237 The Dark Side of Success Nobody Talks About

Send a textI've had the pleasure of meeting Benny Lewis a couple of times at conferences over the years, and I'm really happy to finally have him on the show. Benny built one of the biggest language blogs in the world, with over 2 million monthly visitors at its peak, a bestselling book, and a growing team. But at the height of that success, he was working 20-hour days, clinically depressed, and struggling with his health. In this episode, Benny shares what that period really looked like, how he got through it, and why he made the decision to completely simplify his life and business.We talk about his approach to language learning and why speaking from day one is central to everything he teaches, how he built and maintains a highly engaged email list, the importance of finding your niche and owning a specific point of view, and what he's working on now as he prepares to relaunch his YouTube channel after years away from it.It's an honest conversation about what it actually takes to build something online, what success can cost you if you're not careful, and how to figure out what you actually want from your business and your life. I really enjoyed this one and I think you will too.#OnlineCourses #SalesFunnels #CourseCreators #DigitalMarketing🤝  Get In TouchIf you'd like to talk more about how you can grow your course business, email me at john@datadrivenmarketing.

Send a text🔥 Ready to double your course sales? Book your call at https://datadrivenmarketing.co/callLiam Ward is a blues harmonica player, teacher and founder of learntheharmonica.com. He's built a course business with 240,000 YouTube subscribers and millions of views... and he barely checks his numbers.In this episode we get into why Liam thinks your business doesn't have to run your life, how he's built a passive income school that fits around his life as a musician, and why joy might be a more useful metric than revenue for a lot of course creators. We also have a genuinely good debate about data, because I'm not going to pretend I just agreed with everything he said.It's a different kind of conversation to what we usually have on the show, and I think that's exactly why it's worth your time. If you've ever felt like your business is pulling you away from the reason you started it in the first place, this one will resonate.🎶 Liam's harmonica school: https://learntheharmonica.com🎶 Check out Liam's music side of things: https://liamwardmusic.com. If you want to find out how to grow your own course business in a way that actually works for your life, head to datadrivenmarketing.co/resources where you can get access to a range of free tools and guides to help you do exactly that.#OnlineCourses #SalesFunnels #CourseCreators #DigitalMarketing🤝  Get In TouchIf you'd like to talk more about how you can grow your course business, email me at john@datadrivenmarketing.

Send a text🔥 Grow your course revenue up to 30% in 7 days - no paid ads, no sales calls 📈https://datadrivenmarketing.co/roadmapMarnie Ginsberg built Reading Simplified from a private tutoring clinic into an online academy that's served over 16,000 members and reached more than 3 million children... and she did it with no business background and no outside capital. Which is just remarkable.In this episode we get into something that I think a lot of course creators will really resonate with. Marnie's business is literally called Reading Simplified, and yet her own instinct in business has always been to complicate things... trying every marketing channel, building out in every direction, doing all of the things at once. Sound familiar?We talk about what made her decide to stop, why doubling down on one channel is so much harder than it sounds, and how the same diagnostic thinking she uses to help struggling readers maps almost perfectly onto how you can find the bottleneck in your own sales funnel.We also get into her membership model, how she structures coaching without it eating up her margin, and the high ticket offers she's building out for 2026.If you've ever felt like you're working flat out but not quite moving forward the way you should be... this one's worth a listen.📚 We mention Expert Secrets by Russell Brunson and The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt in the episode... both well worth picking up if you haven't read them.And if you'd like to get hold of my webinar resources, just drop me an email at [email protected] and I'll put something together and send it over to you.🔗 Connect with Marnie:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ReadingSimplifiedIG: https://www.instagram.com/readingsimplified/Website: https://www.readingsimplified.com#OnlineCourses #SalesFunnels #CourseCreators #DigitalMarketing

Send a text🔥 Grow your course revenue up to 30% in 7 days - no paid ads, no sales calls 📈https://datadrivenmarketing.co/roadmapAlexis Haselberger has built a multiple six figure business with a small audience.. and honestly, most people are surprised when they hear that.She's a time management, productivity and stress reduction coach who helps busy professionals do more and stress less. Her clients include Google, Lyft, Workday, Capital One and Upwork, and over 229,000 people have taken her courses on Udemy.In this episode we dig into how she's built four different revenue streams that all pull their weight, why she nearly burned out with 35 one-on-one coaching clients and a six month wait list, and how that pushed her toward building courses. We talk about the difference between selling on Udemy versus selling on your own site, and why those are completely different games.We also get into her approach to YouTube and LinkedIn, and we actually pull up her YouTube analytics live to look at where her best performing videos are getting their traffic from. Turns out 52% of her top video's views come from search, which opens up a really interesting strategy for her going forward.We chat about webinars, evergreen funnels, and whether email marketing works differently when your audience is made up of super busy people who barely read their inboxes. Plus we get into some really cool stuff about AI and courses, including how one course creator replaced her course with an AI chatbot and 3X'd her best launch.And Alexis shares some genuinely practical productivity tips that I think any course creator will find useful.. especially around getting stuff out of your head and being realistic about how much you can actually get done.This was a really fun conversation. Hope you enjoy it.🔎 Find Alexis here:🔗 Website: https://www.alexishaselberger.com/ 🎙️ Do More, Stress Less Podcast: alexishaselberger.com/podcast 📖 Distraction Action Plan:  https://www.alexishaselberger.com/reduce-distraction 🔗 Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/domorestressless 🔗 Insta:  @do.more.stress.less 🔗 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@do.more.stress.less 🔗 FB Group:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/domorestressless/  #OnlineCourses #SalesFunnels #CourseCreators #DigitalMarketing🤝  Get In TouchIf you'd like to talk more about how you can grow your course business, email me at john@datadrivenmarketing.

