Podcast · Live coaching

How to market an online course as a solopreneur

Mark Latimer set out to reach 3,000 solopreneurs with his ChatGPT courses in a year, without a big team or a big ad budget. On this live coaching episode we worked out how: sell through partners, give copies away on purpose, ask for reviews and referrals, and answer questions on video.

Mike Moll
Mike MollSales + Offer Coach · with Mark Latimer
Updated 7 min read33:21 video
MarketingOnline coursesPartnershipsReferralsEmail listContentAI
YouTube Watch · 33:21
Short answer

How do you market an online course when you're a team of one?

Sell through people who already have your audience. Find businesses that sell something next to your course and split the revenue with them, give free copies to people who run big communities, and ask every happy student for a review and a referral. Work out what one subscriber is worth to you first, so you know how much you can give away to get the next one.

Key takeaways
  • Make the course good first. Mark interviews beta users when they finish and uses what they say to improve it.
  • Sell through partners whose audience would love your course and who don't sell the same thing, for a revenue share.
  • A recorded course costs nothing to copy, so give it away on purpose to people who run communities.
  • Happy students rarely tell anyone. Ask for a review in an automated email when they finish.
  • Know what one subscriber is worth to you, then reward referrals with something that costs you less.
  • Don't overwhelm buyers with a thousand prompts or 85 hours of video. Sell an outcome a student had from the course.

Why does the course have to be good before you market it?

Mark runs Art of ChatGPT, where he teaches solopreneurs to use ChatGPT in their business. His free course, iPhone Mastery for ChatGPT, starts on your phone, so using it becomes a daily habit. When we recorded this, his goal was to serve 3,000 solopreneurs in a year.

When I asked how he planned to get there, he started with the product. The course has to be good enough that people finish it and tell someone. He's interviewing beta users when they finish, and he uses what they say to improve the course and to write content that turns visitors into active users.

I agree with that order. Every idea below works better when the people who take the course come out the other side with a win.

How do you sell a course through someone else's audience?

Find people who sell something next to your course and let them sell it for you. I'm doing this with my course on how to get booked on podcasts. One company I talk to helps people become authors. They help write, publish and market the book, and one of their services is booking authors on podcasts. Some of their clients will never pay for that service, so I asked them to sell my course to those clients at whatever price they like and keep a percentage. A few PR firms are doing the same.

The test is simple: their audience would love what you do, and you aren't competing for the same dollars.

For Mark, that means marketing agencies and training companies with a lot of small-business clients. They can sell his ChatGPT courses as part of their own programs on something like a 50/50 revenue share. Once it's set up, it's a channel he doesn't have to work.

Why give a digital course away for free?

Once a course is recorded, another copy costs you nothing. That changes what you can afford to give away.

My podcast course sells for $375, and it paid for itself in the first four sales. So when someone I want on board asks what it costs, I send them a copy. They get a $375 course, and it costs me nothing to send.

Mark can do the same with bigger groups. Donate ten copies as prizes at a conference or an association event. Give five copies to someone who runs a large community, for their best members, and ask for feedback. If they like it, set up an affiliate deal. You earn trust with that community before you ask it for anything.

A question that I often ask myself is: what's the grateful thing to do?

Mark Latimer, on why gifting the course fits his brand · 14:50

Why won't a good course sell itself?

Mark said a course that's done well should market itself, and a good course does a lot of the work. The catch is that happy customers stay quiet. When someone loves a course, they keep it to themselves and mention it only if a friend asks. When someone hates a course, they post about it.

So build the ask into the course. Set up an automated email that goes out when someone reaches the end. Ask for a review or a testimonial, and tell them why it matters: it helps you reach more people like them. Asking in plain, grateful words has gotten me good responses.

The course has to respect people's time too. I once paid for a personal branding course from a big name that was a string of YouTube videos with no direction. Mark has spent a lot of time editing his so people want to keep going, and that's the kind of course people finish and recommend.

How do referral rewards work for a course?

Give people a reason to share, and make sharing one click. Here's what I do with my newsletter. Every subscriber gets a link to share. If 20 people sign up through it, they get a free half hour with me to solve a big problem in their business. I've charged up to $1,000 for one hour.

Mark can do the same with what he already has. Get 20 people into the course and you get the other courses free, or a spot in a program. If the first course helped someone, they'll share it when sharing is easy.

