The Art of Selling Online Courses

215 How Her AI Launch 3x'd Her Best Course Launch

• John Ainsworth • Season 1 • Episode 215

Share episode

Send us a text

🔥 Download the $100 Million Offer Workbook Template and my completed version: https://datadrivenmarketing.co/million

What would you do if your course sales dropped 40-50% from their peak?

Most course creators would double down on what's always worked. More launches, better funnels, new lead magnets. Lydia did something completely different. She canceled all her courses and replaced them with an AI product.

The result? Her biggest launch ever. Three times bigger than anything she'd done before.

In this episode, Lydia shares exactly how she built this AI mentor, why her customers love it more than her courses, and what this might mean for the future of online education. Whether you're thinking about adding AI to your business or just curious about where things are headed, this conversation will give you a lot to think about.

Lydia is a polyglot who's learned nine languages on her own and has helped over 22,000 students do the same. Her TED Talk has been viewed more than 19 million times.

👩‍🏫 Connect with Lýdia Hric Machová:
🔗 Check out her TED Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/lydia_machova_the_secrets_of_learning_a_new_language  
🔗 https://languagementoring.com 
🔗 https://facebook.com/languagementoring 
🔗 https://instagram.com/languagementoring 
🔗 Sales page of the AI mentor (in Slovak): https://jazykovymentoring.sk/kurzy/almi/ 

SPEAKER_00:

We see that people actually do have money, they want to spend it, they just didn't like the form of the know-how that it had before. I think possibly online courses will change, or the whole era of how knowledge is put into online courses will change. I actually cancelled all my online courses. We basically went all in. So the three months we've just worked on building this product, and I really believe that the launch was three times better than everybody's ever done. This is really what people want. Their referral was just so amazing. They mentioned stuff like I have learned more in one month than I've learned in five years before that. It can actually provide a much better value than anything that can.

SPEAKER_03:

Hello and welcome to the Art of Selling Online Courses. We are here to share winning strategies and secret acts to top performers in the online course industry. My name's John Antwerp, and today's guest is Lydia Eric Machava. Now, Lydia is a polyglot and an entrepreneur from Slovakia. She's learned nine languages on her own and can teach anyone how to learn any language without teachers, language courses, or travelling abroad. And her TED tour on the secrets of learning a new language has been viewed more than 19 million times. She's co-hosted two polyglot gatherings, the world's largest polyglot event. And after almost 10 years of running language mentoring in Quebec, she's moved from selling courses to selling AI mentors, ones that have all of her know-how and guides clients on their language learning journey in a very personalized way, based on a monthly subscription. And the launch had over 400 customers sign up, was her biggest ever launched by three times. And the testimonials from her first users are more exciting than anything she's ever created. And she's already got over 22,000 happy clients, so that gives you an idea. So today we're going to talk about why she decided to move from her course business to focus on building an AI product, how come it did so well, how it works, why her clients like it so much, and how you can replicate her success. Lydia, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you very much, Alan. It's good to see you.

SPEAKER_03:

So, what's your feeling about the future of online courses? Do you feel like it's totally doomed? Or like what is it that was your kind of uh uh position on this that caused you to make such a big change?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, well, we've had this discussion with quite a lot of people recently, maybe in the past two or three years, that online courses are getting worse and worse when it comes to selling, right? And when when we compare uh the business volume to the years in the COVID era, for example, and post-COVID years, well, many people report that it's uh maybe down 40 or 50%, and that was also our case. So even though we've been doing things the same way, and I think we know how to do funnels and how to sell the product and everything else, uh people just didn't buy as much uh recently, and um the conversions were just getting worse. So we still got a lot of people interested in the topic. They read open the emails, they read the sales pages, but then they didn't buy, right? And originally I thought that the reason is that people don't have money, you know, the economic situation in Slovakia is getting worse, da-da-da. But actually, as it turned out, um, now that we did the launch in September with a completely new product and a completely new way of delivering value and knowledge uh to our clients, we see that people actually do have money, they want to spend it. Uh, they just didn't like the form of the know-how that it had before. And that brings me to the idea that um I think possibly online courses will change, or the the whole era of uh how knowledge is put into online courses will change. And it actually makes sense to me because I don't know about you, John, but I don't Google stuff anymore. Uh I don't if I want to almost never, right?

