297 Why I Left Udemy to Build My Own Course Empire

Send us Fan MailStruggling with low conversions? Grab our FREE checklist of 15 must-have elements to optimize your sales pages! 👉🏼 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/elementsJessica Russo Scherr holds a Fulbright Award, teaches Visual Art at one of the best international schools in Frankfurt, and somehow alongside all of that has built a gel plate printmaking course business that took around 2,000 students through her courses after launching in November 2024. She had no idea what gel plate printing was three or four years ago.I talked with Jessica about how she got there and what the business actually looks like day to day. She runs five course launches a year and near-weekly live webinars where up to a thousand people show up to watch her demonstrate for 45 minutes, before she makes a short pitch and opens the floor for questions. She told me the webinars are some of the steadiest income she has, and that even selling two courses in a session feels like time well spent.We also got into something she was honest about: she went in thinking this would be passive income. It has not been. It has required real, sustained work. And yet she has no plans to leave her teaching job, partly because she loves it, partly because she has a seven-sink art studio in Frankfurt and that, apparently, is non-negotiable.Toward the end we worked through her email list growth, where I think there is a significant gap between what she is doing now and what is possible, and brainstormed what a lead magnet could look like for her niche.I think you'll like this one.Check out Jessica's work:🌐 https://www.bluelavaart.com/📸 https://www.instagram.com/bluelavaart▶️ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@bluelavaart▶️ YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/bluelavaart🌐 Newsletter: https://www.bluelavaartacademy.com/newsletter-form

Send us Fan MailAdd 30% to your revenue with order bumps in 3 simple steps 🏅 https://funnels.datadrivenmarketing.co/order-bump-blueprintAnnelies Espeel spent over 20 years treating patients in Brussels as a Chinese medicine practitioner and acupuncturist. Then she built an online masterclass, started running Meta ads, and found herself breaking even almost immediately. No backend, no upsell, no guarantee on the page. Just a solid product and a funnel that was halfway there.In this episode, I sat down with Annelies and walked through her entire setup live. We looked at her sales page together, and she is already doing a lot of things right. She leads with the customer's pain, she has testimonials, she has an order bump that is actually converting. But there were some clear gaps, and we got into all of them. Headline placement, button copy written in the first person, adding a transformation section, why bonuses work best when they answer specific objections, and what an upsell could do for her return on ad spend.What I found refreshing about Annelies is how honest she was about the learning curve. She came from Chinese medicine, not marketing. She said it plainly: "I have content, I just didn't see the wall behind it." That is such a common place to be, and she is already further along than she thinks.If you are at the stage where your funnel kind of works but you are not sure why it is not scaling, this one is worth your time.Check out Annelies's work:🌐 www.sparkleyourvitalenergy.com🌐📸 instagram.com/anneliesespeel▶️ https://kayanova.eu/en/sparkle-your-vital-energy/

Send us Fan Mail15 sales page elements you can't afford to miss - free checklist 📝 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/elementsMonica Froese built a multi-million dollar Pinterest ads course business, then shut it all down in a single conversation with her husband right after they signed the papers on their new house. That alone would make for a good episode. But Monica's story keeps going.After pivoting to Empowered Business and launching her Digital Shop Experience to what she describes as her biggest launches ever, her marriage fell apart. She pulled back from the business, turned off her paid ads, and by 2024 her revenue had halved. Then in 2025 it halved again.I talked with Monica about how she rebuilt from that. Not through a dramatic new launch or a big moment of inspiration, but through AI. Specifically, agentic AI. She talks about how tools like Claude, Fable 5, and MCPs allowed her to take back work she'd previously hired out, update a spreadsheet she'd been selling for ten years but never had time to improve, and relaunch a brand she'd been sitting on since 2013.We also got into the lifetime updates problem, how she's rethinking course pricing as AI changes so fast, and the question she asks every new creator that stops them cold: what are you growing your audience for?Monica is honest about the hard parts in a way that most people aren't. I think you'll get a lot out of this one.Check out Monica's work:🌐 https://monicafroese.com🌐 https://www.skool.com/empowered-ai-collective/about 📸 https://instagram.com/monica.froese ▶️ Empowered Business Podcast® https://monicafroese.com/podcast 

