How to Make $2,000,000 From Courses and Quit Your 9-To-5

Aaron Francis

What's the dream revenue that we're going for? Dream a million dollars. Pick a timeline.

Nathan Barry

Three years? Five years?

Aaron Francis

Can you say eighteen months? Eighteen months.

Nathan Barry

Mhmm. This could go terribly wrong. In this episode, I talked to Aaron Francis who did 350,000 in revenue for the year.

Aaron Francis

Great amount of money. There are two of us and we could go get tech jobs. So what I wanna figure out is how do we take that and turn that into a long term sustainable business? We have to have multiple price tiers.

Nathan Barry

Okay? Every time I've implemented tiered pricing, I've noticed at least a 50% increase

Aaron Francis

That is obvious, but I'm not doing it. What you

Nathan Barry

wanna do is bring everybody back to this because that's where you have the deepest connection with the audience. The most simple effective thing to do, lead magnets. In the video, I'm gonna show you what to do.

Aaron Francis

Mhmm. In the free resource, I'm gonna do it for you. This feels doable. I think coming in, I felt the need of a little bit of guidance. Leaving now, I feel very much more organized and with a path forward.

I love it.

Nathan Barry

Aaron, welcome back.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. It's good to still be here.

Nathan Barry

We were talking on x in DMs, and, you listen to the podcast and

Aaron Francis

all of that.

Nathan Barry

And you're saying, hey. I'd fly to Boise. Why why

Aaron Francis

did you wanna fly up to Boise? Yep.

Nathan Barry

So

Aaron Francis

So my my specific pitch was I am the smallest creator that you're gonna have on, but I will come to Boise and we can go through it. And so here's what I wanna talk about. We've got, high performance SQLite, which is database course, did a 25,000. Great amount of money. Very happy with that.

There are two of us, me and Steve, and we, could go get tech jobs. Right?

Nathan Barry

Right.

Aaron Francis

And so a hundred and $25,000 across two people plus self employment taxes against tech jobs doesn't go that far. So what I wanna figure out is given what we have, which is an audience expertise momentum, how do we take that and turn that into a long term sustainable business that makes more than we could make as w two. That is that is my goal.

Nathan Barry

That sounds good.

Aaron Francis

And we've got a lot of options, and I'll be curious to hear which ones you think are the best. Okay.

Nathan Barry

Now let's let's dive in. Let's draw some stuff. Let's get a feel for the business today.

Aaron Francis

K.

Nathan Barry

I will I'll start with that.

Aaron Francis

So we did a hundred and

Nathan Barry

25,000 in thirty days in the launch. Yep. Okay. So you got SQLite, and

Aaron Francis

then we're gonna say thirty days.

Nathan Barry

Yep. But just one thing to talk about here is if we think about the shape of a launch Mhmm. Right, you're gonna go from zero to there, and then you're gonna come down to something Mhmm. And it's gonna default to that or that. Let let's let's call it

Aaron Francis

this one, because I think that's probably more accurate.

Nathan Barry

And so we have to figure out, like, typically what happens in a launch business

Aaron Francis

is we're figuring out how do we do that Yep.

Nathan Barry

And then how do we do that. And, usually,

Aaron Francis

these spikes keep getting smaller and smaller.

Nathan Barry

And I've watched that play out many times, both myself and in the other creative Yep. Creative businesses. Okay. So hundred and 25,000, in the launch SQLite in thirty days. What's the what are some of the other courses

Aaron Francis

that are still driving meaningful revenue? Another property is screencasting.com Okay. And that has done a 15 in nine months.

Nathan Barry

Okay. And

Aaron Francis

these are the two primary properties that Steve and I have. This was pre Steve. So Steve and I partnered up after I launched this.

Nathan Barry

Okay.

Aaron Francis

So there is a rehab of this coming with some additional material, and this is the first post Steven Aaron thing, that we launched.

Nathan Barry

Okay. That makes sense. So total in last year Mhmm. What what do you think revenue is at? That we could use as a trend line

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Nathan Barry

To understand the audience.

Aaron Francis

An interesting an interesting point about this is we also had a corporate sponsor

Nathan Barry

Okay.

Aaron Francis

That paid us I won't disclose because it's their business, but paid us a not insignificant amount of money Yep. To do that. Including? On top of $1.25. Okay.

Uh-huh. So it's we'll say 5 figure sponsorship as well. So so

Nathan Barry

we'll just throw sponsorship as a little.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. Throw sponsorship in and let's go ahead and include YouTube sponsorship, because then I can I can hide the numbers a little more easily? So let's say, but on sponsorship altogether, we've done 90,000. And so we're gonna

Nathan Barry

total all of this as up. Let me look in the math. So we're a hundred and five I'm sorry. 205 and then so 330 plus some of the Subsidonious. Yeah.

So this business right now, if you could repeat last year

Aaron Francis

Mhmm. You're talking $3.50 a year Mhmm. Is basically where we're at. Mhmm. That sounds about right.

Yeah. Okay. On one hand,

Nathan Barry

a lot of money.

Aaron Francis

A lot of money.

Nathan Barry

On the other hand

Aaron Francis

On the other hand tech jobs Two people, self employment taxes Right. Four kids. Yeah. Not not a lot of money while being a lot of money. Yeah.

Nathan Barry

Okay. So we're as we're thinking about where we're at Mhmm. So we'll just say, today Mhmm. Is 350 k. Mhmm.

Pick a timeline. K. We're going what sounds good? Three years? Five years?

What what time horizon are we operating on?

Aaron Francis

Let's say can we shorten it? Can we say eighteen months? Eighteen months. Mhmm. Okay.

Nathan Barry

So this is Is that bold?

Aaron Francis

Is that silly? We can do anything. I don't do anything. Let's say eighteen months. So by the end of twenty twenty five, let's do that.

K. How much revenue what's the dream revenue that we're going for in 2020? So so at the end of 2025, what is the trailing twelve months?

Nathan Barry

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Dream a million dollars.

Nathan Barry

Okay.

Aaron Francis

Alright. Which is not the final resting point, hopefully, for the revenue, but in by the time we hit 2025, hopefully, we've made a million dollars in total.

Nathan Barry

What is okay.

Aaron Francis

So it's 2026. I don't know, but the dream would be the dream in the fullness of time is $2,000,000 a year. Okay. So if we can do it by 2026, happy. Happy as could be.

There's so much they wanted to get into.

Nathan Barry

Okay. Like, what that enables or that sort of thing.

Aaron Francis

Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

But you didn't come here for, like, a counseling session. Well, you came here for that. 23 episodes. Yeah. Exactly.

We'll sit back down. I I love the specificity of the goal. Shifting gears a little bit. K. Is there anyone maybe we can brainstorm a few people.

Aaron Francis

Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

Who comes to mind when you think of they've pulled off Mhmm. Something like the business you're trying to create?

Aaron Francis

Kent c Dodds, Wes Bos. Okay. Maybe Matt Pocock. Kent C Dodds is a educator developer educator which is what I like to call myself, a developer educator. He has primarily staked out a place in the React ecosystem which is a JavaScript framework and he has he's got a big team now actually, but he does, educational materials and he, you know, has written recently, not recently, in the past year or so about his million dollar course launch and I'm like that seems good.

West Boss halfway there. Yeah. Halfway there. West Boss, on the other hand, is also a developer educator, but he is following a much more, I think, similar pattern to what we'll have, which is several discrete properties. That it's like Okay.

Learn ES six, learn CSS, whatever, and they're all on different domains, but they all funnel back to the West Boss brand. So I think West Boss is probably the closest corollary to what we're going for.

Nathan Barry

Okay. That makes sense. The reason I asked this question is often we throw out crazy things. Mhmm.

Aaron Francis

You know? Like, okay. A hundred and $25,000

Nathan Barry

launch, 2,000,000 a year in revenue. It's really hard to bridge that gap mentally. And you can do things where you're like, okay. Well, if we just had 14 courses, that would get there. Or I'd be dead.

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. And you're like you can quickly say, oh, that's a terrible idea.

Nathan Barry

But what it helps with is saying, am I trying to do something that's never been done before?

Aaron Francis

Yes.

Nathan Barry

Are we trying to climb the mountain that, you know, to date has been proven unplanned?

Aaron Francis

Has killed everyone else that tried? Yeah. I don't want to do that.

Nathan Barry

Or are we saying like, no, people who are wildly talented, very determined, and all of that have done it. Mhmm. And, actually, they might be friends of mine, actually. Like and that brings it down into this achievable way. Yep.

