272 My Free Content Is Why My Course Sells

Gabriel lost his job. While applying for new ones and getting rejected, he started teaching Spanish online and writing short stories for his students. The feedback was so good he thought, why not share this with the world?

Eighteen months later, his site Fluent with Stories is pulling in 250,000 visitors a month through SEO, adding close to 2,000 new email subscribers every month, and his debut A1 Spanish course launched to testimonials most creators would genuinely envy. And he's been taking it seriously for all of five months.

I sat down with Gabriel to talk through how he built all of this, what's driving the SEO traffic, how Amazon KDP became an unexpected lead generation engine, and where the gaps still are in his funnel. We also got into the tripwire conversation, single vs double opt-in, and why his sales page is missing the one section that could make a real difference to conversions.

Gabriel is one of those guests where you're just rooting for him the whole way through. He's humble, he listens to his audience, he builds what they ask for, and he has a genuinely different product in a very crowded niche. The bit where he talks about his readers begging to support him before the course even existed, that one stuck with me.

If you're early in building your course business and wondering whether the fundamentals actually work, this one is for you. I think you'll really enjoy it.

Check out Gabriel's work:
🌐 http://www.fluentwithstories.com

Transcript

Cold Open Support From Readers

SPEAKER_02 0:00

I saw something very strange. I I have a number of people that bought the A1 card just to support me, for me to focus on creating the next card thing. This inner thing with my readers, that is fantastic. I found product marketing people are loving these these concepts to keep asking for more. I wouldn't call it a strategy because I was not thinking about doing the business out of this. But I think it's the main driver of this business. I don't know, it's my first website. I don't know what to do. I'll just tell you, I'll just tell you that's a lot.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

I can't believe you're going to do more than 30 minutes for five minutes. It's

Stories First Spanish Learning Model

SPEAKER_00 0:33

fantastic. Hello and welcome to the art of studying online courses. We are here to go winning strategy. They are a Spanish learning business built on one stubborn idea. You don't learn a language by doing grammar tables. You learn it the way you learned your first one. He is a self-described language enthusiast who speaks five languages himself. They turn that obsession into a course built entirely around rated short stories, original tales with humor, romance, thought twists, narrated by native speakers with the grammar quietly absorbed in the background rather than taught at you. It's a really different angle in a really crowded niche. And it's working. Gabriel's built up a community of more than 15,000 Spanish learners on his email list. He's bringing well over a thousand new email subscribers every single month, nearly 2,000. And his flagship A1 Spanish course is just launched has the kind of testimonials most creators would kill for. Gabriel, welcome to the show, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:31

Thank you for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

So what's

Why Comprehensible Input Works

SPEAKER_00 1:34

your background with this? Why is it that you're so convinced that stories is the is the way to go with learning languages?

SPEAKER_02 1:40

I mean, I as a language enthusiast, I've been learning languages for for a while. I learned English basically just using comprehensible input, just like playing games and reading books. So whenever I started learning French when I moved to Switzerland, I did the same thing. I bought some books, I started reading, and that's just how my brain works. I learned things from from context. So I saw that it was the best way to learn a language, and I I've been using it since to learn other languages.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

So do you know Oli Richards? Because he has a similar kind of philosophy in the way that he's teaching languages as well.

SPEAKER_02 2:18

Yes, I actually bought a pair of his books when I was learning German, and I I found it very useful because as a matter of fact, I think there's a huge lack of graded readers and for all of the languages, and all my clients have been saying me this, like finally, someone built the thing that I was looking for. So Ollie Richards, yeah, he's uh a pioneer in the space, and I I admire uh everything that that he did. But I try to to make a bit of a different approach where I'm putting the I'm I'm writing trying to write like uh a novelist and think of grammar and vocabulary, putting that in the in the second place because I really want to engage people with the stories. I don't want them to read the story just to learn, I want them to learn and to be engaged. So that's that's how I try to differentiate myself.

Building Interactive Story Lessons

SPEAKER_00 3:20

And I was going through one of the ones on your website this morning, and I saw you've got it seems that you've got more than just like reading the story, right? You've got uh you can read it, you can have it read to you in uh by a native speaker, you can see the English translation of it as well. So you kind of got a few different angles people can take if they're if they want to.