SPEAKER_03:

Almost never Google anything, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And before that, you know, you would go like, okay, like Google, I don't know, you would say like hotels in what Vienna, something, right? And now you go to Chat GPT, and it already has pretty good context about you. So you tell it, okay, I'm looking for a hotel for me and my family, and ChatGPT knows who your family is, and you know that I have a one and a half year old, and uh, we want to spend there three days, and we want to be close to the city center, but not in a rush street. And you know, you give all these details in there, and then it gives you something out of it, right? Well, I think this is exactly what how it could work and should work, and it can work now, I know, uh, with any knowledge basically. So, to give you um an example, when I taught people how to learn languages in the past with online courses, um, I would tell them, okay, let's um let's look at vocabulary. This is the vocabulary module, and now I need you to listen to me for an hour and a half because I want to make sure that you understand what you've been doing wrong and how vocabulary is taught in schools, which is not really an effective way. And now I have a completely different way how to do it, and these are all the possibilities and all the details. And after that hour and a half, you would then go out there and actually try those methods by yourself. You would probably stumble upon a few problems. You would maybe ask us a question and we would reply within 24 hours. And by the time you actually learn some words, you know, it would take forever. And as we know, many people don't even get to that point, right? I mean, the statistics um are that 5 to 15% of people actually finish an online course when they buy it. So it seems to me that people are buying more of an idea of a result rather than the result, right? So they want to learn a language, they buy my course, but actually what they're buying really is hope of one day learning the language, but it takes a lot of energy and time for them to really get to that process of learning and then get to the result. So in this long way, I'm getting to the main point, which is AI uh makes things a lot more um personified and and um detailed so that you don't have to go through that hour and a half of uh vocabulary explanation, but you can tell me, you know what, Lydia, um this is my situation. I've been learning Spanish for quite some time, this is how I've been learning vocabulary, this is this is what works for me, this is what doesn't, and I wonder if I can improve it in any other way. And then with all that context, I don't need to give you this hour and a half of, you know, these are all the possibilities. I know exactly how to help you. So it's as if you had a consultation with me in person, and I would just go straight to the things that you need to learn on your level, and we don't have to bother with the details which are not relevant to you. That's exactly how it works now with my product, which is not an online course, but as you mentioned, it's an it's an AI mentor that has all my know-how and takes out the relevant bits and pieces of my know-how and gives it to you in a very short way right away, so that it actually saves you a lot of time. Did that make sense?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I think there's a lot of stuff to kind of unpick there. So one of the things that we've seen within data-driven marketing is that some clients the sales have been going down steadily over time, and language courses seem to be more commonly in that space. And it's not all of them, but it is a decent like we definitely all know we definitely both know some of the same people who've seen this, right? Who've seen like just the it wasn't just there was a peak at COVID and then it went back down again. It's like no, no, no, it's down from pre-COVID as well. Um and I don't know what all the reasons are for that. I feel like AI's got to be part of it, but I wonder as well if it's just also expectations have changed, more people have taken courses that they didn't finish, like you're talking about. Um there's more competition, you know, there's there seem to be a thousand channels on uh YouTube of language with name, right? You know, like we've we know lots of we know lots of friends are doing that, and then maybe more people saw that and started doing it, so that's taking more of the pie, you know, instead of the whole pie.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, I'm not trying to say it's it's so straightforward, like this is the problem and this is the solution. Yeah. But what I definitely see in there, and I've had this idea for about a year, like ever since I really started to use ChatGPT heavily every day, I just realized how much better and easier it is if you get your answer right away and you don't have to go on Google and read a lot of articles and wonder if you ever find the the answer that you're looking for. So I was thinking for quite some time, is there any way how I could make all my know-how about language learning accessible to people in a in a quicker way? Right, I mean, somehow prepared for them in chunks that are that are easier for them to consume. Because also attention, people's attention is getting shorter and shorter because of all the social media. So actually watching a module about vocabulary for an hour and a half is quite a lot today.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. Well, so the reason I was bringing all those different things up is because if someone's listening and they think, well, my sales aren't going down, I don't need to worry about this. It's like I think the thing is, I mean, one, maybe that will happen in different niches over time. But secondly, if you figured out a way that can make someone's learning experience better, that's like such an obvious win, then, isn't it? Because it's like, great, okay, cool. If you can help your students more and you can improve your product, then you can be better than the competition. You can sell more of your courses, you can help more of your students, they'll get better results, you'll get more word of mouth. All of these things are great. And I think sometimes when things are going fine, as they have been in the course, and they were in the course space for many years, right? It's very tempting to most people just be like, oh, cool, I'll just carry on doing what I was doing. Like I've got a friend who's been on the been on the podcast before, you might know him. He basically just went hunting for two years. He just really likes going hunting and he and off he went. He kind of just left his business in somebody else's hands and went off went off hunting and had a great time. And then he's like, Oh shit, stuff's going downhill. I need to do something about it now, right? You know, it's just like it's you've you've said before, right, that there aren't really any passive income businesses exactly. It's like at some point you've got to jump back in and get it working again. And I feel like this is an opportunity for most of us to be like, oh, right, here's a way to move the business forwards to use AI to make it better, and we can start doing it now, even before we have to.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, well, I absolutely agree with that. And even if it's not a major shift like I did, so I actually cancelled all my online courses.

