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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
222 Selling $10K Courses From Podcast Only: How I Do It
🔥 15 sales page elements you can't afford to miss - free checklist 📝 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/elements
Kyle Buller has close to 7 million podcast downloads and sells courses for $10,500. No sales calls. No big sales team. Just his podcast doing the heavy lifting.
About 70% of his high-ticket buyers tell him they signed up because they'd been listening to him for a year or two before buying. That's the power of long-form content. When somebody spends an hour with you every week, they're building a relationship and trust before you ever make an offer.
In this episode we talk about why being authentic and vulnerable matters more than ever, why people are sick of the polished facade, and what happened when Kyle lost his 107,000 follower Instagram account overnight with no warning.
If you've been wondering whether to focus on short-form or long-form content, this episode will help you decide.
🔗 Check out Kyle's work: https://psychedelicstoday.com
#OnlineCourses #SalesFunnels #CourseCreators #DigitalMarketing
🤝 Get In Touch
If you'd like to talk more about how you can grow your course business, email me at john@datadrivenmarketing.
We have over 15,000 students in our education platform. We're getting close to 7 million total downloads. That's outrageous. I love that. Somebody is listening to you for an hour and they're gonna hang out with you on YouTube and watch you. They're invested. It's building relationships. I've just did a lot of feedback from students, people that can listen to us, and they've just always said, we've really built trust with you guys because you guys are very vulnerable, you're open, you're grounded. It doesn't always feel like you're putting up. I think we're kind of moving back into this like depth-oriented thing. It's like people kinda want that messy authentic part showing up because we're kind of sick of just looking at the thought of what people are just projecting onto the screen.
SPEAKER_00:Hello and welcome to the Art Telling Online Courses. We're here to share winning strategies and secret acting top format in the online courses. My name's John Antwart, and today's guest is Kyle Fuller. Kyle is a thematic psychotherapist, a breathwork facilitator and educator recognized with leadership in the psychedelic field. He's the co-founder of Psychedelics Today, a leading global platform for psychedelic media and education, co-founder and director of Vital Psychedelic Training, a 12-month professional program that's trained over 500 practitioners across clinical and wellness fields. And we're going to talk today about why Kyle thinks community matters so much, why you should be authentic, messy, and vulnerable, and of course, about funnels and email marketing. Kyle, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me here, John. Excited to be here. So can you explain to those of us who don't know about this what is a somatic psychotherapist?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, uh the easiest way of describing it is a somatic therapist is somebody that's just a little bit more body-oriented. So in regular psychotherapy, we talk about it from this concept of like the top-down approach from the mind. And we're really trying to be more analytical, trying to figure things out. But a somatic therapist is really also paying attention to like what's going on in the nervous system. How are people responding? And to get people to become more aware of, you know, their reactions in their nervous system, how to regulate themselves a little bit more. Um, and so it takes more of what we call that bottom-up approach. We're starting with the body instead of always trying to, you know, be in that analytical mind. Because we live in a culture that's just so analytically oriented. Um, we don't always pay attention to our body. We go, uh, you know, you could ask somebody, it's like, what are you feeling in your body right now? Most people say nothing. You know, I don't feel anything. But if you really slow down, do you feel your heart beating? Do you feel any sort of cold or tingling somewhere? And so it's really just starting to become more aware of what is going on in the body. And there's this idea that, you know, there's a lot of stored emotion in there. And when we can slow down to tap into it, we might become more aware of like what we're actually feeling instead of what we're actually we're thinking, right?
SPEAKER_00:No, I didn't was not aware that was a a a field in and of itself. That's cool, man.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I become really popular over the years. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Has it? Okay. Yeah. I'm gonna look into it. Like I've worked with a therapist at the moment, but I've I've never uh worked with anybody but like I've you know worked with medicate and teachers and this kind of thing, but not not something that seems to kind of cross the two. I spent I couldn't imagine not noticing what I was feeling in my body. It really do people is that a lot of people that unaware of what's going on.
SPEAKER_02:Oh totally. Yeah, I always say like we're like not a very somatically literate culture. It's like we're very body oriented in the sense of like exercise and like physique and stuff like that, yeah. How it looks. But we're not always like somatically literate of like, you know, what are you noticing right now in your body? Like how does it feel? Like, and people might go, I don't feel anything. And you're like, well, do you feel, you know, anything? Like, you know, they really have to like develop language around it. Like, oh yeah, actually, there is this tightness here. Well, what does that feel like what what's that tightness telling you? Uh, you know, I've just been carrying a lot of weight lately, you know, like I'm just really stressed. And so then you can start to deepen um that experience and then kind of start uncovering things that we're might be holding in the body. Fascinating.
SPEAKER_00:So the courses that you are selling is teaching people how to become a somatic psychotherapist, or what are you doing?
SPEAKER_02:We do general kind of harm reduction integration work around psychedelics. So the psychedelic research has really kind of blown up in the past decade or so. Um, and people are interested on how do I get involved in this field? Um, and so we started back in 2016 with a podcast, and then I was already doing some psychedelic education at a college that I was at, um, teaching two psychedelic-oriented classes. Um, and so a lot of therapists and clinicians and doctors have started seeing what the research is saying and they're interested. They're like, you know, I have clients that are interested in microdosing, they're talking about mushrooms. I have no idea what what I'm doing. And so we're trying to help to develop, you know, more psychedelic literacy and competencies.
