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In this episode, Rick Mulready reveals the exciting new direction he’s taking his business. Rick doesn’t just discuss the potential of AI; he breaks it down into a practical, step-by-step approach accessible to all online business owners.
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Links from this episode:
- Subscribe to The Art of Online Business’s YouTube Channel
- Get The Lead Gen Cheat Code: The Easiest Way To Get High Quality, Affordable Leads Without Paying for a Facebook Ads Manager
- Listen to Rick’s ‘The AI-Powered Business’ podcast
Adding another layer to the AI journey, Rick, in collaboration with AI expert Rachel Woods, introduces his latest venture: The AI-Powered Business podcast.
Tune in for this exciting episode and empower yourself to take your business to the next level with AI.
Kwadwo [QUĀY.jo] Sampany-Kessie’s Links:
- Grab the Facebook Ads Lead Gen Cheat Code course to cut your lead costs and double your email list!
- Visit Kwadwo’s website for Facebook Ads help
- Learn about the online business software Rick and Kwadwo recommend and use
- Visit Kwadwo’s website to learn how he can hire a VA for you:
https://quayjo.com/hireyourva - Say hi to Kwadwo on Instagram
Rick Mulready’s Links:
- Visit Rick’s website
- DM Rick on Instagram
- Full episodes of The Art of Online Business Podcast on YouTube
Timestamps:
00:00 – Introduction
00:52 – Rick’s sabbatical led to new plans
03:26 – AI tools streamline business and save time
08:17 – Reinspired by different aspect of online business
12:30 – Partnering to simplify AI for non-technical people
14:36 – Using AI to streamline Facebook ad process
18:18 – Big plans for my new company, revenue sources
20:18 – I made a basic website myself with AI
24:40 – Delay due to desire for relevant questions
26:56 – New podcast coming soon
Speaker 1:
Once I did that, I was able to launch a program and you know what I actually had paying customers and if you’re thinking about a course, I highly recommend, before you spend all the hours making this work of art, go see what people actually need, not just what you, as an expert, think they need. Hey, there, kwayjo here, and this Thanksgiving season, I wanted to share with you five business strategies, tips, knowledge that I’ve learned about online business that have just changed the game for me, in hopes that you also can apply these things in your business and increase your reach. The number of people, the amount of people that you’re able to impact and the revenue that you’re allowed to bring in, or the revenue that you’re able to bring in, and what that does for you and your life goals, sound good. Well, keep listening, let’s go. Also, if you could leave a podcast review for this podcast, there’s a link in the show notes below that allows me to know how you like the episodes that I’m delivering and I definitely appreciate your good reviews. Enable more people to find this podcast people that need what this podcast provides more tips and strategies for online course creators so they can scale their businesses up into the high six figures. Also, if my voice is new to you, hi, my name is Kwayjo and I’m the new co-host of the Art of Online Business podcast, along with Rick, I think we well, he made that announcement when he came back from his sabbatical, I believe in episode 718, was it Back in the mid September? And if you’re listening to this from the far future, that’s September 2023.
Speaker 1:
Okay, so the first thing that I’m thankful for is when I learned how to pre validate a course. The credit for this one goes to, I believe, pat Flynn, though I’ve also heard Rick talk about this a lot, which you know what happened. I had another course way back when I lived in China, way back when I was the owner, creator of elementary Chinese teaching expatriates, people who worked in China professionally that were non native Mandarin speakers. I taught them how to speak Mandarin and you know what? I spent one summer because my full time job I was a teacher in English, as a second language teacher, esl teacher, at an international school in China, and if you’ve been to China and you’re like where where Tianjin was where I taught, well, I taught in many cities, about Xiamen in the south of China and then Tianjin in the north of China. So one summer, because everyone kept asking me how to teach them Mandarin you know I was really good at Mandarin and people that would come as new teachers, they would ask me questions I decided, hey, what if I developed a course on some practical Mandarin phrases? And you know what? I spent geez, 80 hours conservatively actual editing hours making this cool course and text would move around on screen and the background was this cool blue and the text. I just really have a gift for explaining language and this course was a labor of love and you don’t want to know what happened. I lost the course right before I went back to school in the late, late, late summer.
