← The Think Media Podcast
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- [00:00]
A
The economy is shifting fast. If you're an entrepreneur or creator serious about scaling with YouTube, this is your moment. October 2nd and 3rd in Las Vegas, we're hosting the Think Media Mastermind. It's exclusive, it's application only, and spots are almost gone. Apply now@thinkmediamastermind.com the way people are making money online is changing fast. AI is flooding the Internet with content. Social media is more competitive than ever. And here's the scary part. Most online courses are failing, leaving creators, entrepreneurs, coaches burned out and audiences disengaged. But the entrepreneurs who understand this shift are tapping into a hidden advantage called the dopamine button. And it's transforming how we create content, courses, and cash flow online. Today on the Think Media podcast, I'm joined by Marisa Murgatroyd. She is an online business builder, a psychology expert who's helped over 18,000 students launch their businesses and generate more than $53 million in online course sales. She's been featured in the Inc.5004 times and has spent years studying how the world's most addictive apps and games keep people hooked and how you can ethically use those same principles to grow your business, get more views on your content, and ultimately grow your influence online. And we're going to be covering a lot in today's episode, what's changing in the world of making money online and why most creators and business owners are stuck right now. And this is an important episode to really future proof your business and your brand going into 20, 26 and beyond. Marisa, welcome to the podcast.
- [01:43]
B
Thank you so much for having me back, Sean.
- [01:45]
A
So we've broken this into five parts and I want to encourage listeners. This is a juicy episode, but in part one, I want to talk about the shifts, what's changing and because the way people are making money online isn't the same of what it was even a couple years ago, maybe even a couple months ago. AI is changing everything. Information is everywhere. And most courses or people that have products and offers aren't actually getting students results. So let's unpack some of the problems first. What do you see as far as some of the changes and shifts?
- [02:15]
B
100%. Great question, Sean. And I think the main thing is that when everybody has the same competitive advantage, which is that AI edge, then it's no longer an edge. It becomes a race to the bottom. So undeniably, AI is a massive performance enhancer. Undeniably, it can expand our brainstorming and writing capacity and allow us to research quickly and produce a lot more Quickly. But the interesting thing is that AI can do so much, but it doesn't actually know what's good. It's, it doesn't have discernment, it doesn't have taste, it doesn't have the nuance in human sophistication. So if we go back and look at the California gold rush in 1849, when everyone was heading out west, you know, with their pants to kind of look in their shovels and their picks to look for gold, the interesting thing is the people who were making money during the California Gold Rush were not the pioneers, the ones looking for the gold. They were the ones selling supplies to all the other people who are looking for gold. The people selling the shovels, the people selling the clothes, the people supplying the AI people. So what I've seen is that people who are selling AI solutions are making really good money, right? And so everyone who's doing the automation at first, they start to see the cost savings, the time savings, being able to replace team members, all the different things. But then what happens is who are they actually selling to? Because if everyone's being replaced by AI, then who has the money to pay for the different solutions? So what I'm seeing is, while I can be a race to the bottom, if you take the money and the time that you're saving through using AI and you pour it into extraordinary customer experiences that deliver results consistently on demand, then you're able to create loyalty. You're able to do more with every single customer or student who comes in the door and actually help them get, get results while having a phenomenal experience. So I believe the future is actually human and not automation. It's not that the automation won't happen, but if you don't match the automation with human experiences that, you know, get people excited, that get people leaning in, that get people taking action, that deliver on the transformation you promise, then you don't have a business. So do you mind if I actually show this progression of economic value? Because what we're in right now is actually a series of changes that started decades ago. It started really at the beginning of all of commerce. And when you understand where this fits in historically, and I know I'm sounding a bit like a geek right now, but when you understand the patterns and the trends behind what's going on now, it actually points the way to the solution and where the future is.
- [05:03]
A
Yeah, I would love for you to bring that visual up and then, you know, describe it for those that are listening on audio as well. They can benefit from these Insights.
- [05:11]
B
Okay, so this is from a book called the Experience Economy by Joseph Pyne and James Gilmore. And they were the ones to start to see that the economy's really progressed. Like when, you know, people started paying for stuff. They were paying for raw commodities that were just extracted from the earth, right? So you could sell people just raw wheat, all the different things. And then eventually what happened is as the economy got more sophisticated, all of those commodities were turned into goods. So rather than selling wheat, you started to sell flour. Right. And so now people were making things out of the commodities, and they could charge more because they were adding additional value to the commodities. So what happens is a commodity market's relatively undifferentiated, so it's a race to the bottom because everyone's selling similar commodities, right? But once you start to make goods, then you have more opportunities for differentiation. But once that market got saturated, then people started moving into the service economy. And the service economy is you add another level of value on top. So now you turn that flour into a cake, right? And people pay more for the cake than they pay for the wheat, and they definitely pay more for the cake than they pay for the flour. So this was going on for a long time. We were in a service age for. For ages. But now you can kind of see people sending you email, automated, you know, cold emails all the time saying, hey, do you want to work with my agency? I'll do this. I'll do it for free. Results guarantee all the different things, because there's more and more people who went into the service industry, but services are also being replaced more by AI. So now what's the next stage of economic value? It's actually experiences because people don't want to just pay for the cake right now, but they can go pay for a place to host an entire birthday party. Remember back in the 80s, like Chuck E. Cheese's? Did you ever have a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese's?