SPEAKER_00:Are you trying to help them to be able to help people or just to stop people getting in trouble? Because you said harm reduction. I was just like, okay, okay. Yeah, both.
SPEAKER_02:Because there's a also a lot of like just regular folks that are reading headlines. They want to, you know, get more involved and maybe you know have their own experiences. And we're also trying to teach like best practices um so people aren't putting themselves in harm's way as well.
SPEAKER_00:Do you know Sherry Walling? Her name doesn't ring a bell. She does work in the same in the same field. She's um a therapist, particularly working with um entrepreneurs, I believe. And uh I got the chance to hang out with her at a conference one time and she was doing a lot of work around psychedelics and microdosing and lots of stuff that I had no idea what she was talking about. So um I mostly talked to her about circus skills instead, because that was what she was really into. Um but yeah, you might want to check her out. She's got a great podcast on the topic as well. Um so uh it could be some good crossover for you guys. Okay, so could you give people and I kind of mentioned the the fact that you trained 500 practitioners, but it sounds like you're involved in a lot of stuff. Could you give people some kind of idea of the the scale of your business revenue if you're happy to share it, but if not, number of students or staff or whatever you kind of can.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, um so like I said, we start with our podcast. Um, and the podcast we've been we're we'll be at 10 years in May. And we have, I think we're getting close to seven million total downloads um on that platform.
SPEAKER_00:Um I said this earlier before we started, but that's outrageous. I love that. Because podcasts are different to like like we have a lot of people on here who have over, you know, have millions of YouTube views a month, but I feel like a podcast download is like deeper than that, you know?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, it takes a little bit, it's a different audience. And we did notice like a huge shift. I'm not too sure, like if any of your other audience members who had podcasts, like there is a weird shift that happened in the podcast industry maybe two years ago, um, where Apple changed their way that they report like quote unquote downloads. And I think it was like if you were subscribed to it, they just automatically counted every uh new episode as a download. And so I think the industry in the total has seen a dip in actual, which I which is great because I think you you get actual numbers then of like who's actually listening versus like if you're just subscribed, it automatically counted as a download.
SPEAKER_00:Um it used to count it as a download, and then the numbers went down because they stopped counting it automatically if if you didn't listen to it. Yeah, can they play if you listen to it?
SPEAKER_02:Um I think so, yeah. As long as you like hit the the play button on it. Um so that was like a really interesting thing that happened. Yeah, I think it was like two years ago. And it was like, yeah, everybody that was like on Apple. So Apple is, I think, just uh counting any any new episode released if you were subscribed as a download. So yeah, uh podcasts where we're uh we spend most of our time doing that. And then um we have our education platform, and we have over, I think, 15,000 students in our education platform. Um, and the vital one that you have mentioned with over 500 students, that's a different type of course where it's a year-long program, um, you know, very intensive every week, pretty much, um, like three and a half hours a week of class time. Um, and that one we've had over about 500 or so or more folks go through that program. And we started that one in April of 2022. So we're on our fifth cohort right now. Do you sell more like DIY type courses as well as that then? We sell like um kind of more niche uh things, like a recent uh course that we just did was called uh Shadow and the Psychedelics. So, how do you work with like shadow material that might arise during that? Uh, we just released a breathwork course. So how understanding like how to utilize breathwork practices and techniques if people are engaging in psychedelic work to help them navigate the experience a little bit better. Um, we started with uh the the weeks kept changing, but it was like a four-week program, then it turned into like a seven-week program, and now it's at like a nine-week program. Um, and we used to run it every quarter, but that was called uh navigating psychedelics for clinicians and therapists. Um so that was almost like our short form course that then later turned into vital when people wanted to um do a deeper dive. Um and yeah, we've just had like little smaller courses on other topics where people could just sign up pre-recorded um and kind of go through it at their own time. But so we do a mix of things. Like we have the year-long, that's like our flagship program, and then we have some smaller courses as like entry points for people that don't want to commit a whole year to that. Got it.
SPEAKER_00:And what's the what's the cost if someone does the whole year-long program?
SPEAKER_02:We started off um when we first launched, it was I think$12,000 per person. Um, and now I think it's down to$10,500 per person. You went down, interesting. Okay. Yeah, market kind of shifted and there was a lot more kind of like competition that came in. And we've had some like uh policy change in the United States as well around this. Um, and so I think we had to lower prices a bit just because of like the competition.
SPEAKER_01:Hmm.
