250 Building a Course Business in 25 Hours a Week

Send us Fan MailWant 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://funnels.datadrivenmarketing.co/the-complete-lead-magnet-guide David Duffy is an Irish musician and bassist who co-founded Secrets of Solo, the biggest online school for solo swing dancing, with his wife Ksenia, a dance artist with over 200 million views online. One of their videos alone has 14 million views on YouTube. And yet, when those viral moments happen, the sales spike they expect... doesn't really come.That's where this conversation gets really interesting.John sat down with David to dig into the gap between attention and revenue, something a lot of creators feel but rarely talk about this honestly. David runs the marketing and business side of the school while Ksenia teaches, and he's refreshingly open about what's working, what isn't, and where they've been getting in their own way.They get into the tension between being an artist and running a business, why Ksenia only wants one sale a year and what that's costing them, the €12 choreography challenge that brought in 70 new members at Christmas, and how to use analytics to figure out which part of your funnel actually needs fixing.John also walks David through how to think about conversion benchmarks, monthly promotions, and why urgency works even when it doesn't feel like "you."If you've ever felt like you're creating great content but not seeing it turn into consistent revenue, this one will resonate.Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.Check out David's work:🌐 https://kseniaparkhatskaya.com/🌐 https://secretsofsolo.com/📸 https://www.instagram.com/ksenia_parkhatskaya/▶️ https://www.youtube.com/ ⁨@secretsofsolo⁩  

Send us Fan MailJayne Havens never planned to build a business. She just wanted to help her kids sleep.But after one year of running a sleep consulting practice and feeling maxed out, she made a decision that changed everything. She stopped taking more clients and started teaching other people to do what she did. That was 2019. Today, roughly 75% of her income comes from a single $2,700 certification course, and she's still running it all from her kitchen table.Dominik sat down with Jayne to dig into exactly how she built this, and honestly, it's one of the more refreshing conversations we've had on the show. No complicated funnels, no big ad spend, no content machine. Just Jayne showing up in Facebook groups, having real conversations, and being, as she puts it, the most helpful person in the room.She also talks about how she uses her podcast not to attract new leads, but to close them. How she keeps a personal list of warm prospects on her phone. Why her affiliate partners outperform paid ads by a wide margin. And why she thinks copying someone else's funnel is a trap most course creators fall into.If you're building something in a specific niche and wondering whether you really need ads or a massive audience to make it work, Jayne's answer is pretty clear.I think you'll find this one genuinely useful.Check out Jayne's work:🌐 https://thecpsm.com/📸 https://www.instagram.com/snoozefestbyjaynehavens/▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@Becomingasleepconsultant

Send us Fan Mail2-10x your email list size in just 3 steps 📩 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/guideBethany McBride started her business because she needed to make a thousand dollars to cover some bills. That was it. No grand plan, no marketing strategy, just a Facebook group and a love for teaching worship music. A few months later, she and her husband had replaced his income entirely.This week I sat down with Bethany, the creator behind Simplified Piano, an online piano education community helping beginners, mostly people in their 60s and beyond, learn to play worship songs using a simple chord-based method. She built the whole thing around four chords: C, F, G, and A minor. That's genuinely it.What I loved about this conversation is how much of Bethany's business was shaped by constraints. Health challenges that made a 9-to-5 impossible. A toxic mold situation that forced her family into her parents' basement. Five kids. And yet she and her husband built something with 450,000 monthly YouTube views, around 160,000 email subscribers, and a model that's mostly evergreen and automated.We talked about how she gets 4,300 new email subscribers a month from a lead magnet so simple it's almost obvious in hindsight, why she switched a one-time offer to a recurring membership almost overnight and barely noticed a dip, and what she wishes she'd known earlier about getting in front of real students and listening to them properly.Bethany is warm, honest, and genuinely funny. I think you'll like this one.Check out Bethany's work:🌐 https://www.simplifiedpiano.com▶️  https://www.youtube.com/c/simplifiedpiano