- [07:06]
A
I did. I know listeners probably have mixed experiences about, like, the cleanliness or the quality of Chuck E. Cheese, but I've spent a lot of time there, and there.
- [07:14]
B
Are kind of sheeshier places you can have that birthday party right now than before. But even McDonald's, they had that little playground in the back, and you could do birthday parties there. I was a, you know, growing up in the 80s, so we had all of the Chuck E. Cheeses and the McDonald's and all of that. But eventually it's like, you know, hiring someone to kind of create an experience. So it's not just about the cake. Now you have these whole birthday celebrations that might last entire weekends where you do so much more for your kids to make it memorable. And then the ultimate stage of economic value is ultimately transformation. And now the person delivering transformation is the guide. So rather than just going and getting some wheat and then figuring out how to celebrate a birthday, the person who's providing a transformation maybe looks at, okay, well, how do I create a whole coming age process for, you know, a particular child? How do I create a series of theme celebrations every year of their life? You know, going from the age of 10 to the age of 18? So what happens is at each stage you are adding more and more value and then you can charge higher and higher price points. But the information age is basically like selling a good, you know, selling information. And many people were creating kind of products and courses that were basically goods or maybe services, and they were hoping that people would continue to pay for that. But now that AI has replaced so much of that, you can query AI and ask it how to do things. You have to add a whole nother level of value on top of what it is that you are delivering. And the thing about experiences, experiences are revealed over time, right? It's not just something that's delivered on demand. They require greater access, they require higher touch. And if you want to create experiences that deliver transformation, well, transformation needs to be sustained over time in the individual receiving it. So how we provide value now and what people are continuing to pay for at high price points is changing. They don't just want the information dump. They don't want to know what's in your head. They actually want to see the same results in their lives that you're getting and have a phenomenal experience doing that. So this is what's really changing in the market. You know, that whole idea of set it and forget it, extract as much money as possible from the customer and deliver as much little value as possible. That that's going away. Like people aren't making hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars based on selling templates or whatever else it happens to be. They're making that kind of money by providing a level of access and support and care and leading people through a process, guiding them every step of the way, giving them that kind of human touch point. Because information alone, it doesn't change people's lives. I like to say if it did, we'd be living in Google Topia because we all know what we need to do, but how many of us actually do it, right? And that's the big difference and that's what people are paying for. The guide, the support system, the structure, the step by step to get to the outcome along the way and avoid all of the mistakes.
- [10:19]
A
Can you. You know, one of the things I love about connecting with you is we have these high level conversations. We both, in different ways, been building online businesses for over a decade and we connect with. We're in a lot of privileged to be in a lot of different rooms where we hear about what's happening in the industry. If you bring it down to kind of a street level, what is the panic, the talk? Maybe people talking about their business dried up or it changed or what you're hearing about plenty of people, content creators, not everybody has to make an online course, but obviously information or packaging and making an offer is what people have done to make six, seven, eight, nine figures. And it's still a massive industry, the elearning industry. But. But what is like the kitchen table talk behind closed doors or from, you know, people you're talking to when it comes to how they're feeling the shifts and the changes?
- [11:13]
B
Yeah, a hundred percent. Well, first of all, the course creators, the guides, the program creators kind of created the challenge because we sent out huge amounts of information basically teaching people how to do what we do. And that created more and more competition. So the market flooded with people who didn't necessarily have the level of experience, who were learning how to use the business model, but didn't necessarily know how to fill the business model with real value. Does that make sense? Not all courses, not all programs are created equally. Some of them happen to be good marketers who could sell anything and did sell anything. So people bought hook, line and sinker into these promises of instant transformation, you know, that you could have blindfolded without doing any work automatically. And, you know, people bought into it. And a lot of people did not get results and people made money, but they didn't genuinely serve. And so what happened is, you know, people got a little bit burnt out on the promises and started to, you know, struggle to know who's the real deal, who's like a legit provider and who isn't. And you combine that with all of the larger global trends and you know, changes that started happening in the pandemic, people don't really know who or what to trust. And a lot of the things that they could rely on in the past, the social structures, the community structures, a lot of that's been kind of giving away and there isn't really kind of something to replace it that people have certainty in. So the really interesting thing is, have you heard the concept of the third place?
- [12:49]
A
Yeah. Like Starbucks is a third place?