SPEAKER_02 3:37

Yes, exactly, because I I'm I'm taking it further. I I saw that people they want to to listen at the same time that they read. So I think it was important to add the the audio. I also added a bit of key vocabulary about the the most important words on the story. After that, they have some exercise, they can practice the vocabulary with some flashcards, they also have some comprehension questions, and I mean the the feedback has been amazing. People love hearing to the stories and practicing, they say it's uh it's a really good tool.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

Nice. If anyone listening is interested to hear the episode with Ollie, uh he's on episode 115. I interviewed him. He's a uh friend of mine who runs this business called store is it story learning as well? Something like that. Yeah. Um okay, and one of the things I find fascinating in the language space is that everyone's got a different angle on it. Like you you're like super against learning through drilling grammar, and then my friend Shona Beckwith, that's her only thing. It's like she her audience is the people who are like, they want to get the grammar perfect, and they want to like so hers is called perfect English grammar, and then you've got uh she was on episode 136, and then uh do you know Lydia Marachova? I don't. So she has an approach she called language mentoring, I think. And her idea is everyone's got a different way that they learn languages, so she will help you find yours. She's not teaching anyway, she's just helping you figure out what's your way of doing it. So she's like, okay, well, maybe like so maybe it's listening to podcasts in your native language, or in the language that you're trying to learn, or maybe it's watching TV, or maybe it's like immersing yourself like Benny Lewis's thing, or whatever, and she's helping you to figure that out. So that's like I think it's great because like at school, you've there's one way, right? This is how you do it, this is what you're gonna do. And it's like, oh no, you could do it however the fuck you want. You want to do it Gabriel's way, you fucking go do it Gabriel's way, it's great.

SPEAKER_02 5:31

Exactly, exactly, and that's that's exactly what I'm I'm being told by by my my readers. Some of them just use stories to learn, some others use it as a compliment. I mean, people just need to find the the best way to to learn a language and and stick with it because there are people that do better with grammar, other better with stories or podcasts, wherever. You just have to find the the way that works best for you, I think.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

And how long you've been working on this business for?

SPEAKER_02 6:00

I mean,

From Job Loss To Webflow

SPEAKER_02 6:01

around one year and three months, and I've been taking it more seriously for about five months. That's when I decided that I I was building I was going to build a course. Actually, because readers they kept asking me for more stories, more exercises, more structure, for them to have a structured way to learn at a complete level. So at that time, so I just to give a little bit of context, I lost my job, and as I was trying to find another job, I gave some Spanish lessons online. I wrote I wrote these stories for the students, and I thought I learned with stories with reading, let's see what they find. And I saw that they were very engaged, they loved learning with stories, so then I thought, why why can't why wouldn't I share this with uh with the world? So I taught myself web design, SEO, all of the stuff. I built a uh a website with with Webflow as a no-code because I don't have a code background, and I put the stories out there, feedback was amazing. I was still looking for another job, but I was kept I was getting rejected every time. And at some point I just said, you know what? I'm going to take this serious seriously. I have a lot of demands. I think I have something great here, and people want to read more stories. There I write, so yeah. I right now I did the course, and people are already demanding me to make more courses, make more languages. So yeah, for five months I've been dedicating every day to this project.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

What's your

SEO Growth Against AI Overviews

SPEAKER_00 7:37

main traffic source for it?

SPEAKER_02 7:38

I mean it's SEO.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 7:41

SEO. Yeah. And a little bit from Amazon KVP, because I I also publish the free stories as as books on on Amazon. At first I looked at it as a bit of a lead magnet to bring people, but even people that that find the website, they buy the books either to support me or to read offline. But at first I was thinking, is anyone going to buy this because the stories are free on the website? But as a matter of fact, they did, and the the books they are selling very well. Nice. I was not expecting that.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

Could you, for anybody who doesn't know, could you tell them what KDP is?

SPEAKER_02 8:17

Yeah, so basically it's an independent publisher program where you can upload your books, and people there can buy an e-book or a paperback version that Amazon prints and sends to to the customer directly. So you just have to publish the book and wait for the sales. Given that you have a nice target keywords and that there is not a lot of competition and that you can differentiate yourself a little bit. I think I have an advantage because I was also directing people from the website to the books, which made them increase in sales and reviews, and now I think it's working both ways.

SPEAKER_00 8:54

And so how much uh traffic are you getting to the website through SEO at the moment?

SPEAKER_02 8:58

Through SEO it's uh at uh 250.

SPEAKER_00 9:02

Thousand. Thousand, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So 2500 uh a month? Yeah. Wow. And so you only started working on that a year ago. Yes. Wow. Well that's impressive, right? That's a lot. I don't know. It's my first website. I don't know if that's a lot of months. I'll just tell you, I'll just tell you, that's a lot. So the person I've met in the language space who who has the most visits to their website through SEO, it would be either Shona or Benny that I mentioned earlier. So Shona, I think at one point was doing maybe two million a month and was averaging for a long time about a million, and that was massive. And that was after 15 years working on it, something like that. So to be at 250, and Benny was like at one point hit two million, is now much it like changes, right? And you get he got a big drop, and so he was down much, much lower than that afterwards than it hit nowadays. So yeah, 250,000 after a year is fant absolutely fantastic. So you're obviously doing something very well there. Whatever you're doing, Google is Google is liking it.