SPEAKER_00:That makes sense. Yeah. And one of the things you said about growing an audience is that being authentic, messy, and vulnerable is important. Why do you think that?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think over the years, like, you know, I've just received a lot of feedback from students, people that like have listened to us, and they've just always said, you know, I think we've really built trust with you guys because you guys are very vulnerable. You're open, like you're grounded. Um, and it's not, it doesn't always feel like you're putting on a show, right? You're just showing up as yourself and being open and honest about like whatever take we have. Um, and I think that just really helps to connect, especially, you know, we're all kind of in this like attention economy, right? And I think it kind of ebbs and flows, right? Like sometimes that high production, like really flashy stuff catches people's uh attention, but you also don't really maybe know the depths of somebody when you're looking at that stuff, versus like, and I think we're kind of moving back into this like depth-oriented thing, right? It's like people kind of want that messy, that messy authentic part showing up because we're kind of sick of just like looking at the facade of what people are just projecting onto the the screens and the overly high production stuff now, especially with like AI development too. You know, it's like what is real? And I think like we want to move towards realness. I know I do, yeah. I see like highly stuff.
SPEAKER_00:I'm like, I think one of the things with uh AI is that even YouTube where you can see it's an actual person still. Maybe one day you won't be able to tell, right, the difference, but like you can see it's an actual person. You don't know if AI wrote the script, and you're like, what do they really think? And it's like one of the things I really like about podcasts is like uh maybe there's a time in the future when this changes, but people know it's like this is an actual conversation, you know, and it's not scripted and it's not figured out and we've messaged before and figured out what we might talk about, but it's like it's it's it's actually real. Um the one of the things I find with producing content is if I try to do stuff that isn't just authentically me, I just get exhausted from I don't think I'd keep it up for long enough, you know? Like if not for months and years. And like I've done this podcast for not as long as you, but let's say four years. May maybe maybe coming up to five, I'm not sure. And um I just wouldn't do it. I just wouldn't still be doing it, I don't think, if it if it required me to kind of have a facade or something else and and and uh do something that was what I thought people wanted to see. And I know that people like the podcast because they tell me on a regular basis. I mean, it might be it might be that I'd have five times as many listeners and they'd all be telling me how much they loved it way more if I'd done it some different way. But it's like I know that people do like this. So I'm like, okay, cool, great.
SPEAKER_02:It's a tough balance, right? Like as you're saying that I'm just thinking about like how it's shifted over the years of like, you know, just putting out long form pieces of content either through YouTube on the podcast stream. And then once TikTok came in, and now we're like in this like TikToki of like short form content, you know, sound bites, viral hooks, and stuff like that. And I feel like we haven't really kind of kept up with that because it doesn't feel like authentic to us in a way. Um, but I know that's like where a lot of attention is nowadays. It's on the reels, it's on these platforms, but I'm also hearing a lot of people getting burnt out with it. You know, producing that stuff is very timely, you know, it takes a lot of time to actually produce that stuff, coming up with the scripts, figuring out your hooks and all that stuff. But um, yeah, it's an interesting balance as like the media landscape has shifted over the years, um, and trying to keep up with like trends and where do you actually want to put your energy? What's actually gonna like nourish you versus what's actually burning you out? And then you have to like balance the business stuff. It's like, well, what's actually converting, right? It's like people might be their their eyes are glued to TikTok, but are those people actually going off the platform when you have a call to action? Are they not buying courses? I'll tell you that, Kyle.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we've done a lot of testing and they are not buying courses. You find that people on TikTok don't buy courses or just on absolutely not. So I've had one person on the podcast who TikTok was her main traffic source, and I've had so many uh people on the podcast, but clients who they've got big TikTok audiences and they're making no sales from it. YouTube long form converts so much better than TikTok, it's unreal. Like YouTube long form converts way, way better than YouTube Shorts, but YouTube Shorts is still better than TikTok. Like TikTok is dreadful for this stuff, and I'm not a hundred percent sure why. I mean, part of it is short form content is people are just scrolling through, they're not necessarily then clicking links and going somewhere else. That's a part of it. But even the ones from there who end up on email lists are also then less often buying. I don't know if it's a younger crowd or something as as well.
SPEAKER_02:Maybe yeah, yeah. And I think it's also been a tough year for a lot of folks in like the course sales. Um, I've been kind of hearing that across the board too. Like 2025 has been like a weird year for a lot of folks for sales. But yeah, you know, I think that is true. Like on those shorter form platforms, you know, people don't always follow you on TikTok. Um, you know, it's like the way the algorithm just kind of goes, you kind of scroll through, you like stuff, you're not really converting. Where long form kind of I think goes back to that like authentic part, right? It's like if somebody is listening to you for an hour and they're they're gonna hang out with you on YouTube and watch you, you know, they're they're invested. Again, you're taking an hour, half an hour, whatever it is out of your day to listen to somebody when we're all battling for attention. You know, that's probably that's building relationship. Um, and I think I've heard that like over the years where like, you know, I've run into folks that have listened to us. And I mean, people have told me crazy stories where they're like, I think one of the craziest things, somebody told me they're like, I had you in my ears when I was like fleeing Russia. Like, I was like, you know, you like you guys were like so grounding and like kept me saying time to breathe.
SPEAKER_00:I don't have time to breathe, Kyle. I've got to get out of Russia.