And then you can also do this thing where when you start to look at all the problems that you're gonna have between here and there Mhmm. You could list those out and then you'd be like, well how did Kent solve that? Right. How did how did Wes solve that?

Aaron Francis

Problems are solvable.

Nathan Barry

Yeah. Because they've been solved. Exactly.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. Our mutual friend Ben Orenstein, tuple guy, tweeted not too long ago when I was actually working at tuple. He tweeted, I think it's something like, I think it's very reasonable possible and more people should consider that you can make a million dollars a year if you're a good teacher and a good developer. And that has stuck in my brain of like, yeah I think that I think that is possible. Being a good teacher is a huge part of it and these two guys are, but I think it is very, very possible.

Nathan Barry

It's interesting what you're talking about there of you know, you think of the other words that you could substitute in there. Great teacher

Aaron Francis

Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

Great developer. You know, someone's like, oh, I'm gonna become the best machine learning AI engineer and some FAANG company is gonna pay me a million dollars a year. That might actually be a harder path than to be

Aaron Francis

a good developer and a and a good It's that combination of skills that I think more people could have. A lot of great developers out there. Honestly, I don't think there are that many great teachers, but the overlap of good developer and good teacher, that's available. That's totally available to everybody. So that is my goal.

Yeah. And there's other people, you know, even as you

Nathan Barry

list out a few people, I think of, more I think of like Adam Wathan.

Aaron Francis

Yep. You know, there's and they've taken a different path in that

Nathan Barry

they made a wildly successful framework. Right.

Aaron Francis

But early on, Adam would be on this list, but now he has a different type of company. Yep. So I can't see myself in him. But, yeah, he's absolutely an inspiration

Nathan Barry

in there. And so we could look at like, we'll put him on the list because of

Aaron Francis

because our attorneys still overlap at this point because I'm early. And this is this is what he was doing early on.

Nathan Barry

What do you think are some of the biggest obstacles that you're going to hit? Like, what what problems, as we get more specific, do we need

Aaron Francis

to solve? I think the biggest so, like, the biggest fundamental structural problem is, having enough stuff that people can throw money at. Like there's no way that SQLite gets $2,000,000 There's maybe a way that screencasting does a million, but like I just don't feel like the surface area upon which people can give me money is is large enough at this point. And inherent in that is the drawback of being a course company. I don't want to make a course every three months.

Okay. And so that's where I'm trying to figure out, like, what is the right product mix or bundle or guest instructor instructors that, like, I can get to a point where this number is reasonable and this number is possible. And I have I have ideas on how to expand both of those. Okay. Tell me a little bit about, Kent's million dollar launch.

Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

And yeah. What what was that in? Right? Because that's almost 10 x. Yeah.

Aaron Francis

The numbers you did. Yeah.

Nathan Barry

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So was that different audience, different

Aaron Francis

different audience, different lead time, different technology. So one thing about SQLite is it's relatively niche. Yep. It happens to be the most used database in the world, but most people in our space don't really use it. It's very much for, like, embedded stuff.

So it's a relatively niche audience. Databases themselves relatively relatively niche audience. And when you look at what Kent C. Dodds is doing, it's React. And for the people that don't know, React has eaten the world.

And so like Yep. Everyone needs to know React and I feel like a lot of his stuff begins at a beginner level. He does have intermediate content, but a lot of the stuff that I do begins more at the intermediate level. Right.

Nathan Barry

So you get that pyramid.

Aaron Francis

Mhmm. You're further up,

Nathan Barry

just meaning that there are fewer.

Aaron Francis

Fewer people, fewer people. There's just fewer intermediates than there are beginners. Wes Bos, I don't know the numbers that he has done, but he does have a lot of he has a lot of products. And so I think the difference between these two guys is Kent has consolidated everything into what he calls epic web And that includes like React and Tailwind CSS and some other stuff. Wes Bos is like thirty days of JavaScript, ES six, CSS whatever, React whatever.

And they're all discrete. That's more what I am going towards because I don't have one piece of content that is large enough to encompass 10,000,000 people. Right. You know?

Nathan Barry

Okay. So you're going for more more products. Mhmm. Is there really quick, I realized we didn't

Aaron Francis

get the elevator pitch on

Nathan Barry

screencasting.com. What's that from?

Aaron Francis

Screencasting.com is my techniques, methods, technologies for recording high quality screencasts quickly. So high quality, low effort, how do you do that such that you can put stuff out into the world and move on? And is the focus of this

Nathan Barry

someone doing internal training or is it someone who wants to be the next developer creator?

Aaron Francis

Yep. That.

Nathan Barry

Okay. It could be

Aaron Francis

for internal training. The the way that I talk in the course is more like you are an individual trying to make an audience or grow an audience or create a course yourself or whatever. That's that's what I talk about.

Nathan Barry

Okay. That makes sense. What's the price point on screencast?

Aaron Francis

That was quite a bit more. That one's $2.99. Okay. So SQLite's currently 149. Screencasting's $2.99.

I think it's overpriced. And I have some evidence for that, but yeah, it's quite a bit more.

Nathan Barry

Okay. So one problem is enough products.

Aaron Francis

Yep. What's the other problem in our path from $3.50 to 2,000,000? I feel and I think we've taken a step towards solving this already. I feel like the administrivia of having all of these things is growing. And so, like, emails about purchasing power parity discounts, emails about, typos in the transcripts, emails with just random questions.

And my personality is such that, I tend to not I tend to not be able to do those things very quickly. I tend to put them off and then they grow and it's like, well, guess I'll never get to that email because it's been a day now. Guess, it's this bad. So that's a really difficult part for me. And I think some of that is like, I maybe am becoming more of a creative and, like, I need more of this space and then doing all of these things has become even more difficult.

So we've recently we've recently hired, somebody for twenty hours a week to man all of the inboxes to help us do a content calendar. It actually came from listening to your podcast about your personal brand manager. And I was like, I mean, I I can't afford that, but, like, having somebody who can do that for the business plus me as we're moving into this is the Aaron Francis brand, that has been a huge a huge help. But I imagine it's gonna continue to grow pretty pretty drastically. Yeah.

But what I like about that

Nathan Barry

is that you've already created that bucket of like, yeah, section off that bucket of work. And so the hard thing for you will be to just stay disciplined about

Aaron Francis

it. Yes.

Nathan Barry

And to say that is not my problem.

Aaron Francis

Big time.

Nathan Barry

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

And she started yesterday, so I'm not quite there yet, but yes.

Nathan Barry

But there's like one struggle that I had was, leading from the front or

Aaron Francis

you know,

Nathan Barry

I don't know what leaders eat last. Right. Like these kind of ideas, and so I always think, like, I never want to ask someone to do a job that I'm not willing to do it myself. And so I would be jumping right in there.

Aaron Francis

Mhmm. And I

Nathan Barry

just found that I was holding the business back in substantial ways. And so there's, two phrases that I think are really interesting. One sounds horrible, so maybe it's just an intro phrase.

Aaron Francis

I love it already.

Nathan Barry

But it's where you just say, it's not my problem. Oh, that sounds great.

Aaron Francis

And you like that. That is your problem.

Nathan Barry

The other one that I heard, Andrew Wilkinson from Tiny say recently is he said, I am Teflon for tasks. Love that too.

Aaron Francis

Try to stick try try to give me something to do. Oh, look at that. It just looks right

Nathan Barry

off me. Yeah. That sounds

Aaron Francis

awesome. I would love that.

Nathan Barry

And so, like, getting into that mindset because you're realizing, like, any of those examples, a refund on this, a transcript, bug, any of that, like you can't spend any time on that.

Aaron Francis

No. And it just eats away not only does it eat away my time at like just little bites all throughout the day, it eats away my energy. Right. And that's the hard part when I'm like, alright, you've got to sit down and record five videos today and then you see the email inbox is like there are 13 people waiting for something. And I'm like, oh gosh, I'm just not gonna do anything.

It's like, no, can't do that. So I feel like that is and this is very much a personality thing. Mhmm. And I think we may be hiring around it, but it is gonna be interesting to see as we go how much of that I can, like, give over.

Nathan Barry

It takes a level of discipline. That's really hard. Yeah. One one thing for me as the team has gotten bigger, you know, on the kids side is really, like, engaging at the right level.

Aaron Francis

Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

And a phrase that I've started to use,

Aaron Francis

is I think I'm involved with the wrong altitude. Interesting.