SPEAKER_02 10:04

Yeah, I I I found that Google loves my website, and as I looked to it, I think that I was I I planned the for for the keywords. I did a little bit of keyword research before launching the website, and that's critical. So I saw that uh there was this lack of of interactive stories also online. So I did that, and with the audio and the exercises, I I I see that people spend a lot of time on my website, and maybe that's that's one of the reasons that Google loves my website so much, because people they enter the website and they stick around, they don't bounce as much as I imagine in other websites.

SPEAKER_00 10:44

I tell you what's also like a real advantage for you there is a lot of people are finding that if they've got information on their website from keywords, then people are seeing the like AI, the quick answers thing. I forget what they call it in Google, but like the instant overview thing, right? And and then not going through to the website. But your what people are coming to your site for is stories. I get I'm guessing, is that right? Is that what the kind of keywords you're targeting?

SPEAKER_02 11:09

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

So there's no way that they could get the story without going to the site and getting the story. That's like they're not just after information, they're after like the the whole longer how long look how long your stories are it depends on the level.

SPEAKER_02 11:22

But the shorter ones are like uh 150 words and uh the longer ones from B2 are close to a thousand.

SPEAKER_00 11:30

Okay. Yeah, there's no so there's no way that they're kind of just extracting the story and putting that in the overview, right? It's not the same, not the same thing anymore.

SPEAKER_02 11:38

And I mean they don't get the experience because on my website they can listen to the audio. Yeah. They can they can also write uh comments about the story, they can practice the Spanish. Sometimes I I go there and give them my feedback on their writing as well. So there's kind of a community around them, around the website, and people want to to stay around. So I always say that SEO is not dead, but you definitely want to have an experience that really makes people want to go to the website and not being drawn into in a AI overview, otherwise your website is going to die,

Amazon KDP As A Lead Magnet

SPEAKER_02 12:17

unfortunately.

SPEAKER_00 12:17

So then what's your so you got good traffic coming in? What's your uh number of new email subscribers you're getting per month onto the list?

SPEAKER_02 12:25

I'm getting around 2,000 subscribers.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

Okay, so about just under 1% of your your website visitors converting to to opt-ins. Okay, cool. And what are you doing for that? What's your what's your lead magnets?

SPEAKER_02 12:38

I mean, I have uh an ebook with with six stories where they can learn like 100 must-know Spanish phrases, and that's been doing quite well, quite well actually. It's the the only lead magnet I have seen from the start, and uh it has been working very well.

SPEAKER_00 12:56

Nice. And then how's it work in terms of you mentioned the books that you've got? How much are you doing uh in term of sales of the books per month?

SPEAKER_02 13:04

I mean that's always uh rising. So I I saw that as I get more reviews, and I I saw that I'm now all all of my all of my books are on the first page of Amazon's sales, they are always increasing. And I think that this month I'm going to sell around 1,000 copies. Some are some are ebooks, some are paper paperbacks, but yeah, sales are are increasing. Nice.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

And how much do you sell those for?

SPEAKER_02 13:29

I sell the ebooks for for $2.99 and paperbacks uh I think it's $12.99.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

And then how much if you sell a paperback for $12.99, how much of that do you get? And how much goes to Amazon for the publishing and stuff?

SPEAKER_02 13:44

I think I get around $5.50.

SPEAKER_00 13:47

Okay, okay. So you might make like $4,000 or something like that from the I think I think I'll hit that number this month. Okay, that's cool. That's nice. All right, and then what's the if someone buy buys the book, what's the journey back from there to your website? Like are you promoting the website in there? Have you got like a free lead magnet you're promoting in the book? Like, how do you get people who just saw you on Amazon back in again?

SPEAKER_02 14:13

Yeah, so as soon as they start reading the book, I have the lead magnet where they can they can input their their email, they have a link or a QR code also where they can join the mailing list. Then after each story, I have a link to the story on the website where they can listen to the audio and practice. And on the end of each book, I have a a review request that also seems to work quite well to increase reviews. But I I see KDP mainly as a lead magnet, has a way to drive people to my website and eventually also buy my my paid products if they want.

SPEAKER_00 14:51

Do you get any idea of the percentage of people who find you through Amazon go through the book who then join your email list? That's kind of a quite a lot to track, but I'm wondering if you've managed it.

SPEAKER_02 15:03

Yes, I mean I I wish, but I don't.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

No. The numbers I've seen, so this is not not quite in this space, but like in people selling like a business book on Amazon who then would use that as a lead magnet to get people onto the list. The highest I've seen was people managing about like 10-ish percent of the the buyers of the book who then would join their email list. You're doing a lot of stuff that's really clever, though. Like, so you've got like you read it and then it's like, well, go here's the audio exercises to go with it. It's like that's really nice. Is that is that an opt-in for the audio exercises? No, it isn't. No, oh okay, okay. But they get to your site from that. Okay, that's cool.