SPEAKER_02:And I was just like, that's that's really interesting to hear. It's like really flattering, but it it's interesting, right? It's like you have somebody in your ears when you're doing things, like doing the dishes, doing this, doing that. It's like you are kind of cultivating that relationship through that process for versus the short form, right? You're just kind of scrolling through, you maybe you're not following. And I think TikTok and those platforms also want to keep you on the platform. So, like clicking those links, they don't want you to leave. I think, yeah, the conversions probably aren't so great over there either.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah. The only thing that I found in terms of audience is podcasts. If someone has a big podcast audience, those people tend to be so loyal and they really want to hear from that person. And YouTube is even YouTube long form is more transitory than than a podcast. Um, so that's like it's just such it's such a big deal.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So what's kind of the process for you if from someone being a podcast listener to buying one of your programs? Are you promoting it directly on your podcast? Are you trying to get people onto an email list and then run promotions to them? Like how does it work for you?
SPEAKER_02:I've kind of done like a few things, but I would say, yeah, the podcast is like the main funnel. Um and so, you know, we've done ad spots on there talking about like the launches of certain programs. So, you know, we'll put that in the beginning during the intros or at the end, just getting people to know about that. Um, maybe leading them to some sort of sign up, learn more. Um, and I would say that that probably has been like our biggest conversion. And I I chatted with a lot of our students that converted to the vital program. That's a high-ticket item, you know, people aren't just throwing down and signing up right away. Um, and a lot of our students that have come through, there's I think especially in the beginning when we first launched, I would say probably like 70% of them said, I signed up because I've been listening to you guys. Like I've just been really wanting to study with you. And this program sounded awesome. Um, you know, I've been listening to you for a year, two years. I've been listening to you since you guys launched the podcast. Um, and when I was kind of comparing different programs, like again, it was like the relationship building through that that you're starting to build trust with people. And I think again, showing up and being authentic and being a little messy and screwing up here and there, right? It adds a little bit of like a human um, you know, humanness to it, which I think people appreciate. So yeah, I'd say podcast has like has been our biggest funnel, besides like social media and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_00:Going back a step, actually, how have you managed to grow the podcast to that size? Are people finding you through search? Are you running ads to promote it? Like how how are people getting to download the podcast in the first place? I have no idea. No.
SPEAKER_02:Um in the beginning, like we were, you know, the psychedelic industry is pretty new in a way. Um, you know, it's it's been there, it was there through the 60s, got kind of shut down, starting to re-emerge. And so we were pretty early. I think we were one of the first like psychedelic podcasts that besides like kind of archival podcasts where they would like maybe rehash some stuff. There's a guy, Lorenzo, he had the psychedelic salon, total OG in the space. He had a lot of archival audio that he would just release. Um, and so I think part of it was like being early. And um and then we noticed there was like a huge kind of wave that happened after Michael Pollan released one of his books called How to Change Your Mind in 2018. Um, where you know Michael Pollan hit a different audience, and then you know, I would say like 90% of the emails we were getting around that time always started with a Just read Michael Pollan's book. I'm really interested in this. And so I think it was like being early in that scene in this very niche. I mean, the psychedelic industry was so small. Like I remember when I went to, I mean, you kind of knew everybody. Um, like when I went to like one of my first conferences in like 2013, I think there was like 1,200 people. Now one of the big conferences, they're up to 7,000 to 12,000 people. So it's really grown in the past few years. And then I was also really active on social media in those early days. Like I was able to grow our Instagram account up to like, I think it was like 54,000, 60,000 before I handed it off to a team member. Um and so I was, we were also very active on those platforms, posting news, like creating content for it. And again, I think it was just like we were very early. And so I think just being early in that and grabbing people's attention, like probably really helped. I again, I think it's getting harder now that like, you know, everybody has a podcast, everybody has like a social media channel, everybody is kind of doing this and like, you know, really adapting to the way media has changed. Um, and so yeah, I think like that's my best guess is how people are finding it. It's just like through searching and then, yeah, just being early organic.
SPEAKER_00:Um I got a friend Rob, he runs one of the top business podcasts in the UK. It's called the Property Podcast, I think. And uh I was thinking about starting a podcast and I said to him, Right, what did you do? How did you grow it so big? He said, We were the first one. And so when they whenever their people were searching for property podcasts, they came up and then they because they were the biggest one, they got featured by Apple on the lists. So then that made them grow bigger. And I'm like, Yeah, Rob, this isn't this is no help to me. And he's like, I know, I'm really sorry. The advice I have for you is have started a podcast six years ago, you know.
SPEAKER_02:We also did do a lot of ads um in those early years, like every podcast uh show that we did release, we put ad money to. So I think again, it was like on social. I think people converted through social during that time. And again, you know, I think it has been a benefit of being early when a lot of people weren't doing that. There weren't a lot of podcasts in the space, especially on these topics. People weren't doing all this short form stuff trying to capture attention. And, you know, we have seen some of our numbers drop throughout the years as the media landscape has changed. Um, and so that is something we're always constantly trying to think about. It's like how to get in front of new audiences, where's the attention? How do you get people to tune in and listen? And so I think it is playing on that social media thing, but yeah, it's like how do you and I think that's like where some of that short form viral content is helpful if you can find something really compelling to get somebody to go there. And I've noticed my own behaviors too of like, oh, they said this ridiculous thing. I kind of want to hear the rest of this. And I have I have gone to those podcasts to listen. And it does work, like there, there is a psychology behind that of like trying to get people hooked in to want to learn more.