Send us Fan MailNeed better results from your email campaigns? Get our FREE templates and see the difference with two proven email strategies! 👉🏼 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/templatesNicole Hullihen runs a full-time VP role in pharmaceuticals, leads a family, and still finds 25 hours a week to build a course business on the side. I honestly wasn't sure how that was possible, but listening to her talk about it, it starts to make sense.Nicole is the founder of Execute The Vision, where she teaches Excel and business operations skills through courses, done-for-you templates, and a work management software she built herself from scratch after deciding to learn to code a couple of years ago. She's got around 365,000 followers on TikTok and has sold to roughly 800 course customers in just over a year, all while keeping her prices deliberately low because, as she puts it, she just wants to get the information out there.We talked about how she drives traffic from TikTok and YouTube to her site, the frustrations of linking off social platforms, why templates have actually outsold her courses, what shifted in organic reach after the TikTok ban situation in the US, and her thinking on content format and hooks for educational video.There's something refreshing about someone who isn't trying to squeeze every dollar out of their audience and is just genuinely passionate about helping people work smarter. She's got a clear point of view and a lot of hard-won experience to back it up.Hope you enjoy this one.Check out Nicole's work:🌐 https://xecutethevision.com/home📸 https://www.instagram.com/xecutethevision/▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@XecuteTheVision

Send us Fan MailLeah Bolden built a YouTube channel with over a million subscribers and nearly 200 million views by teaching one thing really well: how to fix your home. And she did it by speaking to people exactly like a friend would, not like a tradesperson trying to impress anyone.Dominik sat down with Leah to talk about how See Jane Drill went from a classroom suggestion to a full course business, and the conversation ended up being one of the more grounded and honest ones we've had on this show.Leah talks about how a video on tape measures quietly racked up 18 million views and got Good Morning America calling. She explains why her audience turned out to be 78% men when she expected mostly women. And she gets into the real engine behind her course sales, which is soft mentions in YouTube videos and a newsletter, not complicated funnels or big launches.What really stood out was her take on community. She meets with her course students once a month on Zoom, takes their questions, and says that single hour is probably the most valuable thing she offers. She also gets honest about what she would do differently if she started over, and her answer on the membership model is worth the listen on its own.There is a book coming, some thoughts on AI that she is genuinely uncertain about, and a clear through-line across the whole conversation: authority and trust come before anything else.I think you'll enjoy this one.Check out Leah's work:🌐  https://seejanedrill.com▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@UCraGaDLfWec67xl9FEPndtw

Send us Fan MailPete Matthew runs one of the UK's most trusted personal finance brands, a podcast with over 8 million downloads, a YouTube channel approaching 150,000 subscribers, and an online academy that did £140,000 in a single Black Friday weekend. And he still considers it a side project.I sat down with Pete to talk about how Meaningful Money actually works as a business, the honest gaps he knows exist, and the philosophy that's kept him going for 15 years without burning the trust of his audience.We got into the structure of his three-course academy, how a software reseller deal quietly generates £50–60K a year in near-passive recurring revenue, and why his email list of 18,500 people opens his weekly digest at 60% but almost never gets asked to buy anything. Pete knows he's leaving money on the table. He's remarkably candid about it.And Pete built all of this without a plan to monetise at all. He picked up a video camera in 2009, started answering basic finance questions in the Cornish countryside, and after 150 videos got his first client completely out of nowhere. That foundation of just genuinely trying to help people is, I think, a big part of why his audience defends him when anyone questions his sales emails.Pete is thoughtful, funny, and completely honest about the gaps between where his business is and where it could be. I think you'll enjoy this one.Check out Pete's work:🌐 meaningfulmoney.tv🌐 meaningfulacademy.com🌐 jacksons.life📸 https://www.instagram.com/meaningfulmoney.tv▶️ https://youtube.com/@UC39PLqUmy-AKK5HGYYfwFYw

