Welcome, friend.

The title of this particular gem:

How To Rescue a Dying Course Business – What’s Changing In The Era Of AI & How To Build Back Stronger

If this made your ears prick up, you’re likely staring at some rather depressing numbers in your dashboard:

Traffic that’s fallen off a cliff
An email list that’s gone into hibernation
Course sales less than 50% of 2022 levels

If I had to guess, you’re probably working harder than ever while making less money than you were a few years ago.

Is this you?

(If not, and you don’t want to receive this series, you can click here to opt out. Don’t worry, you’ll stay on the list, just won’t get the rest of this series.)

One entrepreneur recently told me:

“I didn’t realise how great 2022 was. All I did was create viral content and sell courses. In 2024, I worked twice as much and made way less.”

I can assure you that what you’re experiencing isn’t a personal failing.

It’s not because you’ve suddenly lost your expertise or no-one’s interested in you any more.

Nor is it the case that you just “got lucky” back in 2018 and your luck has just run out.Nope.

What’s happening right now is the biggest structural shift in the online education space since, well… since online education became a thing.How do I know this?

Three reasons…

Firstly, I’ve watched this unfold in my own multi-million dollar education business, StoryLearning.com.

Secondly (and more importantly), I’ve had a front-row seat to these changes impacting the whole industry – in the last few years, I’ve been a mentor and advisor to over 200 online education businesses – everything from seven-figure household names, to solo educators running niche operations from their kitchen tables.

Thirdly, I’m fortunate to be friends with many of the biggest industry names, and they all corroborate precisely 100% of what I’m about to tell you.

And the pattern is as clear as ketchup on a white shirt…

More has changed in the last 12-24 months than in the previous 10 years combined.

Lower response
Traffic vanishing into thin air
Sales down
Shrinking margins

But if you’re panicking at this stage, let me remind you:

This isn’t the end of your business… It’s the beginning of a better one.

Just so long as you’re willing to adapt.

The most important thing to realise is this:

Business as usual is not an option.

If you keep trying to force the old model to work, you’ll spend the next few years fighting an increasingly uphill battle. But…

If you embrace evolution in your business model, you have the possibility to create an even better version of what’s come before, and thrive over the next 5-10 years.

Here’s what it will look like:

You’ll have smaller, more engaged audiences paying premium prices for transformational experiences.
You’ll work fewer hours while making more profit.
You’ll build a more sustainable, defensible business that can’t be disrupted by the next algorithm change or AI breakthrough.

All of this is up for grabs.

As long as you’re up for the challenge.

In this series, I’m going to walk you through exactly what’s changed, why it happened, and most importantly, what you need to do about it.Not in some theoretical way, but with tactics I’ve been helping real entrepreneurs apply in their own businesses – including my own – in the last year.

This is your roadmap back to profitability and freedom.

And if this all sounds a bit daunting, let me tell you something I told my friend Tiago Forte recently…

What if everything you’ve done up to now was just the warmup act… and the main event was yet to come?

Let’s get started…

The End of Easy Traffic & Passive Income

Back in 2013, when I started StoryLearning, making passive income was my North Star.

Makes sense, if you consider my situation in life…

I was stuck in a job I hated, working for a boss I couldn’t stand, living in a country I didn’t want to be in.

So naturally, the idea of making money while sleeping on a beach in Thailand seemed rather appealing…

2013 Olly in Egypt. Haven’t changed a bit.

I went all-in on passive income

Went full Pat Flynn on my life.

I built everything around affiliate offers and automated email sequences. I created a huge SEO operation, an army of affiliates, wrote books… stuff that would keep delivering eyeballs and printing cash without me lifting a finger.

Fast forward a few years and my little blog-turned-business was into seven figures in annual profit, with my amazing team running everything.

Traffic poured in, email funnels converted, and courses sold on autopilot.

I barely had to show up.

I’d built the dream online business.

I spent my days taking extended walks in the hills of Hobbitshire (a place of legend that I call home, deep in the foothills of the English countryside), chilling on the beach, and taking flying lessons, because… why the hell not?

Absolutely not posing. Really.

Unfortunately the ‘old model’ that built online education businesses like mine and yours, based on cheap attention, easy traffic and automated marketing slowly began collapsing under the weight of new realities.

The landscape was shifting.

First, I began to hear from friends whose business was crippled by Google’s HCU in late 2023.

Then, I noticed our own search traffic starting to dip.

Finally, I began hearing tales of woe from all around the internet, including entrepreneurs I mentor. In some cases, despite growing the overall business substantially, the growth was entirely neutralised by a corresponding drop in Google traffic.I wrote an email series called “How a 7-figure Business Dies” and got a barrage of emails back from seasoned entrepreneurs who told me:

“Olly, WTF – you’ve just described my exact situation.”

Contrary to what most people think this isn’t just because of AI or the economy, it’s a structural shift across the board in three main areas.

So let me walk you through exactly what’s changed and why.

1. Google Search Traffic Changed

If you’ve been relying on SEO for your traffic, you might already know where this is going.But even if search hasn’t been a big part of your business, it’s worth paying attention because what’s happening right now represents one of the biggest structural shifts in how people find and engage with educational content online.In late 2023, I began seeing a consistent set of patterns across the businesses I work with, as well as with my own business StoryLearning.ChatGPT hit the mainstream and all of a sudden, the foundations of how people search for information shifted.Google panicked and responded with a slew of changes to stay competitive, including the rollout of AI-powered summaries at the top of search results, but also a set of other changes the moved away from curated information on blogs and towards community-based content, like Reddit.

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, what used to be a clean, ranked list of organic results is now:

AI-generated answers at the top giving quick responses
Followed by a wall of ads taking up prime real estate
Washed down with a mix of Reddit threads and user generated forum answers

All of this means the carefully crafted content you spent 10+ years making, that used to have a prime page-one ranking, is now dead and buried on pages 2, 3, or 4 of the search results.

To put it another way – the internet took a nosedive, and we’re all left picking up the pieces, trying to figure out where things went sideways.As a result of this, I saw three distinct outcomes play out among different businesses:

Total freefall: Some businesses saw their organic traffic fall off a cliff. I’m talking 90–95%+ losses, practically overnight. These are established websites, often with years of content, strong backlink profiles, and steady historical rankings.
Major decline: Other businesses, like my own company StoryLearning have seen traffic drop by about 40-50%, slowly, over a period of about 18 months, beginning in October 2023.
Anomalous growth: Bizarrely, a small minority of businesses have actually seen their search traffic stay constant, or even increase. Yes, they exist. And no, I can’t explain why.

Why are a handful of businesses surging while the majority crater or fall off at best?

Honestly, no one really knows for sure but it is clearly linked to how Google is redefining “quality” and how radically they’ve changed the search experience since late 2023.

If you’ve never relied heavily on SEO, you might not have noticed much difference.But if you’ve built your funnel around organic search, you’re going to need to rethink your traffic strategy fast.

This is not a temporary dip, it’s a brave new world.

So buckle your seatbelt because the rules of traffic have changed.

(Oh, and if you’re sitting on the sidelines thinking, “I’m okay. I get all my traffic from YouTube”… not so fast! The internet has the loyalty of a rented gun. Smart entrepreneurs out there will consider this the canary in the coalmine that tells you the air’s getting thin before you stop breathing. Whatever’s barreling down the track next won’t send a telegram first.)

2. Course Sales Are Declining

When it comes to the world of online education, we are seeing something that many would have considered unthinkable just a couple of years ago:

Course sales are declining.

Yes, you heard that right…

But before you start shaking your fist at the sky and cursing AI or the general state of the economy, let’s talk about what’s really going on here, because the picture is more nuanced than it first looks.

For most course businesses, front-end sales are still doing just fine.

People are still finding your website (SEO issues aside). They’re opting in. They’re even buying that first product you offer (assuming you’re writing proper email sequences.).

So far, so good.

But it’s the back end — the place where the real money is made — that’s starting to wobble.

The foundation of many education businesses is regular backend email promotions, selling digital products from your catalogue to your list.

There, we’re seeing general response down up to 50% on pre-2023 levels.

People just ain’t buying like they used to.

For legacy course businesses that rely heavily on these internal promotions to drive revenue every month, this is starting to become a real problem.

So, what’s driving this shift?

Contrary to what many are saying I don’t think that there’s any kind of fatigue with courses as a format per se.

People are still buying courses…but how they’re buying is shifting and that’s what’s causing the problem.

Your customers still love to learn.

And when they see a course that solves a specific problem they’re struggling with, they’ll happily reach for their credit card, especially when that course is attached to an educator they know, like and trust.

But there’s a growing realisation that buying course after course doesn’t actually get results.

While the success stories are there, and we all have great testimonials from our students who did actually apply what we’ve taught, course completion rates have always been shockingly low (sometimes as low as 5%).

Now that people are finally realising that “more information” doesn’t solve their problem, they are becoming more discerning.

It’s not just information they’re looking for now.

It’s genuine results.

“But wasn’t this always the case?” you ask.

Yes.

But in the course space, AI is now giving people entirely new options for learning new things.

Take my space, language learning, for example…

For years, if you wanted to learn to speak Spanish, you’d buy a Spanish course, maybe even hire a tutor to practise with and spend hours watching videos, studying grammar, and doing structured drills.

Now you can literally speak Spanish with an AI, using a tool like Langua or TeacherAI.You can now practise speaking as much as you want, whenever you want, in real time, for $20-30/mth – something that costs $30-50/hr with a human tutor.

Is it the exact same experience as with a human?

No, but that’s not the point.

It’s creating new options.

Would you still buy that 13th Spanish course if you can just grab your phone and practise speaking Spanish instead?

So while AI isn’t destroying course businesses, it is giving people more choices.And in certain niches, those new options are proving faster, easier, or more effective, especially for things that are practice-based or benefit from repetition.

So yes, people are still buying but the way they buy is shifting beneath our feet.