SPEAKER_00:Um but nice. So you said you you're mostly promoting stuff directly on the podcast, but you you have built up an email list as well, haven't you? How big's the email list now?
SPEAKER_02:Kind of forget it kind of fluctuates maybe between like 45,000, 47,000. I know sometimes we go in and clear a bunch of like dead stuff out, so it kind of fluctuates here and there. Uh and a lot of that was through a lot of free lead magnets. Like we put out a lot of free courses. We have the um, you know, email sign up on the website. You know, in the early days we had like free PDF uh magnets as well. Um, a lot of them have come through uh yeah, just the email sign up and then a lot of the free course leads that that we put out there for folks.
SPEAKER_00:Nice. And then how do you use the email list? Are you running a lot of email promotions of your courses to them? Is it just for uh newsletter? Like what do you do with that?
SPEAKER_02:We do both. Um newsletter, we usually do like a monthly or weekly news roundup that's happening in the psychedelic space. So yeah, my business partner Joe, he'll usually put that together, round up like what's been happening in the psychedelic space, maybe some updates on our end, um, you know, kind of like Joe's thoughts on, you know, his perspectives on hot topics. Um, and then yeah, we will do like, you know, solo direct emails about an offering. So, you know, we've just been um emailing our list about our breathwork course, and that's pretty dedicated to this is just about the breath work. Um and so yeah, it's a mix, like just newsletter format, and then we'll do just like direct promotion as well.
SPEAKER_00:Nice. And what's the what's the goal for the business for you? Like, are you happy with how everything is? Do you wanna do you wanna grow it a little bit? Like I find I find this a fascinating question in terms of like what's kind of almost your your perspective on life. What are you trying to do to an extent?
SPEAKER_02:I think we're trying to figure that out, honestly. Um the psychedelic industry, it's been really interesting like being in this this field and industry because you're always kind of at the hands of policy and especially with social media um and censorship. And so we're in this kind of weird taboo controversial field where we have a lot of moving parts. We had huge expansion. Um, again, like probably like 2018 up until like last year, there was like this huge expansion and growth. We grew a pretty big team, and then there I think there's been like multiple factors in the past year, but I think one of the big ones is I've chatted with like a bunch of our colleagues, and everybody kind of has like the same kind of analysis here. We just had a big uh industry conference in Denver. There's about like 7,000, 8,000 people there this year. Um, and it was a little bit smaller than previous. It is big. That's one year you were running, or that's one US. We weren't we weren't running it. It was an organization called MAPS. Um, they're kind of the the leaders in the psychedelic space. But the the year before, there was about 12,000 people. And so this year it shrunk. Um and a big event that happened was that everybody was on was feeling very optimistic that MDMA um or ecstasy as people might know it, um, was gonna get legalized um through the FDA here in the United States for PTSD treatment. And they had a bunch of meetings and then they decided not to um pass it. Um they they asked MAPS to go back and run some more clinical trials, um, some flaws possibly in the research and stuff like that. And so I think that was like a big like shit, like what just happened? Everybody in the field was like really rooting and we were really optimistic that this is a year MDMA is gonna get legalized. And then it didn't happen on the FDA level. So I think that caused a bit of contraction of like, you know, operators in the field, also investors, like coming in and being like, what is the long term? You know, if we just spent all this money working on this and now we have to put more money and more research, like what is the ROI here? And then I also think like the US economy, you know, it's just been like kind of a weird year here in the States with the election. And so we saw a little bit of this contraction happen. Um, and I was talking to like other operators in the space, and everybody kind of felt it. Um, and so we've had this little bit of this contraction, which I think is good because when you have a field that is just exploding very quickly, um, it's all and we're working with very powerful substances too. Like people are just trying to like run and rush us to market, which you know, we kind of agree with too, because there's a lot of mental health crisis that's happening. We need new interventions. Um, but there is also, I think, a lot of excitement coming in from like investors, and how is that gonna like shape that a bit? And so it felt like there was a little bit of a contraction and shake up. And I think it's giving a lot of folks in this space time to reflect on like why we all got involved in this in a way. Um, and taking time to think like, yeah, where does this actually want to go? Where does this want to move towards? Um, and so I think a lot of people in this space have been feeling it this year of like, yeah, why are we all kind of getting here? What how do we want to grow this industry? What part do we want to play? Um, and so yeah, I think that's interesting about like booming industries. And I, you know, you could probably see that in crypto, right? It's like crypto had like this crazy heyday, everybody was getting into it. And then the contraction happened, right? And now it's starting to like, you know, people are probably trying to figure out what's next. But you get that with any, you know, new emerging field that doesn't have like stable ground. Um so yeah, I think we're all just trying to, you know, reflect and be like, yeah, what are we doing? What why do we why are we showing up here? Obviously, it's still really exciting and like, you know, the policies are constantly changing. I'm here in Colorado where they've decriminalized psychedelics and they've also legalized psychedelics, psilocybin for like service centers. So like policy keeps changing and shifting. Um, but that's also yeah, an interesting thing where it's like their you know, administration could come in and say, this is it, you know, we're gonna make these things illegal again. Or I mean they're already federally illegal here in the States, but you know, they could come back and you know, tighten drug laws and stuff like that. So it's a really interesting um industry to be in. Also back in um, it was like Memorial Day weekend, I think it was like twofold. Um there is somebody reporting all these psychedelic accounts, and I think that was also around the time Meta released their new kind of like AI algorithm moderation stuff. And so almost everybody in our industry got their account shut down. Um and so right. So then you're dealing with we've built this, you know, we have like a hundred and seven thousand followers on Instagram. And then all of a sudden we get this message from Meta saying, your account's banned, you can't appeal it. Uh this account will be deleted. Um and so people have lost their accounts.
