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The Art of Selling Online Courses
The Art of Selling Online Courses is all about online courses.
The goal of this podcast is to share winning strategies and secret hacks from top performers in the online course industry. We are interviewing successful business owners, asking them questions on how they got to the point where they are right now, and checking how their ideas can help you improve your online course!
The Art of Selling Online Courses
$100K course sales in 30 Days (Complete Breakdown) - With Lindsay McMahon
From slipping sales to hitting $100K in one month - that's what happened when Lindsay McMahon transformed her course business through systematic monthly launches.
In this episode, she reveals her journey from random launches to a structured approach with monthly live promos and quarterly flash sales. Lindsay shares how she built All Ears English into a diversified business with online courses, a podcast reaching 200M downloads, premium apps, and corporate partnerships. She discusses the challenges of selling in the ESL market, her approach to comprehensive sales pages, and why diversifying revenue streams helps her "sleep better at night." Learn how she cleaned up her email list, improved her VSLs, and built a sustainable course business that stands out in a crowded market.
Want results like Lindsay? Book a call at datadrivenmarketing.co/call
Online courses are kind of just one way that we make money at All Ears English and that's something I would definitely recommend to your listeners to diversify revenue, because what if some area just drops one given year, especially in our industry? We have a lot of price sensitivity in our industry, so I think if someone's going to go and purchase a $399 course, that's a big deal. So the most important thing that happened was I got a lot more serious about Hello and welcome to the Art of Selling Online Courses.
Speaker 2:We're here to share winning strategies and secret hacks from top performers in the online course industry. My name is Jon Ainsworth and today's guest is Lindsay McMahon. Lindsay is an edtech entrepreneur in the field of ESL English as a Second Language, serving global professionals. She's the CEO of All Ears English, a fast-growing audio-first language training platform. As the producer and co-host of the award-winning All Ears English podcast, lindsay's built a digital brand that inspires students worldwide and has acquired more than 200 million downloads since launch. In December, lindsay hit a game-changing milestone $100,000 in just 30 days. Today, she's here to take us behind the scenes of that journey. We'll dive into the challenges she faced, why she decided to upgrade her funnel with our team and the results she's achieved, since this is a must-listen for anyone wondering how to break through growth barriers and scale their course business. Lindsay, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1:Hello John, how are you? Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 2:Ah, delighted to have you here. This is fantastic. I've been looking forward to this.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Talk us through it. I mentioned it very briefly, but what kind of results have you gotten from working with our team on your funnels and your email marketing?
Speaker 1:Sure, yeah, absolutely so. First of all, online courses are kind of just one way that we make money. At All Ears English, we do a few other things and that's something I would definitely recommend to your listeners to diversify revenue. We do licensing. We do sell ads on our podcast for sponsorship. We also work with corporations on the B2B side to kind of license our courses to larger platforms that serve businesses. So we also have an iOS and an Android app. So I would say the first thing is definitely expand the ways you make money is always a good idea. Right To diversify. So if something goes down, something else is usually going up.
Speaker 1:But I decided to work with DDM starting back in February of last year of 2024, because I did notice my sales were starting to slip. We focus on three core areas in online courses we do fluency, we do business English and we do IELTS and specifically IELTS was really starting to slip. I know, after COVID a lot of schools went online, so the market got really flooded. At the same time, immigration kind of went down and so we saw kind of a squeezing in terms of the number of students taking the exam. So things got tougher and tougher and I didn't see it right when the pandemic hit, but right after right, more like 2022.
Speaker 1:And I think I'm not sure if you've seen that too, john, especially in this industry. I've heard that from other creators in this industry that around 2022, people started to feel the effects of the pandemic. So that's why I decided to join you all and I came on board and we scoped out how we would put together. You know, launching new courses as well as doing live promos once a month, and it's definitely been gradually increasing, with a couple of exciting months kind of splashed in there as well kind of splashed in there as well Nice, yeah, 2021, a lot of course creators have told us was like peak course for them.