Nathan Barry

And so that's where, you know, we might be talking about overall strategy, and then I find myself getting into, like, the tactics or the email copy or something like that. And and people want my opinion on it. Sure. Or they don't want my opinion and I'm

Aaron Francis

inserted. And they have to listen to you. Yeah. Both of those situations happen,

Nathan Barry

but just that, like, giving the team that language and all that. Like, oh, I'm involved with the wrong altitude here. I like that. Step back and and reset.

Aaron Francis

Zoomed in too far. I I like that.

Nathan Barry

And so that's the other thing that you can ask. This is maybe more for someone who has a bigger team.

Aaron Francis

Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

But to say if someone's bringing a problem to you is to say either what role would you like me to play? Uh-huh. Like, because you don't wanna be the person like, they're dealing with real problems, and they're like, not my problem.

Aaron Francis

Right. Yeah. But can I just get five minutes of your time? Exactly. Yeah.

You know? And so

Nathan Barry

you're like, oh, I I play the coach role Mhmm. Or the manager role in that, or also to ask what altitude would you like to have this conversation about? And and that can really help with some of those team dynamics.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. I like that. That's very helpful. Okay. So problems.

Enough products.

Nathan Barry

I feel like we this is gonna be hard.

Aaron Francis

It's gonna be hard. But we have a plan for it. Good path.

Nathan Barry

What other problems do we run into?

Aaron Francis

I think inherent in this enough products is enough time for me personally to create the stuff. Okay. Because, not only are we doing courses, but we're also doing YouTube. And I'm writing blog posts. And Twitter is our top of funnel in some regard.

And so, like, there's a big amount of creation pressure that has put on me. Like, I am the face of the business. Steve and I are the business, but I am the face of it. And so, like, I have to be out there, and this just takes a lot of time.

Nathan Barry

Okay. Yep. I like that. That makes me think of two other problems. Great.

Aaron Francis

One is brand. K. You brought up

Nathan Barry

to me being the face of the business.

Aaron Francis

Big, big problem.

Nathan Barry

Yep. And then the second one, I can't actually write and talk at the same time. I would have sort of just write whatever.

Aaron Francis

The second one. Yeah. It just says the second one.

Nathan Barry

The second one is audience size. Yeah. Because at some point, all of this comes down to a math equation. Yes. Right?

And so you have to have a plan

Aaron Francis

Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

To grow a significantly larger audience.

Aaron Francis

Yep. Which comes back to time to create and enough products, and I get all yeah. These are all very related.

Nathan Barry

Yep. They are. Okay. So as we look at these well, actually, let's quickly talk about audience size. What size audience do we have right now, that we're getting into?

Aaron Francis

Size audience we have now on Twitter, we're at 39,000 YouTube, maybe 42 or three across email lists. Probably, I wanna say close to seven or 8,000 across email lists. You're so good about calling it x. I just cannot okay. So here's the thing.

Nathan Barry

Fucking let all of you in on a little secret. I was not good at calling it x, and then I went to rebrand my company name. And then I switched. It's a respect thing.

Aaron Francis

It's a respect thing. Okay. I see what you've done there. Yeah. It was never gonna say It's never gonna say it's better.

We let people in on money. Y'all please call it Kit. Okay?

Nathan Barry

So if we're talking about an increase of, you know, five times So it's a lot. Could you reasonably increase these audience sizes by five x? Mhmm.

Aaron Francis

And two and a

Nathan Barry

half years.

Aaron Francis

Yes. Maybe. Doubt it. So email, yes. Because I've put very little effort historically into growing an email list and now with the decline in my opinion of x, I'm thinking I gotta get off this thing.

And so putting a lot more energy there. YouTube, I think, yeah, I could get to 200,000 in, you know, a year and a half or two years or whatever. Mhmm. X, no. I don't I don't think I could get to five times that's 200 as well.

I don't think I could do that.

Nathan Barry

Okay. Are there people out there Mhmm. These people or others who have hit five x these numbers, the numbers that you would need to get to?

Aaron Francis

Yes. Okay. Yeah. I think Kent's at north of two hundred west. Is that maybe, I don't know, one fifty?

Adam's probably at one fifty on on Twitter. Yeah. So yeah. It is not impossible and I don't know why, but I don't think I can do it.

Nathan Barry

Well, it might be that the algorithm is totally different.

Aaron Francis

That's right.

Nathan Barry

Right? I look at it's

Aaron Francis

a new age.

Nathan Barry

I have a 3,000 on x, and I'm like, do I want to push that to 200,000? I don't know that the techniques that I learned and used, will scale in the same way. Yep. I feel that. Someone posted posted a tweet the other day and they were like, can we just have the algorithm from two years ago back?

Aaron Francis

God. Can we please? It was like, all my friends plus their friends. That was it. It doesn't have to be complicated.

My friends and their friends. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Nathan Barry

So that's something else. Like, I think we can five x these audience numbers. The one that I would focus on the most or the the two is YouTube and email.

Aaron Francis

Good. Okay. That's where I feel most optimistic. So that's good.

Nathan Barry

Because I I think about the hub and spoke model

Aaron Francis

k. For contact creation Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

Or really for audience growth. And so what a lot of people do is they maybe list it out like like this where it's just like, I've got all these channels. Someone said I should go on LinkedIn as well, so

Aaron Francis

I'm doing that.

Nathan Barry

I'm already making videos, so I guess I need an Instagram. And since I'm on Instagram, I might as well have a TikTok.

Aaron Francis

Exactly.

Nathan Barry

And before we know

Aaron Francis

it, we're on every single platform. And you hate it all. Yep. Speak for yourself.

Nathan Barry

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron Francis

I love it. I tried TikTok for a second and was like, I am too old for this. And you thought YouTube comments were bad? Wait till you get TikTok comments. No way.

So in the

Nathan Barry

hub and spoke model, right, if we're making a wheel, you know, we've got a few different spokes coming off

Aaron Francis

Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

And we're bringing people, right, each of these, you know, x, YouTube, you know, IG, those are all going to be spokes. Mhmm. And so what you wanna do then is bring everybody back to the email list. Mhmm. Right?

Email is at the center. Mhmm. Because that's where you have the deepest connection with the audience.

Aaron Francis

It's the only one I own. It's the only one you own.

Nathan Barry

Right? Like, if I really piss you off one day, you'd

Aaron Francis

be like, screw it. I'm exporting my email list, my head, and I'm going somewhere. Exactly. Right? Yep.

Please don't. Yep.

Nathan Barry

I won't. Don't worry.

Aaron Francis

Depends on how this turns out, by the way. As long as it turns out good, I'm happy. If you call me an influencer, it's over.

Nathan Barry

And so in this, you you take this approach because email is really amazing at connection and really, really terrible at discovery. Mhmm. Yep. Right? Like, agreed.

Zero out of 10 on on discovery.

Aaron Francis

Fully agreed.

Nathan Barry

And so then you can choose what platforms to focus on. Mhmm. Now what I think

Aaron Francis

is interesting about YouTube in general is that YouTube is

Nathan Barry

really good at discovery Mhmm. Because it has both the, like, you should watch this algorithm and the search algorithm.

Aaron Francis

Yep.

Nathan Barry

And and then it's also not half bad at the connection and that long term side of it. So it's really interesting. And so the fact that you already have 40,000 on YouTube, and that's growing, gives me a lot of confidence in being able to hit that number.

Aaron Francis

Good. Good. And this has come in one the past year.

Nathan Barry

Yeah. That that's fantastic.

Aaron Francis

So that gives me a lot of optimism that you're optimistic about that.

Nathan Barry

The thing that

Aaron Francis

I

Nathan Barry

want you to get good at Mhmm. Is and this is maybe where you can write some things down, and we'll go up here, Is the YouTube to email conversion. Yeah. Have is there anything there

Aaron Francis

that you've tried? To the extent we've tried anything, it has primarily been YouTube to SQLite course. Okay. There's been very little, which in a way is second order onto an email list, but there's been very little YouTube go sign up for my newsletter. In fact, when I say very little, what I mean is zero.

There's been none

Nathan Barry

of that.

Aaron Francis

Okay. None of that at all. Well, there's these things where, people

Nathan Barry

have this some people I've hired recently to help with things like KITT Mhmm. Have come in and said, like,

Aaron Francis

I'm very

Nathan Barry

like, this is not going well of some area of

Aaron Francis

the business that they're coming

Nathan Barry

in to fix. And they're like, I'm really excited about this. And they're like, why? Because it's so bad?

Aaron Francis

And they're

Nathan Barry

like, let's just say there's a lot of opportunity.

Aaron Francis

So much opportunity. What a nice thing to say. Thank you. There's a lot of opportunity here.

Nathan Barry

Yes. I agree. So, so we haven't really done any YouTube to email. No. So why don't you write down up here.