I can give that away because I know what a subscriber is worth to me. When we recorded this, every 25 people on my list brought in about $275 on average, through courses or one-off consulting. Once you know that figure, you can compare a referral reward with what ads would cost you. Referrals come with proof built in, too. A friend posting "I took this and it was great" converts better than any post you write about yourself.

What should a course ad say?

Mark asked how I'd advertise his course on Instagram or Facebook. I'd lead with one outcome a student got. Most AI course ads offer a thousand prompts for $27, or a course with 85 hours of material. As a solopreneur, I don't want more to get through. I want the answer.

I want one hour. Teach me the thing in one hour.

Mike Moll, on why volume-heavy course ads miss busy buyers · 24:22

Take three stories from your exit interviews: the hours a student saved each week, or the agency they stopped paying because they could do the job themselves. People see themselves in other people's outcomes and think, "I want that." The ad is the teaser that gets that reaction. The landing page gives the details of what they get.

How do you get seen without paying for ads?

Answer people's questions on video where they're already asking them. Go through Reddit threads and Facebook groups and find people who are stuck. Record a short Loom of you solving their problem in ChatGPT, step by step. Loom lets you add a call to action to the video, so it can point to your course. If you spend seven minutes solving someone's problem, it's fair to mention your course at the end.

I do a version of this every week. I used to write long answers to people's questions. Now I answer 8 to 10 a week on Loom. Each one is YouTube content, it gives me clips for other channels, and I run the transcript through a GPT I built for my brand voice to draft a blog post.

Mark added a recording tip from his side: record the full screen every time. You can crop later, but you can't go back and get the part you didn't record.

How long before posting consistently pays off?

For me it took about 60 days. I posted on LinkedIn three to four times a week and shared Instagram stories fairly regularly. Then I landed two contracts, possibly a third, worth about $45K, in 10 days. One of those leads told me they'd been keeping an eye on my content and had seen one of my ads.

Repetition is what makes people remember what you do. People start to think "Mike's the guy who does that thing." For Mark, the goal is that people think "Mark's the guy who makes AI easy."

At our stage, with no full team and nobody else as the face of the brand, that means making a lot of content for a while. Mark is planning for it with production blocks in his calendar, an assistant who finds questions on Reddit for him to answer, and editing he'll hand off once his course on editing with ChatGPT is recorded.

What can you do this week?

  1. Write down three businesses that sell something next to your course, and ask each one to sell it for a revenue share.
  2. Pick five people who run communities your buyers are in, and send each of them a few free copies for their best members.
  3. Add an email that goes out when someone finishes the course and asks for a review in plain, grateful words.
  4. Work out what one subscriber is worth to you, then set a referral reward that costs you less than that.
  5. Answer one question a day on video in a group where your buyers spend time, and point to the course at the end.

If Facebook is where your buyers are, this episode with Megan Van Noy covers how to sell in groups without spamming them.

Episode chapters and transcript
Chapters 16
  1. Meet Mark Latimer and Art of ChatGPT
  2. Why the first course lives on your iPhone
  3. The goal: 3,000 solopreneurs this year
  4. Getting off the blank page
  5. ChatGPT as a daily debrief
  6. The big question: how do you reach 3,000 people?
  7. Sell through people whose audience already fits
  8. A digital course costs nothing to give away
  9. Gratitude, teleprompters and recording courses
  10. Why a good course still needs a push
  11. Referral rewards and what a subscriber is worth
  12. What a course ad should say
  13. Answer questions on Loom in Reddit and Facebook groups
  14. Turn every video answer into content
  15. What 60 days of steady posting did
  16. Bonus: dictate prompts on a Mac
Full transcript 33:21

From the YouTube captions, lightly cleaned for punctuation and filler words. Timestamps open that moment in the video.

Meet Mark Latimer and Art of ChatGPT

Mike: All right, on this episode we are joined by an AI advocate, lover, friend of mine, travel buddy, Mark Latimer. He is the owner of artofchatgpt.com, and yeah, really excited to have you on today.

Mark: Thanks. I'm happy to be here and looking forward to learning a lot and brainstorming ideas.

Mike: Awesome. Yeah, so for the people watching, give me your, you know, your two-minute rundown of what it is that you do.