Speaker 2:You know if you've got a growing or if you've got a growing audience, you're relatively new in the whole business, every year is probably going to be going up and up, right. But if you've already got an established audience and it's kind of started to to cap out and you're already doing email promotions and you already got different offers and what have you, when covid came along, it was this giant jump for a lot of people who were in the space because oh, you can't do any training in person, it's got to be online. You're totally ready for it. Big jump. And then it was like now, other people, everybody started to get into the space and it started to get a little bit busier one of the things I tell people regularly is that they should be selling high ticket programs as well as just courses.
Speaker 2:And it's a funny one, because just selling courses is kind of amazing, because there's no real delivery if you haven't got a coach, any coaching or membership or anything with it, but there's like a whole load more money in your existing business, in your existing audience, if you start to sell more expensive programs. Now you listed out a few things there. You said you got an app. You said you're working with corporate. Are you doing higher ticket stuff as well? I don't know how that kind of fits.
Speaker 1:Not really. No, we've tried introducing. We do have for a couple of our courses. We have a gold plan which includes a little bit more coaching, a little bit more feedback, kind of the red carpet service a little bit. But we've never done the super, super $5,000 high ticket. I'm a little skeptical whether it would work in our industry. I'm sure there are examples where it is indeed working, but I think it would be a very different way of selling which we're not necessarily set up for at the moment that it will work, but I don't know the details because I haven't found someone in language space who's doing it.
Speaker 2:But, for example, I was talking yesterday with oscar owens and he's uh was just on the podcast and he had he was teaching people magic cool and that's a hobby, right. That's another thing where people are going to spend a lot of money, but he's selling a high ticket program for like five thousand dollars interesting to come and learn magic with him and his team, you know it's just like it's working yeah, it's going great and it's like oh well, in that case there's definitely something.
Speaker 2:And then you look again. So I had a friend, christopher sutton, who I badgered for ages saying you really should sell something much higher ticket, and I couldn't figure out exactly what it should be. He was teaching musicality and I couldn't figure out exactly what it should be, but I was like but I know that that there's money there, I know it is. And then eventually he started doing and he figured it out and he tried something at a thousand dollars and it wasn't that he didn't manage to get it right and then he tried something at ten thousand dollars and that worked.
Speaker 1:Tons of sales from that's hilarious wow, it's counterintuitive. This world is so counterintuitive it's incredible.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh scott from scott's base lessons, had a chat with christopher. Christopher told him what he'd done, that he was selling this ten thousand dollar program, and scott's like tell me, okay, got the price. How does the coaching work? How many coaching sessions? How does it? Like just listed it out exactly and was like he went and woke his wife up and he's like I'm going to sell a high ticket program and she's like what?
Speaker 2:I don't care right now, right right and he just he launched it like a month later and he said to all his team it's like we're going to launch a high ticket program and they're like, well, what's it going to be in it? It's like I don't exactly know, but it's going to be ten thousand dollars and we're going to sell a lot of them. And you know what he was right they did. And now that's like his whole other arm to his business. I'm like so.
Speaker 2:I know there's something in the language space, I just haven't figured it out exactly. The closest I've seen is do you know the Moser brothers?
Speaker 1:I don't actually, I don't know that name.
Speaker 2:So they Timothy and Josiah. I hope I've. I think that's his name. Josiah, I hope I've. I think that's his name. Josiah. It's either Josiah or Jeremiah. It's Josiah. I know he talks to Timothy, so that's why I can't remember. I know it's a very biblical sounding name. They teach people Spanish, okay, and they have a higher price program. It's not massively high, but it's something like 700-ish a month. That kind of amount, so much more than just selling courses and that's working great for them. I forget the name of their podcast, but I think the podcast is like their main way of driving traffic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it might be something worth looking at. I think, after 10 years in the industry, sometimes we tend to develop an idea of what works and what doesn't, but certainly that's not the way to get better and build your business. You have to have an open mind. So I'm sure you're right, I'm sure there is a way to do it. It just has to be done right. It has to be targeted to the right audience, the right sub-niche of your audience, for the right product. For example, probably it's in the professional business. English space is my guess. So yeah, now you're inspiring me to check it out. See what I can do here, john.