SPEAKER_02:

That's bolding media.

SPEAKER_00:

When did you do that? Right right after the launch. Right.

SPEAKER_02:

You're like, the launch went great, that's it, no more courses.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. And we basically went all in. So for three months, we just worked on building this product, and I really believed in it. And then the launch, which was three times better than the best launch we've ever done, basically confirmed uh that this is really what people want, and we know how to how to explain to them the value of what they're getting. And given that they haven't, you know, returned it to us within the 14 days guarantee, that kind of proves that they uh it actually does deliver what uh what it says on the box. Um so then we yeah, we canceled all the courses uh basically because it's it would be difficult to explain to them why they should buy this big course now when they have something much better available at the same time. But what I was going to say is even if people don't make that huge shift, I think it makes sense uh to think about ways how you can improve uh your current online courses and add an AI thing into that, which will basically help the people consume your know-how and make sure that they can apply it to their lives because this is what most people struggle with. Even if you have the best course in the world and it has the best know-how explained in a good way, you still need to apply it to really get value. And if there is an AI GPT or something that can help you do that, I think that's worth considering for sure.

SPEAKER_03:

So I want to go back a just one step here before I start getting into the details with you of like, okay, well, what actually did you build and how did it work? So one of the things you'd notice was that some of your students weren't finishing the courses and they weren't actually managing to apply anything. You'd noticed that you were using ChatGPT instead of Google, and you're like, okay, there's probably something here. How was your course business doing? Was that still doing fine or was that starting to decrease in sales already when you when you started thinking about this?

SPEAKER_00:

It was decreasing. Uh so we were about 40%, 50% down from the previous years. But uh it's also hard to pinpoint exactly what the reason was because it was also it coincides with the time that I went on maternity leave with my baby. So I gave it birth, I gave birth, and I was at home for half a year. I didn't work at all. And I I I had the passive income, right? At that time. Um, but then of course I needed to step back in and figure out what we do uh as a long-term vision because we saw that it's kind of decreasing slowly.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So um it was it was still doing pretty well. Like we were still profitable. Um, it was it was a working business. There was definitely no reason to like cancel it right away or we were in debt or anything like that.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay, so let's say someone's listening to this and they're like, okay, I'm I'm on board with this concept, this idea. Maybe I should give this a bash, maybe I should build something with AI. What was it for you that made you think, oh, this is possible, I can build something? Had you been messing around with custom GPTs? Did you know other people who'd been building AI products? Like what caused you to think I could actually do something here?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Um, I had been thinking about it for a few months. It's like, how can we we could put all the know-how into a GPT and give it to our clients, but then the problem is how do you sell a GPT and how do you protect it from being shared, right? Yeah. That's that's the main problem. And uh right now there is no solution that ChatGPT offers or any other LLMs, as far as I know. And that's when I stumbled upon this um this Czech startup company that offers a product exactly for that. So they basically give you an LLM where you put your know-how in it on a Google Drive. You you really copy all your videos, audios, textbooks, ebooks, whatever you have in whatever format. And in a few hours, you basically have uh a mentor that has all your know-how and it works as a chat bot. So your clients can chat with it, and the best thing is that you can sell it. It's it's meant to be a product uh based on a monthly subscription where you give your clients access to your chatbot with a certain amount of messages that they can exchange, and then they pay monthly, and as long as they pay, they have access. When they stop paying, they don't have access. So this business um aspect of it was quite important to me too.

SPEAKER_03:

And what's the tool called?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh it's called BuddyPro, buddypro.ai.

SPEAKER_03:

I went on their site earlier and was kind of checking it out a little bit, and I've been playing with your has your one got a name? I forget.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, her name is Almy. So that's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_03:

Me and Elmy were having a chat.

SPEAKER_00:

I and Lydia Machova, you know, they're just the one.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it. Um yeah, Almy and I were having a chat about like I said, oh, what if I learn what if I learn German? So my girlfriend uh is German, and I don't think her parents speak any English. And it's like, oh, we might go over to Hamburg next year. And I was like, I did GCSE you know, uh uh German and I got an A, and that's 30 years ago, and I don't remember any of it, you know. Maybe it's in my brain there somewhere, I don't know. So Almy and I were having a chat, and uh it it suggested uh she it what do you call it?