Mhmm. Let's go, let's

Aaron Francis

just say, like, YouTube to,

Nathan Barry

to email conversions.

Aaron Francis

So are we doing a are we doing, like, a funnel type thing?

Nathan Barry

Let's just let's just go categories. Let's put a category wherever you want up there, and then we'll brainstorm ideas underneath that.

Aaron Francis

Okay. So we'll say, YouTube to email. So what what are our ideas here? So we've done nothing so far.

Nathan Barry

Nothing. What what do you think would work? We got 40,000 people

Aaron Francis

over here. Uh-huh.

Nathan Barry

There's probably some number that are on the email list. Right? Because they got on the email list from buying the quarters. Right. That sort of thing.

Aaron Francis

So we have we have a few things. We've got, we could do, you know, we could do YouTube video. This is this is what we're doing now. SQLite course, which in fact puts you on the email list. So you have a hop, skip, and a jump here.

But this is paid? This is paid. However, there are, certain videos that are free to watch provided you put your email in.

Nathan Barry

So you

Aaron Francis

have a free trial? Mhmm. Okay. Yeah. So that's, pretty disjointed.

I think the question that you're asking is how do we do this? And so one thing that I have done is so this number two, this number three. I have done this, which again is a hop, skip, and a jump. So from YouTube, I will I will typically take a YouTube video, turn it back into a written article, put that on the blog, and then the blog has a way aaron frysalis dot com, and then that has a way to sign up for the email list. Very tenuous because this is, like, in the description of the YouTube.

And so by the time you reach here, it's like there's one person.

Nathan Barry

You've gotta finish watching the video, then you Read

Aaron Francis

the description. Read the description. Come come come here. Scroll to the bottom.

Nathan Barry

So here we're like a 1% conversion rate and then this is a 1% conversion rate.

Aaron Francis

Lots of room for improvement.

Nathan Barry

There we go. You guys aren't quite Yeah. So, I mean, the most simple effective thing to do here in this case Mhmm. Is, lead magnets. K.

Right? It's a weird I don't know why we call it that, but Mhmm. Here we are. And so what we're doing is just providing something in the video and saying, hey. If you want this Mhmm.

Go and download it here. The way that I like to do it the most is in the video, I'm gonna show you what to do. Mhmm.

Aaron Francis

In the free resource, I'm

Nathan Barry

gonna do it for you Mhmm. As much as I can. So is there a cheat sheet, a, you know, a code snippet, something like that that you're teaching on a regular basis? Ideally, that you could link to from a series of videos.

Aaron Francis

Right. Exactly.

Nathan Barry

So you can create it once and get leverage from that.

Aaron Francis

That does not exist at the moment. Okay. I'm not opposed to it. I think my question is the shape of that thing. Because let's say I'm doing a video on SQLite.

I'm doing a video on Laravel, which is a framework. I'm doing a video on JavaScript. The those lead magnets need to be different, I would assume. Maybe? There's probably something we

Nathan Barry

come up with that's generic enough. But okay. So but generally, going generic is not what you're trying to do with the

Aaron Francis

lead magnet. So so in your estimation, let's say I produce I produce a video on SQLite that goes the the content of the YouTube video is SQLite, and then I say go to aaronfritz.com/SQLite, sign up, and I'll email you whatever we come up whatever I come up with.

Nathan Barry

So let me give you a different example. Tell me. And we'll see how this comes out. Out. If I'm I wrote a book years ago called Authority.

Mhmm. And, one of the most popular things in a higher package that I sold in that was a ninety day launch plan.

Aaron Francis

Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

So I told you everything to do in the book. Here's all the theory. We walked through it. We built up the concepts and all of that. And then there was this one thing that was wildly popular, which is, like, you want to launch on this day.

Mhmm. Here's a plan that works backwards from there.

Aaron Francis

What's, like, a spreadsheet or something? Yeah.

Nathan Barry

What to do every week from there. And that was so popular. And that's the thing of, like, I'm teaching you how to do it in the YouTube video Uh-huh. And I'm just giving you the resource to make it really easy to apply it. Uh-huh.

And that's the sort of thing where you say, you know, in my case, I'd be like, go

Aaron Francis

to nathanberry.com/launchplan Right. And I'll give it to you for free.

Nathan Barry

And they put in their email address, and I send it to them. Mhmm. And that's the kind of thing that you can talk about a lot. You know, with screencasting, you could go, here are the Camera reviews. Camera reviews you could do.

I would do the five biggest mistakes that

Aaron Francis

I see people make. It's great. You know? It's a lot easier.

Nathan Barry

And then especially because the camera reviews change over time.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Nathan Barry

The mistakes really don't. We all we all make the same thing.

Aaron Francis

So help me understand here. So YouTube to the course Mhmm. Good produces money. Right? And so I feel good about that.

Like, this is, you know, we've got a course, got YouTube up here, and then down here, outcomes SQLite course, and this is where the money is. So are you saying that this is in the long term more profitable than this? Skipping over driving them to the course and driving them to email?

Nathan Barry

No. I wanna do both. Okay. Because the thing about email is it lets me change the message to each person Okay. Based on where they're at in their relationship with my content.

Aaron Francis

Okay. And it it lets me segment.

Nathan Barry

It lets me do so many things. So I put out a YouTube video. It goes out to everybody. Right. And so I'm not gonna put out a YouTube video once a month being, like, here's why you should buy, not even SQLite, but, like, whatever else.

Aaron Francis

Right.

Nathan Barry

But if I get you on the email list, then I can say, oh, you came in because you bought SQLite. Now you're on the email list. Let me send you an email about how to create screencasting videos. Mhmm. See if you engage with that.

Aaron Francis

If yes, let me send you down

Nathan Barry

an email sequence that really promotes the screencasting course. Mhmm. So that's one side of it, is the email. You can personalize things so much more. But the other side is the conversion rate.

This jump from YouTube to SQLite probably has a very, very low conversion rate.

Aaron Francis

Gotta be vanishingly small.

Nathan Barry

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Less than 1%. So in your in your mind, it is more profitable to do this, to go from YouTube to email somehow to course somehow because then I can go to second course to third course to fourth course like that. Correct.

Nathan Barry

And and it's not just that it's more profitable. It's that, you're going to get that higher conversion. Right? I'm gonna do both. Right?

Because you're talking about the when it's a direct bid, talk about the SQL course. But what I don't want is someone to say, the only reason I would join your email list is if I bought your product. Because think about someone who comes in.

Aaron Francis

Let's

Nathan Barry

go upstream from this.

Aaron Francis

K.

Nathan Barry

Right? Upstream from YouTube Mhmm. Is a a search.

Aaron Francis

Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

Right? So I have my search query, and that takes me into YouTube. Mhmm. And then you're, like, buy my course, and I'm like, I don't know you.

Aaron Francis

We just met. Yeah.

Nathan Barry

But if you're like, hey. Download this additional resource. I'm like, hell yes. Absolutely. And then the other thing that you could do, if we go back to this hub and spoke model

Aaron Francis

Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

Right, and I'll I'll put in the spokes that we're ignoring

Aaron Francis

for right now. But

Nathan Barry

now it lets me hit this from multiple angles.

Aaron Francis

K. Part of the reason that I think your course launch that

Nathan Barry

that we talked about in the first episode Mhmm. Went so well when you went live on, you know, on x is that you sent an email. Mhmm. And they got that email, and they're like, oh, yeah. Yeah.

I'll look at that later. Or they

Aaron Francis

saw the subject line. Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

But then they were scrolling on x, and they saw you go live, and they're listening to that. And they're like, oh, I actually got that email. And Mhmm. Right? You're hitting it from multiple channels.

It's sort of like retargeting. Mhmm. And so in this case, if we get them on the email list, we can have that steady drumbeat

Aaron Francis

Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

Of content, and we can engage with them, the written content, the YouTube video. What's the thing that YouTube optimizes for most? What do they care about?

Aaron Francis

Watch time. Yeah. Yeah. Who's who's great at watching

Nathan Barry

your content? People that click a link in an email telling them, hey. I made a video on this thing. That's a good point. Go here to watch it.

Yep. Right? They click through with so much, trust and intent that then YouTube now YouTube knows that was direct traffic.

Aaron Francis

Right?

Nathan Barry

And but they'll think about it.

Aaron Francis

It's not gonna penalize you. Yeah. May not help as much, but it's not gonna penalize you. Plus, I get to email people.

Nathan Barry

Mhmm.

Aaron Francis

I gotta email people. I gotta email people. You do have to email people.