Speaker 2:So take us, we've gone on I've gone on my little rant about high ticket programs. We've started out with kind of an understanding of the fact you've had this massive increase in sales. You've had some incredible months, like that $100,000 one, which is fantastic. Take us back a step and explain to everybody listening who do you help and what kind of problem are you solving for them.
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely. So take a step back here. So we help at the core. We help adult English language learners, who are mostly global professionals, I would say. You know people who want to eventually, or currently do, use English in their career in some way, or they aspire to do it. We also help kind of a sub-niche of people preparing for the IELTS exam and just general fluency. So that is who we help Our listener, our typical listener and we were born as a podcast, born online.
Speaker 1:We are audio first and I love that term because that's really who we are. We do YouTube, we do video, but it's not where we shine the most, to be honest, it's really on the podcast, using voice, the power of the voice, and that's who it is. So I think it tends to be a slightly older consumer, so probably 25 to 45 in that age range, rather than the Gen Zers and people who just want to improve. We also have a very specific philosophy, which is not just something we hang on the wall or talk about at every team sync four times a year. Our philosophy is connection, not perfection, and we came up with this in one of the first episodes that we released.
Speaker 1:It just came out, naturally, on the podcast and we thought, oh my gosh, that's it. That is the approach to learning English. Because we realized that so many students, they learned English in school and they're still frozen, as if they're students in a classroom being called on by the teacher. They were embarrassed over and over again and just couldn't get there. So they're paralyzed as adults. And so we went ahead and trademarked that phrase, and it's more than a trademark.
Speaker 1:We bring every episode of the podcast back to human connection and it is kind of a distinct and unique perspective on the industry. A lot of times you'll see people just focusing on the nuts and bolts of the language, but we actually believe that you can miss some of the nuts and bolts and still accomplish the ultimate goal, which is connecting with the person in front of you. So every piece of content comes back to connection. So that's kind of how we're a little bit different and it resonates with the people that love us. I mean, it's a really self-selecting thing, right? Whoever tends to go towards that idea, they'll follow you and they'll come back to your show.
Speaker 2:So you're running the business. You've got this great podcast that's doing fantastically well. You've got all these different offers. You found that you were having some of them starting to dip a bit and you came and worked with us. What's happened. I really want to make sure the person listening to this podcast is able to go. I can see what Lindsay did when she worked with a different marketing. I could go do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So the most important thing that happened was I got a lot more serious about my launching schedule. So in the years leading up to working with DDM we had developed somewhat of a cadence of every month, maybe every other month, we'll launch something. We were tending to relaunch the same courses again and again and we have realized in the last year this industry loves newness. Things that are new and shiny and bright do so much better. So that's been integrated into the strategy that we now understand, kind of our playbook.
Speaker 1:But the number one thing, the number one way, two ways is that I've been able to really systematize Every month we do one large live promo and in the coming year, four times a year, we'll do an additional flash sale at the end of the year.
Speaker 1:Not every month, that's a little too much. So it's that, and in addition to that so it's become very scheduled we're always working on the next promo, if that makes sense. And then, in addition to that, ddm has just taken some of the work off my plate. So I was the one or some of my team members were the ones preparing all the sales pages and writing those sales pages. That's actually a ton of work and they never looked very good either. So it's really been nice to have people just kind of doing the work, doing the thinking, and also kind of doing the work for me. In a sense, that's given me time to go out and look for the things that I'm really interested in, which is getting those B2B deals. So things like that is what I want to go after as the owner of the business, and I'm able to do that now. So those are the two ways it's really helped me the most.
Speaker 2:Nice, okay, so we had doing monthly promotions and then also sometimes doing a flash sale as well, were you not Sorry? Yeah, like you said, just once a quarter, once every three months, yeah.
