$44,600 From One AI Carousel Series: How I Turn Views Into Coaching Clients

A cartoon brain doesn’t sound like a serious business strategy, yet it brought me $44,600 in coaching clients i 2026 alone and it started with nothing more glamorous than me scrolling on the sofa.

I’m breaking down how I took a viral AI trend, found the white space in my niche, and turned a playful “edutainment” format into a repeatable content series that built real authority, real community, and real sales.

We get tactical about what made the carousel work: the pattern interrupt that stops the scroll, the first-person “brain voice” that creates emotional intimacy and curiosity, and why one sentence per slide beats big paragraphs for a cold audience.

I also share the behind-the-scenes process of making AI-generated visuals fit a cohesive brand aesthetic using ChatGPT for brainstorming and prompt refinement, plus the mindset piece most creators miss: speed to posting beats perfection, and discomfort is often the doorway to the next level of visibility.

Then we connect virality to conversion. Going viral isn’t the finish line, it’s the top of your funnel. I walk you through the exact conversion touch points that turn wide-net content into qualified leads: a clear caption, a pinned comment, simple credibility markers, and a DM trigger word that moves the right people into a call and into your offer.

If you’re a coach, creator, or service provider trying to build a sustainable audience and a client-getting content system, you’ll leave with a blueprint you can adapt to your own voice and niche.

 Come find me on Instagram @minniecourtneycoach and DM me the word “brain” so I can point you to your next step.

Work With Minnie

I'm Minnie Courtney. I built a multi-six-figure coaching business at 22, generated 200M+ views across niches, and have spent the last year helping intelligent, spiritual women build personal brand coaching businesses that actually blow up.

This is about building the strategy, the content system, and the personal brand that makes you impossible to ignore, helps heaps of people and gets you consistently highly paid.

If you are an ambitious woman who is done figuring this out alone, my The Paid Coach Immersion is where we build it together. Fast, strategic, and built around the standard you actually want to be held to.