Nathan Barry

I don't know

Aaron Francis

if you know, Nathan. Email's important. I gotta email people. Okay. I like that.

Still learning that to this. Yeah. I like that. So the lead magnet, I think because then that goes like this too.

Nathan Barry

Right. Oh, it's gonna look like a flywheel. Look at that.

Aaron Francis

I just invented that. So You're welcome.

Nathan Barry

So in this, I really want well, let's just let's brainstorm some lead magnet ideas. Okay.

Aaron Francis

Just generally speaking, cheat sheets, I feel like, are always good. And databases are, prime for cheat sheets. So so is, screencasting. Cheat sheets, you said, top mistakes or whatever. Yeah.

So I feel like that's another good one. Something that I don't know if it's a good idea or bad idea is some sort of, free access to partially free access to one of the courses.

Nathan Barry

Yeah, it's like with a book doing a sample chapter.

Aaron Francis

Yes exactly. Yep. So I feel like that would that would be easy to do for me. I think my hesitation is somebody that is cold off the street, are they gonna want free access to a course from a guy they don't know about? Partially free access.

Nathan Barry

So the thing that I like about that is it has really, high perceived value. Okay. Right? Because you hey. I took the time to create this whole course

Aaron Francis

and all that,

Nathan Barry

and we have a lesson on exactly the

Aaron Francis

thing that you're dealing with,

Nathan Barry

and I'll give

Aaron Francis

that to you. That's interesting.

Nathan Barry

The other thing that it lets you do is you can have a bunch of jumping off points. Mhmm. Right? Like, you could give away little bits of the course, and someone who's a true like, who's consumed all your content might be like, I could piece together 27% of this course if I, like, opted into everything. Go for it.

Aaron Francis

It's like you're a do not care. That sounds great. Or you

Nathan Barry

can buy it for a hundred

Aaron Francis

and $49 and charge

Nathan Barry

it to your work credit card.

Aaron Francis

Exactly. No problem.

Nathan Barry

So the thing about that is you can get really relevant conversion rates without making a ton of content. Because you could go to you could have 10 of these.

Aaron Francis

Yes. And that is interesting to me because of what you just said where each one could be related Mhmm. To, like, the video that I just put on YouTube.

Nathan Barry

Yeah. And so you could go

Aaron Francis

and find the most relevant thing.

Nathan Barry

Right. Go create a landing page and kit Uh-huh. That's dedicated to that, customize the copy. Uh-huh. So it's like search intent to the video to the exact like, at each point, the intent and the conversion is really high.

And again, just there's 70 lessons in the course. There's going to be more. Who cares? Not care

Aaron Francis

about somebody getting like, a lot this is such a side note. A lot of what people are paying for with courses is organization and structure. So if you can piece everything together, congrats. That's what I did. I had to do that.

So I'm super unconcerned about that.

Nathan Barry

A quick line of especially as we're teaching skills that make money. Mhmm. Generally to people who have money. Patrick McKenzie, who's by Patio eleven, he has this line. This is no, like, payroll department in a company wants to write a payroll check where the memo line says researching free stuff on the Internet.

Aaron Francis

A %. There's there's nothing free about that. I just paid you. There's a hundred and $50,000, 2 hundred thousand dollars. It's worth the time to just read docs when you could have just paid $1.49.

Yes. Totally agree. This this moves me. I like this. Okay.

I like this for a few reasons. Not least of which I don't have to go and invent new things, which these will I think be good in the fullness of time. But right now, I can do I can do that today.

Nathan Barry

Yeah. And I like that. Yeah. That's good.

Aaron Francis

Okay. So that I I do I do like this. I feel compelled by that.

Nathan Barry

So let's put a pin in this because I think we found something good there that we wanna go to. Mhmm. And this is gonna really take us, you know, to the audience size. We've got some other problems that we need to solve. There's a couple other tweaks that I I want you to make here.

K. One, I wanna I wanna double your average order value.

Aaron Francis

Great. I would love that. Let's do that. The thing that we have

Nathan Barry

to do is we have

Aaron Francis

to have multiple price tiers.

Nathan Barry

K. Right? So a single price of $1.49, this is going to 200. Mhmm. I honestly would not I I like the cheaper price of $1.49.

Aaron Francis

I would probably keep that. Mhmm. And then I would add a second price

Nathan Barry

of $25,300.

Aaron Francis

So the struggle I've had with that, and then I've, you know, read Authority. I remember your MicroConf talk. I remember Ryan what's his name? Delk? Yeah.

I remember his MicroConf talk. The the struggle I had with that was coming up with what is the additional tier. Given my moral reservations about putting expert interviews behind a paywall because I asked Kitsy Dodds to donate his time and then I sell it. I'm like, I hate that. What we came up with and it's not very compelling is, it's team pricing.

And the only reason team pricing exists is to anchor the $1.49 as being like incredibly low because I'm comparing it to like, you know, $6.99 on a page.

Nathan Barry

Yeah. Team pricing is great.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Nathan Barry

Right? Because developers tend to, you

Aaron Francis

know, flock together. And we we did this kind of on a lark just for this the pricing psychology of, like, $1.49 is low because it's next to whatever. We sold one team package of 25 seats for like $3. Yeah. We never spoke to them at all.

They came to the site, hit add to cart, and gave us $3. I'm like, we should do more of that. So that's the only tiering we have at this point.

Nathan Barry

So I think going back to switching styles in your content k. If there's anything where you can go in the course, I will teach you how to do this.

Aaron Francis

Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

And then the next tier is I will do it for you. Mhmm. So if there's anything in here where it's like, hey. This makes it much more compelling Mhmm. You where it's gonna be a shortcut.

So an example would be in my first book is the App Design Handbook. Mhmm. And, you know, I had just the book for $39. Mhmm. And then I switched media types.

Mhmm. And I

Aaron Francis

said, you get the book plus training videos Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

For $99. And then because I don't have the the moral hesitations that you do around it, I had expert interviews Right.

Aaron Francis

In the $2.49 package. But the the other thing that

Nathan Barry

I did is I said, hey. What what tools do I use? Mhmm. And let me get all of those in there. Mhmm.

Right? So I had the cheat sheets. I had the, hey. Here's the Photoshop templates that I use back when we all used Photoshop.

Aaron Francis

Good days. But, you know, I

Nathan Barry

was just saying, hey. As a professional who does this in the in industry all the time Mhmm. What are all the tricks of the trade

Aaron Francis

Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

And, those things that I can put in there?

Aaron Francis

So I like that where I thought you were going is how can I lump in some of my time? Because I don't wanna

Nathan Barry

Yeah. I don't wanna get on that.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. I did that with screencasting. There's a $2.99 and then for a thousand dollars, you get a one hour hands on. And a thousand dollars is awesome. But then you got to schedule these hands on.

I didn't have very many, but I had, you know, five and every one of them it's like, am I bringing enough to like justify it? You know both that this isn't worth my time anymore and I don't know that this is worth your money. And so I I felt hesitant about that, but adding on non time bound things, I think is doable. I would need to I can't do it off the top, figure out what that might be.

Nathan Barry

Yeah. So every time I've implemented tiered pricing, I've noticed at least a 30%, if not a 50% increase in revenue.

Aaron Francis

Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

In my own personal stuff, it's been a two x increase, especially when you're in a market that is not price sensitive.

Aaron Francis

They're spending other people's money.

Nathan Barry

They're spending other people's money.

Aaron Francis

And

Nathan Barry

so give them the ability to do that.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. To pivot very slightly, I think bundling, and that's that comes back to this, I think bundling could be, a way to achieve Right. Similar ends. So let's Do we do we have another sheet or have you ever done a three sheet? Can I do a three sheet?

Nathan Barry

We've never done a three sheet,

Aaron Francis

but we might as well. Can I flip or should we leave these out? Let's flip this one. Okay. So let me give you, wow.

First three sheeter. Yeah.

Nathan Barry

I don't

Aaron Francis

know if that's good or bad. Okay. So we've got we've got a screen excuse my doctor's handwriting. Screencasting over here. Standalone course.

Right? Flagship course. Teaches the philosophy of how to do it. How to record, how to edit, how to prepare yourself, how to teach people. What it doesn't teach is how to use Adobe Premiere or DaVinci Resolve or ScreenFlow.

So I think and now with the help of Steve, who's a proper video guy

Nathan Barry

Right.

Aaron Francis

We're gonna have a course on Premiere and a course on Resolve and a course on ScreenFlow. Such that you buy what is that? $2.99? Such that you buy this for $2.99 and then some combination of these Of the platforms. For 99 each.