Speaker 1:So in the first year we didn't do any of those second per month flash sales. So that's the plan for the coming year. So in the coming year, so in the beginning, we had to kind of clean up some things. We did a lot of initial cleanup work. My email list was big but very junky, right, a dirty list. Essentially I hadn't really been cleaning it, I'd been overpaying, hadn't really been cleaning it, I'd been overpaying. We moved from Entreport over to ConvertKit or Kit, I guess is what it's called now. So I'm saving some money. I used to get slammed with fees when I would launch on Entreport $100 fees every other day throughout a launch. It was insane and I don't get those fees now. So we had some cleanup work to do to lay the foundation. But certainly the most important thing is I know every month we're launching something and usually when we're launching the month one we're already working on month two.
Speaker 2:So it's very scheduled and we don't veer from that If that makes sense, I think it's one of the most undervalued and people underappreciate how hard it is to do that every single month and how organized you have to be with it. We had a client who one month he was delighted and the next month I talked to him and he was really like unhappy and he was like kind of freaked out a little bit and I was like what on earth's going on? And what happened is he had made a lot less money that month and then he's kind of forecasting oh my god, we're making so much less money. Isn't it going to be like forecast for us? And I was like, well, did you run an email promotion? And they hadn't done because it got pushed back because of something right, yeah, and that's what.
Speaker 1:That can't happen yeah we can't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, whatever that something is is not as important as doing the email promotion, because you can't do two the next month to make up for it, right, it's like one a month, is the balance 100, and we know as founders I mean I'm because we do make money in three or four different ways I'm insanely busy.
Speaker 1:I mean right now there's 100 emails waiting for me, around 100 different not 100, but maybe 15 different projects, and they're all huge rabbit holes. I could go down any of them on any given day and what is the likelihood that I would be following through with that? So, for example, prepping the emails. So Monica on your team has done an excellent job writing our emails, helping us develop our voice a bit better. That's just incredibly helpful for me. It's huge.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so having those monthly email promotions go out, and I'm just going to, I want to hammer this and I hammer this almost every episode, but I'm just like it's so vitally important If you're listening to this and you're thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's fine, it's like no, honestly, every single month, and get organized everything around it and plan everything around it so that it happens, even if you're going on holiday, even if you've got another project coming up like get ahead with this stuff and get it working.
Speaker 1:Yes, and also I would add to that, in addition, getting serious about what you're building. So not only this year. So when I look at my calendar for this year, we're not only launching every month, we're pretty much building all year. As I look ahead, it's only January now, but in the first quarter of the year we're building another business English, professional English course. So, again, like I said before, the industry needs something new and also you want to update your old courses. Right, you want things changed, language changes. We need to make things new and fresh. So, getting serious about your building plan do you have the people on your team that you need to build those courses? How are you going to be set up and how is that going to affect your capacity for everything else? So there's a lot of planning that goes into it. So just kind of professionalizing everything to a certain level is, I think, what we've done.
Speaker 2:That's fantastic. What has been the process for? You mentioned a couple of the details there, but what's been the process for developing those courses? What's the starting point? Are you doing research with your audience? Is it you coming up with ideas Like how are you defining what courses should be created?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So some of it is talking with your team and getting their input on what they would suggest. Some of it is knowing what, some of it is intuition, knowing what seems to resonate. Well, what is the course that when, every time we launch it, it does? Well, right, For us it's business English. It's like knocking me over the head hey, go build another business English course, Improve you know. Duh, right, Of course, go in that direction. So that's the direction that we're kind of heading in.
Speaker 1:But we're going to also be building a listening course this year, a pronunciation course. So I do a combination of surveys talking to our listeners, emailing back and forth with our listeners. One thing that's been added with our welcome sequence, our warmup sequences for our live launches, is that we do get feedback, people writing to us and I reply to them and I say can you tell me more about what you need when it comes to your business goals this year? And I'll gather that information. So there's a design phase. So we phase out our course creation into a design phase and what I do is I make sure I'm thinking in terms of no-transcript.