- [12:51]
B
Yeah, Starbucks is a third place. Church can be a third place. Your sports team could be a third place. That humans need something more than home and work. Right. We need another place to go. So what you know, can really be supportive is people will pay for community now. They'll pay for community around things they're passionate about, whether that's sports, whether that's faith, whether that's business, whatever that core driving interest is. And so that's part of leaning into what's the experience that you can create in a community that you can create where people can make progress and experience transformation together. And I think that, you know what, it's becoming harder to sell people in. But if you can, once they say yes, provide an extraordinary experience, deliver those results, people will stay in a community for a very long time. So I have someone who's going into her 10th year with me, who's been in my year long business growth program for 10 years, who's invested over $200,000 in my company. And many of the people in my year long program have been there for years. So much so that I'm going into delivering an accelerator this weekend. And a bunch of them are getting together in Sedona to go through the accelerator together. You know, and, and that's so beautiful. So even though it's a virtual event, they're coming together in person to go through the virtual event together. So I think what's happening is trust is really difficult. And even if you're a content creator and putting out content on a regular basis because so much AA content is flooding the market, people don't even know if the content is real. Did you write it? Did AI write it? Is it you speaking? Is it an AI speaking? Is it a deep fake? And there's so many questions about like authenticity and legitimacy that it becomes harder to stand out. And if you also couple that with some just technological changes, like if you rely on email marketing, it's becoming harder and harder to get into people's inboxes and actually get messages to your end customers. And so some of these trends doesn't mean that you can't build a business. It means what's becoming important is changing. So simply kind of creating content, distributing it everywhere, is becoming less and less important. But if you can actually create, whether it's live experiences, high touch experiences, access points, ways to bring people together virtually or in person, and then make sure that that experience they're having in that virtual or live room is super powerful, engages people. That's where the dopamine button can come in. And that you actually commit to not just dumping information because people can find that they want shortcuts to results, leading people step by step through a process to an end result. That's what people want right now. And they, they also are feeling overwhelmed. They don't want all the information, they don't want all the stuff. They're like, how. What's the shortest, simplest way to get a result?
- [15:49]
A
Well, we've covered a lot here and, and we're going to get to the solution. We're going to talk about the dopamine button in a second. Some of the opportunity and what's working now and really the new way forward. But I want to go just a summary of some thoughts and see if you have any additional insights. There's a lot of challenges right now. And if somebody wants to grow their channel, grow their social media, if they want to productize their knowledge, their expertise, there's reasons they're hitting a ceiling. Courses as just info dumps. People are not consuming them, students are not finishing them, they're not getting the result. AI is commoditizing info. So you just get stuck in the sea of sameness if you don't have any differentiation. Content without depth doesn't lead to real change. If someone just reads a chat GPT script, well, everybody can do that. Everyone starts standing, sounding the same. People are overwhelmed. And so I wrote down a couple things. This sounds kind of bleak, but it's important we understand the problem. Increased competition, increased skepticism. People are burnt out, people are jaded. There's a trust recession right now. Reach and views are down in different ways. How much are you getting? Reach in someone's inbox, email, open rates, views on content across social media. People are overwhelmed. But if you pivot and adapt and if you're listening to this, this doesn't mean you have to like start running live events in person or lease a local shop and create a third place and experience for somebody. Although depending on your level of business, you might be thinking about ways to do so. But there's solutions to do this in a digital environment. How can you create community? How can you bring people together? How can you rally people around Your brand, your YouTube channel, in the same way that people gather at a coffee shop, gather around a sports franchise, gather at church, how can you bring community that ultimately leads to transformation and even your free content? If People are watching your free content and getting results in advance. If people are watching your free content and having an experience because of the emotions and the storytelling and what happens inside of your content, then you'll be able to stand out going forward. This is the future of making money online and building influence online. And so it's a big time right now to pivot and adapt, especially with AI. Any final thoughts before? I want to talk about the dopamine button, but on my assessment of the challenges we're facing, yeah, 100%.
- [18:22]
B
And I think I would only pivot this idea of, you know, packaging your knowledge and expertise because I think it's less about you and your knowledge and expertise today than it is about how do you solve a problem for people, how do you get them a result they desire? And one of the big shifts that I think is critical to make in this particular market is to making the shift from what you know and what you want to sell and what you want to deliver to what are people hankering for, what do they want? What are the big like bleeding neck problems that are holding them back in their life? So from what can I deliver to how can I be of service, how can I scratch an itch, how can I fulfill a need, how can I be a problem solver? And I think so much of the early Internet was about kind of sharing your knowledge and expertise. And right now with ChatGPT basically being a repository of all the knowledge and expertise ever created through all of humanity over time, now it's very different. It's really about how can I transform someone's life. And sometimes it's in a small way, it can be through entertainment. Right? It doesn't have to be through something that's world changing. It could just simply be bringing more moments of joy to someone. And so that's the new lens. It's really being that problem solver rather than just a kind of sharer. It's not just being a trusted guide, but it's being a guide to a place that people want to go.
- [19:46]
A
Okay, so before we talk about even more of the good and what's working specifically, I do want to lean into the dopamine button. Now we have a, you have a free resource for people. We'll tell them about it in a second. But if you're going to win right now on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, social media, and you've studied apps, which these social media apps themselves, but even mobile gaming, dating apps, you know, any ui, ux, experience, user experience, user interface, they've all figured out how to tap into our brain's dopamine button. And if you're listening to this, this is crucial. Like if you can get this, then you're gonna thrive in the future economy. Can you explain though, what dopamine is in simple terms and why it's such a game changer for listeners?