Mark: So I am the head instructor at artofchatgpt.com, where we teach people about AI and how to use it for their business. We focus primarily on ChatGPT. We've built some great courses, and we've got a free one that just launched called iPhone Mastery for ChatGPT, and we encourage you to check it out.

Mike: Yeah, absolutely. And what, you know, I think the idea of using AI, the idea of using ChatGPT, there's a lot of buzz, there's a lot of hype. I can say firsthand, like, I've taken some of Mark's training at some of the live-in stuff in Mexico, and just, you know, "Hey, man, how do I do this damn thing?" and us, you know, jumping on and troubleshooting problems in my own business. He, you know, he is the person who has led all of my ChatGPT and AI knowledge so far. So someone is like, oh, you know what, I'd love to start deploying this.

Why the first course lives on your iPhone

Mike: I know that I could use it. What will they find in that first course?

Mark: Well, the first course is primarily focused on accessibility and getting you in the habit of using it. So we focus the first course entirely on just using ChatGPT on your iPhone. And it sounds simple, you can download an app, you can install it, but how often do we have apps that we don't go back to? This course ensures that we approach it from a place of gratitude. My business is Grateful AI, and anytime you're using technology from that place of gratitude, you'll likely use it more, be happier about your experience with it, and get better results.

So it's a foundational course. If you have an iPhone, if you want to get better at ChatGPT, I'd suggest starting there. And we just try to have a lot of fun too. Like, there's some courses out there that can be a little bit stale, not interesting. We've put a ton of time into editing to make sure that you're going to get a captivating experience and want to continue to learn.

Mike: Yeah, absolutely. And I took the—let's call it the unofficial version of the course. The, like, how do I get people who are, like, afraid of this platform, who have no idea really what they're doing, who've used it a few times and, like, I don't know, I didn't get what I need. You know, you were the one that made me delete, you know, the browser from my phone, right? I use ChatGPT. It's the first widget on the bottom left of my phone. I haven't used a Google search in a decent amount of time now as my primary thing.

And a lot of what you teach, and a lot of the way that you make the platform and make these tools accessible, is incredibly helpful. So I haven't seen the official course, but I know I was part of the unofficial course launch in terms of training, and I mean, it's really changed the way that I do a lot of things in my business now.

Mark: Well, I can appreciate that. AI is really the art of intelligence. It's how we think about the tool, how we approach it. So I'm very appreciative that you had a chance to take a peek under the hood and excited to roll out more great training.

The goal: 3,000 solopreneurs this year

Mike: Perfect. So let's talk about the goals of this thing. So you've got, you know, the free course, you've got some fundamental courses, you're launching more. You know, tell me about where you're going with the brand as a whole.

Mark: So ultimately, I want to serve a lot of people this year. Our goal is to serve 3,000 solopreneurs in some capacity. We've got a bunch of free training, and I think if you haven't used ChatGPT before, right now, pause this, just download it—make sure it's the official app—and just start to use it. It's like anything you learn. Learn to play the guitar one step, one song at a time. And for our brand, where we're taking it is really to be the Art of ChatGPT, that creative aspect of approaching it from a place of gratitude. And I think if we do that, then we'll be in a great position to help a lot of people in a holistic way.

Mike: Yeah, absolutely. And I think functionally, when I think about some of the processes that we were doing, or that my assistant were doing, or my media—like, I have this incorporated across everybody now. Like, we've enhanced our team's ability to work and think and create by 10x. I mean, what would we do before? Watch some YouTube videos, try and get some insights, we'd read a bunch of blog posts or pay for some templates around some subject matter, and now we can be like, "Hey, you know, hey, robot, we're trying to accomplish this thing, and here's the parameters."

Getting off the blank page

Mike: And, like, just, honestly, just give us a place to start, give us a sounding board, take us away from the blank page. I had this conversation with someone the other day, and it's like, when I go to write content, if I'm staring at a blank page, it's game over for me. So the only way it works for me is I have an experience on the phone, I record a voice note, and I'm like, "Okay, this is what happened, this was the takeaway, this is the valuable aspect," and that's how I write my newsletters.