Speaker 1:Think about it. We haven't gone as far as to write the sales page, but I just met with Boris yesterday and I said let's talk more. We're about to start building this new course and I don't feel like I quite have enough information yet on how are we going to sell it, and so I was kind of pushing him. Let's meet with Yosep, let's sit down. What is the sales page going to look like? We probably won't build it literally, but I need a bulleted list of what are the key words that are coming out of the marketing. What am I going to say in the VSL? And, by the way, that's another thing, I'm just shooting off things here that I've started doing this year. That I think has increased our sales is VSLs. I used to be a little lazy around VSLs. It's a lot of work to get behind a camera, set up your studio and then you're always oh, this is wrong, that's wrong. I just started doing proper VSLs that I really hadn't been doing before, and I think that helped.
Speaker 2:When I record VSLs it's often with Boris and what we'll do is I'll come on to Riverside, let's say to record it, and he'll be on a Zoom call on another screen. Interesting Just listening in and he's like no, do that again, do that better.
Speaker 1:It's kind of cool it's lonely. No, that makes sense actually a little connection there.
Speaker 2:You have some fun, have some laughs yeah, it's just like I've got a videographer that I've worked with for quite a long time on youtube and he said what I do, I didn't know this. He said what I'll do if I've recorded a take that I know in my heart of hearts isn't good enough, then I'll finish, and then I'll kind of like my eyes will just dart over to his for a second to look at his face to see what his reaction is. And if I, if I know, yes, I nailed that one, then I don't look over at him and I'm just like is that true? And then he showed me like a recording of it and I look like almost like a naughty child, like yeah, I get away with this one, that's hilarious.
Speaker 1:I love that. So you've got people really holding you to account, right.
Speaker 2:John, it's good.
Speaker 1:It's good. Yeah, I mean it's tough. It's really take all day to film and a week to write the script and then to go and edit it. Get an editor. But I do think for us we've seen the returns on putting that focus into that one VSL for the launch, so yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, talk everybody through that then. What kind of what's in your VSL? Why does it take so long to put the script together for it? What's the process?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I've been working. I work with the team sometimes on scripting it out, and I also sometimes just write it myself, modeling on other things we've done in the past. Usually, so sometimes just write it myself, modeling on other things we've done in the past, usually I'll share it with someone on the team. Hey, what do you think about this? There's different styles. To be honest, in the past I've thought that our audience, so the ESL audience, less is more. But I guess I've realized this year that more is more, at least when it comes to the sales page. So I used to have really really short sales pages, highly visual but very few words on the sales page, and working with your team, we've actually added more words. They're pretty lengthy, wordy, image heavy but word heavy sales pages. So that's kind of busted my original myth that I had, which was less is more, and so that's how it works with the VSLs.
Speaker 1:They tend to be well, they're in proportion to the size of the course and the size of the purchase, but they tend to be 10 to 14 minutes, I think, in general, and I bring in a lot of personal material. So because my team, myself and the members of my team, my teaching team, have all worked in the industry for years, have traveled. We do bring in personal photos. Hey, I taught English in Buenos Aires in 2007, and here's a photo of me there and it's building that credibility because these are still personality businesses. Right, we've had a couple of fits and starts when it comes to selling through ads, but we haven't gotten to that point yet where we're selling to a cold audience, so they all still pretty much know us. So we can still kind of build off of the brand equity, the personality, the vision of the brand around connection. So I think the more personally you can make it, the better.
Speaker 2:At this stage, what are you including in that VSL? What topics are you covering? What kind of sections are there?
Speaker 1:I don't have it to list off the top of my head, but there's definitely objections. There's a hook at the top of the video which that's always the trickiest part right, to make sure you grab their interest immediately and speak to exactly what they're experiencing now. And that comes from surveys. You just need to survey your audience, right. Just take the exact language from their emails to you. Their surveys put that right in there.