3. Email Marketing Is Getting Harder

When it comes to building relationships and making sales, especially in education businesses, email is the single most powerful asset we’ve got.

Was true in 2005.

Still true in 2025.

But lately, something’s shifted.

Across all the businesses I work with, we’re seeing a general decline in engagement, and I don’t just mean that open rates have tanked or that everything’s landing in spam.

It’s more subtle than that.

People just aren’t responding in the same way.

They’re still opening. They’re still on your list. It’s not that unsubscribe rates are spiking or emails are going unread.In fact, on paper, the numbers often look fine.But the emotional bandwidth, the spark, the enthusiasm? It’s off. You feel it in the replies, the click-throughs and the general energy of the list.So why is this happening?

Well, back in 2020–2021, right in the heart of Covid, there was an explosion of email activity:

Struggling traditional businesses turning to email for the first time
‘Offline’ teachers starting to create content online
The rise of the editorial newsletter — Morning Brew, The Hustle, etc

In fact, there was a time a few years ago when every man and his dog was starting a newsletter:

“My top 7 links of the week”
“Brian’s musings”
“Something random about not very much at all”

Gradually, the inbox has become a battleground… even more than it ever was.A flood of content, every single day with dozens of voices vying for your attention.Audiences have adjusted and become more discerning –– but this itself isn’t the problem.

See, just like page 1 of Google, the volume of competition has never mattered as long as you are making the best stuff.

So, the basic answer to email overload is just to make the very best stuff and earn your place in the inbox!

Here’s the thing though:If you’ve been running your business for a while — let’s say you grew through the 2010s — you probably started out like me, writing your own emails and hitting publish from your laptop with that raw, personal founder-led voice.

But as the business grew, email changed. We automated, hired teams, built “content calendars” and scheduled everything.

We made YouTube videos and sent emails about those videos. We launched stuff. Promoted stuff. Built nurture sequences. It all became… well, industrial.

“Factory email marketing,” I call it.

And somewhere in that process, the founder’s voice, which was the thing that connected to the audience in the first place, got lost.

For the longest time, it didn’t matter… because it worked.

But the game’s up now.

In this new environment — with higher inbox competition and audiences who’ve had years of content fatigue — the scaled, systemised email strategy that once felt so smart… is starting to bite us.

Because the real power of email was never just the information. It was the relationship with the reader.

And when people are overwhelmed, the only emails they open are the ones that feel like they’re from a real person they trust.

A nice little “pick me up” at the end of their day.

So, here’s my take:

Email still works and it’s still a vital piece of the puzzle.

But the way we use it has to evolve. The “factory email” play is no longer enough.

…

“Well, that’s great, Olly! Thanks for all that doom and gloom in my inbox on Saturday afternoon! I’m off down the pub to drown my sorrows!”

But no!

Not so fast!

Yes, there’s change.

A lot of it.

But where there’s change, there’s also opportunity.

(That’s why so many new businesses spring up in recessions.)

So, if you can tolerate me for a little while longer, I’ll explain exactly what that opportunity is…

How your business model is going to change…

And how you may well end up making more money that you can shake a stick at…

Alright… enough doom and gloom.

Time to redraw the map, and get clear on the new world we’re all operating in.In this chapter, I’ll walk you through the strategy that underpins everything else in this guide and explain why low-traffic, high-profit is the future of online education.

Think of it as swapping your dog-eared, coffee-stained blueprint for a crisp new playbook that actually matches the terrain we’re on now.Once you understand this new model, the practical stuff will click into place — from transforming your traffic sources, to redesigning your offers, fixing your email marketing, tightening your operations, and creating unforgettable experiences for students.

When you’ve got the lay of the land, any (understandable) panic you’re feeling right now should start to ease.

You’ll stop staring at the smoking wreckage of the old model wondering if you should just walk away…And see exactly where the opportunities are, and how to make the most of them without torching the business you’ve already built.

It’s Not All Doom and Gloom

I saw a post on LinkedIn recently that made me do a double take:

A course seller had seen monthly sales declining, and took the extreme decision of making all their courses FREE, stating: “Clearly people had less money to spend.”

But it’s far more likely to be down to a whole confluence of forces:

Attention drifting towards AI options
Google algorithm changes
Email fatigue
War in the Middle East
Trump tariffs

The world is a complex place.

And the only way to truly understand what’s going on in your business is with one little word you may have heard of…

Data.

The numbers always, always, always tell the story. And if you don’t know your numbers, you cannot claim to know what the heck is going on.

For example…

Here’s some of the chaos I saw in my business, StoryLearning, in 2024-2025:

Our Google search traffic dropped a further 10-20%
Evergreen course sales dropped by around 50%
YouTube Adsense revenue dropped 30%

However, at the same time…

We increased our free trial conversions by 50%+
We figured out how to 10X leads from our YouTube videos
We 2X’ed the results of email promotion with a different approach to email

Oh…

And in a happy twist of fate, we discovered that the 50% drop in evergreen course sales actually reversed itself in June-July. Imagine if we’d lost our nerve and decided to make all our stuff free?

What I’ve just described are specific challenges in one specific business. And, to be sure, there are others having a much harder time than us.

Then, there are others who are kicking ass and taking names…

In some of the entrepreneurs I mentor, I see:

Brand new YouTubers executing 6-figure product launches
Creators running 7-figure launches from a $297 challenge
Educators selling $300 courses with webinars like it’s 2015 again

Here’s just one example from my 2025 private mastermind group:

So, can you tell me what the hell’s going on?

Everything’s in flux, that’s what.

But one thing is clear:

There is more opportunity to grow a successful education business than there’s ever been.

You’ve just got to be open to leaving old habits behind and charting a new course.

Even in a difficult environment, we still have influence over results.

We don’t have to be passive victims.

We can correct course.

We just have to be willing to look at what’s really going on.

Know Your Numbers

When I think about it, it’s crazy that course creators have been able to run the same playbook so successfully for 10-15 years without much change to the fundamental model:

Make content, get traffic
Build list
Sell courses to list

Now that things are changing, it’s messier than it was…but there’s a lot of opportunity within the mess.This is why it’s vital to understand what factors are at play. Because if you misunderstand the situation you risk making extreme decisions, like that rather impulsive chap on LinkedIn who made all his courses free.

As a result of declining sales, he concluded that people had less money to spend.To me, that’s quite a leap.

Don’t you think it’s far too simplistic to just say “people have less money” without looking any deeper?

Or could it be:

Traffic is down?
Conversion is down?
Backend sales are down?
Some combination of the above?
Something else altogether – War in the Middle East? Trump Tariffs?

If traffic is down, the answer is not to change your products.

If conversion is down, the way you sell needs to evolve.

If backend sales are down, you need to re-evaluate the way you deliver value.

If people have stopped spending money because their pension pots have just shrunk 10%, then it’s not because your business is broken. You may just have to wait a couple of months for things to correct themselves.

My experience with course creators is that they tend NOT to know their numbers…and not knowing your numbers makes it very difficult to diagnose problems and take remedial steps.

Whatever your specific situation, start by getting a firm grip on the numbers that matter in your business. We don’t want you to be clamouring to fix the wrong problem.

First, understand what’s going on in your business. Then, take steps to fix it.

The New Model

The market is becoming flooded with information that is not only free, but also personalised. (Hey, ChatGPT!)

The result of this is that information itself is becoming a commodity and is losing its value.

If you can get an answer for free from ChatGPT, why would they pay you for it?

They won’t.

Unless you offer something that AI can’t…

Trust.

If you’ve actually done the thing you teach, can prove it, and can relate to someone like me, then I’m going to choose you over ChatGPT.

It’s not the message… it’s the messenger.

In this new world, the task for you is to develop your authority.

And the best way to do this is to:

Occupy an ever-smaller niche, solving acute problems
Build your brand and grow your personal credibility
Provide more effective help with direct student contact

Let’s unpack this a bit.

The Old Way:

Get a bunch of traffic with internet marketing techniques (like SEO) then use that volume to play a passive numbers game selling digital products.

The New Way:

Choose a specific problem for a specific bunch of people, become the best in the world at solving it, build your entire brand around it, and offer an (ideally expensive) high-touch way to solve it.

For example, one entrepreneur I mentor helps doctors pass their consultant interviews.

Talk about specific — it’s like a spiritual advisor for atheist goldfish, or a matchmaker for identical twins.

That’s all she does. It’s her entire brand. She only offers that.

But guess what? She has a 100% success rate because she’s damn good at it.

(Can you claim a 100% success rate? I can’t.)

Now, if you happen to be a doctor who wants to pass their consultant interview, you’ll pay handsomely to get what she’s got.

You certainly wouldn’t trust ChatGPT with something as important as that.

This particular business ticks all the boxes:

Solve a specific problem for a specific bunch of people
Become the best in the world at solving it
Build your entire brand around it
Offer a high-touch way to get the result

Now, to pre-empt the question I know is coming…

“Does this mean we all have to offer high ticket coaching?”

No, not at all.

There are still plenty of viable business models with low-ticket offerings.

But it is important to understand what’s coming down the track, so you can make the right decisions for your business.

Low Traffic, High Profit

So here’s the big shift we need to make:

We have to stop designing our business models around the idea of cheap, high-volume traffic.

That era is over:

SEO (dead or dying)
Social (too dangerous)
Podcast (too hard to grow)
Partnerships and JVs (too manual)

Yes, YouTube is still viable as a high-traffic medium… for now.

But having seen what’s happened to Google Search in the last two years, you’d be a fool to think that there are no changes on the way.

When attention is harder to win and more expensive to buy, your business model has to adapt.

Back in 2015, you could sell a $200 course to 1% of your list and still make a killing, because traffic was cheap and plentiful.

But in 2025? That same model isn’t viable, so you need to build a business that’s profitable in a low-traffic environment.

This means:

Fewer customers, higher value
Clearer offers with real outcomes
Premium pricing from day one
Deeper relationships, not just clicks

To spell it out:OLD WAY: High traffic, cheap productsNEW WAY: Low traffic, expensive solutions

In many ways, this perspective is nothing new.