SPEAKER_00:That's why we build email lists. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. Uh we had our, we don't have our our Facebook group or and Facebook page back. Uh they have suspended it. And I think we had like 37,000 or something, 40,000 people over there. And so, you know, that was the really it's been really challenging trying to market and do stuff when all of a sudden you're afraid to actually market anything. Because, you know, if you use the word psychedelic, if you use a certain word, is this AI moderation thing gonna pick it up and ban it, even though you're doing education um and you're not doing anything illegal. And so it's been a really weird year for all of us that are trying to like navigate like, what's our social media plan when any post that we make could possibly flag our account and get banned? Um, and then it's just like, as you said, email lists. And I think that's where like where, you know, podcasting comes into play. It's like, you know, we own the podcasts, like who knows, Libson could probably ban stuff if they don't want to have that stuff on on their hosting. But um, you know, I think it's really important if you are kind of playing in some of these emerging taboo fields to own your content, have your own domains so all your hard work just doesn't get ripped away. And that was really challenging where we're like, we might not ever get our our Instagram back, our Facebook, you know, page again, banned. I don't know if we'll get it back and be able to publish on on Facebook, which then hurts advertising. Can we actually advertise through Meta now? And yeah, so it causes a bunch of kind of like interesting dilemmas here when it does come to marketing in this field.
SPEAKER_00:I got a friend who uh she her business sells like kind of soft porn audiobooks for women. And she said just just there's tons it's a funny one because there's so much opportunity. The market's like there's so much opportunity in the market, but everything's difficult. Yeah like it's hard to have someone who will be your payment provider because they don't all necessarily want to be involved with it. And Facebook won't let you run certain kinds of ads on it. And just like every single thing that you're doing, you have to work your way kind of around it. But one benefit is that means that lots of other people don't get into the field because they give up with all that stuff. So that's kind of cool in there.
SPEAKER_02:It's uh it's a hurdle. Like, you know, you mentioned banking. Um, we've had uh colleagues in our field lose bank accounts, even though they're doing everything legally. They might be media companies and stuff like that. Um, and so it does happen. And I think when you're playing in those fields, it is kind of like who's really committed to this? Who's gonna jump through all those hoops? Like there have been times, like especially when we were losing all of our accounts. I'm like, I'm done. Like, I don't want to play the social media game anymore. I don't want to be beholden to meta and like all these people, like so um it does, I think, like you know, put you down a bit, like when you've worked so hard for something and you've grown an audience that way, and then all of a sudden it can just be taken away with like and you can't get in touch with anybody over there. That's like the code. No, don't be silly.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, come talk to us. No, no, no, no, no. This is one of the things I say. It's not like the main reason, but it's it's one of the reasons I say to people that it's such a big deal to grow your email list. Because if if you're making all your sales directly from you know Instagram or YouTube, what have you, I mean, firstly, you'll make a lot less sales than if you go to email. But secondly, if at some point you get your account banned or even suspended temporarily, you just can't make sales for that period of time. Whereas if you have your email list, you're just like, okay, well, I'm not growing my email list anymore because I don't have that account, but I'm gonna make just as many sales this month as I would have done last month because I'm making it directly off the email list. And it's like, it's not like that's gonna solve the problem forever, but it makes a hell of a difference for right now and it might give you the chance to figure something out, you know?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, imagine having no email list, but you have everything on these social platforms and you you make one post. And I I was hearing actually during that time period, I was going into some Reddit forums uh to try to figure out what's going on. It wasn't just happening to like psychedelic and drug accounts, as you're saying, like, you know, it could be in like, you know, these books that are semi-pornographic or whatever. People were getting hit in like alternative medicine communities of like talking about certain things. And so um, yeah, censorship is something to be mindful of if you have controversial opinions, right? And it's like, what is the AI gonna do? Because these things aren't also human moderated as they used to be, where there's nuance and context. So, oh, okay, that's harm reduction, that's education. You know, it's just like AI picks it up and goes, Oh, well, this is like illegal or this like offends our community guidelines. Um you don't, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You need to you need to be aware of that, yeah. What's the challenges for you in terms of if you so I know you said that you're still kind of figuring it out whether you are growing the business or or whatever, but like if you what's any challenges for you with the the email marketing, the funnel side of stuff? What's another thing you're like, oh, how could I how could I do this better? Or you've you've got stuck with it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah, we definitely are are trying to grow. Um, I think this time has just been like a self-reflection on like how do we want to grow that? And I think that comes down to like this funnel thing, right? So I've been kind of thinking about this in the past few weeks where I think sometimes like we've had like people we've worked with and contractors that we pulled in, like you guys are kind of confusing because you do a lot of different things. You have this, you have that, you have the, you know, and it's like, and lately I'm like, what is like that one thing we really should focus on instead of having so many different offerings and like showing up in lots of different ways? And lately I've been thinking about like, you know, what are the few things we really want to focus our energy on instead of maybe having like so many different things where could that possibly be confusing to the audience? Right. So the audience is like, well, where do I begin? Um and I just kind of think about that. We've I've received a few emails uh over the past like few weeks where people are saying, I'm really interested in psychedelic education. And I've been looking at your um you know, your education platform, what courses should I start with? Right. And so I've been thinking about like, yeah, what is that funnel? How do we like get people through a system where they're like, this is where you start, this is where you go, and this is like the learning pathway. Um, right now, sometimes you know, people get on there and they're like a little bit lost. And so I think like, again, I think that comes with like this reflection time of like, yeah, what do we want to re like you know, really focus on? Like, what is our offering? For the past few years, it has been vital, um, and that will continue to be our offering. But I just think about like what is that funnel so it's not so confusing for people? Um, so yeah, it's something we've been kind of thinking about.