SPEAKER_02 15:39

I mean, they bought a book, I don't want to like get the contact content that I promised on the cover.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, no. If you promised it, then you can't you can't also require an opt-in. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:48

I see that the opt-in rate is quite good. I'm quite happy with it. I don't know if it's good or not. As I said, it's my first website. But I think that giving stuff for free, it's it's a uh I wouldn't call it a strategy because I was I was not thinking about doing a business out of this. But I think it's it's the main driver of this business because people they literally sent me messages like before I have the course, right? They were like begging me to to donate me for for the free contact that uh that I share on the website because they love me so much.

Double Opt-In Versus List Growth

SPEAKER_00 16:24

Nice. You've got at the moment double opt-in turned on. Is that a deliberate thing, or is that just because the uh email service provider you're using had got that on by default?

SPEAKER_02 16:37

No, that's uh that's by choice.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

Okay. Talk me through that.

SPEAKER_02 16:41

Because I I'm no email expert, but I heard some bad things about about bousing emails and sending emails to spammy emails or whatnot, so I decided to protect a little bit my uh email domain rating or whatever they they call it. And that's why I do it. You advise against it?

SPEAKER_00 17:03

Yeah, generally. So the reason is people's email inboxes are so busy that there'll be a lot of people who it's their real email address that they put in and it's not spammy, it's not even a misspelling, it's just their real email address they wanted to sign up, and yet they'll never click that link. And it's something like 50% of people won't ever get around to clicking that link because they just don't see it. They've they've they've signed up and then instantly it's gone from their head and they just never get around to it. So what we found is that revenues go up by about 20 to 30% when you have single opt-in. Now, what you then have to do is then a bit more work because you don't want to have those email addresses that aren't real, that aren't clicking the links, that aren't open emails, you don't want to have those on your email address uh list. But what we generally do is we give them more chances than just you've got to see this one email and you've got to click the opt-in link on that. So what we'll do is we'll then do cleanups of the list every so often. And so you want to take people who didn't open the emails and you want to take them off the list. But it gets a little more complicated as well because with the way that Apple Mail now does, especially on the iPhone, does tracking for emails, you don't know if somebody for definite opened the email or not because they're not allowing the tracking on it, right? So you then have to run a re-engagement campaign to give people a chance to stay on the list. So there's a bunch of work involved. But if you do all of that work, then you still get the benefit of not emailing people who've got a dodgy email address, and you get a bigger email list and you get to grow the revenue from it. I'll get I'll I'll uh I'll get Yosip to send you through some details about it afterwards because it's like he's he's in the thick of it dealing with the stuff every day, whereas I'm like talking about it on the podcast more than I am actually building the stuff right now. So I'll get him to kind of send you like what's the what's the latest and how does that all of that kind of stuff work. But generally, yeah, I would advise, I would advise having a single opt-in. It's just the the benefits outweigh the the the downsides, it's just a bit more, it's a bit more involved in it.

SPEAKER_02 18:55

Yeah, thank you. Sounds interesting.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

Yeah, no worries.

Tripwire Brainstorm And Fast Wins

SPEAKER_00 18:58

The other thing that I was thinking about for you, so when I opted into your to your email list to kind of see how it was working, there's no there's no tripwire on there at the moment. And I know since you listen to the podcast, you've heard me talk about tripwires. Is there is there anything that you is that deliberate because you're like, well, John, I've got so many things to do, I just haven't got to that one yet. Or you like not got any offers that you could have there. Have you have you considered the tripwire?

SPEAKER_02 19:19

Yeah, I mean, the first time I listened about tripwire was on on your podcast, and I immediately immediately start thinking about what could I put there that would would convert. But I'm also so focused on launching the next course, which I have already a very big wait list for of people waiting. I definitely want to have a tripwire, but I heard you say that it needs to be kind of related to the paid product. So it helps, yeah, for definite.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:53

So I've been thinking about it, but I still couldn't decide what would be a good offer that I put in there if you have some ideas.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

Yeah, do you mind if we do some brainstorming? That would be fun.

SPEAKER_02 20:04

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 20:05

Okay, so what's your free lead magnet at the moment? It's an e-book. An e-book.