It’s the equivalent of telling you to “niche down” — and how often have you heard that old chestnut?

But what this really speaks to is orientating your entire business model around it by asking:

“How can I offer something that guarantees a solution to a problem for those who are willing to pay for it?”

…and then creating the ability to charge handsomely for it by building authority around this promise in as many ways as possible.

For example, at StoryLearning, we’re shifting our business model towards a coaching solution (high ticket, and supporting that by signing two new book deals (authority).

It’s a long-term move, but one that I believe will be very powerful over time, because people trust brands who publish great books, and want to buy from them if they can get results.

All of this basically puts you in a position where you can get the highest possible LTV from every lead you get, which gives you a much higher margin to work with.

And, in turn, this makes for a better business, because:

You don’t need as many leads
Paid ads are more likely to work
A tiny YouTube channel can yield great results
Partnerships are easier because you can pay more to get them

And to be clear:

YES – this means no more “passive income” course dreams and…

YES – this means being open to higher levels of student support

Those who cling onto “I don’t want to manage people or speak to any students” are going to find it harder to adapt.

This new way is gonna feel a lot more like ‘work’.

But in the end, it all just feels like better business to me.

Building Traffic Algorithms Can’t Kill

In his book Antifragile, Nassim Nicholas Taleb introduces a powerful idea:

Some things break under pressure. Some survive it. But a rare few, the antifragile, actually get stronger from the chaos.

Most course businesses are pretty fragile because they operate a passive revenue model based on an algorithm-based traffic source.

For example:

Google sends traffic
% of traffic converts to email lead
% of leads purchases

A model like this relies on large amounts of traffic because only a small percentage of people ever buy.

If your traffic drops, your revenue drops in short order, but, critically, your business model can’t adapt to make money in other ways because it only functions with huge amounts of traffic.

Which means you’re fresh outta luck.

What are you gonna do — hand out flyers to 250,000 people on the street?

Unfortunately, when the storm comes (as it always does in the form of algorithm changes and platform shifts), these fragile systems collapse.

This is exactly what happened in October 2023, when Google’s HCU (Helpful Content Update) wiped thousands of businesses off the map overnight by throttling traffic.

Your goal?

Don’t be fragile.

You need to focus on building something more resilient that can hang on for longer, absorbing the blows and trying to outlast the disruption.

What we want to build now in this new era are antifragile traffic systems — marketing engines that don’t just survive volatility but even benefit from it.

So what does that look like?

It means moving beyond dependence on any one channel and building a layered growth strategy where different parts of your system balance each other out.

YouTube as a Core Discovery Channel

If you have traditionally relied on Google search to drive traffic and revenue, there’s only one other channel that can deliver meaningful traffic at scale.

YouTube.

Podcasts? Don’t have the reach and too hard to grow.

Social media? Shallow, chaotic and unreliable. (Although there are benefits – more on that soon.)

But YouTube?

It’s still growing — and it still works.

So if the question is:

“How do I keep my business model the same — automated, content-led, and passive — but replace my lost SEO traffic?”Then YouTube is your best bet.

Maybe your only bet.

Thankfully, at StoryLearning, we leaned into YouTube early.We started building our channel properly in 2021, and now a significant portion of our traffic and sales comes directly from there.Without that move, we’d be in a tougher spot today.

But while I’m bullish on YouTube, I’m also cautious. Because here’s the truth:

YouTube is still algorithm-based.

And that means it carries the same core risk as SEO: it can disappear at any moment.

Let me give you an example.

Some time in 2024, YouTube made a subtle tweak to its recommendation engine. For reasons they never fully explained (had something to do with giving exposure to smaller creators), views across a wide swath of channels dropped by 60% — almost overnight.

These weren’t tiny creators either. They were big, trusted channels that were suddenly flatlining.

Two weeks later, everything rebounded but the lesson stuck.

When you build on someone else’s algorithm, you’re never really in control.

This is why we need to think bigger than just swapping SEO for YouTube.

Because even if you do succeed on YouTube — and many of you will — you still want to build from a place of resilience, not dependence.

I’m not saying not to use YouTube. In fact, I’m actively recommending you do. But if you treat it like your new SEO, you’re making the same mistake all over again.

So use it…

And build on it…

But make damn sure your business model doesn’t depend on it, because that’s what will future-proof your business.

Predictable Traffic

Ultimately, if you’re serious about building a sustainable business, you can’t be beholden to an algorithm.

You need to create a business model that can thrive to more predictable, direct traffic sources.

I’m talking about things like:

Sponsorships
Partnerships and JVs
Paid advertising

These strategies give you more control because they’re not reliant on algorithms – you can turn them on, test them, scale them…

But there is a catch.

None of these channels deliver the volume that SEO once did — and paid ads, in particular, come with a cost.

What I’ve been seeing recently is that sponsorships and influencer deals can far outperform traditional paid media in terms of quality and a lot of smart education businesses are quietly buying their way into high-trust inboxes with great results.

Sponsorships

Newsletter sponsorships have been one of the highest-performing channels for my own personal brand business, especially when it comes to building a quality email list (and you may even be here reading this because of one of those sponsorships!)What makes them so powerful?

You’re not cold-interrupting. You’re showing up inside a curated, trusted environment, a place where readers are already primed to discover new tools, ideas, and offers.It’s warm, it’s targeted, and when it works…it really works.In some of my campaigns for my own personal brand business, I’ve seen leads coming in at $2 CPL from the right newsletter, which is far cheaper than most paid ads.

But the variance is massive and while a few sponsorships perform incredibly well, others completely tank, with CPLs soaring up to $50–$100.

What I’ve learned is that newsletter sponsorships are a lot like influencer marketing:

You need to go in with a testing mindset. Set a healthy budget, test widely and track obsessively.Then cut the losers fast and double down on the winners.

Partnerships

The same logic applies to partnerships with influencers and organisations.In the case of influencers, many influencers with 1,000–10,000 followers or readers have far more engaged audiences than big names and their sponsorships are often more affordable and more effective.

With institutional partnerships, virtually every single lead they send can be highly-qualified and extremely valuable.A great example of this comes from one of my mentees, Kenneth Kelly, who runs Counselling Tutor, a leading provider of online training and resources for counselling professionals and students in the UK.Ken and his team were producing a tonne of valuable content – including a podcast and YouTube channel – but these visitors didn’t include enough of the professionals they were set up to serve.

Not only that, the lion’s share of the traffic was coming from Google search, creating a major problem we’ve discussed: single channel dependency.

But Ken has a high standing within the counselling community and his business partner was deeply embedded in all the major counselling institutions in the UK, who were already recommending Counselling Tutor in an ad-hoc way.

There was a huge opportunity to systematise these referrals, growing revenue and further diversifying away from SEO.

So we built a strategy to formalise those relationships and Ken and his business now receive hundreds of referrals coming from ethical bodies every month, with conversion rates of up to 25%.

That’s a number I like.

This is what happens when you focus on quality and finding the right people.

Turns out you don’t need millions of impressions when the message is surgically targeted.

You just need the right message to reach the right people, in a place where trust already exists.

Partnerships like this let you borrow trust from someone who’s already earned it.And that kind of trust? It converts.

Paid Ads

When course sales start to decline, paid ads can start to look like a silver bullet.

The logic is seductive: “If I can just drive more traffic, the sales will follow.”

At a time when algorithms are changing and platforms are shifting, paid ads offer something incredibly valuable: Control.Done right, paid traffic lets you reach new audiences on demand, test offers quickly, and scale what’s working without waiting for the algorithm gods to smile on you.But here’s the fact of the matter:Paid ads won’t fix a broken funnel.

They’ll just help you burn money faster than a toupee in a hurricane.

They also won’t sell ice to an Eskimo.

Just because you made it, doesn’t mean there’s an Instagram user who wants it, or who will buy it for a cost that you can stomach.

Remember, advertising is a force multiplier.

It takes what’s already working and amplifies it.

So if your offer, messaging, or positioning is off, paid traffic won’t save you. It’ll expose the cracks in your business model, quickly and expensively.

The truth of the matter is that most online education businesses do not have business models built for cold traffic. They rely on the trust built from warm audiences who often buy out of reciprocity.

This is why an offer that sells like hotcakes to your email list will completely crash and burn when you turn on the paid ads…

When you sell to your email list, you’re selling to people who know, like, and trust you, with high awareness of who you are and the problem you solve. But selling to cold traffic on Facebook ads is akin to interrupting someone’s day with something they don’t want, having no idea who you are.

Ads aren’t just a “new traffic source”. They’re a completely different ball game.

So before you reach for your credit card and spin up a Facebook campaign, ask yourself a few hard questions:

1. Is your backend profitable enough?

Most course creators try to run ads to low-ticket products — a $47 course, a $97 mini-training. This worked in 2015, but doesn’t work today. Ad costs are simply too high.

With ad costs as expensive as they are, unless you have a high-ticket backend (coaching, cohorts, licensing), there’s often no profit left after customer acquisition.

2. Do you know your numbers?

Remember what I said earlier about the importance of knowing your numbers? Well this applies even more in the case of paid ads.If you don’t already know your conversion rates and customer LTV across your funnel, you’re not ready to run ads.

Even if you do know those numbers, they will all change once you move from organic to paid.

Paid traffic is a data game. Without visibility into your metrics, you’re flying blind. And in paid media, blind becomes broke pretty damn fast.

(Here’s what numbers to track.)

3. Do you have the operational runway?

Testing ads takes time, budget, and emotional stamina. Expect to lose money in the beginning if you haven’t done it before because that’s just part of the process.

You need enough cash, patience, and clarity to make it through the messy middle, so be honest with yourself.

Bear in mind that if your business is truly in panic mode, ads might not be the right next step.

So… Should You Run Ads?

If your course sales are slowing down and organic channels are delivering less than they used to, paid traffic is absolutely worth considering.