- [20:36]
B
100%. So the dopamine button is actually my terminology for part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens, which is essentially the ancient punishment and reward system in our brains. So when we are moving towards our goals, when we're making progress, when we feel like we're winning, our brain floods our fluids. Dopamine, and that is the neuro, you know, chemical that's responsible for feelings of happiness and joy and pleasure where we feel rewarded and it's that kind of like body reward, that physical reward. And when we feel rewarded, we want to keep feeling that way because it's a pleasant sensation. So we continue doing the things that bring us dopamine. And so what's happened is Silicon Valley has spent, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars in figuring out how to basically hack our reward system and get that dopamine flowing all the time. And so they do that through what I call constant wins. And constant wins are all those notifications. Any kind of reaction on social media is a constant win. That's a direct line to our reward system and pushes that dopamine button over and over and over again. You know, all the kind of visual notifications on your phone where you're like, oh, one other person saw this and five people liked it and people commented and this person shared and it just activates that ancient system because we feel like bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. And then it's like, flood, flood, flood, flood, flood, flood, flood. And you know, all the things that you just mentioned, TikTok is perhaps, you know, one of the best at doing that too, because all of the short form content, even the speed of the edits and things like that stuff flashing on the screen, all of this is like a reward for our brain because, and you know, so basically social media and video editing styles have all been designed to keep having like new fresh things that it feels like, oh, stuff is happening, I'm getting a payoff, I'm getting a win, there's something to look for. And because of that, we spend all of our time on these particular platforms. So if you're on a platform and you're not paying to be on that platform and you're receiving value from that Platform, it means that that's not the product, you are actually the product, right? So social media platforms, you know, are incredibly wealthy because they're selling your eyeballs, they're selling your time, they're selling your attention to sponsorships, to advertising. And so they've been leveraging the dopamine button to keep us hooked because they understand that the most valuable commodity, the most valuable asset right now is human attention. And so the dopamine button is all about understanding how do you work with attention, how do you fight fire with fire. So let's say you want to help people not just stay stuck on their phones watching TikTok video after TikTok video, but how can you use the same mechanisms to actually get people chasing their hopes and dreams in life? Right? How do you make it set it up so people feel like they're winning each step of their way, even if as they tackle challenging things, they develop new skills, they go for goals that they never dared to go for before. They say yes to increasing their performance or their status in life or their bank account or whatever else. Getting a six pack abs, how do you make all of those things just feel super engaging and ethically addictive? Because you use the same kind of mechanisms that Silicon Valley uses to get you hooked on your phone to get people hooked on what they want in life. And when you do that, that helps create an engaging experience because it's not just the consumption of information, it's feeling. It's like the, the structuring of kind of steps and milestones to ramp people up into greater levels of action and help them build confidence as they go. Because when people win, even if it's a small win, it gets that dopamine button firing. And then if you are able to kind of help building on wins, you can actually make something progressively more challenging. And people will keep going because they've got that momentum built. And that's how you can get kind of ordinary people to do harder and harder things. So one of my favorite examples of this is from Dance Dance Revolution and it's this arcade game that's, there's, you know, millions of units all over the world. And you can kind of Google YouTube dance dance revolution. And to see these kids who are like moving so fast that you can barely, barely watch them go with like crowds around them. And they're just regular old kids. But how do they start, how do these kids start becoming these, you know, dance superstars? Dance Dance Revolution starts with one step at a time. And it's like, let me Hear you say, yeah, step to the left, step to the right. And they start them one step at a time, and then they add steps and they add steps. And along the way, they feel like they're winning. And you can actually do the same thing. And it. When you kind of structure people to win in your world, from what I call moment one of day one, the moment they hit that buy button, because hitting a buy button floods dopamine, you feel like you've bought a solution. But what happens is most people follow up that flood of dopamine from the sale with a, you know, disappointing de escalation of momentum. But when you learn how to build experiences, and it could be, you know, courses or programs, but it could also be services where you actually maintain that escalation and continue it. So people start to build more momentum. They're able to tackle harder things. They gain skills, they smash goals, they build confidence. That feels great. And if people are experiencing that in your world, well, guess what? They're going to want to keep buying. So I have found a direct correlation between customer success, student success, and lifetime customer value. How much they buy. I've tracked it precisely, in fact. So in my signature course, the Experience Product Masterclass, if someone does not graduate the program, like, they don't finish the content, they're about 7% likely to, you know, sign up and continue with me simply by graduating. By finishing, I think that number goes up to 10 or 12%. And then the next number, if they actually make money, even if it's one sale, I think it goes to like, 15%. And if they actually earn their investment back, it's up to 22%. So the difference between someone not completing and their likelihood of buying and simply finishing the program, I mean, that's a huge leap. I mean, it almost doubles, and then it doubles again if they hit the next big milestone. And so if it's harder to get a new customer because of everything we've been talking about, if it costs more because ads are increasing, then you want to start making really good use of every single person that does say yes. And the other thing that does is it creates testimonials and people will actually share their success stories. And even though, yes, some people say testimonials can be faked and all of that, you know, if you have enough of them, it becomes undeniable and indisputable. I mean, my one program has 3,388 testimonials from, like, 7,300 people. That means almost half of our students actually don't just succeed, they take time to write an in depth story. Some of these are pages and pages long. You can't manufacture that, man.