Speaker 1:But sometimes I feel like I've read it so many times. It feels like a cliche. But then I have to say no, no, they need to hear this, they need to know that. You recognize them. And on the podcast they hear that in our voice, because everyone wants human connection. They get it, we want it, they want it, we all want it. But how do you convey that on a sales page that this course is going to get you to that, whether it's through business or IELTS or fluency. So objections, the hook. There's usually some form of an about you know about who are we and why should you listen to us? Credibility building and listing features certainly benefits over features. But going into some length around screenshots of our live you know, live speaking events, seeing other students, the social proof, the screenshots of our community and then the you know, the offer, the value and then the closing. That's very broadly speaking. It varies depending on the video.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what I do when I'm explaining to people the basic concept of a VSL is like why would you have a VSL and the sales page? And the reason is because some people like to watch stuff and some people like to read, and so why not give them the opportunity?
Speaker 2:Some people might want to do a bit of both, but it's like, why not have that on there? And so what's covered in the video is basically what's covered on the sales page. It's not word for word, you don't read out every single bit of it, but it's like you're basically hitting all of those points for the people who aren't going to read through the whole thing, and not a massive percentage of people watch it, but the ones who do are engaged and it increases sales.
Speaker 1:Exactly. And also, I think about it. As you know, duolingo or these kind of faceless brands are not necessarily our direct competitors as small course creators, but they are another option for our audience, right? So how are we going to differentiate between ourselves and Duolingo? There is a personality, there's a face to the brand, somewhat, or multiple faces to the brand, so why not bring that to the forefront? I don't think you have anything to lose.
Speaker 2:No, no, not at all. And going back to what you said about sales pages, I hear this from, I'd say, pretty much everybody that they're like well, surely nobody reads this long sales page with all these words on it. And I'm like no, you're right, Almost nobody would read the entire thing. But you're writing this for 2000, 5,000, 20,000 different people and each of. If you were talking to them one-on-one, you might tailor what you're saying to that person and to what their issues are and what they need to hear about. But you're writing it for all these people, so you've got to talk to all of them. So you've got to have sections that answer each person's questions.
Speaker 2:Some people will want to know about the benefits more. Some people want to know about the detail and the features. Some people have got objections they need answering. Some people really need to know who are you, Tell me about you and why I should be interested. So you've got to have all of those sections and then you've got to have compelling sub headlines to get people to stop and read that section if that's the bit they're interested in. And it makes it massive, and I know it does, but it's okay, because that's what works.
Speaker 1:It's what works and you know, especially in our industry, we have a lot of price sensitivity in our industry, so I think if someone's going to go and purchase a $399 course, that's a big deal, right? So your sales page should match not just the price point but the price point relative to your industry to who's buying it. That could be a weak salary, I don't know. It's a lot of money around the world and it is a lot of money, and so having enough content to assure them that this is the right choice and clearly state your refund policy, I think can only help. So that's been an evolution for us. For sure, and it's probably part of why our sales were starting to plateau and to dip around 2021, 2022 is because our sales pages were just way too simple.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and if anybody listening, if you're listening to this and you're thinking, well, what should be on those sales pages? Obviously, lindsay listed off a whole load of the elements in the VSL. That's what should be on the sales page. But we've got episodes specifically about sales page. So go search back through the video sorry, through the podcast feed and find them. I'll see if I can find it in a minute and actually give you an episode number.
Speaker 2:But here is the super quick like, like see how many of the 15 crucial elements I can remember off the top of my head. You want to have a call out to your audience, a compelling headline, compelling sub headlines throughout the whole page pain, agitation, solution. Towards the top. You've got to have features, benefits, a guarantee, testimonials, frequently asked questions. You've got to have a call to action button that is in the first person, ideally for the person reading it to be able to feel like it's them saying it as they're clicking on the button. You've got to have a reminder at the bottom of almost everything.
Speaker 2:You want to have the VSL above the fold, towards the top, and I've run out. I probably got to like 11 or something there, but go find We've got episodes where we cover absolutely what's in there. The other place you can go to is datadrivenmarketingco. Slash resources and on that page there is a download 15 elements every optimized sales page must have, and you can get that for free. Okay so, lindsay, you said some really interesting stuff about like how you've got this diversified business. Can you talk us through that a little bit more, because I don't think very many people have got that?