SPEAKER_00:How much work have you done in terms of um surveying your audience and trying to figure out like what segments you've got and what different pain points each segment has got? Do you spend a lot of time with it?
SPEAKER_02:We did uh we did some market research maybe like two years ago and came up with those profiles. Um and it sounds like our three audiences are like the psychedelic curious people that are just starting to get more involved. We have the psychedelic professionals, those are folks that are like hot to buy, they want professional training and courses. And then we have uh what we've labeled as like the psychonaut, people have been engaged in this work for quite a while, and they're not probably gonna buy anything. They're like probably the most seasoned and experienced, but they're also like, why would I buy a course on this type of thing? Um, you know, I've been doing this for a while. Um, and so you know, the pain point for the for the for the professional is like, I want to get involved. Um, you know, I want to make this part of my career. How do I get involved? Um, and so a lot of our education has been really around that avatar um and trying to cater uh the courses uh to that audience.
SPEAKER_00:So do you have a way when someone joins your email list to segment them and find out which of those groups they might be in?
SPEAKER_02:We might. We did. I'm not I don't I don't take care much of the marketing. Um usually my co-partner does that. Um but I remember when we did, we had that automation set up when somebody signed up for the newsletter, we had like links for them to click to be like, you know, where are you on your path? Um and then we would have a bunch of automated emails um that would kind of then, you know, shoot different emails to them. So if they were just like a psychedelic curious person just starting, they would click a link, it would tag them as that, and then it would feed them like uh courses to start with um or podcasts to start with. Um but I'm not too sure what the funnel looks like now.
SPEAKER_00:Um we've kind of can I sh- I know you're you said this isn't you, but can I show you something that might be useful if you want to be able to do that? Let me uh share screen and I'll describe that if you're listening to this, and don't worry, I'll kind of describe what we're what we're looking at here. All right, so this is your website, right? Yes. Okay, good. I'm on the right side, good. So what I found when I went through, I got a little pop up. I'll see actually if I can where else I might be able to see the uh the opt in. Here we go. There's an opt in down here. If I put my email address in and click subscribe. Subscribe. What I oh that's interesting. I've got a I'm not a robot, just a subscribe. Now what? I'm redirecting you back. Right. So what that's done here is I've uh I've gone to the website, I've found an email opt-in box, I've signed up for it, and it's basically just said success, you've managed to sign up to the email list. Now if you would like to know which of those three segments somebody is in, that next page that they see is probably the best way that you could possibly find out. Because if you had like a one question form or just a a link that somebody clicked on that next page that was was hooked up through you know behind the scenes technology to update your your email marketing system, kit or active campaign or whatever, with that information about them, then about 70% of people would give that information right there and then, and then you'd know which segment they were in. Whereas if you're doing it through email, if you got five percent of people who gave you the information, you'd probably be lucky. That makes sense. Yeah. So the way that you can do it, there's something called um. So there's two parts to it. One is you use hidden fields in a form. And the other one is that you pass information through in the website URL. So if someone goes to I'm actually I probably can show you this on our site, maybe not. I'm I'll just describe it. So if someone puts their email address in, you need the information about which of those segments they fit into to f to be connected with that email address. But you don't want them to have to fill their email address in again on the edge page. That would be weird, right?
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_00:So what you can do is basically have a form that includes their email address, but the email address is automatically filled in because there's um there's information passed through in the URL that then the form extracts and fills that fills that field in. And then you hide the field so they don't even see that. So you're getting in when someone clicks submit, that information then is added to that person's record. Um and you can do it with type form or form stack or you know, pretty much any of the form software will let you do these things. And someone, you know, any any developer would be able to do it quite easily. Like I set it up for myself, but I think most people wouldn't kind of want to fiddle around with this kind of thing. Um But it's not it's not complicated, you know, um to do. It's not like a uh uh you know, it's not like someone has to custom code this thing. All the software already has it, you just have to kind of know how to put that together. And so if and like only if this is a thing in your email marketing you then later on use to be like, right, because you're in this segment, you're getting this offer, because you're in segment, you're this segment, you're getting that offer. If you if you are doing that, then this would get you that information on a lot more people. I love that.