Apply to work with Minnie here: Click Here To Apply

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Transcript

Making Cartoon Content Fit Your Brand

Posting Imperfectly Then Letting Go

Why The Brain Carousel Went Viral

Turning Virality Into A DM Funnel

Key Takeaways And Your Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 0:41

It all started with a funny AI trend I spotted while I was laying on my sofa scrolling. 25 carousels later, that trend has brought me$44,600 in coaching clients who found me because of a cartoon brain that broke the internet. Boy oh boy am I excited for this podcast episode. I want to tell you exactly how that happened because the strategy matters a lot. But also the decision that I made and the reason I ended up in that situation to be able to capitalize on this opportunity is even more important than the strategy. This decision is the same reason why a lot of smart, strong, intelligent women hold themselves back from actually being able to get this kind of success. So I want to make sure that you're priming yourself up, and this is gonna be possible for you after listening to this episode. So this opportunity was something where I had seen okay, bear with me here. You know those reels where it's like an object that you have in your house, like a toothpaste or a toothbrush or a lemon, and then AI had like animated it. So it would be like the lemon being like, I'm the lemon in your fridge, don't put me here, it dries me out, right? And so they were like teaching, but through the first person perspective of the object itself, thanks to the magic of AI that we have these days, right? So I saw this trend. Obviously, why am I watching like a one-minute video about the objects in my fridge? Hilarious, right? It's educational, but it's so light and entertaining that anyone would want to watch it, even if you're like, I don't actually care that much about this thing. Um, but you're actually able to get like very quick practical, quick wins and takeaways from it. I was like, this is this is cool. As I do when I'm scrolling, I'm always not just looking at being a consumer, but I am very conscious of the fact that I'm a creator. So when I see something that's working, I ask myself, okay, would this be an opportunity that would work for me in my niche? The answer is not always, but very, very often more often than you realize, yes, if you just get a little bit creative about it. But looking at the trend of using AI to give objects or things or places or all of these sorts of things their own voice and make kind of like edutainment, right? Where it's like educational but it's very entertaining. I realized that this has a huge total addressable market, right? Total addressable market, Tam, that is basically the amount of people that would be able to be reached by this that would be interested in this. And I also realized that there was almost no competition of this specific format within anything to do with my sort of niche of personal development, psychology, business, anything like that. And so that's what I mean when I say the opportunity is always there, because I wasn't just waiting for like a viral idea to pop into my mind, I was looking at what is already proven to work, what is already working currently online, and then asking myself, okay, where has no one gone with this yet? Where would this be like applicable to the type of woman that I want to attract into my content? And although I could see that was a very good opportunity, we have to be honest about the fact that this is nothing like any content that I had posted before. So I had posted AI carousels that were a conversation between a little girl which represents our inner child and a kind of older woman, beautiful, comforting older woman that you know represents our future self that's able to give us advice. So it was kind of you, the viewer, as your current self, looking at this carousel that shows a conversation between your inner child and your future wise self. And so I posted that, which was very successful, which was very successful, but it was still very different aesthetically than like having a cartoon brain. I'm skipping ahead here. When I was thinking about how this would uh apply to my niche, I was imagining, okay, I want to talk about like I talk about mindset, right? That's the mind, that's a brain. We could literally have the brain like explaining why we do these things. Like, I'm the female brain, this is why I'm like this. I'm like a procrastinating brain, this is why I'm like this. And I was like, that makes so much sense to me. But again, as I circle back, aesthetically, that is not like the content that I post. Would this work? Would people like it? Is it weird? Is it too childish because it's like a cartoon? Is it cringy? Life hack for you, content hack for you. Whenever you think something is maybe a bit too childish or cringy, it's probably has a lot of viral potential because childish and cringy basically is usually just code words for meaning. It's very, very universally understandable. It's taking complex concepts and it's putting them into what we could say, like, yeah, a childlike version, um, a fifth grade version, if you want to call it a dumbed-down version, it's not really, but it's really simplifying it in the same way that cartoons do. Um because that is what when someone is scrolling, they are going to be able to take that in, they're gonna be able to digest that level of education. Whereas when most people are scrolling, they're not there looking for like a PhD lecture, you know. If you think about the things that are most universally successful, like Disney movies, for example, young children love them, older children love them. So many adults are obsessed with Disney, right? Because they take these emotions, they take these storylines, and they put it in such a universally understandable and relatable way that it has a huge tam, a huge, total, addressable market. And so I had seen that trend, I'd identified it, I had added my creative twist onto it of having this kind of brain chat series. I didn't even know it was gonna be a series at the time, but having this brain chat post, but I had this had some discomfort around it, like that doesn't fit with what's on my feed, especially because the