But when I'm faced with just a blank page, it's such an overwhelming feeling for me, and I, truthfully, I'm a procrastinator. I shut down. And so some of the stuff that I've learned through you, in terms of, like, building out even just content ideas or getting a baseline started or having it ask me questions that sparks better content, there's so, so many ways to get off that blank page and to, like, get—you know—get your feet, get in motion, which is so critical when it comes to creating, especially as a solopreneur, where we've got, you know, other fires to put out. There's things burning all over the place, right?

And so the more we can not procrastinate on things like content, like streamlining operations, there's so many of these pieces that we can leave them, but, like, ultimately they hurt our growth. And so, yeah, I really appreciate some of the work that you've done there because, you know, you get overwhelmed and you walk away from the computer. You always have a million emails to look at, you know, people to follow up with, things to do. But when you put away these big things and you don't take action on them, over time it piles up.

Mark: That's for sure. Well, we're usually only one, two, three, a couple people in our organizations, right?

ChatGPT as a daily debrief

Mark: And there's a lot of pressure, and a lot of people don't talk enough about the mental health aspect of how these tools can support solopreneurs. If you let ChatGPT know what you want your three big wins to be that day, and then you debrief with ChatGPT at the end of the day, you're going to get positive feedback and that feeling that you're making progress, because not every day feels like a win. But when you have the support of a really intelligent business partner in your pocket, there's no reason why you're not trying to explore the ways that it can give you the right quote when you need it.

You know, we all have our favorite inspirations. Today I had a couple Zig Ziglar quotes that were just exactly what I needed, but I didn't need to go to YouTube or Facebook—I guess you could go there for it. I meant—what is the other source? Anyways, it's just information at your fingertips. And the more you use the tool there, I feel like there does need to be a little bit of a guide.

I sit down with my mom, and she's here in Florida with us, and it's great, I love just teaching her, showing her a couple things. For her, she'd never have access to this information, so I feel like anytime I can teach someone even the smallest thing that can improve their life in a better way, I owe it to myself to do that.

The big question: how do you reach 3,000 people?

Mike: Yeah, for sure. All right, perfect. Well, that brings up our big topic of discussion today, which was kind of the marketing of this thing, right? So, 3,000 people, you know, obviously some of them are going to come in on the free tier, some of them are going to move to your more advanced courses, or your more specific courses, you know, for editing, for all the different types of things that you're building out. In addition to that, I know that you do some private training stuff where it's, you know, "Hey, let me kind of dive in with you and be your direct guide," which, you know, some people will appreciate over pre-recorded content. Depends on who you are.

But I like that you're building it out for, like, kind of everybody, right? You're kind of building something that, each person with each learning style, with each—depends on how much time or budget they have, you know, you've kind of got a little bit of something for everybody. But let's talk about how we get to 3,000. You know, I've got a couple ideas, like, bubbling around in my mind, but do you want to—do you want to start with, like, how you're thinking about it, and then I can maybe enhance it? Or do you just want some random ideas from me? What feels better for you?

Mark: So to get to 3,000, for starters, it's got to be a great course. Like, the meat needs to be there, right? It's really got to add a ton of value, it needs to be well done. So we're putting a lot of time in up front to continue to listen to our feedback that we're getting from the initial beta users. So out of each one of those, we're doing kind of exit interviews, I guess, and generating some content from those that should serve as at least ways to—when we do get people to visit, that they're turning into active users. So really looking at that, optimizing that point.

I do have a podcast where I interview people. I haven't started to leverage that to point people to this free course yet, but I'll be doing a ton, a ton more interviews, and also maybe interviewing people that might have large networks with very specific audiences that would be solopreneurs, people who, you know, fit that kind of profile of, they have an iPhone, they'd like to master ChatGPT, and they're predominantly US-based is what we're focused on.

Sell through people whose audience already fits

Mike: Yeah, and I suspect one of the conversations I'm having with one of my courses is, there's a guy who helps authors, that helps people become authors, and they do, like, all they do, everything they do, they help with the writing, they help with the publishing, they help with the marketing, and one of their services is, "Hey, we'll get you on a bunch of podcasts."

So I reached out to them and said, "Hey, I have a course that's called How to Get Booked on Podcasts. You know, for your people that aren't going to pay you for the service, why don't you sell this course? It's already done, it's already quality, you know, you take a percentage." And then I, you know, I'm not competing with him, because if they're not going to pay for them to do that as an agency—and same thing with a few PR firms that are on board with it too.