SPEAKER_02 20:10

Before we brainstorm, I'd like to to tell you another thing because I have a lot of people on my course that are keep telling me uh how nice would it be to have a speaking component. Like inside they have some speaking challenges, but they can practice by themselves. But I I see that they want uh a human behind it. So I was wondering if I if I should launch uh a speaking coaching program as well. I know that's a completely different business, but what I was thinking it was like make a tripwire could be like a one-hour lesson with uh with a teacher, with a lesson of the course, kind of like a webinar where in the end he he would sell try to sell the the course to to to the person. I don't know if that would work as a tripwire.

SPEAKER_00 20:55

So I think doing the the a webinar that at the end you're selling something more is probably too much to do all in one go because learning to do the webinar, getting someone else to do the webinar and and having that all convert would be, I think, maybe too many moving pieces. But I think having like some kind of offer of do you want to buy some one-to-one coaching with somebody could work. It now means, of course, you've got to find somebody and train them and manage them, and if they aren't as good, then you've got to replace them and all of that. So there's a lot that there is a lot that's there rather than like an info product or uh something that you've already got. One of the things that I really like to start with is like what already exists. So for order bumps, upsells, tripwires, all of these kind of things, if you don't have anything in place, I really like the idea of putting something in that you that you can just you've already got, you could just sell right now without any extra work. And then maybe later you come back and you put the perfect thing in when you've got the time to kind of do it. So the thing the the the two things that have just immediately come up for me is one, you could put the course there and just offer that straight away. That's kind of expensive to be offering as a tripwire because it's like $97, right?

SPEAKER_02 22:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

The I've I've talked about this a few times. The the tripwire that we had to convert the best was we had a client called Tealswan who she had her lead magnet was five free guided meditations. And then the tripwire was 27 guided meditations for $27. And so because the thing that you were buying was precisely linked, was just basically more of the thing that you just bought or you just got for free, it was a perfect fit. And so that worked really, really well. And so I'm wondering if they're signing up for a story-based ebook, could you sell them more story-based ebooks? Because if you had that, because you've got loads of them, right? Already.

SPEAKER_02 22:48

Yes, I do, but uh I'm also enrolled in KDP uh Kindle Unlimited, so I cannot sell the the same books in another platform, so it would demand a little bit of work of creating other.

SPEAKER_00 23:01

Creating more. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:02

That's why I did uh didn't do it. Yeah, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 23:05

Do you have anything else that you're selling at the moment? Because you've got so you've got the course, you've got the the ebooks and paperback books on on KDP. Is there anything else you've been selling? No, that's it. Okay. Hmm. I mean, if you just put the A1 course up there, some people would buy it. You think? Some would, right? I don't know what the percentage is, because it's like normally for Tripwire looking at something that's cheaper, like 17, 27, 37, $39, that kind of price point. But you could do the the A1 course with a whatever 20% discount, buy it now for $79 or something like that.

SPEAKER_02 23:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 23:42

And a percentage of people would buy, and you've already got a sales page that you just would need to tweak to say, you know, temporary discount, put a countdown timer on, that kind of thing. So that would reduce the amount of work for you. It it's not the perfect one, but it's something that you could do relatively quickly. Like it's you know, it's it's probably like a half day's I I don't know. It depends how how advanced you are in all your no code and how your website's set up and everything. But like I'm thinking like a a few hours kind of getting it set up, something like that.

SPEAKER_02 24:11

Yeah, yeah, it's it's quite easy to to implement. I think I think it's better than than nothing, right? Right. I'll implement that.

SPEAKER_00 24:19

Yeah. It's a great idea, thanks. Yeah, no worries, and let me know how it how it goes. I'm always really curious because there's so much testing involved in all in so many of these things. But I think that here's the here's the way I approach funnels, right? Here's the overall, and I don't talk about this philosophy very often because it's kind of a little bit more abstract, but there's a number of steps in your funnel. There is how much traffic are you getting, there's what's your opt-in rate. I don't think about I don't work on traffic at all, but like what percentage of people then opt into your email list, what percentage buy the tripwire, what percentage buy something from your welcome sequence, how many emails are you sending an email promotion every month of those? How many people are going from the email to the sales page, how many go from there to the checkout page, how many go from there to buying, how many then buy the order bump, how many buy the upsell. All of these are percentages, right, at each stage. The easiest thing to improve by far in any of those is to take something where you're not doing anything and do something. Because it's impossible that the percentage goes down, right? Because it's currently zero percent. So the f the easiest thing to do is just basically go through and build all of the bits, and then you can kind of go back through and then build them, make them better, you know, improve them, what have you. Like, so for people who aren't doing an email who I know you've only got the one course at the moment, but like for people who've got multiple courses but their own they're only sending out two or three email promotions a year, the easiest thing they can do is just send out an email promotion every month. Even if their sales pages suck, their checkout pages suck, their uh they have no order bump, they have no upsell. That one thing on its own, just doing that every month, is going to it's like probably double their revenue. If they've if they've already got the email list, they've already got all their courses, they've already got the sales pages, that kind of stuff. For most people, that's that's likely. For you, it's a little trickier because you don't have all of the other courses yet. Yeah.