And then maybe we say you get a discount or whatever. But like this increases our average order value because you can say, I want to learn philosophically, how do I teach people? How do I get comfortable on video? Also, nuts and bolts, how do I use Adobe Premiere?

Nathan Barry

Yeah. And then in your checkout flow, you could

Aaron Francis

have it exactly where you're you're on

Nathan Barry

the sales page or say, hey. Buy this whole bundle. Mhmm.

Aaron Francis

And they say, no. I want just this.

Nathan Barry

Mhmm. And you're like, okay. Cool. And they buy it, and then they say, hey. Do you wanna upgrade to one of these?

And they're like, yeah. What the hell? Yeah. You know? Or and then you can tailor that pitch Mhmm.

Because you're like, alright.

Aaron Francis

You're gonna learn everything you need in all of this.

Nathan Barry

And then you're gonna find out that you actually You want

Aaron Francis

to know keyboard shortcuts and panel locations and how to execute philosophically, how to execute tactically in these and they could, you know, you could go on. You could do Camtasia, you could do Vscript, you could do like and so I feel like this is a model that I think we can execute on SQLite as well because you've got here's SQLite the database, here's its Rails implementation. Here's its Laravel. Here's its Django. And so this becomes one, I think one ninety nine and this becomes 99.

And so, like, you learn everything you need to know about the pure vanilla SQLite. And then you're a Rails guy? Great. Learn how to use that in Rails, all of its quirks, foibles, flaws, Rails caching, Rails active record, all of that stuff. And that takes the cart price up.

Nathan Barry

I think I think that's good. I'm hesitating, and I'm trying to figure out why it's because of this.

Aaron Francis

It's a

Nathan Barry

time to create. Mhmm. Because I've I've seen enough course businesses to know that you could have three, maybe four courses total and hit this 2,000,000.

Aaron Francis

Like, so why do I why am I making 40 of them? Okay. Alright. Here here's my rebuttal. K.

I see I see and I I rebut. Steve could do this one. Steve could do all of these because he's the actual expert. I can't teach Rails. I don't know the first thing about Rails.

Nathan Barry

Mhmm.

Aaron Francis

So a guest? Yeah. I could teach this one. So we'll put AF next to that one. Django, I don't know the first thing.

So the things I'm on the hook for, I would actually probably do ScreenFlow, are these two. Yeah. That is a rebuttal with embedded in it a problem. Now I'm managing guest instructors,

Nathan Barry

which there's a lot like, you can build a great business off of that. There are ways that this could go terribly wrong

Aaron Francis

Sure. Where you

Nathan Barry

can say, oh, let me forever give you a revenue split on this course and all of that. And you might really regret that.

Aaron Francis

Right.

Nathan Barry

Or you could say, hey. I will pay you $10,000 Mhmm. To help produce this with me. We'll do all the back end and all of that.

Aaron Francis

Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

And, you know, as you build your audience Mhmm. I'll help amplify in a, b, and c.

Aaron Francis

I like that. So we eat some of the risk for some certainty. Yeah. And hopefully, that person gets a chunk of change that they're thrilled about. They don't have to market a course, and we can also throw some of our, distribution or reach behind their personal brand even though it falls under our course platform.

Yeah.

Nathan Barry

So there's a lot of ways you can solve that, but I think you're right to to worry about, like, oh, that. Mhmm. There there are some, you know, potholes in

Aaron Francis

that journey. These, I'm not worried about because it's Steve, and he's my business partner. So that seems great.

Nathan Barry

And if you have course creation down to a science, like, there's a lot of things where okay. Say, on one

Aaron Francis

of these more particular ones,

Nathan Barry

say, three years

Aaron Francis

from now, we're like, actually, we don't want these individual ones. Mhmm. But you spent, like, a month Right.

Nathan Barry

On each you know, you learned a bunch. You you're now better at Mhmm. Course creation. You've made plenty of money. Like, it will work.

I would just

Aaron Francis

really encourage you to think as

Nathan Barry

you scale the business Mhmm. To think beyond scaling products to scale revenue. K. Because you're in a high leverage business.

Aaron Francis

Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

And so if we look at the the equation here

Aaron Francis

Well, let's look at the equation. So the equation is what? Number of products.

Nathan Barry

I don't know that it's even number of products.

Aaron Francis

Oh, I started off strong. Confident that it was number of products times. So we gotta re we gotta salvage this. Editors, help me out here. What's the equation?

Nathan Barry

Well, let me think about it. I think it's

Aaron Francis

I mean, even if we just go,

Nathan Barry

let's just go audience.

Aaron Francis

Oh, shoot. He started a new line.

Nathan Barry

And then we've got a conversion.

Aaron Francis

Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

And a I mean, maybe the price comes first. Right?

Aaron Francis

Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

I I didn't write it as an equation.

Aaron Francis

I know. If that's the timeline. Yeah. That's okay. That's good.

Yeah. That's good. Yeah. That's perfect. Much better.

Nathan Barry

So in this, like, if we can figure out how to grow this audience to, 50,000 Mhmm. On the email, which we know we can do.

Aaron Francis

We know we can do.

Nathan Barry

Because it's

Aaron Francis

been done. It's been done before.

Nathan Barry

And then if we can go from a and, you know, I'm making things up and we're not gonna do live math, but a 2% to a 4% conversion rate. I get it.

Aaron Francis

Math. That's doubled. That's doubled. That's great.

Nathan Barry

I wasn't gonna do that.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Barry

And then if we, you know, price, this should actually be, I'm gonna say ARPU.

Aaron Francis

K.

Nathan Barry

So average revenue per user.

Aaron Francis

Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

But then if you could take that from $1.49 to, you know, say $2.50 Mhmm. Right? Then these are the the factors that we

Aaron Francis

can play with, and you didn't actually touch product quantity.

Nathan Barry

Nah. Who wrote that?

Aaron Francis

So that's that's where my brain went was immediately I wrote products because I'm thinking, how do I go here? And I go straight to make more products, bundle more, sell more things.

Nathan Barry

Yeah. I think that's

Aaron Francis

Skip that quite a bit.

Nathan Barry

Well, so let's stay here for a second. Mhmm. So average order value, there's two aspects of it. There, you know, there there's the average purchase that we're making.

Aaron Francis

Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

And then from there, if we're moving on, then we've got the lifetime value.

Aaron Francis

Right.

Nathan Barry

And so I feel like you jumped to increasing lifetime value before you increased average purchase price.

Aaron Francis

I see.

Nathan Barry

Now they go hand in hand. Mhmm. But, like, you can get really good at cross selling. Actually, on that note, have you done much cross selling between these?

Aaron Francis

Zero. Okay.

Nathan Barry

So that's the thing where you're like you're getting into a strategy that involves, okay, we're gonna get great at cross selling. Mhmm. And it's like, well, that's not yet a strength. Mhmm.

Aaron Francis

So maybe let's not it's not yet a weakness either. It could be. That's right. Yeah. I think this in my mind is the desire for, like completion and like empire building.

Right? I want to have this. Yeah.

Nathan Barry

And I

Aaron Francis

don't know if that's good or bad, but this to me feels like, wow, look at that. Look at all those arrows and stuff. That feels good. I think the easiest or maybe the the first thing to do is work on that. Yeah.

Or maybe work on that.

Nathan Barry

Well, they go hand in hand. Yeah. Right? Because we are creating more content than we teach on YouTube. We're documenting in public what we do.

It builds the audience. It talks about the course.

Aaron Francis

Right.

Nathan Barry

Right? You don't truly put things like, I will only do this,

Aaron Francis

and then I will only do that.

Nathan Barry

Well, actually, maybe let's think about the order of operations relative to this funnel.

Aaron Francis

K.

Nathan Barry

So if we're going here, the action step is to get to a second price here. K. And so we wanna get to, I believe $2.49. K. But you should play with it.

Aaron Francis

K. So we wanna get that second tier. The second thing is we

Nathan Barry

come over to audience here

Aaron Francis

Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

Is we wanna get really good at converting from email

Aaron Francis

to YouTube, From email to YouTube. YouTube to email. The inverse of that. Yeah. I was like, you're not introducing a new thing, are you?

Okay. I'm with you. Yep. Driving YouTube Fifty seven minutes in. I'm not gonna lose.

Out of luck driving YouTube to email. Okay. I think this is worth the price of the trip to Boise. Okay. I think this is that is obvious Mhmm.

But I'm not doing it. Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

And I didn't think about it. Yeah. So this is because we're going coming back to our equation or funnel or whatever is this is the audience side of it.