- [28:07]
A
There's so many nuggets there. And this is like the number one skill for creators, business owners right now. And it's understanding the dopamine button. I have a few takeaways, but I do want to make sure that people get this. If, if people can go to thinkbrainhacks.com I'll put this in the show notes because you have like a free resource on this and a video training and so we'll link that in the show notes because you got to study this. But here was my takeaway. You mentioned Dance Dance Revolution. I've played it. You don't want to see me dance as a six one lanky, you know, white guy. But it also reminds me of Guitar Hero and when you see people shredding, you know, they don't even know how to play guitar. They get the game and they start slow with. It's not too many, you know, licks to hit on the guitar. One step at a time, one note at a time. But as they build up. We've seen viral clips of people just doing impossible levels of songs. But that one step at a time. And so if you're a content creator, you're not trying to pack your videos with just as much as info as possible. People watch the whole thing, they forget it all, they can't retain it. You're just trying to get them a win. And if you get them a win and consistent wins, then even that dopamine button is going to bring them back to your content again. Like, man, when I watch your content, I, I get that result, I get that experience. And you're totally right. I mean this isn't just online courses. It makes me think, especially the gym, you know, what's the whole process? Cool. You got the sale, someone signed up, but did they actually show up? And if they showed up, was it too much too soon? So they got too sore and they didn't come back. How did you craft those experiences? You know, one of, in our high level coaching program, there's a, a roofer who is also coaching other service providers. But he's got like an eight figure roofing company and even the customer experience, he wants it to be a win of simplicity. I have an iPad experience where you can select, okay, what is it you want? What level of roof do you want? Do you want to, you know, do gutters as well? You're talking about customer Experience. You're talking about am I getting wins where I'm making progress and I have confidence and I have certainty and a payoff and my whole experience with that brand too. Isn't just getting one sale where I purchased a roof, horrible experience. Never did business with you again. But he's thinking about ltv. He's thinking about lifetime value, about, okay, what's one step through the entire process of my business? Every single business owner, creator, coach has got to know this, they got to be thinking about this. And so there's other stuff I want to talk about. So I know this is a whole separate training that you do and it is a free resource. So I encourage people. If you're listening and this sounds interesting to you, you could go to thinkbrainhacks.com but what specifically is. Is the resource you got a PDF, but is it also a video training?
- [30:59]
B
Yeah. So I do three kind of share three brain hacks specifically because Constant wins is actually just one of them. And there are a lot of different ways to get the dopamine button firing and set people up to feel like they can win. What the roofer is doing is actually customization. So there's customization, there's perceived customization, getting people's buy in by letting them make meaningful choices. And you can actually do that at scale too. So there's a lot of really cool things that you can do to make people feel like they're in the driver's seat. Right. They've got the confidence, they know the route, they've got the buy in and they're going at a speed that feels comfortable to them. So I'm giving you three brain hacks with case studies, with examples. And once a year coming very, very soon, I also deliver a live training related to that. And other times of year you can get a pre recorded training too. So I give you a lot of my best stuff, show you lots of examples, give you the context, give you takeaways that you can start applying right away.
- [31:59]
A
Yeah. So if you want to take action on that, I'll make sure to link to everything in the show notes, the dopamine button, resource and that live training, depending on when you're listening to this podcast. So save this episode for later or if you're able to access that, check out the show notes to get into deeper training on the dopamine button. Okay, so as we land the plane and kind of these final sections, I do kind of want to talk about the opportunities you see. So there's a, there is a Lot of bad news right now. I just did an emergency training because there's a ton of shifts, you know. And one thing though, we know is that the only constant in life is change. I've learned the only constant on YouTube is change. And so it's not all bad news. There's actually new opportunities being created right now. So give us a little bit of the optimism, like how many people are online? How much money is being spent? What, what are, what is the future that is possible for action takers who don't get stuck in cynicism, but actually learn new skills, adapt and pivot? Right now, 100.
- [33:08]
B
Well, I will say that the whole online learning industry is still over a billion dollar a day industry and it's growing. But what's happening is it's shifting away from home study style courses, you know, where people pay $97 or $197 and then they get the information dump and then they're just meant to kind of sort through it and figure it out on their own. It's shifting away from that to more curated and guided experiences. And that means having cohorts, which is groups of people going through together. It means having touch points where people can interact and engage with you, the creator, where you guide them, you help them with the application, knowing that the information is just a piece of the larger experience in the larger program. And I don't know about you, it's like I've had everybody try to steal my content and then resell it on different, you know, sites for less money, but they're only selling the videos. And I know I have something like 20% of the people who signed up for my signature course come back and buy it again. And they buy it again. I give it to them at half off. But why would they buy something for 50% off, which is still, you know, $1,000 if they have lifetime access to it? Because the value isn't in the content. They get the dozens of hours of group coaching, they get support, they get someone reviewing their milestones, they get a community, they get the momentum that comes from all of that. They get the accountability, the container, the structure, all of that, that immersion that we're creating for them. So 20% come back and buy the same thing over and over and over again. We have some person who's bought it every year for eight years, right? His name is Rob Wallace. And we have 88 people who signed up for it at least three times to go through this 12 week experience. At least three times. Even though they have lifetime Access to the content. So all of this to say is to, to look at what are people actually buying, because the content and the information and I know we call them creators and it used to be content creators, but we're no longer content creators. Right. We are creators of experience and transformation. And so making that pivot is really important.