It's like, who is selling something complimentary whose audience would love what I do, where we're not, you know, we're not fighting for dollars, we're not, you know, we're not crossing over with any of the tasks or aspects of our programs? It's like, you know, these guys help people publish books, so this podcast course is part of the marketing engine, and they don't have a course.

So it's almost like a, why not? I'm not going to steal them away to start running other campaigns or help them write their next book, right? Mine's just how to get on a podcast, but he can sell that for whatever price he wants, and as long as I get, you know, whatever dollar amount I need per course, it's a great partnership.

And I think you could probably open up to that as well. People that have, you know, whether it's, you know, they do training for this, some people that do, like, done-with-you or done-for-you kind of marketing agencies, I imagine those people have tons of clients who are kind of supported by them on a regular basis.

I think getting in through them and saying, "Hey, I've got this suite of products that can help their agencies run more efficiently as a small team. Why don't you, you know, come on the pod, we'll chat, I'll show you it," and then it's almost like, "Why don't you sell it as part of your program, 50/50 rev share?" And then that's a channel for you. You don't even have to lift a finger on—

Mark: Yeah, that's a great idea. People already have tribes, right? So tapping into other people's communities that they've already built that trust and can save a lot of time.

A digital course costs nothing to give away

Mark: So yeah, that would definitely be an interesting approach.

Mike: And the thing I love about the digital product side is, like, you have an asset that's zero dollars to share. Like, that's the best part, right? So anybody that I'm trying to get on board with the podcast course, they're like, "Oh, how much is it?" "Oh, it's $375." "Cool." "Yeah, I'll just shoot you over a copy." And they're like, "Oh, you're—" like, it's almost like, "Oh, you're giving me something for 400 bucks. That's so awesome that you're just giving it to me." But the truth is it's already recorded, I've already made my money back. I made my money back in the first four sales, so now I can give this away strategically.

One other thing that you could think about as well is, like, conferences, things to do with associations, or giveaways and stuff like that. "Hey, I will donate, you know, 10 of my courses that are X amount of money to your, you know, giving for a prize for, you know, at a conference as part of a giveaway or part of a whatever." So the nice thing about having a digital asset like that is it's zero cost for you to donate them, gift them, give them away to the right people strategically.

So it's like, you know, "Hey, person that owns a big tribe, let me give you, you know, let me give you five of these to give to your top people, get the feedback, see what they say, whatever." And then if you like it—if they like it, then let's build an affiliate thing, so you can build that trust, you can build that credibility with almost nothing lost from your side, really. No time, no energy, which is awesome.

Mark: I love the idea of a gift. A question that I often ask myself is, what's the grateful thing to do? And gifting is totally in line with our values. Also, you know, early in the course I do a whole video on approaching this learning with gratitude. So I feel like there's a place of people that may be a bit more into mindfulness, spirituality, that don't mind taking a moment to pause and reflect at the beginning of training and set the right intention. That's not for everyone, but for those that enjoy that, this is a great place to get this kind of training.

Mike: Yeah, yeah. So a bit of a differentiator.

Mark: But that's just who I am, right?

Gratitude, teleprompters and recording courses

Mark: Everyone's going to be a little different in how they teach and approach things. So, yeah, while I'm using my teleprompter, I'll take a moment, and I've got the Elgato Prompter. Mike's probably going to have one pretty soon.

Mike: So jealous. I want it.

Mark: I'll do one of these, and I'll just take a breath between delivering lines, so each time there's a new paragraph, I've kind of grounded myself again, forgot about the last one I made a mistake on, and give it another shot.

Mike: Yeah, yeah. Recording courses, man, it's such a challenging thing. Like, I remember when I was doing the How to Get Booked on Podcasts one, there were some recordings that were like an hour and 28 minutes, and I was sending them to my editor being like, "So this is going to break down into about six and a half minutes' worth of content, so I'm sorry in advance." Like, it's exhausting. It's so, so hard.

So I'm actually excited about the prompter, because I think that's going to cut down—we don't have an affiliate link, because they don't have one, but it's the Elgato Prompter. Mark's on it, which is why he looks like he's staring deeply into your eyes, and I'm trying to do the same, but it's—yeah, it's a cool device that I'm excited about. I just got to figure out how to get it to Mexico here.