But they require the right mindset.

Unless you’re lucky enough to have your business work right out of the gate with paid ads, you need to be open to potentially changing your entire funnel, including offers and pricing.

When you’re spending money day in and day out, every aspect of your funnel needs to be on the table for changes.

Making this work requires not only sophistication but also a mindset to test and change literally everything that you do. This approach is not for everyone.

The real question to ask is: “Am I ready for the kind of business paid ads require?”

If yes, great.

If not, that’s fine too.

Many profitable businesses never run a single ad.

Either way, knowing where you stand is the key to moving forward with confidence.

Anyway…

Enough traffic talk.

It’s time to get on to the business model question.

Because when you get your model right, everything else gets a whoooole lot easier.

Designing for Depth Over Scale

As we’ve discussed, the direction of travel in the information economy is that information itself is losing value.

If you’re a course creator, this matters.

15 years ago, it was worth paying for information in a course, because you couldn’t get it elsewhere.

Now, information is freely available.

The other reason to pay for information was because the teacher had a unique way of conveying it.

Now, information is personalised, thanks to AI chatbots.

Quite the shift, eh?

What this means: Less appetite to pay for information.

But there’s something going on.

Based on what I see in consumer behaviour, there’s less appetite to buy courses in general.

It’s not because people have turned to AI instead. (Right now, AI isn’t good enough to deliver robust results.)

Rather, I believe it’s down to “course fatigue”.

After 10-20 years of buying online courses, people have started to realise that buying yet another course isn’t going to solve their problems.

I don’t have any data to back this up.

Rather, it’s an observation from the online world around me.

But I’d bet you the biggest steak in Texas that it’s a thing.

So there are now two things happening:

Information is freely available
A wider recognition that information alone isn’t enough

Wait, But Why?

But are people buying fewer courses?

Understanding this is key to what’s coming next…

You can know everything in the world, but if you don’t do anything with it, you won’t get any results.

As Derek Sivers famously said:

“If more information was the answer, we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.”

And this explains why people are fatigued with courses. Even 15 years after the course boom began…

You still ain’t no billionaire
You still ain’t got no six-pack
In fact… your life hasn’t really changed that much at all

But why not?

It was never about the information, stupid!

It was about whether you could apply it well enough and consistently enough to get the result you wanted.

How To Sell Results

So now, we can get into the meat of things.

How do we go beyond providing the information, and actually getting students results?

1. Specific Problems & Tangible Outcomes

The broader the problem you’re fixing, the harder it is to solve.

“Learn a language”
“Learn to draw”
“Be more productive”

People have been teaching this for millennia and students have been struggling with it.

What are the chances of you inventing a radical new way to teach these things that works for everyone?

(If you do – I for one want to invest!)

So, instead, we tend to gloss over the “you’ve just got to implement!” point, and fall back on making content and creating courses with your face on it, making it feel fresh and personal but still avoiding the thorny issue of implementation.

That’s the creator economy in a nutshell.

But the businesses who are succeeding right now are not the ones who get tonnes of followers and just talk loudly about a topic.

The most successful businesses are getting REALLY good at delivering credible results by focusing on more specific problems and providing tangible outcomes.

“Pass your consultant interview”
“Score 7 on your IELTS (English) test”
“Perform this specific veterinary procedure”

I believe the future is going to see businesses niching down even further.

The more specific problems you solve, the easier it is to get better at what you do.

The better you are at what you do, the better results you get.

The better results you get, the more people will pay you for those results.

Ain’t that neat?

2. Sell Implementation

So one thing is the size and scope of the problem.

The other is the actual “doing” of the thing.

One of the reasons StoryLearning has done well, is because the method gets people to read in their new language.

Our method doesn’t just say “Hey, reading is good!” it gets you reading stuff from day 1.You literally have to read in order to take our courses so there’s behaviour change baked in…but only if you do it!

Ultimately, we can’t force you to log in every day or to come back tomorrow and the day after that, which is the thing that actually gets results.

So, from a business model perspective, education businesses need to start focusing on something beyond the information we provide: implementation.

The question is no longer: “How do we create a cool course and charge for it?” but rather “How do we help our students actually get a result?”

Given that human students don’t reliably take action by themselves, you need to create structures that hold them accountable:

1:1 support
Time-bound offerings
Personalisation
Peer accountability

Yes, this is more expensive and increases complexity.

Yes, this is going to send those who are still chasing the “digital nomad passive income” lifestyle dream fleeing to the hills of Chiang Mai in a blind panic…but s*** – do your students want a result or don’t they?

If all your students get great results… that’s good for business because then:

They’re happy
They pay you more
They tell their friends

This is why we began our VIP Coaching offer at StoryLearning a few years ago, and why it’s going down like a house on fire.

3. Offering More Complete Solutions

If the money is flowing away from endless course purchases, this makes it harder to rely on “volume of sales” for revenue.

Instead, you’ll need to maximise LTV from the customers you do have.

Imagine that, moving forward, customers would only ever buy one thing from you…

If that’s the case, you’d better make sure that offer works as hard as possible for you.

Recently I was working with one entrepreneur to rethink their email sequences. They were offering a <$50 product on the front-end.

In their words, the reason was:

“People say our products are too expensive, so we’re offering something more affordable.”

But, inside every audience is 2% of people who are not price-sensitive and who are willing to spend large amounts of money for a complete solution.

So we reworked their offer to sell a higher-value product instead ($300-800 depending on the option they took). It wasn’t just more expensive, it was a new product entirely. Multiple “complete solution” products, including bundle options, creating a full learning pathway, which is more appealing for people with money to spend.

This resulted in an 11X jump in revenue from their email sequences.

But it’s not just about the revenue.

When you give people the solutions they value, guess what? They take it more seriously too.

(This is the counterintuitive reason that raising your prices is often the best way to increase student results.)

This is an example of creating more value while sticking with a simple course model.

Of course, we could go much further by adding implementation too, but the real point is to run a thinking exercise and ask the question:

If I only had one opportunity to make an offer, how would I maximise the perceived value?

Those customers who are prepared to invest in a great solution will spend 10-20X what your average audience member will.

4. Using Software

This one is “handle with care”, but it’s important to complete the picture.

In the education world, software is the easiest and fastest way to lose your shirt.

Kickstarter is a graveyard littered with the carcasses of apps that began with starry-eyes, but quickly realised that multiple $150k dev salaries are no joke.

But if you do manage to get software right, it’s the fastest way to transform your business.

All around me right now, I’m seeing entrepreneurs using software to add massive value to their businesses.

The App Store is an amazing place.

People will search for, discover, try, buy and subscribe to apps for the sheer fun of it in the millions.

But you can’t just “add software” to your business for the sake of it.

The key is to ask:

“Where is there an opportunity to use software to genuinely make it genuinely easier for my students to get RESULTS?”

In the language world, there are AI apps like Langua or TeacherAI, where people can get unlimited speaking practice on-demand in a foreign language.

This is legitimately game-changing for language learning. Not just a nice-to-have but a totally new opportunity.

I’m co-founder/investor in these apps and it’s amazing to see the financial dynamics.

Elsewhere, Ali Abdaal has VoicePal that offers a similarly new opportunity for his audience…

But it’s also opening up an entire new direction for his business.

But it doesn’t have to be AI. If you’re producing training videos for vets, do you want to make them log into a Kajabi account to access the videos, while propping up an unconscious animal on their operating table?

Or might it be better to provide an iPad app that can be propped up on the theatre table and controlled by voice?

If you did, that wouldn’t just be something you sold to your existing audience, it would be found on the App Store too.

These things aren’t just cute add-ons, they’re major new sources of revenue that attract people beyond your existing customer base if you get them right.

…This is what designing for depth over scale looks like.

And it all involves quite a bit of proactivity.

Which is why most people won’t do it.

But if you grab the bull by the horns and rethink the way you provide value, I believe that’s the single best way to insulate yourself from whatever changes are coming down the track next.

Of course, then, you have to learn to sell it.

And that’s what we’re talking about next.

How to Make Email Great Again

Lately, your inbox has probably felt fuller than a pub on Boxing Day.

Everyone’s launching something, everyone’s “adding value,” and everyone thinks their email is the one you’ve been dying to read.

But it rarely is.

Don’t get me wrong, email is still king.

It remains the single most powerful channel I have in all my businesses, and likely in yours too..

It’s where the sales come from. It’s where relationships are built. It’s the one place I can still speak directly to my audience without an algorithm in the way.

It’s the place you can reply and cuss me out – and I’ll enjoy it, because it helps my deliverability.

(Hey, not on my list yet? Remedy that right here.)

But as we discussed in chapter one, that once-vibrant energy in the inbox is gone, even if the numbers look fine.

Inbox overload is the new normal and that means the quality of attention is way down.

Unfortunately most course businesses are still sending email like it’s 2017:

Factory-farmed email blasts
Copy-pasted templates
Ghostwritten promos that feel about as real as a scone with jam on first (look it up)

These days, if your emails are anything less than dripping with realness, your audience can feel it immediately and they’ve tuned out before they reach the fold.

“Oh, someone else who’s just marketing to me.”

They might open it.

They might read a bit.

But before long, you just become one of those emails that gets archived before you even see what’s inside.

And by that point, you’re toast.

Receiving emails from a friendly creator just isn’t a novelty any more, like it was in 2013.

Your “Hey guys, I’m super excited about…” is faker than an influencer’s morning routine posts.

The grift has grown tired.

People don’t want emails that make them feel like they’re being pushed around anymore.

They want a distinct voice and a dadgum point of view.

Now, what’s interesting is that this is the way we always used to do email.

Back in 2013, when I got started, the entire game was the “blogger with a voice”.

We wrote blog posts.

We wrote emails.

We had all grown up in the era of gatekept media. We revelled in the newfound ability to be publishers. We did not take it for granted.

But then, the internet happened.

Bloggers wanted to be empire builders. Content needed to be scaled. Founders were told they had to “remove themselves” from the business.