Send us Fan Mail2-10x your email list size in just 3 steps 📩 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/guideChandeep Chhabra left his job as an investment banking analyst in December 2013 with no backup plan and one idea: that he could sell his spreadsheet skills. Over a decade later, he runs Goodly, a business built around teaching Excel and Power BI to data professionals, with 137,000 YouTube subscribers, over 19 million views, corporate training clients, a consulting agency, and a bestselling book on Power Query.John sat down with Chandeep for what turned into a live audit of his business. Chandeep has roughly 350,000 YouTube views per month and an email list of about 26,000 people, but only around 500 new subscribers joining each month. John walked through exactly why that gap exists, what his opt-in pages are doing wrong, where the lead magnet link is buried in the video description, and what changes would get that number to 3,000 or 4,000 new subscribers a month.They also got into Black Friday. Chandeep went from $20,000 to $60,000 in Black Friday revenue after adding webinars and a more structured email sequence. John connected him with his head of funnel strategy to take it further.And then the conversation drifted somewhere unexpected: writing books. Chandeep is working on his second, and both he and John reflected on why it's so hard, why you should publish anyway, and why Chandeep thinks books are written for craft and authority rather than money.It's a really honest conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it.Check out Chandeep's work:🌐 http://products.goodly.co.in📸 https://www.linkedin.com/in/chandeepchhabra/▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@GoodlyChandeep

Send us Fan MailGrow your course revenue up to 30% in 7 days - no paid ads, no sales calls 📈https://datadrivenmarketing.co/roadmapStefanie Faye spent close to 20 years translating brain science for coaches, therapists, and leaders. She has done research at NYU, worked with Google, Stanford, MIT, and the FBI, and built a 25,000-person email list. This year, she made what she calls the best business decision of her career: packaging 20 years of expertise into a $44 micro-course.Dominik sat down with Stefanie to dig into how she thinks about all of it. She talks about why she walked away from the sold-out live academy model, at least for now, and why micro-courses are reaching people in Nigeria, South Africa, and Israel who never could have joined a live group program. She explains her lead gen setup, using Meta ads and free downloads to drive a simple email funnel, and how emailing four to five times a week keeps that list warm.There's a moment in this conversation where Stefanie compares "now money" to "later money" that stuck with me. She's essentially choosing to invest her time building assets that compound, rather than filling another cohort. She also has a phrase she uses with her own students that applies perfectly to building an online business: mistakes are always information for iteration.She's thoughtful, specific, and genuinely excited about what she's building. I think you'll enjoy this one.Check out Stefanie's work:🌐 https://stefaniefaye.com📸 https://www.instagram.com/stefanieffaye/▶️ https://www.facebook.com/mindsetneuroscience

Send us Fan MailStruggling with low conversions? Grab our FREE checklist of 15 must-have elements to optimize your sales pages! 👉🏼 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/elementsJohn Bura started making mobile games during the 2008 financial crisis. Then everyone he met kept asking him the same question: how do you build an app? So in 2011 he made a course on Udemy, teaching people to make HTML5 games without coding. That course took off, and he never really stopped.Fourteen years later, John runs Mammoth Club, a full membership platform with over a thousand courses, 15 to 25 staff, and a goal of selling a million annual subscriptions at $199 each, with a free book and a free shirt shipped anywhere in the world when you sign up.I had a great conversation with John about how he built all of this, including the part where he walked away from three million Udemy students because their model made it impossible for publishers like him to scale. He talks honestly about the year revenue dropped 30% and felt like the world was ending, and what happened next. We also got into what he's working on now: onboarding design, A/B testing $1 trial offers, email sequences for win-back, building his own platform from scratch (and why he tells solo creators never to do that), and why producing more content this year didn't automatically mean more revenue.John thinks carefully about things most course creators don't touch until something breaks. This one was worth the time.Check out John's work:🌐 https://mammothclub.com📸 https://training.mammothinteractive.com▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@mammothinteractive