- [35:24]
A
We're no longer content creators, we are experience creators. We're no longer content creators, we are transformation creators. You were going to say something else.
- [35:32]
B
Yeah. So what's happening is I think the low end of the market is dropping out. You can still create low ticket things, but the low ticket things tend to be more what's called a loss leader, which is a way to get people in the door just so they can taste and experience what you do to help ascend them and build the trust into the higher ticket things. But there's so many other ways to add value that go beyond the content itself. I think many people were sold the dream of being a creator as a way to almost like set it and forget it. Like just create this thing once and you're going to profit from it over and over again for the rest of your life. And you never, never have to update it. You just keep delivering the same content that you recorded 10 years ago, only on audio, like in your basement with like trucks driving by. That's what it used to be for the longest time. Now you have to stay current, you know, maybe even deliver live and give people that, those opportunities and those touch points and be much more an active guide in their process. And so there's opportunity for that, because that's something that AI can't give people. Yes, you can ask it for advice, you can ask it to calibrate its advice, but you have to kind of know what to ask. Does that make sense? And so with AI, if you don't know what to ask, if you don't know if what they're giving you, it's giving you is even accurate, because it makes stuff up all the time, it could easily send you down the wrong pathway. But when you're working with a human who sees you, who hears the kind of fear or hesitation in your voice and can say, you know, I hear something there and it sounds like you're not quite aligned in this direction, can you tell me what your hesitation might be? Right. A human is going to be able to read the voice and read the room and get to know the person in a way and then advise based on some of these cues that AI might not be able to pick up on all the time and also based on having led, say I've led almost 7,500 people through the process of launching experience products successfully in the world. And so I know every conceivable question and every conceivable stopping point and hesitation. And I know that it's not just about giving my students the step by step, but also addressing the mindset challenges, addressing the hesitation, the fear, the doubt, the resistance, validating someone's emotion, validating someone's experience along the way. So there's a lot that we do as humans in guiding people and holding them and seeing the best for them. It's actually well known that the way to get extraordinary performance out of someone is by setting a high standard, but also telling them that you believe in them. You know what I'm saying? So AI might give you this optimal pathway, but it's not able to necessarily believe in you each step of the way and kind of hold you to the standards. So these are some of the shifts that, that are happening. I still have, you know, a multi, multi, multi, multi million dollar business every single year. And a lot of that's based on reputation, it's based on loyalty, it's based on people coming back over and over again, sharing their stories, referring people staying in my world because they feel cared for. So if you want to go in and make a successful business today, like really being able to demonstrate that level of care, to have that active involvement in the lives of the people that you're serving, not just to build a nameless, faceless audience where you're counting the numbers or the follower counts, but you actually, you know, you know them by name, you know some of their faces, you know, you can edify them. That's what the future holds because it's what you cannot replace.
- [39:16]
A
So I want to make this tangible in our final section with a few practical next steps and some takeaways. But I also want to encourage listeners, definitely subscribe if you're not subscribed, because we're doing a multi part series and in a future episode we're actually going to be talking about seven AI prompts that you need to know right now that can help you get a jump start in making better content, getting more views. That episode will be coming up. So whether you listen on audio or on YouTube, definitely subscribe. I mean if you enjoy content like this, if you rate and review or hit like on YouTube, that's always helpful and sharing it. I love that you said the way to get extraordinary performance is to set a high standard. For people and to believe in them so powerful. And that's something that AI can't give us. Although AI does try to flatter me sometimes. I know the biggest transformational moments in my life have been from pastors, mentors, individuals who have had a transference of belief and who also didn't let me settle, called me to a higher level, called me up when I was stuck, or in mediocrity or in doubt or in discouragement, or in shame. They called me up and then they had that belief in me. It's priceless because even those injections of belief, and if you will, faith got me back to the information. Maybe, you know, when you, you don't even want to open up the course, you don't even want to read the book, you're stuck scrolling, you're stuck bedrotting, you know, you're. You're stuck looking for distraction on social because you've kind of lost that spark. It's the individual touch point, life on life. You said the future is human. It's the human connection that calls me back to that standard, that transference of belief so I can get back to work and take action. That really stood out to me. And you've added so many nuggets in this episode. But I just want a final few things that specifically for those who want to package what they know or package the problem that they solve and to create transformations for people in a 2026 world. If you were starting from scratch today, what are like the first three steps you would take to launch a profitable online course, or I think the way you would say it, to launch an experience product?