Waitlists Bundles And Speed To Market

SPEAKER_00 26:06

So talk to me about your your A2 course and your wait list. How have you been building the wait list for that?

SPEAKER_02 26:11

So the as I launched the A1 course, I also set up A2 and B1 wait list, and people started signing around because people they they were also asking me about other levels uh when I first announced A1. And now I just have a wait list opt-in in each in each page. For for the A2 course, whenever they finish a A2 uh story, they can easily opt in. There's no double opt-in there, and they can already opt-in for the wait list. And I've seen that a lot of people are signing for the wait list and not for the ebook. So right there, I saw that I was also losing some emails by not having more opportunities for them to sign up on the website. So that that was a lesson for me. I think I I need to find strategies to have more ways for people to opt-in. Because some people they may not be interested in in the book, for example.

SPEAKER_00 27:10

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They don't want that, but they would want something else. Yeah, there's pros and cons to it. I'm just looking through your website at the moment, seeing where you've got the wait list and the oh, so you've got multiple opt-ins at the bottom of the page here. You've got the 30 more A2 Spanish stories are coming. Join the wait list for that, for that's for the whole A2 course. And you've got the learn hundred must-know Spanish phrases through short stories opt-in as well down there. That's cool. Okay. One of the, and then you've got it again at the bottom, you've got the uh like newsletter opt-in at the very bottom. That's cool. I like this. So it's like one of the things that we found works is having the opt-in multiple places throughout the page. Having multiple opt-ins, like different offers, is also is also great. I f I kind of don't I don't recommend that that often because I feel like my impression is most people get a little bit overwhelmed by that idea of having multiple different things. So I I'm like, it works for definite, right? So it's like you're like you're saying, having multiple different things they could opt in works really, really well. But I'm kind of I I'm cautious on the podcast recommending things that I think are gonna cause people to get more overwhelmed and stuck instead of making progress. So it's like I I don't always talk about it that much. But this is cool, I like this. I'm wondering if you could put an opt-in higher up. What do you got? Learn offline with the new A2 book you've got as part of this as well. So that's another place. This is great. You're doing awesome with this man. I love this.

SPEAKER_02 28:29

Thank you. That's an affiliate link, by the way. Yeah, because you can also win. You're an affiliate for yourself of your own books, which is I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_01 28:39

I didn't know you could be an affiliate for yourself.

unknown 28:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:44

How much do you get? What percentage do you get as an affiliate?

SPEAKER_02 28:46

I mean, uh I get around for each ebook I get four percent and paperbacks it's like four point five.

SPEAKER_01 28:54

Okay, that's fun. I love that.

SPEAKER_02 28:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:56

What's what's uh what's next for you after the A2 course? Do you know? Or you just like head down, fucking get the A2 course done first before you think about anything else.

SPEAKER_02 29:04

I mean, after the A2 we do B1, the wait list is already so big that yeah, it's it's the natural path. I'm just going to do whatever my readers want. Yeah, B1, I'll do it.

SPEAKER_00 29:19

That's so simple, isn't it? B1, in my experience in language courses, B1's the big most popular.

SPEAKER_02 29:25

I didn't know about that.

SPEAKER_00 29:26

Yeah, like it's not I I haven't I haven't checked with enough of our language course creators to be absolutely sure. But the ones who I've anecdotally, the ones I've talked to about it, B1 was the one that they sold the most of. And I think part of the reason is most people slightly overestimate their own level in uh how good they are at a language. So a bunch of people who are who think they're B1 are really A2, but it's like that's the that's where there's the kind of the seems to be the sweet spot of the most the most people. So I'll be interested to see what what you find when you when you launch that one. Dude, this is great. I can't believe you've only been working seriously on this for five months. This is fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 30:01

Yes, I'm also very curious to see how people react to bundling the courses together. So I think the lifetime value of each customer is going to increase. And I I saw that I saw something very strange. I I have a number of people that bought the A1 course just to support me for me to focus on creating the next courses. So I think this synergy with my with my readers that is fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 30:27

Nice. And how much do you how often are you emailing content out to people?

SPEAKER_02 30:31

Yeah, I send them uh one email a week. And uh I took a little bit of time to find my tone of voice, but what I saw that people really like is when I talk about me and my life, sometimes in a funny way. I like to to write fun stuff, keep positive vibes, and I do this thing where I have a trans translation line by line, so they have English and then Spanish on each phrase. So they are connecting with me and learning Spanish at the same time. I discovered that they they love that. And I mean I I share a lot about me. Last month my my dog passed away. I announced it to them. I got a lot of replies, so I really have a deep connection with my audience now, which is great. That's awesome, dude. It's not just about the business, it's also about the relationships that you get out of the out of it, you know.