So they hired teams of writers.

And before long, every email sequence and sales promotion on the interwebs was signed by the founder… but written by someone else.

This made good business sense, and allowed businesses to scale.

The economics worked, and much money was made by all.

Until, that is, they didn’t.

First, everyone had a newsletter.

Then, AI happened and now everyone is a copywriter.

Good news for people with no skills.

Bad news for those who had built teams to write their copy for them, with all the authenticity of dishwater.

Not only are they now the least interesting thing in the inbox…

It’s costing them a s***-load of money to maintain the team.

That’s why, recently, I’ve been seeing a lot of entrepreneurs with large business and expensive teams scrambling to rearrange their business back to some semblance of profitability.

Their job is as follows:

Get costs back in check, so you have margin again
Be interesting again, so you can earn your place at the top of the inbox

In my view, there are two ways to do this.

And I do both in my businesses.

Get back to writing again and send everything yourself
The “Founder + AI” formula as a compromise position

Let’s explore.

1. Become An Email God (Yes, you!)

In my business brand, at ollyrichards.co, I write every single word myself.

You will never read a word in this business that hasn’t been written by me personally, tapping my own keyboard with my own fingers, painstakingly editing and crafting each email myself like I was improvising a jazz solo.

Period.

Why do I write everything myself?

How can I possibly justify the time?

Because as Ryan Levesque says, “Real is the only advantage you have left.”

People are already sick of AI copy and ghostwritten dross.

Imagine what it’ll be like 2-3 years from now.

The only way you stand a snowball’s chance in hell of being noticed and remembered is by writing your own stuff, learning to express your own opinions in your own way, and oozing personality on the page.

I would sooner outsource the operations of my entire business than give up the writing itself.

Because when the writing dies, the business dies with it.

However, learn to write like the email equivalent of Thor, and you’ll build a brand that will be ever-more remarkable as the rest of the world disintegrates into a nondescript mess of half-baked information and bland viewpoints.

(Again, if you want to see this in action, you can see it on my newsletter.)

So…

Do you think I’ve been clear enough about my stance on email? 😅.

This is – by a country mile – your best option and what I recommend you do as founder.

If you want to learn to write email properly, and inject “founder energy” like nobody’s ever seen before, there’s only one training you should consider – “The Frequency”, by my friend Ross O’Lochlainn.

(Not an affiliate link, I just love it.)

With this said, I’m a realist.

Not everyone likes writing.

Not everyone can write.

It follows that not everyone should dedicate themselves to writing email in their business.

It’s just the way it is.

So rather than try to jam square pegs into round holes, we need an alternative.

And don’t worry – I got you.

There’s a second option, which, while less effective, will still get you 95% of the way there, by simultaneously speeding up the email writing process while by retaining that founder spark.

It’s also what we do in my business, StoryLearning.

So, let me describe it now.

2. The “Founder + AI” Formula

How do you send emails that feel like you, but don’t take hours to write?

How do you provide the intimacy your audience is craving, without burning out?Well, that’s where AI comes in, not as a way of replacing your voice but as a way of protecting and scaling it.

I’ll be honest, when AI writing first became a thing, I was deeply sceptical.

As a career writer, I was allergic to the idea of using AI to create content.Sure enough, my early experiments with AI yielded bland emails that sounded fake and nothing like my true voice.The emails were 80% at best…and that’s just not good enough.

But I also knew better than to ignore a new technology like AI, so I devoted serious time to it.

(Part of my interest, you see, was finding ways to balance my writing time between various businesses. That is not easy.)

So, I invested heavily in AI writing courses.

I studied prompt sequencing.

I tested, iterated, and broke things.

And what I eventually realised was:

The opportunity for writing with AI isn’t to replace your writing. It’s to speed up your writing process, so you can get to your unique contribution faster.

Through months of learning and experimentation, I developed a system that finally did what I wanted:

Emails that sound 97% like me
Delivered faster than ever
Without compromising on quality or originality

I call it the “10-80-10” workflow:

10% human at the start – You provide the unique content fresh from your brain.
80% AI – The heavy lifting of structure, draft, and expansion.
10% human at the end – You polish. You add flavour. You make it yours.

This system now reliably produces emails that sound like me, not AI, written in minutes not hours.

My Founder + AI system combines two things:

Your personal subject expertise
AI to make the process 5X faster

If you’ve got nothing to say, nothing to teach, no stories to tell… this won’t help you.

But assuming you are a genuine expert, then the real power of AI-assisted email isn’t just speed, it’s scalability.

Once you have your voice trained and your prompts dialled in, you can produce high-quality, on-brand emails at scale, whether it’s you writing or your team.

At StoryLearning, this has become the backbone of our email marketing operation.

Here’s our process:

10% When I have an idea for content, I do a voice recording about it by speaking directly into the Epiphany app on my Apple Watch. The transcript of this gets deposited into a board on Trello, for my team to pick up.
80% My team can run the prompt sequence I’ve painstakingly developed to generate complete emails from my ideas. (Really, really good emails.)
10% Finally, the email gets a complete human edit to add the spark back in – bits and pieces that might be missing, a little flourish here and there. Making it our own. This is the essential final step to create a result that I’m happy to put my name behind.

This process takes mere minutes of my time, but allows us to:

Stay consistent with our sending schedule
Write “100% Olly” to the list
Keep the writing interesting and valuable

Can I say, hand on heart, that it’s as good as if I’d written the emails myself from a blank page?

No.

But it’s 97% of the way there, and easily maintains brand integrity and freshness.

That’s a compromise I’ll take in order to manage a multi-million dollar business at arm’s length.

And for me personally, allows me to stay 100% fresh for writing emails entirely by hand for my business brand.

…

So, look.

Email is still king.

But you’ve got to rise to the occasion and earn your place at the top of the inbox.

You have to make email great again.

You do this by writing real stuff.

No compromises.

Just one human being, talking to another.

If you treat that inbox like it’s sacred and see every person on your list as someone that actually matters, your subscribers will notice.

They’ll read.

They’ll click.

They’ll buy…

…like it’s 2013 all over again!

Because in a world where everything feels automated, the person who feels real wins.

Every time.

That is, as long as they’re still profitable and in business.

The Great Efficiency Drive

As I’ve been saying throughout this guide, the future of education businesses is going to look VERY different than it has in the last 10 years.

Just like a recession, I think these challenges are actually going to weed out a lot of inefficient players.

Like a digital Marie Kondo.

This means that one of the biggest tasks for established businesses in the next few years is to rethink your entire business from top to bottom and become more efficient.

Safety Margins

But wait — weren’t online businesses always efficient? (compared to restaurants or whatever)

Some were but a lot weren’t.

I’ve always preached that online education businesses need margins of at least 30% but ideally more like 40-50%.

One of the reasons for that is so you’re able to absorb shocks.

Those who have been running 10-20% margins are running a permanent risk of being put out of business by one major change.

Example:

Your CAC on Facebook suddenly doubles. If you’re reliant on front-end sales for your profit, there’s your margin gone up in a puff of smoke. If you make your profit on the backend, you can absorb the shock and keep sipping on your martini.

But despite all the disruption, there’s also lots of opportunity.

Those who survive this disruption will emerge stronger than ever, like a cockroach surviving the apocalypse.

Because despite the changes:

People are still spending money
They’re still buying education products
Often, they’re spending more than before

So, there’s plenty of opportunity but you need to make sure you’re stable enough to ride it all out while you recalibrate.

I’ve spent a lot of time discussing all these with 7-figure business owner friends recently.

We’re all coming to the same conclusion:

You can’t afford to carry large overheads like before
You have to cut down bloated teams
You have to make maximum use of AI and automation to run your core processes
Your team moving forward will consist of a small number of highly skilled humans + AI/automation to make the magic happen

Examples of cost centres that can be already rebuilt with AI:

Repurposing content
Creating graphics
Transcription
Customer support
Email marketing

In particular, anything that involves (or is powered by) text or image processing.

To be clear: these things still need to be done… and done well.

The expert touch still needs to be present on the final product.

But you can use AI to do a lot of the heavy-lifting, and therefore do it a lot more cheaply.

The key:

Use AI and automation to cover as many repetitive business processes as possible, thereby freeing up the geniuses in the room to do what they do best.

I think a sensible approach is this:

If you currently operate with 30% net margins, aim to increase that to 50% by rebuilding with AI and automation.

It’s a big job, but that will make you hella-resilient moving forward.

We recently finished up a big structural rebuild at StoryLearning, for example, and we managed to get our net margins by 15% (based on run rate and barring any other shocks).

You can’t afford NOT to take advantage of these savings in the years to come, or your business model will soon be obsolete.

Automation Example

Here’s an example of changes possible in customer support.

A customer writes in with a question: “Is your product right for me, given XYZ circumstances?”

The old way:

Agent carefully reads question
Checks with team about this customer’s specific case
Pulls up a template response
Spends 10 mins customising it and hits send

Total time: 30 mins

The new way:

AI reads the entire history of customer support queries (which it has stored in a knowledge base)
Prepares a personalised response in about 3 seconds, addressing every aspect of the question
If it has an 80%+ confidence score in the response, sends it immediately. Otherwise, saves response in drafts. CS agent comes in at 9am, quickly checks it, hits send.

Total time: 1 min

Many online businesses that came up in the 2010s built big teams to run their operations.It worked, because the economics of digital product businesses could support these teams.

But the future is going to look quite different.

Heck, it’s already different right now.

The key point is:

AI is not an “add-on”. You need to rebuild your business processes to use AI and automation at the core.

Frankly, this is easier for newer businesses, because you can bake AI into what you do from the start.

(Check out my friends at Leap, for example, whose entire education product is run by AI software.)

Established businesses will have a harder time, because you have to undo, or relearn your way of doing things.

This is the weakest link in the process is… you!

If you can summon up the energy to grab the wheel and start steering the ship, you’ll get ahead.