- [41:28]
B
Great question. So step number one is all about what I call the profitable micro niche. It's the idea for the course or the program, making it as specific, as pointed and as urgent as possible. So a lot of people are still trying to create those big, broad kind of survey, be all, end all, know everything, you know, share everything programs. And that's just a race to overwhelm. You know, I like to call that the thud factor. That was actually a terminology people used to recommend, say, create a course with thud factor. And thud factor was the sound of a lot of information landing on your doorstep back when they would say, send them out as cassette tapes or CDs or DVDs. And I've realized that the thud is really the sound of people's hopes and dreams collapsing to the floor and like despair and overwhelm. So that's not what people want today. So. And there's so many People in the industry that you can't compete by creating this big wide, broad course. You compete by really finding that kind of head of the needle. And what is that? What's the needle that you want to thread? And the more specific the better. And a lot of times like the niches you, that things that you can imagine are the ones that really do well. I met this course creator who was like a German, you know, the French horns that they play when they're hunting in like, you know, the, the German, you know, hinterlands. So he taught people, especially people who are coming from like royalty and the aristocracy to play the hunting horn, French hunting horn. And he made like this, this particular course actually has paid for his mortgage for a decade. Right. So sometimes it's the most obscure things, and I'm not saying you have to be obscure, but that specificity sells and that's going to be harder for AI to just query. Like if you're teaching people this thing that 20 other people are teaching, like baking sourdough bread, you know, for example, you're going to be able to Google that on, right? Or you're going to be able to find videos on YouTube, you're going to be able to chat GPT that they're going to be able to synthesize all of the different recipes. So just the baking, you know, sourdough bread for example, that's gonna be a little bit trickier if you don't have a specific hook for that, you know. So if you wanted to teach, I would do something more like gluten free, you know, go and specialize a little bit more or you know, how to grow. How do you create your own bread from scratch? Starting in your garden? Like you got to get a little bit more specific than what everybody else is doing. Add another dimension, add an angle on it that just isn't as commonly available.
- [44:09]
A
Tell me the three things again. Specific. Urgent.
- [44:12]
B
Yeah, specific and specific. Urgent and timely, basically. So, you know, you really want to make sure you've got that angle. So it starts with the right course idea.
- [44:25]
A
Got it.
- [44:25]
B
I actually have a kind of a free five day challenge too on cracking your course idea using AI. So if we want to give that to people as well, because that is the first step. If you don't hit that step, there is no other step.
- [44:39]
A
Okay, amazing. I know we were going to talk about that in a future episode, but I want to make sure people have access to that. So there's a crack your course challenge free and smartcourse ideas.com if you want to check that out and we'll link that up in the show notes. I'll summarize at the end a couple of the resources because this is one to sit down, get a notebook, get your notion, get your tablet if you want to go deeper. And there's some cool stuff. But you could check that out@smartcourse ideas.com okay, so number one, if you're three steps to start from scratch today, profitable and micro, niche, specific, urgent, timely, really crack your course idea. What's number two?
- [45:16]
B
Yeah, number two is thinking about what is the MVP version of that idea that stands for minimum viable product. So a lot of times people have this grandiose vision for what it is that they want to create and they're trying to go out the door and then just say I need to record like 50 videos and I need to have this fancy membership site and I need to have all of the tech ready. And it just becomes this multi year project before they've even tested whether their idea is going to fly and people are going to buy it. So I like to help people figure out what is the simplest version of the core solution. The core solution is what you actually deliver. So the example I like to give is say you ultimately want to create a jet plane, right, that transports people all over the world. If you were to try to build the jet plane from scratch in your garage, you know that would take a long time and a lot of resources. And what if it doesn't fly at the end? You just invested a lot. But what is the core solution of a jet plane? Basically if you put wings on something, it will fly. So what's the simplest version of a jet plane? Well, it's a paper plane, right? So what's the paper plane version of your product that tests the core solution that if you put wings on something, it will fly? An example of one of my students is Kat Karoi. She had come out of a like the physical product world and had manufactured all these purses that then she then struggled to sell. So coming into this world, she's trying to figure out what do I know how to do. We helped her identify Instagram makeovers as the core solution. But rather than creating the course first, she sold it as a high end service for like I think 500 bucks a pop, made 16,000 bucks like that. It tested the core solution of the Instagram makeover without having to create any content, any videos, any of that stuff. Once she delivered those, she also got market research, she got testimonial, she got Case studies, all the things. Then she rolled out a course and then progressively with each iteration she up leveled the course until it was fancy videos and montage and all this stuff. And now over 10,000 people have gone through that program and she's made millions with it. Right. So that. But it started with what is the simplest version of this that I can test, get the market feedback, make sure I've got a winner on my hands and then the next time around we'll get create the hang glider version and then the biplane version. Right. And get to the jet plane version eventually. But if you try to start with the jet plane version, that's how you crash and burn.
- [47:41]
A
Yeah, I mean this is why you're the expert. Because I think there's so many people that understand the opportunity to make money. Why, you know, in the digital product space, the elearning space, but it's such a graveyard of overwhelm of people, you know, big aspirations, trying to build a jet plane from the start. And so so many ideas are stuck on someone's notes. One video shot, half finish, so many dead ends. So this MVP minimum viable product and all the benefits, because you only listed a few, but it's like thinking about the fact that you can get it to the market quickly, the fact that you could get some revenue coming in quickly, that you can then reinvest and it's almost like burn rate for a startup. You now have money to play with to reinvest to buy you more time or invest in tools. But then the fact that you're getting market feedback, you're getting some testing also if it doesn't go well, it's a lot, you haven't risked as much. You didn't build, you didn't film a hundred videos on a course idea that didn't fly and you're able to do the right steps in the right order. So number one, okay, we're going to identify our profitable micro niche and you've got a free five day challenge. If people want help with that, you've got then what is the minimum viable product version of the idea? And these are just the first three steps in the new world of how to win. What's number three?