Mark: Yeah, it is. It is really good. There's few products that come out that I'm just all for, and this one—eye contact, I think, is so important. And if you can, you know, I'm standing here, I've got this tripod at eye level, and I just feel free. I can move around when you do a lot of Zoom calls especially.

I do have my laptop right here in front of me, and I'll often take it outside of this room to just do some work from a coffee shop or—and I'll do that work sitting. But then daily I'll do walks with ChatGPT, that I'll get business advice, strategy, the brainstorming session by the pond watching the ducks. You know, these things revitalize you, and you get back to work.

Why a good course still needs a push

Mark: And if you have to sit down, it's just another way to work. And I feel like this course, if done effectively, should market itself. And I know that's kind of an overstatement, but when it's good, it will do a lot of the work for you.

Mike: Yeah, on that, because I do agree. And I think a lot of courses are done very haphazard. They're done very, like, "I'm just going to put a bunch of recordings from my previous conversations." I remember I took one, a personal branding course from Gary Vee, and there was no direction to the course. It was literally just YouTube videos, like, in some sequence, and, like, they didn't really connect together, and it was very, I don't know, just half-ass. And so I think something where it is intentioned, and it is direct, and it is fast, and it is purposeful, and it is helpful, I mean, the power of that is incredible.

But on the back end of that, one thing to think about is, like, one person loves it. Okay, so, and this is the truth about how people show their appreciation for things, right? I buy a thing and I'm like, "Oh, that was really great, I loved it," and I put it in my back pocket, and if I'm talking to someone who's like, "Oh, how'd you learn this?"

"Oh, I took this great course." But most people don't go out of their way to do it. It's not natural. Whereas, you know, you go to a restaurant and you have a terrible experience, you buy some program, the next time you see the guy's Facebook post you're like, "Man, this was such a dumpster fire. What a waste of time. Nine hours to teach me what could have been done in 20 minutes."

And so one thing is, like, yes, it can sell itself, but how do we give that a little bit of push? How do we give that a little bit of, like, thrust in the right direction, especially as we're scaling? So a couple things that come to mind, some ideas that I'm playing with for myself, is making sure there's an automation post-purchase for, like, "Hey, they got to the end, hey, you know, are—" and it's like, in that, I like the idea of the grateful kind of terminology.

"Hey, listen, we want to get this out and help as many people as possible. We'd be incredibly grateful if you could write a review or do a testimonial or whatever the case may be." So, like, getting that social proof on the back end, you know, kind of a standard idea, but, like, approaching it from a, like, "this is going to help us help more people, we'd really appreciate this," I found has gotten me, like, really good responses on it.

Referral rewards and what a subscriber is worth

Mike: And then, to compound that, and I think even more effectively, what I've been playing with is, like, not affiliate necessarily, but I don't even know what it would techn—I guess it's called affiliate, but without being, like, a monetary reward. But what I'm thinking about, like, for my email list, I put in this little thing that's like, "Hey, here's your link to share this. If you get 20 people to sign up to this email list, I will give you a free half an hour of my time. We'll go deep, we will, like, solve a big problem in your business."

And normally I would charge, like, for an hour, you know, I've charged up to $1,000 basically for one hour. Now, I do a lot of work that goes in ahead of that to make sure, like, that hour is, like, a killer hour.

But, like, you know, what is that mechanism for you where it's like, "Hey, get, you know, get 20 people to sign up for this course and you will have, you know, all the courses for free," or "you get this program for free," or, you know, like, give them the benefit of more products or more things within your ecosystem.

Because if they really liked it, and that one thing helped, it's likelier if you make it easy, if you make it a one-click event. You know, "Hey, I'll put it on my email list. If I get 20 people to sign up, I get a bunch of stuff for free from Mark," which is going to help me, and then it just, that helps get that, helps get the thing out there. So I really like that idea.

It's like, I'm using it for my newsletter right now, which is like just one click, just share this link on your social, share this link in your emails, whatever. If you can get some people on my list—like, because I know that, you know, for every 25 people on my list, I'm going to make, let's call it, an average of $275 bucks, whether that's a course, whether that's a one-off consulting, doesn't matter.

But, like, so for every 25 people I'm going to make money, and once you have that measurement, once you know how much a subscriber or a free course person is worth in the big picture—sometimes it takes, you know, time to figure that out—but once you know, then it becomes, "Oh, okay, well, I could run, you know, I could run Facebook ads, or I could just give away that monetary thing, which is free for me anyway because the course is already there."