SPEAKER_00:

She it's she for me.

SPEAKER_03:

She suggested a whole bunch of different resources for me. So that was really interesting. I was I was enjoying that. Um what was involved in the process of training Buddy Pro?

SPEAKER_00:

It was really straightforward. Um basically I got I got access to I bought the license and I got access to a Google Drive and I just copied, I dragged all the files that I have available in there. And it it can easily work um with transcripts of your coaching calls if that's something you have, right? So it doesn't have to be like nicely put and organized know-how in beautiful bullet points. It's it's like AI, like ChatGPT. It can work with pretty interesting context about anything. And uh and then you have a system prompt, uh, which is basically a main document where you specify um what this what this um chatbot really is about, how it helps your clients, in what ways, and what are the main rules that it follows. So basically you give it the do's and don'ts of how to use that know-how, and and that's basically it. I mean it can it can really take you a few hours or a few days, depending on how much know-how you have. And if it doesn't find something within your know-how, then it uses the internet. So it's like ChatGPT, but enhanced with specific know-how that you put in there. And primarily it uses your know-how, and only if it doesn't have it, then it takes um information from the internet.

SPEAKER_03:

And then you mentioned earlier that you'd spent like a few months building it and training it. Did was there a lot of tweaking it after that that you did to refine the process?

SPEAKER_00:

Or not really. In in our case, we it took us a lot longer because we we basically needed to redo the whole know-how. We were going to do it anyway with the courses, but it would take us a lot longer because AI changed a lot of the methods that we actually advise to our students.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, so your system changed, so you had to update all of your system in order to yes, everything, really.

SPEAKER_00:

Like a lot of the apps that we recommended earlier were just not relevant anymore because ChatGPT can do that, right? Or ChatGPT can be a great tutor for you to practice your speaking with. So it doesn't make sense to explain in a long way how to find a native speaker in your town, you know, to practice with. Uh, it it can still be a method that people choose to do, but there is a much easier version now with ChatGPT. So that's that's why it took us a lot longer.

SPEAKER_03:

I just realized something that the listener might not know. Could you give people a really brief explanation on the way that you help people learn languages? Because it's very different to the way other people do. And some of if people are thinking, oh, it's a French course or a Slovakian course, then it some of this won't make sense.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. Yeah, that's that's a good point. So yeah, my know-how, even with video courses, was quite different. I I've learned nine languages by myself, and somewhere by language number five, uh, four or five, I understood what the principles were, how to learn any language. And then I realized you can actually actually apply it to any language, even those languages that I don't speak. So I I have helped people learn languages that I don't speak. Uh I specifically focus on people who have already some basics and want to get to the really fluent level, so not the complete beginners. And um I I help them create a system where they will pick several methods that polygloths love to use. And you create your own little system of, let's say, three methods, uh, for some input, let's say listening to podcasts, for some output, like talking to ChatGPT, or in the past having an online tutor, and uh something to help you with vocabulary or grammar. And you have your own learning plan and it changes every two months, and this is how you learn the language. Uh it takes me two years to learn a language from zero to total fluency. And uh, yeah, that's that's basically the promise of my courses.

SPEAKER_03:

I remember one time we were at a conference, it would have been Budapest, ECS Budapest. And uh I was saying to you, I just want to be able to go to the market and like order like hams and cheeses and this kind of thing. And you're like, have you considered Google Translate?

SPEAKER_02:

It's like you don't need to learn the language, John. You just need to know like 20 words.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah, and that's it. I mean, it's sometimes it's better to know when not to learn a language because it takes a lot of effort, right? Yeah. If the only thing you need is to impress people with these five sentences, then go ahead and use them, right? Learn them. Um, but what so what I what I focus on is helping people achieve real fluency so that you can uh use the language in normal conversations about anything and then actually keep the language long term and not to forget it.

SPEAKER_03:

Nice.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay. So let's get back into into OWMI. So you've trained up OLMI. It's taken a few months to redo all of the the know-how. You've uploaded that. Was there anything else involved in the offer? Was that was the offer get access to Almy, or was there anything else that people could access with that?

SPEAKER_00:

So I I created the offer based on Alex Hormozy's uh hundred million dollar offer. Is that what the book is called?