cartoons that I was seeing, these AI cartoons, you know, it was like super cartoon-like, right? Bright colors, bright images, uh literally a banana talking type of thing. And I was like, how is this gonna match my feed? My kind of like my brand is very deep, it's deep colors, it's a darker aesthetic, it's it's like thoughtful, it's that type of vibe. So, what did I do? I moved anyway. I was like, a problem or a doubt is not a block, it's just a question to answer, right? So, who do we take our questions to in this day and age? Our bestie Chat GPT. All right, that was before the Claude days, guys. So I go to Chat GPT and I'm like, okay, here's examples of um the type of images that I've been seeing of these AI of this AI trend. This is my idea of what I want to turn it into with the the brains speaking from their perspective. This is who my audience is, this is what my brand is like. Here is a screenshot of what my current feed looks like. How could I make this the imagery and the aesthetic of this fit with my brand? So between me and Chat GBT, we did a little bit of brainstorming. We put the brains. This was chat, this was a Chat GBT's idea, right? This is why you gotta brainstorm with the AIs that have a lot of ideas as well. It can't think for you, but it should improve your own thinking and your own ideas. And so Chat GBT put the brain inside like this little cave thing, which like represents you know, inside your your mind, but that means it was like dark, it was like mysterious, it was cozy, it was all of those things that I wanted my brand to be. We rather than making them like bright colors, we made them more kind of like muted, uh kind of darker tones, but but still colors, um and cute and fluffy and comforting, right? So I was like, okay, I've generated this image, I've worked on it back and forth a million times because again, when my clients have tried to you know bring to life their own ideas in this way, they'll often come to me and be like, Chat GPT is giving me like a bad image, right? And I've tried a lot of different um tools, like chat um AI tools to generate images because I know a lot of people say that like nano banana is better and things like that, but for me, chat GPT has always worked for the style that I like to do. You just have to talk back and forth a lot to it, you have to be willing to like take the time, know that it's gonna give you things that aren't correct, and also obviously just not give it like meh blague, nothing key prompts, um, and give it very specific prompts. And also, what I always do is like before just like sending a prompt and asking it to give me an image, is just sending the prompt and asking, like, does this make sense for what I'm trying to do? Do you think this will create the right type of image? Is there anything you would improve? Chat GPT can refine it itself, and then you can send the prompt, which I find works really well. And so I'd done all of that, I'd created the the message as well, like the text of what I wanted this to say, what I felt really related, what I felt as a woman, um, and obviously working back and forth with Chat GPT as well of like uh how to incorporate different things from that things that I've picked up from coaches, from books, from uh studies, from podcasts, all of those sorts of things, and compiled all of that stuff that I had inside my brain and from past research and knowledge and everything into the text. And so I had the post. What did I decide to do? I decided to be audacious and post it anyway, even though I was had no idea how this was going to perform, and guess what? It didn't perform well, right? It didn't perform well. I was like, okay, it wasn't terrible, it was just like a little bit below average, and I was honestly, I will be completely honest with you, I was totally unfazed. The reason for that is because I've been creating content for my coaching business for like five years plus, and I've been creating content before that as well. I was doing travel content, I've done yoga content, I've done dance content, I did psychology content when I first got started out. So I was like, I know how content goes, like it goes up, it goes down. Some things win, some things don't. No big deal. That is also the mindset that I really want you to guys to get into is just realizing that everything is an experiment and everything is a win. Because if it gets great numbers, you can double down on it. If it gets average or bad numbers, you got more data of like what is not hitting, so you can improve next time. So I just kept literally kept moving on with my life. Now, as you can see, I put a lot of effort into that first post, right? Because I also didn't know, like, okay, what is the concept exactly? Like, how do I want it to look? How do I want the text to be phrased, all of those sorts of things? So it was a lot of work, I would say it was like a few hours. Um, and then I just let go. That's the balance that you need. Like, put in the effort, like, do that hustle, and then let go. If you're just letting go and flowing all the time, that's gonna be a big problem. If you're just hustling all the time, that's gonna be a big problem. And then, as often happens, when I let go, bam, it exploded. It started to scale up in views, and it ended up getting millions of views. The morning before I created that, because I'd had this idea in my mind for a while, for a couple of days, in the morning before I created it, I was literally like thinking about it in bed before I got out of bed, and I was like, I have to create this like AI brain post because I just I'm so excited about it. If you are having an idea, and for a couple of days it's been like resurfacing in your mind, that is when your speed to decision has to kick in, and you have to say, like, now is the moment I'm doing it. So I jumped out of bed, I created it that morning. That excitement that you have is what's gonna help you to be in the momentum to make the best output that you can, and it's also like it's the time when this idea wants to be birthed into reality, and so if you don't jump on it and take action, somebody else will. And so after I'd been through this whole process and I'd seen now that it was actually being successful, this is where I want to actually break down the strategy