On Tuesday, I shared ideas from my first mastermind experience (you can read about my business direction here).

Today, I want to share my general notes from the day.

As a reminder, this was with 10 education-based online entrepreneurs, and hosted by Olly Richards.

33 ideas to help grow your business

AI is a double-edged sword. You need to learn to wield it.

Yes, lots of crap content is flooding the Internet. But it’s an incredible opportunity to expand your output. Keep your team lean (stay flexible for the future) and integrate AI processes as much as possible. Take it seriously.

YouTube is important.

Almost every entrepreneur in the room had a channel. I don’t. Olly’s advice is to track leads not views. Often viral videos give shit traffic. Then YouTube then gives you more of the shit. Just another algorithm trap. Optimize for the right result (use specific lead magnets too). I need to learn how to track this stuff better.

4 ways to optimize.

You either need more traffic, better conversions, sell more stuff, or charge higher prices. Stop overcomplicating it.

Don’t just make money. Cut costs.

Cutting costs ain’t sexy but there’s a huge saving potential by trimming the fat. My plan is to train my VA to review our expenses every 6 months.

The course business is dead.

Just kidding. I’ve seen a lot of noise about this but not much data. Everyone in this room has courses. Everyone is doing well. Shit courses are dead. Create quality—care for your customers.

You can’t rely on social media.

One guy got banned from IG. My traffic got wiped from X. Your newsletter is your most important asset. Keep it top priority.

On that note…

Learn to write great emails.

You must know how to sell your offers. Outsource at your own cost. You need to be sending 2-5 emails per week. Story-driven, personality-based emails. I wish someone would write a banging course on it.

Facts not feelings.

It is easy to react to how things feel, especially when comparing to the past. But data is king. If the numbers are good, you might be looking through the wrong lens (hence, know your bloody numbers!).

Don’t sell the wrong thing.

Fix your message: connect customers to the result. Example: you don’t sell social media growth, you sell more leads. “You sell warm feet, not socks.”

Reframe benefits.

Came up a few times. You can reframe anything into a benefit. This applies to content (turn your weaknesses/flaws into selling points), but also in business direction. Great things emerge from shit situations. It’s all about how you respond. “Opportunities come from chaos.”

Bring solutions not problems.

As you scale, you can’t afford to put out fires 24/7. Encourage autonomy in your team by asking for potential solutions, not just the problems. Caution: can go too far. If you hear zero problems, you’ve got a problem.

Embrace the non-sexy work of checklists.

You can’t scale without decent operations. Checklists improve efficiency. Build them as you go. Good for error correction over time. Encourage your team members to be responsible for creating their own. Loom helps.

Systems are awesome.

One guy had an incredible overview of his business. Big potential to scale. Everything was dialed in. Mine feels like chaos—will fix this during the summer. “If you want less effort, build better systems.”

Webinars can be great.

Webinar → pitching offer is a solid biz model. Haven’t tried myself. Interesting to see how it works. Incentive is simple: buy now.

Top of funnel fixes, bottom of funnel flies

A suggestion from Olly. If one guy doubled his front end opt-in conversions (20% to 40%), that could mean an extra ~$1m a year. I really need to start tracking and testing.

Great question: What is the constraint right now?

Olly asked multiple times. To understand the constraint you need to know the objective. Decide what you’re optimizing for then find the big thing in the way.

Great question: How can you make the most money from the smallest group of people?

Everyone has the tendency to chase new leads. But you end up underserving your best customers. High ticket sales means more money for top end growth, which means more HT sales. Powerful flywheel.

Great question: What would you want things to look like in 3-5 years?

Helps zoom out from tactical hell. I answered mine in part 1 of this review.

Great question: What does this look like if it doubled the size (or even 10x)?

Exposes what part of your business will break due to volume. Better to plan now than suffer later.

You don’t need to build it.

Just a cool note: you can hire people to build stuff. One guy had a cool business hiring an expert for the teaching. I would struggle with this (I like to be in control, plus I love the learning that comes from teaching), but interesting idea.

Cash is king.

If you have cashflow issues you might need to defer your ‘dreams’. Fix that shit. Make good offers, sell more time, serve existing customers. Then plan for the future.

Paid ads are good.

I have no clue about this world, but many of the entrepreneurs are successfully running ads. I’m organic. I’d like to explore the other side of things (although, is it a distraction?).

Don’t sell too late.

Yes your lead magnet nurture funnel might be good. But people in pain want a solution now. Set up offers on thank you pages/first emails. Good for return on ad spend.

Become an authority in a specific topic.

Everyone here paid good money to work with Olly. Olly talks a tonne about education-based businesses. His specificity creates authority. It made for a great learning experience too. A note to self: become THE writer for the people you serve (then create cool shit like this!).

Get your clients to define their own takeaways.

Olly asked for this at the end of each presentation. Was a great exercise. Will do this for all my client calls going forward. Noticed it made me think more, but also made sure you heard the same thing as what was said (important for clarity).

If spinning your wheels, get going.

Some choices are hard to figure out. There is no right or wrong answer. Pick one and get going. The path reveals itself the more you walk. You can’t lose if you learn.

Masterminds are awesome.

I felt so pumped about my business during/after. Great to be around the energy. Also, presenting your own business makes you think through it so much more.

Creating fans is powerful.

Two examples. 1) Several of the entrepreneurs there had previously reached out to me asking about working with Olly. I (for good reason) gave a raving review. 2) One entrepreneur sells in webinars. Many old customers come and say buying the product was great—very compelling. Happy customers create customers.

2 questions companies ask when buying businesses.

Where is your recurring revenue? Do you have 3 reliable way to get customers? → first question is why most people struggle to sell a course biz.

Find what works and do more of it.

Nuff said.

Codify your approach.

Stop selling you. Start selling your process. Great for outsourcing, hiring teachers etc. Example: Olly doesn’t teach languages. He runs Story learning.

Find great partnership deals.

Some of the entrepreneurs had cool deals working with companies like Virgin. Who can you reach out to in your industry? Think outside the box.

Great question: What advice would you give to yourself 3 years ago?

Good for reframing. Personal note: usually it’s the same advice you should be following right now.

Hope these notes helped,

Kieran

P.S.

A note on products:

Every entrepreneur had one or several. Some only did courses. But many used theirs as reputation/relationship builders and combined with higher ticket offers.

So no, AI isn’t killing courses.

People want to learn from people.

And a good product helps you serve at scale.

If you’d like help, Productize Your Knowledge comes out 4th July. It’ll be available for a limited time only. You can join 1,150 people on the waitlist here.