Aaron Francis

Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

Because then you keep doing what you're doing on you on YouTube Mhmm. And then just say, okay. Now I'm gonna get really good at it. Especially because we have a way to do it Mhmm. With the sample content.

Mhmm.

Aaron Francis

And a way to do it, and this is what I'm gonna keep

Nathan Barry

coming back to, that doesn't require more time to create or making new products. Yeah. I

Aaron Francis

agree. I agree. And that's why this strategy is so compelling to me because it leverages work I've already done. Mhmm. And if my limiting reagent is time to create, which I believe it is, this does not affect that.

Nathan Barry

Right. Okay. Now downstream, like,

Aaron Francis

I would really focus on these two. K. And then downstream, I would focus on, cross selling. Right. Which is interesting, and I'm curious from your perspective.

These are not related. Screencasting and databases, they're just not related. You can argue that some portion of developers wants to screencast. It's I mean, it's gotta be like, just that part right there. Whereas screencasting and you know Adobe Premiere is like Right.

So that's where I come back to like, this makes sense to me in like a cross sell bundle, up sell whatever. In fact, SQLite plus our next course, which is Postgres, which is a different database, even those make sense to me. Like maybe use Postgres at work and SQLite on a side project. That makes a lot of sense to me. I don't know how I get here.

I'm not saying it's not doable. I'm saying, do you think that makes sense?

Nathan Barry

I think you can cross sell a lot more things than you might originally think. Okay. The example that I'll use is my first two books were about design. Mhmm. IOS design and web app design.

Mhmm. And pre you know, that's that's this, PostgreSQL lite level. Like, it's a different flavor, but like

Aaron Francis

Six zero one. Yeah. Yep.

Nathan Barry

And then I wrote Authority, which is about, you know, how to build an audience and all of that. I cross sold a decent amount. I I don't know the numbers. Let's say it was 20%.

Aaron Francis

Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

It it made good money. So there's a a decent amount

Aaron Francis

of people who

Nathan Barry

follow you because of the brand. They they wanna pay attention to you. But what I'm wondering, bigger picture, you really wanna make more products. Mhmm. And as much as I'm trying to talk you out of

Aaron Francis

some aspect of that Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

Like, I think you imagine this brand getting to six, eight plus products. Right? Mhmm.

Aaron Francis

So I I imagine three, four, five flagships with three, four, five each compendiums. That's kind of how I think about it.

Nathan Barry

So I think that you could totally get there.

Aaron Francis

Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

I would just try to, like, get really good at some of these other things before you increase the footprint.

Aaron Francis

So before I do any of this, try to cross sell these two that already exist.

Nathan Barry

Yeah. And I think that you're cross selling when you do this, it's on hard mode. Yeah. And I think that'll be really good for the learnings. Yeah.

Because you can see, okay, what actually worked? And do it as a test. Uh-huh. Because what you're actually doing is saying, hey, I need to drive LTV long term

Aaron Francis

Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

And I

Aaron Francis

need to get good at cross selling. Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

And so I'm gonna use the things that I have, cross sell what I can Mhmm. And, and build that skill.

Aaron Francis

Mhmm. How do you see this happening in like tactics? So people somebody signed up because they want to take SQLite course. What's the move to get them to even think about screencasting?

Nathan Barry

Yeah. What I like to do is to send some automated emails that include talking about screencasting. And so I'm it might be a single one.

Aaron Francis

Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

Pat Flynn does this really well where

Aaron Francis

That's a name I haven't heard in a long time.

Nathan Barry

Yeah. So he has a lot of

Aaron Francis

content around building an online business. Yeah.

Nathan Barry

And then one of those emails is all about podcasting. Hey. Do you want to start a podcast? And if you click and engage with that, then he has you tagged as interested in podcasting, and then he will pause the main sequence and send you emails about how to start a podcast and going from there, and that goes into his course. So you're really looking to gather some intent and interest.

You can also just run a poll. Right?

Aaron Francis

Yeah. And embed the poll in the email and say, hey. What kinds of

Nathan Barry

content would you like to see from me? Mhmm.

Aaron Francis

You know, more about screencasting, more about this. What's the biggest problem that you know? Or, like, what's the next skill that you're trying to learn? So I would play with things like that. So the Pat thing makes me think of a potential angle that I'll be curious your opinion on.

I am on camera teaching all of these videos. Yeah. Here, I'm teaching you how to be on camera and teach videos. And so I wonder if, like, tying those together somehow, like, hey, you bought the SQLite course, you enjoyed it, hopefully. I also have a course teaching you how to make courses just like that, like the one that you just watched and paid for.

You know, click here or whatever whatever whatever.

Nathan Barry

Like, you could put a lesson at the end of the SQLite course or in it somewhere as well. Right? You can cross link.

Aaron Francis

Because if you're gonna get Oh, back up. I could put a lesson in the SQLite course that is functionally a cross sell to the screencasting course. And you could

Nathan Barry

tie it in really well. Right? You don't truly understand these concepts until you can teach them. And so let me show you how to teach this so that, you know, you apply it at work or all that because

Aaron Francis

you're not gonna

Nathan Barry

be like, oh, I got this great Aaron Francis video. Let me explain it, and I actually can't explain it well enough.

Aaron Francis

Literally never crossed my mind to use this course. I thought I had to go through email, but I could potentially use this course to talk about other and, you know, vice versa. Yeah. The other thing that I wanna see

Nathan Barry

you do is as we're jumping around a bunch, but as we think about the brand, I'd love to see you spend time on the big picture brand and how these things come together. And then say something like like, make a video that is, this is the Aaron Francis content business master plan. Mhmm. Here's the courses that I wanna make. Here's how I want to link people between them.

Here's the order that I wanna do it in. Mhmm. And think of it like it's the combination of your live stream Mhmm. Product launch on x Mhmm. And Elon Musk's like this

Aaron Francis

is my master plan for Tesla. And I was like, first we're gonna have

Nathan Barry

this product, and then we're gonna level it up into a consumer level sedan and and on from there. We're just tell people what you're doing, and then that gives you another opportunity to cross sell because they're like, I didn't even know you've had this.

Aaron Francis

And that is reality. People are like, oh, you have a screencasting course? Like, yeah. You've got the best domain ever and you didn't even know it exists. Yeah.

That's very real. And so what you're saying there, if I'm if I'm hearing you correctly, is, zooming so zooming out a little bit to the level that is above this, which is the Aaron Francis empire, and use some behind the scenes content to grow the audience, but also grow all of these, in their cohesion.

Nathan Barry

Yeah. I think that you're not quite clear on what the brand is long term. Yep. You're, like, 90% there. Mhmm.

But requiring yourself to teach it, to explain it, it's gonna force you to get clear and then they'll get the audience to be really clear.

Aaron Francis

What does a clear brand sound like to you? So if you had to to describe, me as if I had a clear brand, What would a crispy brand statement be? Because I don't even know if I fully understand Yeah. What that could sound like. Or pick somebody else.

Pick, you know, pick Ali Abdaal or Amy Hoyer. Pick somebody else who you feel like has a crispy brand. I think it's hard to do, but so if we if we if we come into it from the perspective of we're just trying to explain what we're doing and where

Nathan Barry

we're going. Mhmm. One is the it's about me as the creator. Mhmm. And that would be like, I'm passionate about these things and I teach everything I know.

And k. And so and so as that brand, I'm expecting like, okay. I'm gonna get training content on whatever Aaron is passionate about. In in this example, I could say something like, you know, you're coming in, then you're gonna learn the content necessary to become a great developer. Mhmm.

And I'm gonna teach that to you in multiple levels. First, I I love teaching the tactics and the specifics. But then I actually think that the meta skills are just as important. And so in these other courses, I'm gonna teach you how to teach. Because as you show up day to day in your job as a developer, you actually have to teach and advocate for your ideas and explain and be clear.

And that's why I have Screencasting.com. Mhmm. And then in addition to that, I have this other thing. So it's not like we're getting down to one sentence of, like, this is the tagline. But you're explaining the through line of why you chose to create these two courses.

Aaron Francis

Right. Which are seemingly very disparate.

Nathan Barry

Yeah. Yeah. And so you're getting into, you know, that idea of, like, this is where I'm trying to go with the brand long term. And so this is a a place to focus on being clear over being clever. Right.