of what I did from that point to make it not just a viral one-off hit, but to actually make it into something that could create and generate$44,600. First of all, I've said this word like three times already, double down. You have to post some if you are not getting viral hits right now, post more different varieties of things. If you've not posted anything yet, post a lot. Post, post, post, post, post. All you need is to see a few outliers, to see one outlier. As soon as something is outperforming, you need to double down immediately on that. Iterate on that same principle, don't just jump onto the next idea. And so that's exactly what I did, and I did it in a few very strategic ways. First of all, I identified exactly why this had performed very well. My takeaways from that, and I'm gonna break this down for you of exactly why my brain chat series specifically worked well, so that you can apply this to anything else that you're doing, and you can understand the actual principles behind what makes content successful. So this AI animated character created a pattern interrupt in the feed when people are scrolling. It's something that they hadn't seen before, it's something that used like block bold colors, it wasn't a messy image, it wasn't have it didn't have a lot of things, it was literally the background, the big brain, fluffy character in the middle, and then like one or two extra details that created context for you to immediately know like what this post was talking about. That's a huge starting point because if you don't get people to stop scrolling, it doesn't matter how valuable it is. Secondly, the first person voice of the brain. So, how for example, the text on screen would say, I'm the female brain, this is something that almost nobody knows. So, this kind of like I'm this is from me to you. This first person tone created an emotional intimacy, and also it was kind of like novel at the same time because you've never had like a brain explaining something to you, right? So it had a beautiful blend of like emotional intimacy and novelty at the same time, and the viewer is like receiving information from this unexpected narrator, which kind of I believe lowers their resistance to being open to hearing it because it's like okay, not another expert, not another coach, even not another this, that, the other, not another person telling me this is what I did or this is what you should do. This is like the brain telling me, so it's kind of created that curiosity to increase your retention. The content itself, the text itself, was educational and emotionally resonant at the same time. So the experience of being a female, the little girl brain, so like how it feels to be a mom, the sexual brain, these are things that I talked about because I know that what people are actually going through. It's things that people have actual strong emotions towards already. And then adding that educational layer of I use specific stats and figures rather than just saying um it takes a while to recover after giving birth. I would say it takes six months for you to uh physically recover your body, it takes two years for your hormones to come back into balance, and it can take between five to seven years for you to regain your sense of identity. That specificity turns something from yeah, that's cool, that's true, to ooh, interesting, right? If you create a content piece and you say something that doesn't introduce a specific timeline, a specific number, or uh a specific viewpoint that some people might disagree with, then it's basically just irrelevant at the same time. It's just like saying, like, we live on planet Earth, like no one's gonna want to reshare that, no one's gonna be interested in that, no one's gonna care about that. Other examples of how this usually looks is when you say things like you deserve to be happy, it's possible to make money. They're so broad, they're so general that everyone's just like, okay, cool, right? So I made it really specifically educational. However, it was only one sentence per screen. One sentence per screen means that it's not so overwhelming that people will actually want to keep scrolling and have the time to read to the end. If they're seeing a long paragraph and it's a top of funnel type of content piece, top of funnel meaning it's the first type of interaction, it's something where you're just attracting people. It's not people that have already been following you, they're really interested, they know what you do and they're actually ready to work with you. When you get to those type of people, that's what we call bottom of funnel, those people are going to be willing to read a longer sales page because they're actually making a buying decision at this point and they're invested in you already. When it's top of funnel, these people are cold to you, they're a cold audience, they don't know who you are, they don't know if this content piece is going to be worth their time. And you think that the content that you're putting out there is free, it's not because people have to pay with their intent with their attention and with their time to read it, to interact with it, to watch it. And so they're making that decision of is this worth paying my attention to? Having small snippets helps a lot with that, and also you have to remember that when people are finding your content, they're probably distracted, busy, tired, overwhelmed, already, they've got somewhere to go, they're on the train, they're on the bus, they're on the metro. All of these sorts of things that are going to mean they may not be ready to read a long paragraph right now. So little snippets per page allowed them to actually get value and actually learn something, even if they were not currently in a deep learning brain space when they came across it. The topics that I chose were things that my ideal client, my specific ideal client, would be interested in or would relate to, even though I was not teaching business in that post. And that's why I was able to convert these women into a business coaching offer. I was touching on identity, psychology, womanhood, all of these things that can appeal to a massive cold audience, but then from that casting that wide net, because how many people are able to resonate with being a female, with