If you rest on your laurels, you’re in trouble.

Lastly, you can’t automate away your entire business.

Despite what you see on social media, armies of AI agents are not coming to run your entire business any time soon.

But, particularly in the text-driven areas I mentioned above, “one smart person + AI” can now do the work of 2-3 people.

The key is to have 2-3 really good people, so that you can still maintain that creative edge.

The future will belong to businesses that can combine the efficiency of AI and automation, with the magic touch of smart humans.

Be Rigorous About Expenses

There are certain things that only tend to get done when you’re all together in a group.

I’m reminded of this every year during our StoryLearning team retreat, where, amongst the frolicking, negronis and excursions, there are always special insights that come up and big things that get done.

Something we finally did this year was a soup-to-nuts review of recurring expenses.

Talk about a task nobody wants to do.

Reviewing your subscriptions is a task so unappealing it makes reading YouTube comments feel intellectually stimulating.

Perhaps that explains why the last time we did a thorough review of subscriptions was the 10th of NEVERuary.

I mean obviously, I’ve known for years that doing these reviews is important but for a combination of reasons, we’ve always managed to put it off:

“It’s not that much money really”
“It’s better to put that time into growth activities”
”It’s going be more work to switch than leaving it as it is”

And guess what, this is all true!

But what happens when you spin this story for 12+ years?

Well, I found out in this year’s retreat when I sat down with my CEO and went line-by-line through every single damn recurring expense in the entire company.

What we found was somewhat eye-watering…

Here’s a list of what we were able to cut, what we did instead, and the annual saving:

Calendly > removing dozens of seats and moving to Tidycal. Saving: $5,700
Google Workspace > Moving coaches from email to Circle for student comms. Saving: $4,000
Zoom > removing old student accounts. Saving: $3,000
Tracking software > moving to cheaper alternative. Saving: $6,000
ClickFunnels > finally moving off it altogether. Saving: $3,000
Zoom > Moving team meetings to Google Meet. Saving: $1,500
Zendesk > removing two unused seats and replacing with AI workflow. Saving $1,400
Zapier > moving from an arbitrary tier to a level we actually need. Saving: c.$1,400
Shopify > we’re not using it. Saving: $1,020
Web domains x20 > don’t need them, not renewing. Saving: $440

Software we’re not using or had completely forgotten about:

VidIQ > Saving: $360
Dropbox > Saving: $250
Patreon > Saving: $240
1of10 > Saving: $199
Convert Pro > Saving: $89
Teleprompter app > Saving: $80
Elementor > Saving: $49

We were able to cut / migrate ALL of these.

How much did we save?

Drumroll please…

This created savings of an astonishing $28,727 per year.

Now, granted, we’re perhaps an unusual case and yes, there’s going to be some work involved in migration to new tools.

But it gives you pause for thought, doesn’t it?

Case Study

Often, it’s easier to generate more profit in your business by cutting than by adding.

This was clear as day in my work with email marketing expert Chris Orzechowski.

From the outside, Chris’ business looked like a dream — $1M in annual revenue, a large team, strong sales, and high-value customers.

But behind the scenes?

Chris was drowning in complexity. His business had ballooned into a chaotic structure where everything relied on him — development, sales, fulfilment, and marketing. He couldn’t take a week off without the whole machine grinding to a halt.

Together, we took the business apart and rebuilt it from the ground up with simplicity, efficiency, and profitability in mind.

What we changed:

Cut $10k+/month in expenses by removing unnecessary software, team members, and “nice to haves”
Restructured his team to focus on just four essential tasks: generate leads, capture them, convert them, and sell more to loyal customers
Repositioned his offers to target high-value customers instead of selling to a lower-paying audience
Shut down legacy programs that had brought in $600K but were draining resources and energy
Simplified everything – shifting to a leaner, cleaner model focused on profit and free time

The result?

Chris slashed his working hours by 66%
Increased net profit by 50%
And finally felt like he could breathe again — taking his kids to school, spending weekends off, and finally stepping out of “emergency mode” in his business

Here’s what he said:

“Now, I can do whatever I want. I’m not working on weekends, I can walk my son to school, take him to the pool. The biggest thing is just… I can breathe again.”

(Full case study here)

This is what it means to become more efficient.

You don’t need to work harder, hire more people, or chase more revenue.

You need to ruthlessly simplify.

But here’s the happy side-effect of this work…

With all that extra margin, reduced costs, free time and dadgum headspace to work with…

If the grim reaper ever does come knocking, Chris will be waiting with a contract he’ll wish he’d read closer.

This is the Great Efficiency Drive.

But…

Yet again…

It’s not enough by itself.

Nothing in this series is enough by itself!

There’s something else you need to bake into your business model, like a sixpence in a Christmas pudding.

Something that most businesses have been avoiding like a soggy bowl of noodles.

Let’s split the hair and see what’s inside.

Create Amazing Experiences

Online communities were fresh-faced and powerful back in 2013.

I still remember the epic pile into Facebook groups in 2014.

Even Whatsapp groups were once a novelty.

But today, “community” is about as overcooked as the Cumberland sausages I cremated on the BBQ last Sunday.

Slack groups. WhatsApp chats. Skool communities. Circles groups. Discords. Facebook (yes, still).

Everyone’s in 37 of them, but most of them are archived, and no one’s checking any of them.

Earlier this year, I was toying with starting a community of my own, and sought out help from master community-builder Jay Clouse.

Jay has thought more about community than almost anyone, and told me point-blank:

There’s massive fatigue in online communities.

He says:

“People think: I’ll take my content, put it in new software, and boom, now I’ve got a community. But it almost never works. Are we at a 5% success rate? Maybe 15% on a good day.”

Jay’s right.

Most “communities” are ghost towns. You poke your head in, see a couple of boring intros, sticky threads and an AI-generated welcome message from the mod, and then close the tab forever.

After years of digital-first everything, we’re witnessing a big shift back toward human connection and real-world experiences.

It started in the pandemic.

And it’s only got stronger since.

People want fewer things, done better. They want fewer connections… that actually feel like connection.

As the internet gradually loses its personality to AI in the next few years, and all trust goes up in a puff of spoke, people are going to crave “real” like you wouldn’t believe.

Heck, it’s already happening.

So the question becomes:

How do you create meaningful experiences in a world where everything’s online and everyone’s exhausted?

Well…

You go back to the stuff that’s worked for 1,000s of years.

IRL gathering in Nashville this summer

Real-World Group Experiences as a Differentiator

Gathering people together in communities is most powerful way of all to give them memorable experiences… and keep them coming back.

(LTV, anyone?)

I’ve never seen this more clearly than with one very special class of students I taught in Japan.

Back when I lived in Tokyo, I was teaching English at a language school in the Iidabashi area.

One Saturday, I was unexpectedly drafted in to teach a new class called “Advanced Plus 4”.

A lump formed in my throat.

Advanced? Plus? 4?

In Japan this was rare.

The Japanese are not the best at English, and it’s rare to find a class higher than an intermediate level.

Advanced Plus 4!?

I was nervous.

These guys are going to be demanding! They must be pros. What on Earth am I going to teach them?

The day of the class arrives, I walk in, to find five 60-somethings sat around a table, smiling and laughing.

They obviously knew each other well.

This was “Advanced Plus 4”.

I sit down, start chatting away and introducing myself, breaking the ice by throwing in a bunch of advanced English slang.

I wanted to show them I could teach them something they didn’t know!

They were gonna get Advanced Plus 5 from me!

They looked back at me, confused, blank stares.

They clearly hadn’t understood a thing.

Turns out their English was average at best.

I scrambled to recalibrate, threw my Advanced lesson plan to the dogs, and bumbled my way through 120 minutes.

After the lesson, I tracked down the senior teacher.

“What the hell was that?” I asked.

He explained:

“This group has been coming to the school every Saturday for the last 15 years. They love it. They’re great friends. Their English progress seems to have stalled sometime in 1976 but they’ve taken every course we have. They’ve done it all, from beginner to advanced. So we have to keep inventing higher and higher “levels” so that they feel they’re making progress.”

Hah! Everything suddenly made sense.

Not everyone is studying for a high-stakes exam.

Sometimes, people just want to hang out with their friends, and just need an excuse to do it.

Most people spend their days behind screens, bombarded by noise, and isolated from the kind of meaningful connection they crave.

Experiences like this matter not just because they promise transformation or outcomes, but because they offer a reason to gather and to belong.

In my Creator Empires business, the entire product has been built around in-person experiences in exotic locations.

In my OllyRichards.co business brand, I’ve made a point of building real, offline experiences into my business, from curated masterminds to private dinners.

In the past two weeks alone, I’ve run four separate in-person events:

One mastermind meeting
One 12-person entrepreneur dinner
Two VIP days with mentees

Last year, I took 10 entrepreneurs to a castle in Hobbitshire for two days…

Woodland walks…

Cocktails by the fire…

Deep conversations…

My experience teaching around the world showed my the meaning of IRL – experiences I’ve never managed to replicate in the online world.

When I run these events today, the comment I get, time and time again, is:

“You have no idea how amazing it is to connect with other people like me… working on and struggling with the same things as me… in real life!”

And so it is.

If you create the right container, people will keep coming back.

Not for the content… but for the community.

Memorable Moments in a Virtual World

So what does this all mean for you?

You don’t need to hire out a castle to build community.

But here’s what you can think about:

Micro-experiences: Live calls, accountability pods, hotseats.
Serendipity: Creating space for people to bump into each other.
Real relationships: Especially early on, when a small group can become your cultural foundation.

In the early days, go heavy on the live stuff.

Face-to-face time.

Small group calls.

Actual conversations.

It might not scale, but it sticks.

And it’s how you build a community of people that stick with you for the long-haul.

Now, I’ll be honest…

For years, I avoided high-touch formats like the plague

I was the “automate everything, sell it while I sleep, never get on a Zoom call, passive income till the cows come home” guy…

1-to-1? No thank you
Community to manage? Sounds like a nightmare
More work for the same money? Surely you must be joking, sir?