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure, and I think probably part of the reason why I have a diversified business is it comes back to maybe a little insecurity on my part of fear. Right, it's like you better diversify, because what if some area just drops one given year? So I suppose we started diversifying it around when we built our iOS Android app. That's because we launched the podcast. We knew it was doing well and we thought, okay, what about having an app? What about making money in a different environment entirely, and that's a totally separate environment from online courses and licensing and other things. And so that's what we built, and it was a significant investment and licensing and other things. And so that's what we built, and it was a significant investment. I mean building an app. I think I invested $200K over the lifetime of the business probably more than that at this point to building these two apps, the iOS and Android, but it's worth it. We do have a premium subscription and it generates. I wouldn't say it's not passive, because I do have my team doing certain things to maintain the product, obviously, and we're creating the episode doing certain things to maintain the product, obviously, and we're creating the episode, so that goes into the product, but it's pretty hands-off. For the most part it's recurring revenue, so that's added a nice wing to our diversification, for sure. And then, because our podcast is relatively large, it's a big show.
Speaker 1:I think I got into the game of advertising late, later than I should have. We started really early, working with italki, way back in the day in 2014, 15. And then I got away from advertising for years and came back to it in 2020, 2021 and realized, yeah, there's some opportunities here, for sure. So, working with programmatic ads, host, read ads, and they don't have to just be about ESL either I mean our audience also. They purchase products, right, they buy cars. We work with Toyota, we've worked with Lululemon, linkedin Indeed lots of different brands that you can work with.
Speaker 1:We're also, in terms of the licensing, getting onto LinkedIn Learning. This year we have a course on LinkedIn Learning on our business wing. So we expanded our podcast profile and launched two other podcasts as well Business, english and IELTS, energy so seeing what the opportunities are in those specific niches too. So, yeah, I mean, do you have any other specific questions about it? Or that's kind of how we're diversified. I guess we kind of go after everything. That means I basically get really busy and really stressed out all the time.
Speaker 2:I was chatting with a friend recently who runs a very popular podcast in the marketing space and they make most of their money through courses, but he told me how much they made from just advertising on the podcast as well. It's just like that's actually a pretty successful business just on its own. From that, that's pretty cool, isn't it?
Speaker 1:It's kind of cool to be able to think if all of my other revenue streams died, I could just scale down my business to here and just do this or just do this. It gives you the ability to sleep at night a little bit better. I mean, I'd like to eventually either hold on to this business and have a team being on the podcast and doing a lot of the work, or sell this business right, and so if it's just one product based on one person, I don't think it's quite as stable. So starting to develop that portfolio, but it certainly keeps you busy, let's say that.
Speaker 2:And have you done work around that? Is that something you're considering? Or something you've actually done.
Speaker 1:Around selling the business.
Speaker 2:No, I meant around having other people presenting, other people being involved as part of the brand.
Speaker 1:So we have a team at the moment of four of us that podcast across three podcasts. So the IELTS Energy podcast I'm not on that at all. I haven't been on that in years. It's just our two IELTS professionals, our teachers are influencers. I'm not sure what the right term is for this group of people, but my team members and then I am on the other two shows with two other co-hosts and we swap out. So that's a really nice size four hosts for three shows, yeah, so it's already kind of built out, and then when I think about getting myself off the mic, it'll be a real head trip and a real project. How do you replace yourself in this position? But I do believe it could be done. I think it would take some time to figure out. What are we looking for? Is this the right person? But I have to believe it could be done, because otherwise I'll be podcasting till I'm 70, which is not the worst thing. But there has to be some kind of a off-boarding plan eventually down the road.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's an interesting one. I went on Pat Flynn's podcast recently and he's still very much like the face of the brand.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But he's got a whole team doing like most of the delivery behind the scenes Right and he's really focused on Pokemon and Pokemon cards and he's got a whole nother YouTube channel where he's doing that and it's like, huh, well, that's interesting Right.