SPEAKER_02:If I explain that properly, totally. I'll have to start looking into that because we do use typeform and stuff like that, and that's that's a really great point. Yeah, it's like how do you capture that right away? Right, because like people tail off, right? They don't want to follow up with things, they're not they might not follow up with an email, they might not click on things. It's like, how do you capture that right off the bat? Um, I like that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah, because if you if you get 30% of people to open the email where you ask the question, then it's like, okay, that's pretty good. 30% open, right? And then how many of them are you gonna get to click?
SPEAKER_02:Exactly.
SPEAKER_00:Like 3% or something like that of your total opens or something along these lines, and you're like, oh cool, I did really well, I got three percent. Whereas if you have this and you get 70%, then it's like, okay, that's actually meaningful, and that gives you that gives you the date from more people. But like I said, it's this is only relevant if you then use that information later on. Otherwise, forget this. It's just a distraction of something interesting and clever.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I think it's important to know the audience too, right? Like, because that also that also helps with like content production. You know, if we're able to capture all that and it's like, you know, if we've just been dealing with like professionals, like I remember one of our colleagues always said, like, she has a podcast and she was like, Yeah, I feel like I'm just like high school when it comes to this, and you guys are like grad school. And it's like, you know, if there's people that actually want to learn intro level stuff and we're not actually catering to that, like, you know, could that be important for that funnel to get people through there versus just always putting out these like higher level conversations or classes where people are like, why would I sign up for that? I feel like I'm out of my league, right? So I think that even helps to like just figure out like who is our audience and how do we start to like cater content around some of that stuff.
SPEAKER_00:I remember I was doing a mobility course one time and it was the beginner level course, and I was like, Oh no, you guys don't understand just how much of a beginner I am. You need I need you to take another two steps back, you know, and be like, okay, no, no, no, no. Let's say you're really inflexible. Now what are we gonna do? I'm like, the stuff that you want me to do to get started is stuff that I dream of doing. And I've improved at it now, but it's like I found that was not the place for me. I went and I found like a beginner's yoga class instead. And I was like, okay, cool. Um, cool. So that's that's kind of one thing. It's like trying to understand who your audience is better.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's always shifting too, right? Like as you're capturing new ears, people are searching for stuff, and yeah, stuff's always shifting. So I think it's important.
SPEAKER_00:What's anything else for you that's a that's a challenge with this? With like, you know, you said you want to grow, you you kind of want to work on those funnels. What's do you know what the next step is in terms of figuring that out and like how to make it more simple? Or is that like is the problem you don't even know what to kind of work on quite? I think it's a mix of both, right?
SPEAKER_02:Uh I think that we have time to figure it out now. It's like, okay, we can start putting energy towards it. And, you know, vital has been our kind of like bread and butter. And so, you know, I'm also thinking about like how the landscape has changed a bit, and like, is there a pivot that we need to do with the program as well? And, you know, what does that look like? And then how does that then feed into everything that we're doing? So I'm at this like kind of like brainstrewing, uh, like just letting everything like alchemize a bit, hearing a lot of student sheed back over the years, thinking about like, is there a little bit of a change that's happening? And then how do we want to figure that out and then create all the funnels and leads towards that once we um are able to do that?
SPEAKER_00:Nice. That's cool, man. Well, I love what you're doing. I think this is absolutely fantastic. Um if people want to check you out, I know they can go to psychedelicstoday.com. Um, is there anything else you want to leave people with though?
SPEAKER_02:If you're interested in you know building courses, just do it. We have the technology now. It's like so easy. And you know, I think there's like the roadblock of like, well, what if I like put this all together and nobody buys it? I always think like, you know, being able to just share your wisdom with people and show up, I think is just really important. Um, you never know who you're gonna touch um and who's gonna be listening. Um, and even though, you know, as I was just saying, like I'm fighting against sometimes censorship and all this other stuff um because I work in a pretty weird field. Um, you know, that's put your stuff out there. I think it's important. We we don't know who we're we're gonna like touch and how we're gonna impact them. Um, so again, yeah, just just start doing it. Showing up. Showing up is the hardest part of it. You know, I think a lot of us deal with our own inner self-critic. What if I'm not good enough? What if nobody likes us? And, you know, being able to work on like how to get out of your own way just to put it out there for the world. Um, and so that's what keeps me motivated. Like there's those times where I think about my teachers and mentors, and I just always think, I'm like, what if so-and-so didn't show up to offer their work to the world? What if they didn't write this book? What if they didn't do this? Like, who would I be without their impact? Um, and that's what keeps me showing up to keep creating and keep doing things, even though sometimes the inner critic gets loud and wants to like challenge that. Um, to just yeah, keep showing up. But yeah, if you're interested in any of the work, like psychedelics today is a great place to find us. Um, if you're interested in the psychedelics, if you're interested more in some of my personal stuff, you can find me um on Instagram, Kyle Buller underscore, or my other site, settingsunwellness.com. Beautiful.
SPEAKER_00:Carl, thanks again so much for coming on. Really, really appreciate your time and for you sharing your your story with us. Thank you, John. I appreciate it.