- [49:02]
B
Yeah, number three is actually a minimum viable launch. MVP launch. So a minimum viable launch is minimum viable product plus minimum viable technology plus minimum viable marketing. All right, so a lot of people are talking one funnel away from having a massive headache. Right. Is usually what that that is. And so people start trying to do Facebook ads and funnels and all of These high tech scalable marketing solutions. So you know, minimum viable launch is the minimum viable marketing. So I talk about this thing I call the marketing pyramid. And you start at the base of the pyramid and make, make your way up. The base of the pyramid is actually one to one marketing. And then you pass to one to few marketing for things like webinars and, and speaking, and then finally into one to many marketing with the funnels and everything like that. So just like you want to start with the MVP version of the Courser program itself, you want to start with MVP marketing. So MVP marketing, I recommend doing something called chatterboxing, where you're basically starting conversations everywhere, online, offline, anywhere you happen to be, and leading people through kind of a series of questions to first identify whether they're the target customer and then you know, whether they have the problem you solve and then just organically getting them to natural flow of conversation. So I had this person, Hitcham Rifas, who was based in Algeria and he'd been trying to build like webinar funnels for a decade and going to all of the big trainings and could only sell almost like nothing. And I told him to ditch all that and do this minimum viable launch. And he fought me on it for a while and then he decided to do it. And his MVP version of his product turned out to be a $25,000 package to one on one package to telecom industries. And then he did the minimum viable launch approach and he made $750,000 in the course by selling 30 just by going to people that he'd already connected to in different ways using these simple conversational pivots. And in Algeria that was actually 23 years of salary. And obviously that's the outer edge of what someone's ever been able to do. But he was shocked because he's like the simplicity of the approach that I don't need any of that to actually make sales. All I need to do is if I've identified the problem and the solution, well, I've packaged it into the simple format that usually tends to be higher touch and higher price point. The MVP version, for the record, because you're delivering it as a service first, then you just sell it in the simplest, easiest way possible with the clarity that you got. And there's no barriers to entry for you or for the person to say yes. And so that chatterboxing approach, which is going out to, I say in the circle of influence, the people that you're already connected to in some way, shape or form first and it doesn't mean that they're your clients. It's not you necessarily selling to friends and family, but you leveraging those relationships to open other doors to get referrals, you know, to figure out who knows who. And that's oftentimes the fastest way to get those initial sales. Prove your mvp. Once you've done that, then you can start to kind of leverage and scale the marketing. But the thing is is if you go straight to leverage your scale, you don't even know if your message is working. You don't know who you're really targeting. You can't see their expression or like read their response and know whether you're on the right track or you're striking out or you're not able to read the room and have that benefit. So this is the fast way to iterate to a message that really sings. And when you get into the conversation, then you hear their words and then you can leverage their words in your marketing too and then start to create more and more dialed in marketing.
- [52:44]
A
Marisa so many people are, are, are stuck or they're doing the wrong things in the wrong order. This mini masterclass like changes everything. Like, and I see the genius in it. It also makes me think, you know, as our program video ranking academy I want to say came out version 1.0 in 2016 and so we're almost on 10 years of doing it and I wish I knew this information because I did, you know, kind of bit off more than I could chew and it like the process of going through it and you know, so much pain in the journey. And so that's why I love your stuff. Like you're a genius, you're clearly an expert and it's clear why your reputation is so strong in the industry because your frameworks are so clear. And so I love these three steps and so a couple things I want to make sure if you're listening to this that if you want to go deeper, the two resources, if I can recap these that we talked about today is one, the dopamine button. Even if you're unsure if you want to package what you know into a digital product or an experience product, understanding the dopamine button, the three brain hacks to skyrocket your engagement is the critical skill for winning in the future of YouTube, of content of social media and business. That's a free resource you can check out@thinkbrainhacks.com and then you also brought up that if you want to crack your course idea, really dial in and what for you is that specific, urgent and timely course idea. If you go to smart course ideas.com, you can get access to a free five day challenge. Now that's not free forever though, because you're. Every once in a while you do like, you kind of open up the doors. You do some free resources at other times of the year. It's like, like an affordable, lower cost course. Is that true?
- [54:33]
B
That's true. Yep.
- [54:34]
A
Okay, so depending on when you're listening to this, I would act fast if you want to just, you know, grab all these great free resources, then block some time if you're driving or wherever you're at to come back to this. Check out the show notes and we'll organize everything in a very curated way for you there. Marisa, thank you so much for coming on the fake media podcast today. And if you got value out of this episode. This one was power packed, man. So it means the world if you like, share, rate, review wherever you watch or listen. My name is Sean Cannell, your guide to building a profitable YouTube channel, and we'll catch you in a future episode.