Speaker 1:Pretty cool yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like what's the? There's different ways of cutting it. You know that I think are really interesting that there's some people go into it thinking like the goal is I need to be able to sell the business, and of course business isn't especially one that's like they're nearly all personality based. They're nearly all got someone who's a face of the brand, who is charismatic and good on camera and all this kind of thing and that's very difficult to replace but it's not impossible, but it is difficult, and then sometimes it's like, okay, well, what was the bit of the business that you really like?
Speaker 1:What if?
Speaker 2:you just did that bit and you've got other people to do all of the other parts.
Speaker 1:And I find that whole thing is fascinating. I love that idea. I mean, we've worked hard over the years to build our businesses. It feels like we kind of deserve being able to choose. What do we love, what is play? I mean, for me, honestly, podcasting is play. What is play, and how can I do more of that and fill in the gaps?
Speaker 1:But I think, in terms of building stability in a business that you potentially could try to sell one day, building in trademarks, so buying trademarks like what do you believe in? What is your brand name? What can you trademark? Honestly, in the US it's not that expensive to trademark a name or a slogan or a method. That's something you can sell. I haven't tried this yet so I don't know what that's going to look like. But building technology as well, at a smaller scale what is some code you could build, or maybe some AI that you could own and making sure you're signing off IP on that. These are things that we can start to sort of develop something more than just a person, I think. Contracts, deals with corporations where that's a recurring contract and you're going to sign every year. That sort of thing is what I'm kind of looking for.
Speaker 2:Fascinating. I look forward to hearing how it goes yeah we'll see. I look forward to hearing how it goes yeah we'll see, hey, so if somebody listening is thinking Di, you know, maybe I should get in touch with John or with Data Driven Marketing about working together in the way that you have what's anything that you would say to those guys to try and help them understand a little bit more about what it's been like and what's been useful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I think, definitely the things I said before, which is professionalizing your building and launching schedule is huge. So if you think you probably want to have your business at a certain level where you have a team that will be able to support that professionalization of your business like, for example, I have one of my teammates doing the, so Boris and the team are building the sales pages, building the emails, but someone needs to respond and say, yes, that email is right, or we missed that detail, or someone needs to do that. So I've been having a member of my team do that for me. So do you have that in place? You could do it yourself for sure, but do you have the support where you can give up something else to do that? So it's not just hiring DDM, it's like making sure you can support DDM and having the meetings and that kind of thing. So making sure you're at a certain level where you can do that. But it's helped me a ton Again just having the work done for me.
Speaker 1:I think my goal in the coming year is making sure that I'm not only seeing these big months like the November, the big month in November, a spike in June, but making sure I'm seeing that on a monthly basis. That's huge for me, right, because that would be the measure of success. Big months are great, but if you're launching three courses, that's also where it comes from right. So making sure that you're seeing that on a regular basis is huge, but certainly I would recommend it if you feel like you're in the place where your sales have slumped and if you believe you can do better. Right, we saw that slumping and I thought to myself wait, we can do better than this. We launched our business in 2014. We've been around for a long time. We're not going to fall behind, and I just wasn't willing to fall behind, and so that's why I decided to work with you guys.
Speaker 2:Nice, Fantastic. If someone wants to go check out your site, your podcast and learn more about it, where should they go?
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure. So if you're listening to this inside the podcast, you can always just open up the search bar If you're a podcast listener, and type in All Ears English and hit that follow button. You'll find All Ears English right there. If you want to go to our website, you can go to allearsenglishcom and find us on the web. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn if you want. So, lindsay McMahon, right on LinkedIn. Yeah, this has been a pleasure, john.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you Thank you, as always, for listening and thank you, lindsay, for coming on. If you want more help with this and you want help with using email promotions and funnels to get results, like Lindsay, then book a call with me or someone from my team. Go to datadrivenmarketingco slash, call C-A-L-L or click the link in the show notes or the description or the pinned comment below. We've helped dozens of people more than double our revenue and seven people so far to reach seven figures now through this process. So book a call using the link in the show notes and, as always, thanks so much for listening and, lindsay, thanks for coming on.
Speaker 1:Thank you, john, have a good one.