SPEAKER_02:

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And um so the the main product was Elmi, uh chatbot that helps you, that is basically the mentor as if you were talking to me, but you can message me any time of the day, you know, three 3 a.m. at night and I will reply right away. Almy will reply, of course, but she has my know-how. And there were really important bonuses on top of that. And one of them is a GPT that we call Geppetto. And Geppetto is like your online tutor that you can have conversations with. And the reason why we decided to give it an extra give it as an extra is first of all, it's a nice bonus. So it it uh sounds much better when you actually offer it that this is a bonus worth a lot. But also Elmi comes with a limitation of messages and it's 500 messages per month. And the reason it's limited is because I pay for every message that my clients send to Elmi and that Elmi replies. So I need to limit it for them because otherwise it would be too expensive for me. And uh and Elmi can actually be your online tutor but you would spend most of your messages just you know conversing or just practicing your language. So we we wanted to give you some extra um amount of practicing outside of that of those 500 messages. And so that we built a GPT that is an um an online tutor and they kind of co-work together. Yeah this is a specific thing about our product and is that the one that they'll actually practice speaking with okay yeah with with Japetto you can also use the advanced voice mode which is the best thing about ChatGPT it's much better than any other LLM for language purpose. But with Elmi you can do anything else. So you can you can ask her to correct your mistakes to explain grammar to you stuff like that but you could use all your messages and we wanted people to use Elmi as the mentor to guide you in the process of learning languages but to really practice the language with Geppetto.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. If that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00:

Is Geppetto the one who made Pinocchio yes that's that who okay that's a Yeah we were we wanted to find a name that people would understand that this is really a Chat GPT you know so it's Geppetto it's just it's just a um a word play. Yeah and then there is a third bonus and that is uh an accountability sheet where people track their learning and uh Elmi Geppetto and the sheet kind of work all together. Nice it's it's an ecosystem for learning languages basically.

SPEAKER_03:

Could you give anyone who hasn't read Alex Hamos's hundred million dollar offer a a some kind of a brief I don't know a few minutes maybe overview of the process that you went through in order to figure out that these were the things that are needed. I know a lot of people who've read it and have never implemented it. So I really like that you've like okay I read it and then I went through the process and I implemented it and it worked. It's like okay great. Yeah do you think you should do that?

SPEAKER_00:

The best idea that I got out of it was I was only listening to it as an audiobook and I I got this idea I was like of course you need to keep keep asking yourself questions. It's like what are the problems that people will tell you when they hear about your main offer and I tell them like okay here you have the perfect tool to learn any language and they go like yeah but it's limited and I will want to practice speaking more. It's like okay you've got this unlimited Chen GPT basically that comes with it. Well yeah but you know what I've I've I struggle with uh motivation a lot like I will just not be able to keep at it that's where you have the tracking sheet right so I was trying to build it in this way and there were um a few other bonuses that were just like in addition to the main offer where yeah we were basically just looking at um what people could object to and yeah how we can solve that for them.

SPEAKER_03:

Nice. If you want to go and listen to a podcast episode about Alex Homoze's$100 million offer I recorded one it's episode 177 where I take you through the full breakdown of like how do we apply it when we're working with a client what do we take from it and what do we actually implement and connected with that there is a workbook template which I made for myself because I read the book and was like right now I need to do it but I have to what were the steps exactly again? So I went back through and like made a list of these are all the steps you need to do in order to actually implement it. So if you are listening and you want to download that you can get that as well.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah I can tell you that I use ChatGPT for that basically I told him you are Alex Hermozy help me build uh this offer based on your tips and it already had the context about the product and what we were developing so it gave me a lot of ideas that we were just I was just brainstorming with ChadGPT.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah that's beautiful yeah I mean there's a lot of elements to it aren't there but I think one of the the the main concepts like you're kind of saying is find all the places where people are going to get stuck. Find all the problems that people are going to have how can you make it easier how can you make it quicker for them how can you make them more likely to succeed and come up with things that are going as bonuses that are going to actually allow them to do it more easily more quickly more more likely to succeed with it. And then they'll be like oh cool well that's what that's all of my problems solved this is great you know and he has a lot of different exercises within the book. Now imagine you're doing it in person imagine you're doing it one-on-one imagine you're doing it in a group imagine you're doing it only online whatever and a lot of that is ways to help you brainstorm how can you solve that problem.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah so that at the end you can take from that brainstorm okay which ones am I actually going to use which is what you've exactly what you've done right yeah exactly yeah he also helped me realize that the value that this product is giving people is really immense and I shouldn't I shouldn't give a price tag to it which I feel comfortable with. And I've I felt yeah I felt confident doing it because I I know that if people get this um what it offers to them and if they actually pay a lot of m money they're going to pay a lot of attention right who pays pays attention right so I knew that if I if I gave it to give it to people for like$20 a month then they wouldn't really take it seriously and then I cannot provide them with the value, right? So it's actually my responsibility to price it a bit higher and make sure that people appreciate it. And then when they follow the advice because they've paid more money they will actually get the results. So I know they will but they need to really do the steps right with that as well.