having a little girl, with having a sexual life, right? It's so many people that are able to see this and think, hey, this relates to me, let me keep scrolling. That the algorithm is going to see that they scrolled, they're gonna see that they stopped, and it's gonna say this is a good content piece, and it's gonna show it to more people. That means I'm casting a huge wide net. Of course, within that wide net, most of those people are not going to be my specific ideal client who is ready to launch her first or next coaching offer. Sell it out because she wants to make a difference in the world, she wants to help people, she wants to fulfill her potential. And you know, most people that read those carousels, because it was millions and millions and millions of people, they were not those people, right? I mean, like, I had so many celebrities who were liking the carousels, like Paris Hilton commented, who had Chloe Kardashian liked multiple of them, all sorts of bad baby, like if you know, you know, their amount of people that were able to resonate with this was huge. So then what I had to really, really importantly do, and the reason why most people who do go viral are not able to actually convert it into amazing clients, dream clients who are gonna do the work, who they love working with, and who they're gonna be able to actually get a huge influx of cash in their business from, is because they don't do this next step. And that is using the caption and the first comment to do the conversion work. So my viral content didn't sell anything, it was just attracting at scale all sorts of people, working people, business owners, celebrities, dads, moms, even. Then the caption introduced exactly who I am in a very succinct way so that I could immediately turn those that cold audience into people who knew exactly who I am, what I do, and the proof that what I do is actually works and that I've been able to get these results from myself and my clients. The way that I did that again was not writing my whole life story in long paragraphs. I literally used emojis to create a bullet point list. So you can see this is where I started off. I was built this manifestation coach, coaching business to multi-six figure business. I've had this many views, I've helped this many people, this is what I do, and immediately they were able to self-qualify whether my offers would be for them or not for them, right? And if they wanted to stay around for the content, great. But I also gave a call to action at the end of every single um caption most of the time, and that call to action moved those people who are now a little bit warmer because they knew who I who I was into actually getting them to send me a DM uh trigger word. This funnel was built into the content itself, so you had millions of people seeing this entertaining educational content, being able to qualify if they were the right type of person to actually go further into working with me, and then knowing straight away what they needed to do if it seemed like it could potentially be interesting to them at all, which was to send me a simple trigger word to the DMs. This trigger word then, of course, converted into them getting onto a call with me, and from the call, they were then able to join the offer that I had for them to actually get the results that they wanted to have in their business. Carousel stops the scroll with the AI animated brand character. The content then delivers genuine value to a massive audience, creating not just these buyers but also a real brand and an engaged community and audience that builds a lot of brand authority for people making a buying decision. And then the caption introduced who I am and calls out specifically the ideal client that I work with, and then they're able to send over a simple trigger word, get booked on a call and get inside my program. Some people were activated, they've been following me for a long time, and because they've seen this huge influx of views in my uh in this series, they were like, Wow, uh let me, you know, I I want to see how she's doing this, let me get on a call with her. Some other people they found a brain carousel, a lot of people they found a brain carousel, came upon their for you page, whatever. They read the caption, they were like, This resonates, bam, I want to book a call, and they signed with me, paid thousands to me within a couple of days of finding my profile. That is the power of having a complete acquisition acquisition funnel built into your entertainment content pieces. You get all of the benefits of scale and reaching the masses, and also being able to specifically speak to your ideal client. Another thing that I did to just back up this clarity of who I am and what I actually offer is I put a pinned comment on each post, which gave a very brief introduction of like, welcome to my space. This is the space for women who want to become worthy and wealthy. I help you with your content, building an offer, and getting booked out with your first clients to get to 5 to 10k months. So, again, if there's any ambiguity of like, okay, this is a post about um the ADHD brain, for example, you don't know what I do from that. But then if you look anywhere, if you look in my caption, you see exactly what I do and who I'm speaking to. If you look in the comments, you're gonna see my pinned comment, which reminds you again exactly what my actual offer is and who I'm speaking to. If they click on my profile, they're gonna see my bio, which says exactly who I'm helping. It's okay to have this content that is gonna reach the masses. That is it's okay for that to be a little bit more fluffy, a little bit more broad, a little bit more wider than your specific coaching offer. But you need to back that up with consistent, reinforced touch points of clarity of what you do and who you're speaking to. That's how you're gonna be able to not just go viral, but actually make that into a consistent business structure. And that series really compounded a lot of authority for me because it creates recognizability, it creates binge ability to new audiences, it takes your old audience who's been with you for a long time on a new journey so they don't get bored and stale and just interested in all the other new creators who are doing all