SPEAKER_00 31:21

That's great. Sorry about your dog, man. That's awful. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, that's really hard. What's the goal for you with the business? Where do you where do you want to get it to over the next kind of 12 months? Revenue-wise, uh books you've published, whatever it is that's kind of you know on the cards for you.

SPEAKER_02 31:36

Yeah, I think I can triple my revenue in the next 12 months. It demands a lot of work because I know the path to doing it, but it's a lot of work. Creating a course, it's very work-intensive. There is uh 30 stories, and then there's a series of interactive exercises and vocabulary. There's uh I've now implemented the AI writing practice where they can practice from what they read on the story. But I'm now perfectioning the system of creating a course. I'm thinking about having people to to help me create the non-creative side of the courses to to be faster because I see that people they are they are a bit impatient to to get the course. And in language learning, if if I don't create the product after they they will be on a different level and I will lose them as a as a customer. So speed to market is very important to me. And I'm aligning all the systems and thinking of bringing people to to help me to increase this speed to market and be able to generate more revenue.

SPEAKER_00 32:47

One of the things that's really nice in the language learning space for hiring people is that there are a lot of very passionate, very good language teachers who don't make that much money. So you can there's a good uh pool of people for you to go out and and you know bring on as uh as potential people

Using AI To Build Custom Platforms

SPEAKER_00 33:07

to work with. So I was gonna ask you something. Uh do you use AI much in the process of creating any of the elements of the courses or like making the web building the website faster or anything like that?

SPEAKER_02 33:15

Yeah, it's AI was very good to me to allow me to build um the custom platform that I beat that I built for for the course. Without AI, it would be impossible. But I didn't want to subscribe to Kajabi and Teachables and all of that because I couldn't design the the experience the way that I wanted. And I would decide to a subscription, I couldn't customize everything that I want, the checkout, all those important steps. So AI was very important for me to allow me to build this custom platform where people can enjoy the courses.

SPEAKER_00 33:50

Dude, that's dope. I think that's the thing that AI is best at is programming. Like it's it's useful for a lot of things, right? But if you want to build some custom code, AI is spectacular at doing that. Like, especially now, like this year it's changed, right? It's it's gone up dramatically since like December 2025, maybe. Made a big jump forward. And then so this week or last week, they brought out Fable with clawed code, and that was like another level better. And then they got and then they closed it down again last Friday because of the US government. And I was just like, no! I'm halfway through all of these projects. I just built myself a CRM because I was like, I'd always had like I've I've kind of got stuff everybody's records and and tracking stuff in active campaign, and it's quite good. And but I was like, yeah, but I've got I've still got some information in this spreadsheet because that I needed to track in a specific way, and I've got some in this spreadsheet. And so I built a CRM that like pulls all the information in from all of the spreadsheets. So if anybody in the team still wants to use a spreadsheet, that's fine. But it all automatically, once a day, gets pulled into the CRM, and then it's like pulling in information from all different places and like helping me set up these like the campaigns for inviting people on the podcast or whatever else. And I'm like, that's it, that's months of work. If you hire a developer, that is months of work to build all of this stuff. And I built it in like three days, and it's just like, what is happening right now? Yeah, we live in a different world right now.

SPEAKER_01 35:18

It's crazy, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 35:19

Is there anything else you're using AI for building? So you it helped you build the website, all the functionality. Is there anything else you're working on with it?

SPEAKER_02 35:25

I mean, it helps me speed a bit the process of the non-creative things, uh like uh making the English translations, uh making me suggestions of suggestions of exercises and uh some code here and there, and that's about it.

SPEAKER_00 35:41

I was chatting with Sharon the other day about this. She's using it for uh there are a bunch of steps when she's making a course or a a challenge or whatever, where certain things had to be turned into a PDF as well as having it on the website, as well as having it in some other format, and all of that stuff, she was like, that's that's just a that's just a script now. Now I just run that through a you know, AI runs that entire pro instead of it used to be, you know, a VA running it and it taking hours for them to go through and do it and check it and what have you. And now it's just AI just runs that whole process. It's exceptional at that kind of thing. I'm just like, I'm currently just just building AI stuff like two, three days a week. Just like what else? What else did I always want, but never never was able to build it? It's it's crazy the amount of stuff

Sales Page Fixes That Convert

SPEAKER_00 36:26

you can get. So, what's your process for when you're building sales pages? Have you got the the AI to create you a system where you've got a template, or are you telling AI, here's the content, now go make me a page? Like, what's now the process for you with your your site the way you've built it?

