doing, man. I think it's fucking epic. This is great. Thanks, appreciate that. Um thank you so much for coming on. I really, really appreciate your time. Thank you. I know you've got boats to be building, and I appreciate you coming on and talking to everybody here about what you've been up to. That's been great, thank you. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01

And you've given me a little kind of um window into where we should be, which is you know, you really quite exciting to see when we start to do stuff properly, what we can kind of turn this into rather than just kind of struggling along as we are.

SPEAKER_00

So I think you've I think you have built more than you currently have realized. You are further along than your than your revenue shows. You've done a lot of the legwork, a lot of the the the um like foundation building. And I think it's gonna be I think 2026 is gonna be a good year. I think you're gonna be happy.

SPEAKER_02

That's what we want.

SPEAKER_00

A new resolution is needed. Um as always, thanks so much for listening. We really appreciate you guys. If you want to check out some of the resources we've got to help on the topics I've talked about, I mentioned a couple of podcast episodes, but we've also got for increasing opt-ins the complete lead magnet guide. That is datadrivenmarketing.co slash lead dash magnet. And double your email list guide, which is the whole process I was quickly covering for down there about like the steps he needs to change in order to increase his opt in rates once he's got a great lead magnet. So that is at data drivenmarketing.co slash guide. As always, thanks so much for listening. Really appreciate you, and we'll see you next time.