And so it's just like,

Aaron Francis

tell me. You know? I I think, like,

Nathan Barry

a takeaway that I'd love for you to have is the, the couple hundred word explanation of where are you going with this brand? What do you wanna make and why? And then I think you'll see those lines, and you'll start to see, okay, where's the audience overlap? Mhmm. One of the most powerful exercises I did early in my creator career is so I had started out just trying to get like, worked on things that were interesting

Aaron Francis

Mhmm. Where it helped me learn to code, helped

Nathan Barry

me learn design, marketing, whatever. And so I ended up with, an iPhone app for kids with special needs. I had, like, all of these different a book about this, you know, a whole bunch of things. And I drew a Venn diagram of the audience overlap. Mhmm.

And then I got rid of everything that didn't have some level of audience overlap.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Nathan Barry

And that helped me have find clarity of what the through line was. Mhmm. Now I think you really love these different aspects of I do. Of the business.

Aaron Francis

Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

And so I'm not saying, oh, because there's only 10% overlap. You gotta kill one and double down on the other. But what you can do is really find what that through line is and spend time with it, and then figure out how you explain that to your audience. Because they'll they'll see the passion and the authenticity from you and what you're creating, and they'll follow you through that. You just have to give them the the tools for it.

Aaron Francis

I totally understand that. I think I'm at the point where you were creating, an app for special needs kids where you're like, I can do this. I'm interested in this. I'm going to do it. And I feel like I'm currently in an expansion phase of, like, I can do this.

I can do this. I can do this. And I need to, at some point, probably soon move into a contraction or consolidation phase where I'm like, this is the ethos. This is the brand statement, and here are the things that align with it and the reasons why they align. And here's the thing that's out here that no longer aligns.

Nathan Barry

Yeah. And then especially because you

Aaron Francis

have a business partner.

Nathan Barry

Yeah. Right? You guys need to have a shared lens through which you're making decisions.

Aaron Francis

Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

Because otherwise, you're gonna get to some point where, you know, you're saying, I really think we need to launch, you know, the next Right. The seventh specific course or, you know, video editing platform course. And he's saying, like, no, actually, I think the data says that we

Aaron Francis

should launch, you know, Postgres Right.

Nathan Barry

Right or this other one, and you need to have that shared vision of of where you're going. Mhmm. Otherwise at some point it's gonna lead to conflict.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This this is a place I feel murky and so that that is something that needs to be that needs to be clarified, especially as we're moving towards putting all of this under my personal brand, which is shared with Steve, but this this needs to be identified.

Nathan Barry

Yeah. And the thing that I love about the way you've built your brand so far is you get to do this. You get to explore this question in public.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. And it just it just adds to the brand. It does. It really does. Yeah.

Nathan Barry

So I think as we take a step back, we've covered a lot of

Aaron Francis

ground here. Yeah.

Nathan Barry

So today, we're at 350,000 Mhmm. A year in revenue. I I think it's totally possible to hit 1,000,000, next year

Aaron Francis

Mhmm.

Nathan Barry

And then the year after that to hit 2,000,000. We've proven with people like Kenzie Dodds, Wes Bos, this is a path that's been done before. Right? And so we can learn from them. Now in all of these different problems Mhmm.

The ones that I'm thinking about the most are

Aaron Francis

how do we get

Nathan Barry

really good at the audience size Mhmm. And then how do we get really good at increasing that order value. Mhmm. And then the other thing that I love about it is the clear brand

Aaron Francis

that we're talking about is really gonna bring you back to that lifetime value.

Nathan Barry

Because if you can get that cross selling long term down to a great place, then let's say down the road, we bring a paid acquisition. And you're like God willing. Yes. That's something where you're like, wait. I thought I could only pay a dollar per subscriber, but now because I can cross sell,

Aaron Francis

I could pay $4 per subscriber. Like, all of a sudden Right. I could pay the The money machine goes brr at that point. Yeah. Exactly.

There's

Nathan Barry

all kinds of things.

Aaron Francis

This feels doable. This feels doable.

Nathan Barry

I like it.

Aaron Francis

This this feels doable. I want to do this and I think in time that will come. Postgres is coming soon, but, like, these guys, will come at some point, but I think this is the most important thing going from YouTube to email. To email, I feel like is the most important and and easiest thing

Nathan Barry

for me to

Aaron Francis

do, which is great. I love it when those two come together. And then this will be a good adventure cross selling to figure out, alright, you wanna you say you wanna do this. Let's figure out how to do it now. Right.

Don't don't spend three months building stuff. Do it now and see if it works. I like that. Sounds good. Alright.

Let's take

Nathan Barry

a seat and, yeah. Chat through the the final details. Okay.

Aaron Francis

So you made the trip up to Boise? I did. I did. And I got three sheets out of it.

Nathan Barry

So it's totally worth it. So what first, let's just talk about like what you're coming in with and then what some of those takeaways are.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. So I think I was coming in with a lot of raw materials. Like I think things are going well.

Nathan Barry

Oh yeah.

Aaron Francis

I do believe that. And what I needed was a little bit of, organization, direction, tactics, next steps, that sort of thing, because I feel and I I imagine this is common. I feel in the creator space, it's like I can do everything. I can make anything. The question is where do I spend my finite time?

And leaving, I feel like I have a few things that will move the needle, primarily this whole YouTube to email thing, and then figuring out the cross selling. I feel like those will move the needle and I have a path forward to like, start to get a flywheel going. Cause right now everything is done through sheer force of will. Yeah.

Nathan Barry

And

Aaron Francis

if I can get to a point where it's a flywheel, I can breathe a little bit. Yeah. I like it.

Nathan Barry

So as you're going into action items, you're talking about YouTube to email. That was when you said that of like, can I use the course material? And I realized how it tied in with time to create as

Aaron Francis

a problem. The, you know, the sure number

Nathan Barry

of products It just, it made so much sense to me. I love that. It feels great. What are some of the other, like, things that you're gonna implement? The,

Aaron Francis

the brand discovery thing, I think is gonna be pretty important as we continue to increase our footprint.

Nathan Barry

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

We need to have a guiding light and guiding principle, not only for ourselves, but for the audience so they can see this is the ethos that, that is infused into everything that we do. So we'll have to that'll be a fun one for Steve and I to work on. And I think the outcome there is going to be a statement like this is our, this is our brand statement. We don't ever have to share it, but we probably will. But like for us to know, this is our brand statement.

Nathan Barry

There's another creator, Tim Grahl. Who's been a guest on the podcast before, and he put out this video, he runs story grid, which is teaching people how to become great writers. And, I don't remember the title of the video or something, but the gist is like, this is my evil plan to take over the world with story grid. And he just like walks through, this is

Aaron Francis

what I'm doing. I'm gonna do this and

Nathan Barry

then this, and here's how it's all gonna work and all that. And on one hand, you're like, you can't show how all of this is made. And, but he's like, people trust me more now.

Aaron Francis

Yep. Now they know.

Nathan Barry

Yeah. Here's exactly where I'm going.

Aaron Francis

And like the, the empire thing, it's a good shtick. So I can I can ride that shtick for a long time? Like, this is how I'm gonna build my empire. And it's like, oh, that's kinda fun. I like that.

So, yeah, I think that'll be a fun exercise for us to do.

Nathan Barry

I like it. The other thing that I want you to do is to really think about what could be an additional price here, on the products. And I would just ask your audience.

Aaron Francis

So I

Nathan Barry

would just send an email to everyone who bought Simplelight and say, hey. What's something that's not video Right. That I could include

Aaron Francis

And it's not consulting.

Nathan Barry

Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Here are the constraints. Right.

And what's something that I can include that would add a lot of value to this course. Yeah. You

Aaron Francis

know, and throw out

Nathan Barry

a few ideas and just say, hit reply. And let me know.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. I like that. This is the reason to send an email. If reason to send it all comes back to that.

Nathan Barry

Exactly. We covered a lot of good ground.

Aaron Francis

We did.

Nathan Barry

This was great. So if people wanna follow you in this journey Yeah. Because one thing that, everyone has learned from this is that you will

Aaron Francis

share this whole I'm gonna share the whole thing. So yeah. Follow me. Follow me. Follow me.

Yeah. Where should people go to follow you? Yeah. I think, most real time updates are gonna be on, x.com/aarondfrancis. You could also go to aaronfrancis.com.

And, you know, while you're there, why don't you sign up for my newsletter? Like, get on my email list.

Nathan Barry

I love it.

Aaron Francis

How was that?

Nathan Barry

That was good. Thanks.

Aaron Francis

Perfect. Well, Aaron, thanks for

Nathan Barry

making the trip out.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Nathan Barry

If you enjoyed this episode, go to the YouTube channel. Just search billion dollar creator. Go ahead and subscribe. Make sure to like the video and drop a comment. I'd love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were and also who else we should have on the show.