SPEAKER_03:

How much are you charging for this then?

SPEAKER_00:

We had three packages and the most expensive was uh if you just buy one month and then you prolong as long as you wish and that's$148. Then we had a six month package where one month costs you a hundred and thirteen uh dollars and then a twelve month package where it's ninety seven dollars a month that was the cheapest and uh in that case you had to pay over a thousand one hundred uh dollars at once without any installments and what what really surprised me is that actually one third of the people in the in the whole launch actually chose that uh one year program.

SPEAKER_03:

And this is people who you were convinced didn't have enough money to buy the courses beforehand right?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah I was I was really surprised because uh that's what we've been telling ourselves in our team all this time is like yeah the sales are going down but you know you see the situation you you read the news of course it is like everything is getting more expensive and ta-da. Well not really I mean uh people do realize that learning a language can give them a lot of opportunities on the job market it's maybe more important than ever to actually speak a language fluently and uh yeah they do have the money when they see something of value and they have seen it with my with my offer.

SPEAKER_03:

So let's get into that a little bit then so this was three times as successful as your previous biggest launch that you've ever done right you're obviously convinced about it. Do you have any other ideas of like why did this do so well? Do you think you can kind of uh have you I assume you've thought about this a bunch right since it happened. But why do you think it worked so well?

SPEAKER_00:

I think there were a few reasons. First of all it was really a totally new product a new offer something that we haven't done in a long time um in the in the past three years we had been offering the same type of product over and over again so maybe that was also one of the reasons why it was going down and uh yeah the the email database was just getting tired of of the of the same offer or similar offer. But also we did quite quite some hype uh in in the summer in the few weeks before the launch and we were creating some teasing videos of s of like Lydia is working on something really exciting this is gonna change everything it's the future of online learning it's the sci-fi of online learning something like that and uh so people were quite curious and we needed to get them all to the live webinar uh we never mentioned anyone else uh like what the product is and how much it will be it was a secret you will learn it in the webinar yeah okay that's fascinating we had we had a lot of testers so I wanted to make sure that it it really does what it says and it helps people so I got 50 testers to test the product for one month and that's actually what really convinced me that this is something else because their their referrals were just so amazing they they they mentioned stuff like I have learned more in one month than I've learned in five years before that like really yeah like really strong strong uh things and I I wanted to make sure that the testers are not my best clients who would buy anything that I create. I actually uh oh Lydia I love you your stuff so wonderful no I mean I I I appreciate people who you know like are the best clients for us and they love everything I create. Yeah but I wanted to make sure that um this really is a product for people who are not my usual clients. So I specifically sent an email uh like two months before the launch to the whole database and I asked them I'm looking for a few testers who have either never bought my product or bought a product but it hasn't helped them. So if you have been unsuccessful with any of my courses then please sign up for to be a free tester. And we got like 800 people volunteering for this like right away I couldn't even read all those um all those replies but I used ChatGPT of course to help me go through it. Yeah and we chose 50 of them and uh yeah and and the the ones who actually stuck with it and and learned for four weeks had amazing results. Yeah like they really loved it. They said this is so much more fun this is more interactive I don't need to watch anything boring for a long time I'm just learning right away and if I'm like busy at work I just I just um record a voice message to Elmy and she tells me how to change the plan that's all amazing like they really loved it and that's that's when I felt really confident like okay like we're doing the right thing it will work out let's do it.

SPEAKER_03:

Nice okay and can you share for anybody who's like oh man I want to build I want to build one of this that sounds awesome can you share like what's the cost of the license for uh sorry if you told me the name of it the um yeah maybe maybe I wouldn't mention it just because the the podcast can be here for longer and I don't know how their pricing changes by the way I'm not I'm not like affiliated with them in any way I just want to make that sure make sure that that's clear.

SPEAKER_00:

I just think that's it's a great product and I and I know there are a few other services which offer something similar but I've talked to a few people who tried that and they said it didn't work really well and the the the answers that they got from the chatbot were not really well. Well I can say my experience and now the experience of about 200 other entrepreneurs in Slovakia and Czech Republic who have bought the license is that it does a really good job of getting the right pieces of know-how um uh out there and applying it.