And so, like, leveraging that, and knowing I'm going to give away, you know, $300 worth of stuff for every 20 people that you bring to me, the power of that is really great, because it's social-proofed marketing, which is great. You know, it's not you posting saying, "This guy said it was good." It's that guy posting saying, "I took this thing, it was great, you should check it out." I mean, that is going to convert at a really good rate for you.

What a course ad should say

Mark: Yeah, so much to think about there. There's no shortage of different things that you can apply. I'm curious, if you were to advertise this on, say, Instagram or Facebook, how would you approach it?

Mike: That's a funny question and a great question. So my Sunday newsletter—this is unrelated, I know, we know each other—my Sunday newsletter is a screenshot of a bunch of promotions. If you're listening, I apologize. A bunch of promotions for chat prompts. And I've been taking screenshots of all the dumbest ChatGPT prompt promotions on the internet, and I'm going to write a post on Sunday, like, how to not sell AI training.

And again, it wasn't inspired by you, it was completely separate. It's because I see them all the time, and every ad is like, "Hey, here's a thousand prompts, and it's going to cost you $27." And it's like, I don't want a thousand prompts. You're not speaking to me. As a solopreneur, I don't need a thousand more things to do. I don't need 70 hours of course material.

I was trying to learn something about ads the other day. I just wanted to do a bit of a refresher. I haven't run a campaign, I've strategized on them, but I'm not in it anymore as much, right? And this course was like, "Yeah, there's like 85 hours of material." I'm like, who wants to—I want one hour. Like, teach me the thing in one hour, let's get it done. And so here's what: give me 10 prompts that are the must-haves.

And so when I think about whether it's organic posting or whether it's a paid ad, I think about, like, as a solopreneur, what would inspire me to buy it? It's not a volume game. It's not a quantity thing, because that makes me feel overwhelmed. That makes me feel like I'm never going to get through it. I'm going to open this book and I'm going to be like, I'm not going to read 3,000 pages on this thing. I just want the answer.

And so it's like, you know what I would do is, you've got these exit interviews where people are like, "Hey, this helped me learn this, this helped me gather this." I would tell a story. You know, "This course helped Mike cut down 15 hours of manual labor and content creation every single week."

"This course taught this person how to accomplish this thing without needing to go and hire, you know, multiple different vendors or multiple different agencies to do the thing." It's like, oh, that's what it does. Like, what is my outcome, and how, you know, did it do it quickly, did it do it efficiently, and what did it do for that person? I would just give three examples, because often we're going to see that in ourselves when we're reading it.

We're like, "Oh yeah, I hate, like, I hate having to go to an agency for this thing, it drives me crazy. Like, if I could do it and it took me very little time, that would be such a godsend. I could train someone on my team to do it, and we would move on." And so they see themselves in what the outcome was for other people, and they're like, "I want that outcome for me, let me go check it out."

Because the ad should be that teaser, that, like, let's—like, what's something where I connect with it and I'm like, "Oh, damn, if I had that, that'd be awesome." And then the landing page should expand on it and give us more—like, "Okay, what's, like, what are the actual details, what am I getting out of this thing?" But I think if you're going to do content and posts, which leads me to what I was thinking about when we were talking pre-call, which is, like, what do you do online to build your visibility, build the brand, build the whatever?

Answer questions on Loom in Reddit and Facebook groups

Mike: I think what you do is you go through Reddit and Facebook groups and find people who are like, "I'm stuck on this thing," you know, "I'm thinking about hiring somebody," or "How do I deal with this?" or "What do I do?" I would just record Loom videos of you building, like, something in ChatGPT, like, "Hey, if I were you, I would do this," and just give a step-by-step instruction on it.

And then when you save that video in Loom, you can create a call to action, so when you go to edit, you can make a call to action that's like, you know, "Get all the solopreneur AI secrets in this course." And you could drive traffic from that, because if you record a seven-minute video solving someone's problem, I think that's a fair thing to add a CTA on there saying, "Hey, come take this course." I do that all the time, so that would be a good way.