SPEAKER_02 36:42

So I I always build my website by hand because I like to have design control. But I ask I ask AI for some ideas, especially for sales page, which is is not my my strongest at the point. I asked for some ideas, but uh to be honest, I don't know if I'm 100% happy about my sales page, but it's there, it's bringing in some sales, and I I think that is just a question of analyzing data like like you say, and try to make some improvements, see what's working, what's not. I don't know if you've seen my sales page.

SPEAKER_00 37:18

I'm looking at it right now, I've got thoughts. What I'm gonna do though, I think we're running a little bit long. What I'm gonna do is write up some of them, and I'm gonna get Josep to have a look at this as well, because I I can see some places that your sales page could definitely be improved. And I'm just gonna I'll go through one actually. So the way that you start, you've got the headline is learn beginner Spanish with 30 stories. And then you kind of give a little explanation about it. I'm just read just reading this out for the for the listener so they kind of know what's going on. And then we've got like an image of all the different 30 stories, and then explains how it works, which is great, right? You want to have all of those elements, but what we don't really have is the problem. So one of the things that it's very hard as a course creator to do, but it's really important for the the person who's thinking about buying it, is defining to them what is the problem that you are solving for them. Because to you, it's so obvious. Of course, what you need is these Spanish stories, right? In order to move forwards. The person who's reading this has a problem in their life. This is they want to learn Spanish and they've struggled with learning Spanish before and they've tried it learning it different ways, like learning it through grammar tables and learning it through learning vocabulary and whatever else, and they've got stuck with that and then it they've got frustrated. They don't know that you know that unless you say it. And you've said it in other places, right? So you're probably bored of saying it, but you haven't said it on this sales page, right? And so someone who comes to this sales page who isn't your biggest fan, who's gone to all of your content, who's desperate, who's already asking you, please can you just make this damn course for God's sake, those guys, the ones who are just more like, yeah, I'm kind of I I I remember signing up for this guy's emails, let me have a look. What is this thing? Those guys won't have that clear in their head that you really understand what their problem is. And if there's two sides to this. If if someone believes that you understand their problem better than they understand it themselves, they will be ready to buy before they even know what it is you're selling. But if they don't think you understand their problem, they might think, well, how do I even know that this thing is solving the problem that I've got? And so I think that section, having a problem agitation solution section, kind of I would say before, just before that how it works section that you've got at the moment would make a big difference. That'd be really worthwhile doing. And I'll get I'll get Yotip to send you over some details about that as well, like how that kind of how that kind of works. Because that's it's not, it doesn't have to be that long, but it really makes an emotional connection to people who who aren't you've got you've got lots of people who are emotionally connected to you already, right? But then there's some who are milder fans. Those guys you need to kind of make sure you're you're providing all this kind of uh emotional connection for on the sales page itself. Yeah, it makes sense for sure. Yeah, cool. All right, I'll send you through details about that. Gabriel, this has been awesome. I love what you're doing. I don't I don't know if you realize how well you're doing this.

SPEAKER_02 40:07

Yeah, I mean now that you say that, I I thought that I was doing okay, but yeah, like I told you, it's it's my first website, and I don't know what normal numbers are. So I'm just figuring things out. But from the feedback, I already can see that what I'm doing is is kind of special. I found product market fit and people are loving these this concept. They keep asking for more, so I'll just be here writing more stories, whatever they want. I listen to my customers whatever they want, it's where what I'm going to build. And I I will let my readers uh shape the the rest of the of the strategy for this brand.

SPEAKER_00 40:46

Yeah. I think that's I think that's one of the things that you've done better than anything else. So you've got two bits I think that are exceptional. One, you've clearly got great product market fit, which is not easy to do. And like maybe you did that really deliberately, maybe you lucked into it a little bit, whatever it is. It's great. When you find that, you just double down on that, and that's exactly what

Final Takeaways And Goodbye

SPEAKER_00 41:05

you're doing, right? You're just making more of what your audience is after. The other thing is the amount of traffic that you're getting after that period of time. And that might be connected. That might just be there's there's people, there's product market fit in terms of people are searching on Google for this thing, there isn't a lot of it available, and you've got exactly what it is that they want, and then they're coming and they're spending lots of time on your site. So I think that is it's fantastic. It's not super common, and I think you're gonna crush it. I mean, you're already doing great, but I think you're really gonna crush it with this over the next 12 months. I'm excited for you.

SPEAKER_02 41:33

Thank you. I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_00 41:34

Yeah, no worries at all, man. Thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate your time today.

SPEAKER_02 41:38

Yeah, it was great to talk finally meeting you. So thank you very much for the invite.

SPEAKER_00 41:43

You're very, very welcome. As always, thank you so much for listening. Really appreciate you guys, and we will see you next time.