SPEAKER_03:

So nice yeah are there any other costs besides the license or are there any other costs?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes so when you buy the original license then you you pay for every message that is actually sent. So you sell a package of 500 messages uh to your client and you need to price it in a way where if the client uses all 500 messages you will still be profitable. But um if the client doesn't then you basically have a bigger profit. So that means that um ideally you want your clients to use the service a lot but possibly not use all of the messages every month. But even if they did I mean we would we would we would be okay because we yeah we counted on that possibility so that's that's why we priced it the way we did.

SPEAKER_03:

And how much do you pay per message that someone that depends on a few factors it depends on the amount of your know-how the length of your system prompt so it's a little bit more complicated but it's about currently it's about um five dollar cents per message okay so five US dollars okay so 0.05 dollars per per message ish ball ballpark ish kind of thing okay cool yeah if somebody else is like okay I've got a course business I'm interested in this idea I'm I want to go give this Buddy Pro and I a a go what's any tips you've got for people like what's stuff that you learnt through this process or you've seen others learn that maybe somebody could could shortcut the most fascinating thing for me was that while you are building this product you actually ask the product how to do it.

SPEAKER_00:

So I had Elmy with no knowledge of my own and I was like okay how do I configure you like how do I what do I do? It's like well you need to do the the Google drive like they have all the um all the manuals and everything you can follow that. But this is this is your best technical support for building itself like it was just so fascinating to me. And even today like right now I'm working on uh a new part of know how so now I'm going to um specialize on total beginners which may be something for you John uh and I want to add some know-how from other courses in there so that it can help total beginners and I'm just I'm doing it all with Elmy so I'm I'm I'm telling her basically I'm recording messages like okay Elmi I need to make sure that you have this know-how uh so please phrase it for me like create this document that I will add to your know-how base and I want to achieve this and this and that and we need to make sure that this and this doesn't happen and to drew you know and it just gives you the Google Doc that you give to the knowledge base. So this for me has been really amazing just the process of creating it is like okay I have all this know-how how do I even put it in there how do I process it how do I format it the the Buddy pro instance basically tells you how to do it itself it's uh I don't know it's fascinating.

SPEAKER_03:

It's great isn't it I do with um Claude projects I'm working on one for helping me I'm writing a book at the moment and one of the things I've been learning from do you know James Svetok? No okay another DC here but anyway so he he's very good at building Claude projects and one of the things he's been showing me is what you can do is you you ask you set up a a Claude conversation and you ask it what things do I need to include in the instructions what do I need to include in the project knowledge in order to make this a really good project. And it gives you all the details of what you should put in and you put all of that stuff in and then you try it and maybe what you get back isn't quite what you wanted. And then you go back to the other chat outside of the project and you say okay I got back this this wasn't what I wanted what do I need to change and it tells you and I'm like oh that's fascinating isn't it to use you're using one tool to improve the same tool you know yeah it's it's amazing.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean I use AI a lot in my business. We are basically including AI in everything that we do now and um I also use it in this way of learning new apps for example well the other weekend I was just learning how to program something in N8N I don't know if you know about it. Yeah I've started using it yeah yeah okay cool so I had no idea like how do I use it so I just opened ChatGPT is like okay I want to make a workflow help me figure out what workflow would work best for my business and it has all the context about my business so it already knows gave me an idea is like okay let's try this one um I'm listening what should I do okay click here do this and you know the AI can help you with so many things it's just it's it fascinates me really how how it like it is like a a whole new team of people that we've hired using AI and Elmi is our new team member you know like she helps our support people uh she creates products with me she she actually helped me build the offer as well so I told I told Elmi like okay let's do it the Alex Hormozy way like what could we add? You have all the know-how so what are people missing? What is uh interesting to them it's yeah it's fascinating.

SPEAKER_03:

For anyone who doesn't know NA10 is one of the automation tools it's kind of similar to make or Zapia AI agents but it's it's the one that seems to be on the market at the moment the best best one. And we've been doing uh I really liked playing around with Zapia AI agents because you can write to it in natural language. You don't have to code anything at all and it just goes oh you've told me what to do and it goes and builds it and again you communicate with it to improve it. But it's a little bit buggy for the last 10 15 20% of the getting what you want it's great as a uh proof of uh concept but NA10's better for actually building the the software or it and um yeah I've done the same thing with the you're saying about chatting to chat GPT about that kind of thing it's like I've been using it I wanted to get the blurred background on my uh podcast camera and I didn't have it with the lens that I had and I was like what's all this F-stop aperture nonsense that's what's all going on here and I asked ChatGPT about it and it's like oh you want to get this lens or that lens and I got it and then it's like well it's not working how do I configure it's like oh my god this is amazing. Yeah it's so much easier than watching the YouTube videos because you never know if you find the right video to for your problem.