Send us Fan MailStruggling with low conversions? Grab our FREE checklist of 15 must-have elements to optimize your sales pages! 👉🏼 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/elementsBori Vigh built a course business in Hungarian. Not as a stepping stone to the English market. As the whole plan, on purpose.Dominik sat down with Bori to find out how she turned a backpacker blog into a virtual assistant training program with around 20,000 people on her email list, and why she thinks selling to a small market is actually an advantage, not a limitation.What came through in this conversation is how clearly Bori thinks about her audience. She noticed that her most-read blog post was always about how to make money while traveling, so she built her entire funnel around answering that question. Free webinar, entry-level career coaching course, then a cohort-based VA training program. Simple, but deliberate.She also pushed back hard on the advice she kept getting to raise her prices or go international. Her argument is that pricing has to match the market, and that being the well-known face of location independence in Hungary is worth more than being unknown in a crowded global space. It's hard to argue with her logic.The part that stuck with me most was her description of what the first two years actually look like. She was blunt about it in a way that most guests aren't.I think you'll enjoy this one.Check out Bori's work:🌐 https://vahungary.com/📸 https://www.instagram.com/bori.vigh/🧩 https://www.linkedin.com/in/borivigh/

Send us Fan Mail🚀 Work With Me - https://datadrivenmarketing.co/done-for-youBlack Friday is the biggest revenue opportunity of the year for course creators, and the sellers who win it start planning in September. In this episode, John Ainsworth and Josip Bolina walk through the exact Black Friday playbook we use with our clients.They cover why prep has to start in September, why Black Friday is the time to run your proven winner instead of testing new ideas, and how to build a dedicated offer for your best customers who already bought your main product. You'll also learn the two-promotion November strategy, how many emails to send and which types, and why the best offer beats the cheapest offer. Instead of slashing prices in half, a reverse discount that stacks bonuses on top of your existing product will usually make you more money. Plus: what to sell on Cyber Monday for the people who didn't buy, and the simple tracking setup you need.In 2026, Black Friday is November 27 and Cyber Monday is November 30. Start now.Want help with your Black Friday campaign? Email us:[email protected]@datadrivenmarketing.co

Send us Fan MailLooking for predictable revenue growth? Access our FREE 7-day roadmap to increase your income without paid ads or sales calls! 👉🏼 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/roadmapNadia Mologova grew up in a mining town in southern Russia, spotted an art school at six years old while walking with her grandmother, and eventually made her way to Florence, Italy, where she founded her own accredited academy in 2009. She built the entire curriculum herself, from anatomy to composition to copying the old masters, and has spent 17 years passing on a method of classical art that most of the world had mostly forgotten.John talked with Nadia about how the Florence Classical Arts Academy works today, with in-person students capped at 60 a year, online groups deliberately kept to 5 or 10 students, and a hybrid program that brings people to Florence to finish what they started online. The pricing, the hiring of professors, the challenge of giving individual feedback across 12 time zones, all of it came up.What stood out was how clearly Nadia has thought through the tradeoff between scale and quality. She could take more students. She has chosen not to. That's not a marketing line for her, it's just how she thinks about the work. She also talked honestly about stepping back from day-to-day leadership, the weight of running something this complex alongside raising two children and pursuing her own art, including a recognition from the Olympic Committee in 2026.If you're running a course business and thinking about how much individual support is the right amount to offer, this one gives you a lot to think about.Check out Nadia's work:🌐 https://www.artac.org📸 https://www.instagram.com/nadyamolugova▶️ https://www.youtube.com/c/FlorenceClassicalArtsAcademyart

Send us Fan Mail15 sales page elements you can't afford to miss - free checklist 📝 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/elementsLouise Volschenk did her first bride's makeup at 14. She was charging the equivalent of about $10. By 16 she was teaching in salons. By 2013 she had turned her garage into an academy. Today she has nearly 100,000 followers, her own makeup product line, students flying in from other countries, and an online course she openly admits she has barely scratched the surface of.Dominik sat down with Louise to trace the whole journey, from that garage studio in South Africa to a brand that is starting to reach people globally without really trying. What came through clearly is how much of Louise's business was built on personal connection, showing up as herself, talking to her audience, and being the face of what she built.The moment that stuck with me most was when Louise described her email marketing, four newsletters a month, one per product or service area, and then said plainly that the online course is "income that I'm ignoring." Not said defensively, just honestly. She knows the opportunity is sitting there. She knows the course is already made. She just hasn't turned the tap on yet.There's also a lot in here about what it actually takes to teach a skill well, why her students travel from other countries, what she'd tell her 14-year-old self, and why she thinks feeling stuck usually has more to do with watching other people than with your own work.I think you'll enjoy this one.Check out Louise's work:🌐 https://www.halouw.co.za/📸 https://www.instagram.com/louisevolschenk1/?hl=en▶️ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCART2AOrqc0y-k77k4M_U_Q