Send a text🔥 Looking for predictable revenue growth? Access our FREE 7-day roadmap to increase your income without paid ads or sales calls! 👉🏼 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/roadmapSpencer Russell went from classroom teacher to building a business with over 5 million followers and 10,000 customers. In this episode, he shares why he believes your backup plan might actually be the thing holding you back from success.We get into the concept of Blue Ocean Strategy and how Spencer found a niche in the toddler reading space that nobody was tapping into. He talks about the moment he decided to quit his safe teaching job, even with a young kid at home, and why he believes that burning the bridge and going all in was the best decision he ever made. He shares both the spiritual and practical arguments for betting on yourself and how necessity became the fuel that drove him forward.We also dive into the future of online courses and why Spencer thinks the industry needs to evolve. He talks about protecting your business from AI, why community might be the most important differentiator going forward, and how he balances selling physical products alongside digital courses with a 50/50 revenue split.On the tactical side, Spencer walks us through his plan to use a quiz funnel that segments parents by their child's age and routes them into different webinars with tailored offers. We also talk about his email marketing challenges and what he is doing to fix them now that he has taken his business back after selling it to Love Every in 2024.🔗 Check out Spencer's work at https://toddlerscanread.com🔗 Find Spencer on YouTube, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram at  @toddlerscanread  .Thanks for listening and I will catch you in the next one.#OnlineCourses #SalesFunnels #CourseCreators #DigitalMarketing🤝  Get In TouchIf you'd like to talk more about how you can grow your course business, email me at john@datadrivenmarketing.

Send a text🔥 Want to 2-10x your email list size quickly? Download our FREE Lead Magnet Guide and increase your email list size by 2-10x, simply by following our proven step-by-step guide 👉🏼 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/lead-magnetWhat happens when none of the careers in your industry feel right? Sahara Rose De Vore found herself in that exact spot. She had a degree in hospitality and tourism management, she'd traveled to over 84 countries, and yet nothing in the travel industry clicked for her. So she did something most people wouldn't even consider. She created an entirely new career path and built the world's first and only ICF accredited travel coach certification program around it.In this episode, Sahara shares how she went from broke college student to building the Travel Coach Network, a global community of over 750 certified travel coaches from more than 40 countries. We talk about how she educated a market that didn't know it needed her, how she generates sales through strategic price drops, and how adding a single deadline funnel to her email list brought in over $25K. We also dig into her surprisingly low ad spend, her experiments with Reddit ads, and what she'd focus on to grow her email list from 200 opt-ins a month to over 2,000 with the 70,000 monthly visitors she's already getting.If you're a course creator trying to figure out how to sell in a niche that you've had to explain to people, this one's for you.✈️ Check out The Travel Coach Network: https://thetravelcoachnetwork.com✈️ Follow Sahara Rose on social media: @sahararosethetravelcoach🧨 Check out The Dynamite Circle: dynamitecircle.comWant to 2-10x your email list size quickly? Download our FREE Double Your Email List Guide 👉🏼 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/guide#OnlineCourses #SalesFunnels #CourseCreators #DigitalMarketing🤝  Get In TouchIf you'd like to talk more about how you can grow your course business, email me at john@datadrivenmarketing.

Send a text🔥 Struggling with low conversions? Grab our FREE checklist of 15 must-have elements to optimize your sales pages! 👉🏼 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/elementsMark Smith films birds in slow motion. That's his niche. Ospreys, eagles, hawks in ultra slow motion. And it's got him 980 million views on YouTube and 6 million followers across platforms.In this episode I sit down with Mark and we get into how he built this massive audience from one incredibly specific niche. He picked up a camera again at 40, almost didn't start YouTube because he thought nobody would care, and his son had to convince him to post his first video. That video got a thousand views overnight and the rest is history.We talk about why he compares himself to Bob Ross and how the best creators make things look possible for their audience. We get into why YouTube crushes every other platform for selling online courses and why short form content doesn't convert the same way. I also pull up one of his sales pages live on the call and walk through what's working and what's missing.Mark is honest about the fact that he'd rather be outside photographing wildlife than working on his email list or his funnels. His email list is only 2,500 people despite having millions of followers. He knows he's leaving money on the table and we dig into exactly where that money is and what he could do about it.If you're a course creator with a decent audience but you know your business side isn't keeping up with your content, this conversation will hit home.🦅 Check out Mark's YouTube channel! https://www.youtube.com/@MarkSmithphotography🎁 Want the free customer avatar course I mention during the episode? Drop me an email at [email protected] with "Customer Avatar" in the subject line and I'll send it over.