But the more I leaned into personal connection for my business personal brand, the more everything just seemed to “work”.

The business made more profit and – surprise, surprise – I actually loved it.

Same for StoryLearning, where we don’t do in-person (it’s challenging with students all around the world), but we have layered in live training, cohorts, contact with real people, which has ultimately made the business more resilient and more profitable.

Students are more committed than ever, and getting better results, which in the long run will create an even more valuable business.

So if you’re nervous about doing more live or high-touch stuff, I get it.

But I promise you:

In-person is where the magic happens

(Jay was right.)

This is what will keep you relevant in the face of our robot overlords.

And that is what you need in this new era of online education.

Who knows, it might even become your favourite part of the whole business.

(Stranger things have happened.)

…

Phew…

You can say a lot of things about my ramblings over the last few days.

But here’s one thing you definitely can’t say:

“I’m stuck for ideas!”

It’s clear that there’s abundant opportunity to reimagine your business and get a whole new level of results for your students.

There’s only one thing that’s gonna get in the way.

One thing only.

And it’s the same old chestnut that stops every entrepreneur achieving what they’re capable of.

And that is, of course…

Active, Aligned & Alive

Let’s take a moment to recap some of the major points of this manifesto so far:

The old high-traffic business model is dying
Information is becoming commoditised and losing value
You’ll need to sell implementation, not information…
Prepare for a low traffic <> high profit model…
And build antifragile traffic sources
Email must become personal and have “founder energy”
Ruthless efficiency in team and costs is non-negotiable
Community is how you will build your moat

Quite the shift, eh?

And if you’re clinging on to a legacy business model, you’ll doubtless be looking at the above list and seeing nothing but a helluvalotta work.

But, if we’re being honest with each other…

And we can – we’re friends, after all…

The list above also makes a helluvalotta sense.

Frankly, it all just looks like good business sense to me.

Now, as we’re setting about plotting and scheming what your future business will look like, you’re going to need to make a lot of changes.

Some big, some small.

Some now, some later.

Some easy, some hard.

But you know what? It’s not the changes themselves that will determine your success in all of this.

It’s your mindset.

So let’s explore the most vicious mindset villains that I encounter regularly in my mentorship practice.

Dispelling the Passive Income Myth

Here’s what nobody tells you about passive income:

Passive income is about as passive as cutting your own hair.

I realised this, coming up in the world of online courses, SEO, and affiliate marketing in the 2010s…

Everyone was building for passive income, but they were permanently working their arses off.

Why?

Well, here’s the reality:

One day, Google loves your content and you’re ranking on page 1. The next day, they decide your best-performing article belongs on page 47, and you’re down $5,000 a month.

One day, everyone loves your emails. Next day, everything’s landing in spam. Another crisis.

The giant problem with “passive” income on the internet is that it’s always at the mercy of algorithms – and as we discussed way back in chapter 1, algorithms are about as reliable as a British summer.

When you build your business based on passive stuff, you fundamentally lack control.

As a result, you’re permanently on edge, waiting for the next s***-show to kick off.

For many years, I thought this was normal.

After all, it was the only business model I knew.

But then, I started my personal brand business at OllyRichards.co…

And everything changed.

Suddenly, I was doing all the things I’d spent years avoiding:

Buying ads
Getting on Zoom calls with mentorship clients
Running live workshops
Even in-person events (gasp!)

And you know what? I bloody loved it.

Sure, I was trading time for money but it was very little time for quite a lot of money and, more importantly, I was in complete control.

No algorithms. No middlemen. No waking up to find half your income has evaporated.

Crucially, I was working roughly the same hours in both businesses and making similar money too.

The difference?

One filled me with anxiety. The other gave me peace of mind.

So here’s what I’ve realised after all these years:

I’ll take active work over passive income any day.

Direct relationships.

Work I control.

Yes, it means I can’t disappear to a desert island for six months… but it turns out I never really wanted to anyway.

What I wanted was freedom, and ironically, I found more freedom in active work than I ever did chasing passive income.

Funny how that works out.

These days, as I meet more entrepreneurs coming to me for guidance, I’ve noticed a tendency for many people to be stuck in the passive income mentality of 2015.

They’d drunk the Kool-Aid and bought into the laptop lifestyle promise 15 years ago…

And not updated their firmware since!

So take a cold, hard look inside.

Are you blind to new opportunities because you’re hanging on to the passive income dream, like a reality TV contestant from still clinging to dreams of fame after the cameras have moved on?

Don’t let that be you.

Active & Involved = Fun

One thing people consistently tell me they love about my stuff is the lifestyle element.

My business lets me lead a life of morning walks through Hobbitshire lanes, noodling on the piano, or flying my Robin DR400. I collect my daughter from school daily, take multiple holidays, or randomly take days off.

Or work bloody hard if I feel like it. (Remember, business is also fun.)

The lifestyle that my StoryLearning gave me is what gave me the free time to start my new business brand and grow it to 7-figures in year two.

In my famous $10M Case Study, I explained how you can have both – a business and a life.

Those who follow me want successful, profitable businesses without them swallowing their lives whole:

They want to take their kids to school
They want weekends off
They want to travel without laptops surgically attached

If this is you, you might’ve twitched in horror when I mentioned high-touch offers and IRL communities.

I know exactly what you’re thinking: “This high-touch stuff will steal my freedom!”

But…

Don’t confuse “passive” with “freedom”. There’s nothing passive about passive income.

Also, don’t confuse “active” or “high-ticket” with desk chains.

What buys my freedom at StoryLearning isn’t “passive courses.” It’s:

Scalable traffic
Systems
Team

Our VIP Coaching involves lots of people and live classes. But I’m not involved – my fantastic team runs it entirely. I was heavily involved initially, but stepped out once we’d established systems.

So please don’t dismiss these growth ideas because they sound like “hard work.” (Trust me, LOTS of people do!)

Instead, challenge yourself to step into the business owner role – not the employee.

But wait! There’s more!

Higher-touch customer work may become something you love. It did for me.

A passive digital business may efficiently generate revenue, but that doesn’t mean it gives you what you need as a human being.

Once past the “Hey mum, I made $20 while I slept!” stage, you’re still left contending with YOU – with all your needs, wants, idiosyncrasies and imperfections.

Through work with an outstanding life coach (hit me up for a rec), I recently gained clarity on my core values:

Connection
Teaching
Experience

The penny dropped immediately: “So THAT’S why I’m enjoying working with entrepreneurs so much!”

Working 1:1 with entrepreneurs – Connection!

Live workshops and VIP days – Teaching!

Masterminds in castles – Experience!

Sure, it’s work. But I bloody love it – far more gratifying than selling yet another online course. (Although that’s cool too.)

These activities align with the very core of who I am.

Yes, I feel like a sucker for only discovering this aged 44. But this tells me that building a truly aligned life isn’t easy, obvious or intuitive.

Hence this chapter.

The lesson is clear:

Have the confidence to design your business according to YOUR true values and preferences.

When I’m with people these days, THIS is what we discuss. The bigger your business, the higher the stakes. The more out-of-alignment, the more it hurts.

So…much like planting a tree, the best time to start thinking about this was yesterday.

The second best time is right now.

Did I Just Get Lucky?

There’s a doubt that’s been lurking in the back of my head for the last 12 years:

“Did I just get lucky with StoryLearning?”

This thought resurfaced for me recently when a few entrepreneur friends confessed the same thing to me:

“I wonder if I just got lucky.”

It’s like there’s this secret society of successful business owners who are all convinced they’re frauds, convinced that if everything vanished tomorrow, they wouldn’t have a hope in hell of doing it again.

That’s why we hoard cash and avoid risk.

But eventually I got so irritated with this type of defensive thinking that I made a list of everything I could do if my business disappeared tomorrow.

Entrepreneur friends I’d call. Services I could offer. Skills I could sell. Anything and everything I could do to cobble together £10k/mth.

As the list grew, the penny dropped.If it really came to it, I could make £10-20k a month just consulting without breaking a sweat.

Not because I’m special but because I’d spent 12 years becoming bloody good at all kinds of stuff:

Email marketing
Content creation
Copywriting
Product development
Team building

And I gradually came round to the idea that those 12 years weren’t luck at all… they were training.

In 2022, I started working on OllyRichards.co (this business).

I was itching to put my skills to use in something new and fresh.

I worked at it part time. Very casual.

And what happened?

Well I already told you… I went from zero to 7-figures in under two years.

How can this be explained? Did lightning strike twice? Or did I compress 12 years of expertise into a focused sprint?

Sure enough, I now look around and I see experienced entrepreneurs pulling off the same trick everywhere.

I’m telling you this in case you’re sitting reading this, worrying if you have the courage to make big changes, because, well… what if you just got lucky and could never repeat the trick?

Let me tell you why you should take courage from my story:

You’re not starting something new from scratch (much harder).

You’re just pivoting and adapting an existing business, where you already have:

An audience who knows and trusts you
Products and content you can repackage
Sales, marketing, and delivery skills sharpened by years of real-world experience
A brand reputation and authority you can leverage instantly

That puts you miles ahead of the pack.

All you’re doing now is reshaping your model to fit the world we’re in: lower traffic, smaller, more engaged audiences, premium pricing, and transformational offers.

So here’s my challenge:

Stop telling yourself you got lucky.

Make a list of every skill you’ve developed. Every single one. The obvious ones and the hidden ones you take for granted.

Now imagine what you’re capable of when you take those same skills and your existing business and apply them to a model that’s built for the world we’re in now.

When You Pivot… Pivot Hard

Sometimes, a pivot is required.

An example is my friend Mark who’s relied on SEO for the last 10 years to get traffic for his business… which teaches SEO.

Pivot?

Indeed, sir.

Here’s what’s important: If you decide to pivot, then you’d better pivot hard.

You can’t do it by halves.