And then if it gets viral and it gets views, you can kind of see how many people have seen it. It allows you to drive traffic, and then it's just a good function. Like, you're great at making content, and you've made the content that goes in the course, but I think, you know, almost kind of remaking pieces of it to answer people's questions, or "Hey, I've got a module, I'm just going to share the module," and drive the people through that. But I think that would be a really cool way for visibility and potential virality of some of the posts.

Mark: I think ultimately I'm going to have to make a lot more content before I'm going to have to make a lot less content. So it's more important, I think, the habits. You know, do I have my blocks of time where it's just production? Where, you know, the daily rhythm of whether it's, to your point, going through, having my assistant sort some things on Reddit to kind of set me up for those recordings, but making those bursts and recordings optimal. And right now I'm doing a lot of the editing, because I'm also recording a course on how to use ChatGPT for editing, so there's some hands-on learning, and I can also narrate this stuff.

If I wasn't doing the course, I wouldn't be doing the editing, so it's serving two purposes. But at some point I'll be handing that off, but now the training material will be all done for the editor. So it's been an interesting process. I've tried to get in the habit of doing a lot more screen recording, and now with tools like Descript, the AI video editor, there's a really great workflow, probably no different than Loom, that you have a ton of space, so you're not missing out on anything.

And I was for a while only recording a section of the screen, but there's no point not to do full screen all the time, and then you can just clip whatever you want out of it. But you can't go back and get that part you didn't record, so just a lesson learned.

Mike: Yeah, yeah. That's honestly, that's been such a game changer for me.

Turn every video answer into content

Mike: Because I was writing long-form answers to questions for people, and then I'm like, this is stupid, I'm just going to respond to everything via Loom. So I've made it a habit of, like, if I respond to 8 to 10 things on Loom every single week, first of all, that's YouTube content. Second of all, there might be pieces or clips that get used elsewhere. Third of all, I take the transcripts into a GPT that I built for, like, my brand voice, and I'm like, "Write me a blog post based on the content of this." And so, like, I'm going so heavy on video first, and you're very good at it. Like, we're both good at producing videos.

So yeah, that could be interesting, because then you're answering people in long, thoughtful ways where people are like, "Oh, damn, that's really helpful," you know, driving actual traffic to the site, and then repurposing it for everything else.

Mark: I know the repurposing thing is tough. Like, I wish I just had someone full-time who's taking everything that I did and cutting it up.

What 60 days of steady posting did

Mike: It is a pain. But I will say, you know, every time I do a run of content—I've been very consistent for the last 60 days, three to four times on LinkedIn a week, posting Instagram stories fairly regularly—like, I just landed three, well, landed two, possibly a third contract now. So we're talking about, like, $45K generated in 10 days, just because I'm—I know it's because when I'm out there, people see it. People, you know, that was one of the leads. They're like, "Yeah, I've been keeping an eye on your content, I think I saw one of your ads."

Mark: Oh, there you go. Perfect.

Mike: Like, that's what it is. It's that repeat, repeat, repeat. Mike's that guy. Mike's the guy that does that thing. Mark's the guy that makes AI easy for us, right?

Mark: And where's the hat?

Mike: Exactly. And so, you know, I think there's a lot of value in that, and it is that trap of, like, I'm just constantly producing, producing, producing. But I think at the stage that we're at, where we don't have the full team, we don't have someone else that's the face of our brands, it's kind of just like, you know, suck it up for the next little bit, figure it out.

Mark: Well, if you can have fun doing it, right? Like, we're on a journey, you know. You've been traveling for a little while, and waking up in a new place and creating some content feels great, right?

Mike: Yeah, absolutely. Perfect. Well, we ran a little bit over, so was anything else that you wanted to add in as we—

Mark: No, this has been a ton of fun. I appreciate you and your time.

Mike: Yeah, we'll have to get another episode going where we do some live AI training for my community.

Bonus: dictate prompts on a Mac

Mark: Yeah, I'm happy to. To add one thing, it's an accessibility feature. So on your Mac, you can go to dictation, turn on sound, and you can change it to—now I have Control, Control: hit it twice and it turns on dictation. So right into ChatGPT from my laptop, I can do long thoughts and have it turn into prompts. That's a huge, huge time saver right there.

Mike: Cool. Well, go change that if you don't have it set already. I love it, man. Well, thanks so much, appreciate the time, brother, and I wish you all the best with the project.

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