Send a text🔥 Need better results from your email campaigns? Get our FREE templates and see the difference with two proven email strategies! 👉🏼 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/templatesWhat would you do if you had no audience, an email list of 50 people, and zero courses to sell?That's exactly where Trevor Dimoff was when he decided to figure out how to sell a course before he'd even built one. He talked to 50 people, listened to their problems, came up with a solution, and pitched it back to the same people he'd interviewed. The result was $2,000 in pre-sales for a course that didn't exist yet.In this episode Trevor walks through his entire process step by step. How he found people to talk to, what questions he asked, the three things he did during every call that made the pre-sell possible later, and how he delivered the pilot course live on Zoom. He's also really honest about what went wrong after that and why he lost momentum trying to scale too fast.If you're just getting started or thinking about launching something new, this is a really practical episode. Trevor doesn't sugarcoat anything and the lessons from his mistakes are just as useful as the wins.🔗 Check out Trevor's work: https://trevordimoff.com🔗 https://trevordimoff.com/aosoc🔗 If you'd like to connect with Trevor or to ask him questions about having research conversations you can contact him at: https://trevordimoff.com/aosocTrevor would like to thank Jacques Hopkins, the Online Course Guy and his Online Course Show podcast. Jacques interviewed Trevor on episode 90: https://theonlinecourseguy.comTrevor learned the process he used for market research and course creation from: Danny Iny, founder of Mirasee, where he helps online teachers and coaches monetize their gifts: https://mirasee.com#OnlineCourses #SalesFunnels #CourseCreators #DigitalMarketing🤝  Get In TouchIf you'd like to talk more about how you can grow your course business, email me at john@datadrivenmarketing.

Send a text🔥 Looking for predictable revenue growth? Access our FREE 7-day roadmap to increase your income without paid ads or sales calls! 👉🏼 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/roadmapJori Chisholm has been teaching bagpipes online since 2003… before YouTube even existed. He was literally the first person to ever teach a bagpipe lesson on a webcam. Fast forward to today and he's running bagpipelessons.com, reaching students in 30 countries, and last year he hit 3.2 million views on Meta and 320,000 on YouTube.The wild part? He wasn't even trying to hit those numbers. His strategy was simple… post one short video every single day. And it worked.In this episode we dig into how Jori built a thriving course business in one of the smallest niches you can imagine. We talk about why he has courses AND a membership AND physical products, how he uses his email list to actually drive sales, and why he thinks AI is going to wipe out a lot of generic information-only courses but won't touch businesses built on real personal connection and trust.Whether you're in a tiny niche or a massive one, there's a lot to learn from someone who's been doing this successfully for 25 years.#OnlineCourses #SalesFunnels #CourseCreators #DigitalMarketing🎵 Check out Jori's work at https://bagpipelessons.com🎵 Jori's YouTube channel:  https://youtube.com/bagpipelessons🤝  Get In TouchIf you'd like to talk more about how you can grow your course business, email me at john@datadrivenmarketing.

Send a text🔥 Grow your course revenue up to 30% in 7 days - no paid ads, no sales calls 📈https://datadrivenmarketing.co/roadmapHere's something I hear all the time... course creators telling me they feel weird about selling. They got into this to teach, not to become marketers.Kerstin Cable gets it. She's been at this since 2013, runs a language learning business, has recorded over 240 podcast episodes, and recently started AI Language Club. When I asked her about marketing, she literally said "but John, we're not marketers." And honestly, that's what makes this conversation so good.We dig into why selling courses has gotten harder post-COVID, whether social media is even worth the effort anymore, and how Kerstin promotes her stuff without feeling sleazy about it.Her approach is dead simple. Talk about what you know, then make an offer. That's it. But the way she explains it actually made something click for me.We also talk about the mindset stuff, why so many of us hold back from promoting our own work, and what changes when you reconnect with what you actually believe about your course.#OnlineCourses #SalesFunnels #CourseCreators #DigitalMarketingConnect with Kerstin:🔗 https://fluentlanguage.co.uk🔗 https://AILanguageClub.com🤝  Get In TouchIf you'd like to talk more about how you can grow your course business, email me at john@datadrivenmarketing.