Send us Fan MailArnel Nisbet has 1.3 million YouTube subscribers, 700,000 monthly views, and runs her entire business completely on her own, no team, no editor, no outsourcing. She's also a full-time mother of three. And when Dominik sat down with her for this episode, she openly admitted her biggest blind spot: "My email list is my weakness."That kind of honesty is rare, and it's what makes this conversation so good.Arnel started her channel out of pure necessity. She had three tiny kids at home, limited work options locally, and thought if she could earn enough to buy herself one cup of coffee a month from YouTube, that would be a win. Now she's built Gravotion, a growing international learning platform, and she's thinking about where it'll be in ten years, not ten months.Dominik walks her through exactly what a funnel could look like for her business, lead magnets, welcome email sequences, repeat buyer strategy, all of it. Arnel is taking notes in real time. It's one of those episodes where the guest gets genuine value on air, not just in theory.They also get into why passive income is mostly a myth, why you don't need to outsource to build something real, and why "you are your own niche" is actually useful advice and not just a cliché.Dominik hosted this one, and it's a really warm, honest conversation.Check out Arnel's work:🌐 https://arnelseverydayenglish.com/📸 https://www.instagram.com/arnelseverydayenglish/▶️ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_XZoWueXyWuwVG4B_AEmmg?view_as=subscriber

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/roadmapWhat happens when a digital artist with 1.1 million YouTube subscribers decides she wants to work less, not more? That's exactly where this conversation went.I sat down with Flo Visser, the founder of Art with Flo, one of the most popular Procreate tutorial channels on YouTube. Flo started the whole thing almost by accident, after a friendly Instagram competition with her boyfriend spiralled into a viral post, a Patreon membership, and eventually a full creative business built around teaching people to draw.We talked about how she structures her Patreon, why she's been on the platform for seven years and still has a love-hate relationship with it, and how she's built a library of over 250 tutorials across multiple subscription tiers. But honestly, some of the most interesting parts of our chat were about everything else.Flo is training to become a yoga teacher, planning creativity retreats that combine drawing, improv, yoga, and real human connection, and she recently became the only person in her voice acting class invited to continue to the next level. She's also figured out that her elbow is her early warning sign for burnout, which I thought was brilliant.This one was different from most episodes. Less funnel talk, more about what it actually looks like to build a business around the life you want rather than the other way around. Flo's got a clarity about what she enjoys and what she's moving toward that I found genuinely refreshing.Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.Check out Flo's work:🌐 http://artwithflo.com📸 http://instagram.com/@floortjesart▶️ http://youtube.com/artwithflo

Send us Fan MailGet your tripwire product ideas here: 👉🏼 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/tripwireMark Smith has been teaching bass guitar online since 2013. He has 450,000 YouTube subscribers, 150,000 people on his free membership, and a back catalogue of courses that includes one with 25 hours of video content. By any measure, he has built something real.And yet, sitting down for this conversation, Mark is the first to say he's left an enormous amount of money on the table. No tripwire funnel. Email campaigns with one email at the start and one at the end. About three minutes spent writing each one. Mark talks about the first two or three years when the business made nothing and his wife's gigs kept them afloat. He talks about sitting in the bath hearing PayPal pings for the very first time after launching an ebook, and thinking, we're making money. He talks about watching his friend Scott Devine pull ahead and knowing exactly why. We also get into why retirement-age students dominate music course audiences, why being relatable on YouTube matters more than projecting authority, and how Mark scripts his videos using a teleprompter while going off script the moment he picks up the bass.He's currently working through a funnel audit with our team, and it was great to have him on before that process really gets going.I think you'll enjoy this one.Check out Mark's work:🌐 https://www.talkingbass.net/📸 https://www.instagram.com/talkingbasslessons/▶️ https://www.youtube.com/ ⁨@talkingbasslessons⁩  

Send us Fan MailJason Kleinberg was trying to become a rock star. That's genuinely how this whole thing started.He played in bands, toured the world, recorded music. Sounds great until he tells you it mostly meant sleeping on floors covered in dog hair. At some point he started teaching fiddle, put some videos on YouTube for one student who kept asking him to film everything at 9pm when Jason was starving and just wanted to go home.. and somehow that turned into Fiddlehead, a full-time business doing just north of $200k a year.He didn't plan any of it. He'll be the first to tell you that.We had a really good conversation about how he built it, what makes his teaching approach different, community, AI, and what it felt like to finally get an app idea made that he'd been trying to get built for ten years. Developers kept flaking on him. He got it done with Claude Code in an hour.Jason's just a genuinely interesting person to talk to. He's honest about what he knows, honest about what he doesn't, and he's clearly still really enjoying what he does. That comes through.I think you'll like this one.Check out Jason's business:🌐 https://fiddlehed.com📸 https://www.instagram.com/fiddlehed/▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@fiddl3hed