different types of content pieces. And the doubling down on that and making it into a series is the essential point because one viral post is a cool moment, but it's a series that's going to actually build you a brand. And views on virality are not everything, but it sure does help, right? If you have 10 million people in the past 90 days, I've had over 45 million people viewing my page. That means 45 million people that get to make a decision of is this for me, right? And the clarity is given to them, and exactly what next step they need to take to actually go deeper and to get help from me is given to them very clearly. Of course, you're going to be able to make more money if you have that rather than if you have 4,000 people seeing you, right? So it does make a difference, and even like I remember one call specifically when this woman who is working with me currently, she's doing incredible, she's a perfect ideal client, super smart woman, and she was at the end of the call, she was going to make her payment, and she was like, Oh, you know, I know there's like so many, like, there's so many inauthentic people out there, there's scams literally online right now. So, people, of course, are cautious about sending money. And she was making that consideration, she knew that the offer was gonna be perfect for her. She felt that connection with me, and the thing that you know, she said to me right before she actually went ahead and made that payment. She was like, Okay, I know like I can trust you. Like, you have a huge audience, and you even have like Winnie Harlow following you, so of course, you're like legit, you know, like some random scammer. And so having that type of authority for your brand is of course going to be another positive factor helping you out when people are making a decision to to trust you and to commit to working with you. And so I learned a huge amount of things about implementing this content strategy. First of all, before I give you the takeaways, the final takeaways, I want you to literally make a mental like make mental check-in with yourself right now of what are you taking away from this? What are you doing in your content? What are you not doing in your content? If you're wanting to start making content, what is it that you've taken from this that you're gonna is gonna affect how you actually go and make content now getting started? Takeaways on my end for you. Trends aren't a strategy in themselves. Spotting where a trend has potential, spotting where there's white space still within a brand new trend is what is going to be the moneymaker for you, and is what gonna be the thing that stops you from getting lost in a sea of trends and everyone doing the same thing and saying the same thing. Number two, your job with your top of funnel content, with the reels that you're making, with the carousels that you're making to a cold audience isn't to sell them, but it's to attract scale, it's to attract eyeballs. The brain chat series worked because it was genuinely interesting to millions of people, and most of them were not gonna be potential coaching clients, but a large, a large chunk of them actually were potential clients. So think wide net specific funnel. Number three, speed to posting beats perfection. I talked about this in the previous podcast episode when I talked about millionaire microhabits. We talked about speed to decision. If you haven't listened to that, go back and listen to it. But my first brain chat series post, I didn't know it was gonna be a series, I didn't know it was gonna hit, it wasn't the best one. I made it better over all of the other 25 carousels that I made. I've also now made it into a real series as well, where I learned how to um not automate, what's the word? Use AI to animate the brain characters to actually speak. All of that came because I just posted the first imperfect one. And last but not least, discomfort is a precursor to success. Don't stop when you feel uncomfortable, move through the discomfort. And so if you've listened to all of this, you're sitting here thinking, I would love to have something like that. I would love to have millions of people be able to see my authentic voice, hear my message, be able to get into contact with my coaching, and to be able to build that type of financial scaling and sustainability in my business, but you don't know exactly what your next step is. That is exactly what I help women to do inside of the paid coach immersion. We build out your content system, your coaching offer. There was a word I'm looking for, irresistible coaching offer. That's it. Your irresistible coaching offer, and we find the version of this opportunity for you and create the structure for yourself that is going to turn those views into clients. The women that I'm working with, they're not all creating brain chats, right? We help you to find your own version of this, the version of this that is true to you, that is true to your voice, that is built for your audience and your ideal clients specifically, and have the funnel set up to be able to convert into your coaching offer. That is what we build together. If you are ready to stop figuring this out alone, then come and find me on Instagram at mini Courtney Coach and DM me the word brain, and I will know that you've listened to this episode, and I will give you your exact next steps on how I can help you build your own version of this with your own authentic message. If you just want to go direct into applying to work with me, the link is also in the podcast um show notes as well. So either one DM me on Instagram, the word brain, or click the application link in the show notes, and I cannot wait to review with you to get your get my hands on all of your ideas, all of your creativity, and actually bring some structure, bring some alignment to it so that it's actually going to convert and we're gonna create the life that you know that you're capable of. I hope this has been hugely valuable. I'm always open for requests over on Instagram. So if there's anything that like questions that you had about this, specific strategic things, general things, future episodes that you want to hear, feel free to let me know about them on Instagram. If not, I'll see you in next week's episode. Have a blessed day.