SPEAKER_00:

I I cannot imagine actually going back to that. Like and I think that if I think it's been two years and it's like how could you have lived without this yeah I mean I imagine a conversation with my daughter when she's a bit older and it's like so what did you do when you didn't have an answer to a question? It's like well we Googled it and then we looked through articles and videos and sometimes you never got the answer you wanted. It's like why would you do that? Yeah yeah and I'm now teaching my grandma to work with Chad GPT which is nice because she's like she asked me like how do I get rid of these moles in the garden it's like I don't know grandma but let me ask Chad GPT you know and and I put her I put Chad GPT on the voice mode so that she actually hears the reply and she's so she's like this is impossible this is like God and then I go like okay uh Chad GPT my grandma thinks that you're a God how would you explain that you're not and we had so much fun.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay we're we're about running out of time if there's anything else what what else is there that I haven't thought to ask you about that might be useful to someone listening if they want to maybe do this?

SPEAKER_00:

What I think people could take out of this podcast is just maybe this one idea um about the future of of online products and expert business products because this is something that's very relevant to anyone who is offering any type of consultations, VIP consultations, courses where it takes a lot of their personal uh know-how you know if you if you answer people a lot of questions if you think that you do maybe have a team but you cannot trust your support to actually uh reply to all all those questions then I think this might be worth considering for you maybe not this particular one like Buddy Pro but maybe just having a ChatGPT with all the know-how and using it every day in in at least in your support work you know it saves so much time and energy and I think this is this is what the goal is for all entrepreneurs right starting a creative business like you want to free yourself of doing all that stuff. And I believe that AI is here to do that but we it takes time. We need to really work on it. It takes a lot of effort At the beginning, but then when you see it actually saving you so much time, it's just so amazing. Like right now, at this moment, as we're speaking, there are possibly dozens of my clients out of the hundreds that have the product who are asking me questions about language learning. And the the great thing is that even if I did have a one-on-one consultation with all of them, I couldn't possibly give them a better value than Elmy does because I wouldn't remember all the details. She does, right? I mean, maybe maybe it's happened to you, John, that you you may have paid, I don't know, a famous mentor like$25,000, you know, to be in their program. And then you got like half an hour with them or 15 minutes with them to help you one-on-one to solve an issue. Like there's no chance that in that time you can even give the context about your business. Like it doesn't know anything. And you're paying so much money to talk to someone who actually has a lot of know-how, but it's not possible to transfer it to you within a short consultation. And especially not if it's a one-time thing, because then you have some follow-up questions, right? And I believe this is what uh this product is great for because it remembers all the history about you and it it it just personifies everything to your needs, to your situation. So it can actually provide a much better value, right? Than than any humans can. So yeah, I'm just I'm just impressed by AI in general, as you probably can see. And uh I find it amazing that um yeah, we can we can increase uh the or how do I say we can share the know-how within so many people with so many people at the same time using AI.

SPEAKER_03:

Beautiful, nice. If you listen to this and you then decide to go ahead and build an AI tool, whether it's with Buddy Pro or any of the other systems out there, and it works well for you, message me. I would love to hear from anybody else who's starting to do this kind of thing. Um, I think Lydia is kind of trailblazing to a certain extent. I know there's others obviously who've done this, but like I don't know many in the space who are doing this. So it's like if if you try this after uh after hearing this episode, then just drop me an email, John at datadrivenmarketing.co, and I would love to hear from you. Lydia, thanks so much for coming on today. I think this is fantastic. I know you put a lot of effort in in advance, like preparing all your notes of how you could answer all the questions today. If someone wants to just go check you out and kind of learn about your polyglot system or learn about what you're up to, where can they go?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, um, thank you as well for the for the for the great interview. Um, my website in English is languegementoring.com, but we don't have Elmi uh implemented in there yet. We're gonna work on it next year. Uh we so everything I talked about is in my Slovak business, which is called jazykovimentoring.sk. Try to type that if you can. Um yeah, we can stay in touch within uh languagementoring.com. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Language mentoring.com. And one of the things you can look for actually is um Lydia's TED Talk. It was uh TE TED or TEDx.

SPEAKER_00:

The TED TED Talk in New York in the TED Talk in New York.

SPEAKER_03:

It's had, like I said, 19 million views. So go check that out and learn the secrets of learning a new language. Lydia, thanks again so much for coming on and uh hopefully I'll see you soon.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, hope to see you soon too. Bye.