And you can’t let the past stop you from defining the future:

“What about all this stuff I’ve already got?”
“What about my existing courses?”
“What about the membership I built?”

Ruthlessly cut it.

Leave it behind.

Not because what you were doing before wasn’t good or because you couldn’t grow it if you wanted to.

But because you have a far bigger opportunity by applying your skills to the opportunities of this new world.

It could change your entire life… and fast.

This is crystal clear to me now.

Everyone reading this is smart as hell. Perfectly capable of running a 6- or 7-figure business. Capable of turning their life into anything they want.

What will determine your success is the vehicle you choose.

I honestly get it… letting go is terrifying.

But remember that fortune favours the brave.

And there’s something amazing waiting for you on the other side.

And if it doesn’t work? Well, you can always go back to what you were doing before.

The same person who built what you have now is capable of building something ten times better.

You just need to give yourself permission to try.

Scarcity vs Abundance

In the early stages of fixing a struggling business, your first step is to stop the bleeding — cutting waste and plugging the holes where money is leaking (as you’ll discover in the blueprint I’ve laid out in the next chapter).

In this situation, only one thing matters: Cash.

But a lot of entrepreneurs get stuck there and never come out of survival mode.

That’s the scarcity mindset.

Scarcity – hoarding cash, failing to invest – is useful in the short term when you’re trying to keep a business afloat but over the long term, it’s deadly.

Because a big part of turning your business around and making sure it stays healthy is the opposite mindset…

Abundance.

Let me give you an example.

Around 8 years ago, a friend asked how much cash I kept in my business.

When I told her the answer (about a year’s worth of revenue), she said, “Glad I’m not the only one!”

Today, that answer horrifies me because I was so clueless about the role of money in business.

For a growing business, hoarding that much cash is pure insanity.

My business could easily be 5–10X bigger today if I’d put that cash to work properly, because growth compounds over time.

Here’s what I should have done: Separate op-ex from reserve cash and:

Invest back into the business
Spend on education / mentorship
Grow team to free my time (and learn to hire)

Spending cash on any of these things (even if they are unfamiliar) will make you more money than holding onto the cash.

A lot more.

But it requires belief.

Letting go of the old and embracing the new is ultimately about scarcity vs abundance.

Scarcity says: “I can’t change. This is all I’ve got. Better hold on tight.”
Abundance says: “I can change. I can adapt. I can make this even better than before.”

It’s about releasing your grip on what’s familiar so you can reach for what’s possible.

Orienting yourself toward the future instead of clinging to the past.

When you cling to those old ways — whether it’s keeping a failing offer or business model alive or hoarding cash out of fear — you’re letting scarcity run the show.

Transforming your business for this new era is about shifting into abundance…

And I’ll show you the practical steps to do that next.

Step-by-Step Recovery Blueprint

Right, let’s get practical.

If you’ve made it this far, you probably don’t need more theory. You need to know what to do on Monday morning.

But let’s be real… this is not a “quick 60-day fix.”

Turning a struggling course business around is more like steering a tanker than whipping a speedboat.

There are some tough decisions to be made.

And there’s discipline required to follow through.

(We’ve been through all this in StoryLearning in the last 12 months, so I’m with you in spirit!)

Our goal here isn’t just to patch the leaks for a month, it’s to reset the direction so you’re actually sailing toward a profitable, sustainable future.

So here it is — a blueprint to not just save your dying course business, but transform it into a leaner, stronger, more profitable machine than ever before.

Phase 1: Stop the Bleeding

The goal here is simple:

Stabilise. Clean house. Get your head above water.

This is the bit where you find out how much waste and distraction has built up in the murky cobweb-gathering corners of your business.

1. Audit what’s working. Cut the rest

Brew yourself a strong cup of tea and start from the top:

Tools
Subscriptions
Staff
Projects
Your offers

Ask: Is this thing making money or is it surplus to requirements?

A cash generator or a relic from a hasty pandemic-fuelled decision in 2021?

If the answer isn’t clear, it probably needs to go.

2. Inject that Founder Energy

If your sales are dropping, a big part of this could be that you’ve stopped talking like a human.

If anyone else has been writing “as you,” stop it.

Founder-led emails reconnect you to your audience and you need that connection badly right now.

So open a blank email and write to your list as if you were writing to one person.

Tell them where you’re at, what’s coming and what matters right now.

Stream-of-consciousness is good.

Just make sure it’s dripping with personality and energy.

3. Re-map your team to profit

Got legacy staff? Old roles? Freelancers you forgot were still billing you?

Go line-by-line and ask:

“What does this person do and how does that map to profit?”

Every person on the P&L should tie directly to a profit centre.

If you can’t explain how each peron makes you more money than they cost, you need to do something about it:

consolidate roles
automate
or make the hardest call of all

This is painful now, but letting the business fail is far worse for everyone.

Phase 2: Build the New Foundation

Now that you’ve stopped the leaks, you can move on to rebuilding – where we’ve focused much of the energy in this guide.

This is where we lay down a focused business model that can actually grow with you, rather than costing you money to carry..

1. Sense check on pricing

I don’t care what business you’re in, pricing is the #1 lever you’ve got.

Most of us plucked our pricing out of thin air on a rainy Thursday afternoon… and never questioned it since.

This means reevaluating your pricing could be the fastest path to turning things around.

Make sure you’re charging the right amount to your best customers and not needlessly underpricing or discounting.

Price creates perception and people want to feel like they’re stepping into something substantial so start acting like your offer’s worth more, and it will be treated that way.

Have you been mulling a price rise? Would a reasonable outsider say you’re underpriced?

Grab the bull by the horns and address that immediately.

(Run a “prices going up sale” for a reliably big cash influx.)

2. Create higher-value offers with existing material

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel to increase revenue, you just need to make the wheel bigger and shinier.

Take your existing products and look for ways to bundle them into something more complete, more transformational, and more valuable.

This could involve a “larger curriculum” that solves the whole problem instead of just one part, or more access to you and your team to cut guesswork from the process.

3. Explore high-ticket options

I promise it’s not as scary as you think.

A high-ticket offer is about delivering a complete transformation for the right kind of student by providing the fastest, most certain path to success for them.

The easiest way to start?

Create a beta version, pre-sell it to a small, trusted group and build the experience alongside them.

You’ll validate demand, refine the offer in real time, and generate cash before you even start building the full program.

4. Use AI to cut costs further

You don’t need a big team any more.

You certainly don’t need to work weekends.

But you do need the right systems that make the most of what you’ve got:

Use AI for heavy-lifting in repurposing content for different platforms
Automate admin-heavy processes like customer support and onboarding
Write the first draft of those promotional or onboarding sequences that you never got round to

The key: automate the process, not the personal touch – 10-80-10.

The best experiences feel human even if they’re running on efficient systems behind the scenes.

Free yourself up to do the parts only you can do.

Phase 3: Future-Proof the Business

Once you’ve stabilised (Phase 1) and rebuilt your foundation (Phase 2), it’s time to lean heavily into the opportunities that are staring you in the face right now.

1. Move into better traffic opportunities

If you’ve been stuck in low-ROI platforms, shift into channels with better leverage:

Shift from blog-only to YouTube for greater discoverability and longevity
Turn your audio-only podcast into a video podcast for discoverability
Tap into other people’s media with sponsorships and partnerships
Test paid ads if your economic model can support it
You get the idea

The goal here is to slowly stack reliable, complementary traffic sources that balance each other out to build an antifragile marketing system that gets stronger, not weaker, when things shift.

2. Shift from company brand to personal brand

People trust people.

In the new era of online education, your personal authority will outperform any faceless brand.

The old advice you got to remove yourself from the business, so the business can scale without you?

Time to backtrack on that, pronto.

Put your name and face on your content, share your story and your philosophy and let people see you.

This is how you build an audience who will follow you anywhere.

Applying the Blueprint

As you move through this process, remember to focus ruthlessly on the things that make a difference.

There’s no place for tracking fluff-metrics like views and engagement anymore.

You need to focus your time on things that actually move the needle in your bottom line, which means, for example:

Revenue per email subscriber – not list size
Net profit – not top-line revenue
Leads per 1,000 YouTube views – not raw traffic
Replies and engagement – not open rates
Customer outcomes + real reviews – not just pretty testimonials

If you can’t track your activity to a hard outcome like these, it’s probably a distraction.

Yes, there’s more to business than revenue.

But when there’s a storm outside, fixing the roof is your first priority.

Conclusion

This guide ended up rather longer than I anticipated!

We’ve poked holes in the old model and why it won’t be around much longer
We’ve dissected the real reasons the economics of online business are changing
We’ve reimagined what a modern education business can look like in this new world..

…and why you – with all your experience – are perfectly positioned to thrive over the next 5 years… and make a killing in the process..

I’ve tried to give real examples throughout, from my own businesses, or from others that I’m familiar with, so you can have confidence in what you’re reading here, and so that you know you’re not alone in finding things tough right now.

Doing well in the next 3-5 years means:

Serving fewer students, more deeply, who thank you for the privilege
Being free from the mercy of algorithm updates and platform whims
Building something that you’re truly proud of
Having systems that support your life, not consume it

And the guiding light that will keep you on the right path:

Focusing on getting real results for your customers

They want more personal, more useful, more transformative help than ever before… not just more information.

If you can meet them there you’ll not only survive this great shakeup, you’ll look back and realise it was the start of the strongest, most aligned version of your business yet.

Yes, traffic sources will keep shifting…

Yes, AI will keep evolving…

Yes, algorithms will keep playing whack-a-mole with your reach…

But through it all, the basic principles of business will never change.

The businesses that build trust, know exactly who they serve, and consistently deliver real transformations will dominate.

And the entrepreneurs who adapt by simplifying, niching down, and building premium, high-impact offers will do it with more profit and peace of mind.

So regardless of the numbers in your dashboard right now, take heart.

This isn’t the end of your business.

Everything that’s come so far was just your warm-up act.

The main event is yet to come.

Namaste,

Olly Richards