Speaker 1:
And crickets, even though I had somewhat of a following on social media for teaching Chinese. Side note, if you’ve kind of Googled me or stalked me around the internet because you’re thinking about having me manage your ads or joining my Facebook ads course, well, you’ve seen then that I do teach, or I used to teach, chinese and you’re like, why does he teach Chinese? Because that’s social media for my old business. So crickets, crickets. I mean I sold maybe three of the course and it was only like $120. And that was a steal. I mean. This thing was robust with language, about how to handle yourself in day to day life, from markets to greetings to getting what you needed in the restaurant. It was a good course and every lesson I like edited graphically so you could learn the grammar and the tones. Wow, nobody wanted to buy it. So, okay, that’s thought. Contrast that with maybe three months later I, after listening to podcast episodes, I was motivated to do just to start interviewing people, not to sell them, but to actually do let’s call it market research to see what they really had a problem with, so that I could develop an offer program, of course, around that problem to help them.
Speaker 1:
So I just put out the word in my social media and in some Facebook groups I was in and some Chinese social media groups that I was in, and next that I would hop on the phone or you know, the phone, the cell phone with people for 15 minutes just to listen and see how I could help, because I was doing research for a new program. So I did that and what happened then is people got on the phone with me and I asked some very Strategic questions so I could really understand their, their wants, their needs, their hopes and desires around learning Mandarin and, of course, since they were Expressing to me like what they needed, I had a lot better feedback, which meant I could deliver a much better result, because it was actually surprise, surprise what they needed and, of course, what happened was Quite a few of them became customers, because I didn’t sell to them on these calls, but I did ask them. At the end. I’m doing research for a program that I’m going to develop that will teach you how to learn Chinese despite having a busy day job here in China. Once I figure out what that program looks like, after I talk to more people, kind of like I just listened to you, do you want information about how to join? You want me to let you know? And they were like yeah, let me know. So once I did that, I was able to launch a program and you know what I Actually had paying customers and it was beautiful.
Speaker 1:
So that’s one way to Prevalidate your course and if you’re thinking about a course, I highly recommend, before you spend all the hours making this work of art, go see what people actually need, not just what you as an expert think they need. And it’s not you, it’s me too, it’s all of us because of something called knowledge bias, where the Better we get at a subject or a topic, we kind of forget how beginners would approach that topic. So the second thing that I’m really thankful for that helped me level up in online business is learning how to do group coaching or set up group coaching for you listening, if you’re good at what you do, but you just do it one-on-one, like you know, it doesn’t take long for your schedule to be booked up. And then you’re like, how do I scale this thing? And you can’t, because people love the help that you give, but you don’t have any more hours in the day. And if you’re on the other side of that and you have a course that’s in demand, right, then there’s probably opportunity for you to make more money by helping some of those students in a group setting. I’m not talking about just having a group call component on the course. I’m talking about taking people through in eight week, seven week could be nine weeks Transformation that you can like walk them through and there’s more hands-on time with you. But what that means is Does it annoy you that when people take a course sometimes they just don’t finish it? Well, you, because you’re meeting with people. Maybe that looks like a weekly group call, or two group calls a week, depending on how you price things. And then maybe you have a small group, maybe that’s on Slack, maybe that’s just an Instagram DM group, maybe that’s on another social media platform, it doesn’t matter, as long as you can help people better and people are willing to pay more for this.
Speaker 1:
My first one that I did in my previous business. I think it was right around $700 to $800 for eight weeks. And wow, where did I learn that? Well, actually I participated in a mastermind. It was in Rick’s mastermind. I was a paid member way back in 2019 and they made me they made me launch this group coaching program on day two of the mastermind and I was so scared. But you know what, when you get in a group of people that are way further down the road than you are, so to speak, you just do what they say. Right, here’s what I had to launch it and here’s what you can do to launch yours if you’re so inclined. I had an outcome and a promise. Listen to this it is I can take you from zero to being able to communicate your day to day Chinese needs in less than 60 days without needing Google translate. And if you’re watching on the YouTube channel, well, if you’re not watching, there’s a link in the descriptions below the show notes below. But if you’re watching, you can see the same graphic that I would post over and over and over again updating how many spots were left for my group coaching program for Chinese, and that alone.
Speaker 1:
Well, first I’ll tell you how well it went, but let me tell you what else I had. I launched it with the outline and I think I did just a little video of me talking about it and I sent people. Well, you could see on the screen it said message me. So I had people message me and then inside of the DMs, like, explain to them the program. And then the ones that want to join well, I let them join. And I think I was accepting payment on like an either PayPal or like a local Chinese payment platform, because I did this while I was in China. I had an outline of the program and that’s all. So Instagram story plus outline, and that’s what I used to sell this group coaching offer. I think I had nine people in my first cohort and then the next month I had somewhere below 15, but above 10, I scaled it by just continuing to offer subsequent cohorts before the previous one or ones had even finished, and so at one time maybe I had like three cohorts going, but it was manageable because I had a very good system and it only involved like one group call a week, so I just had the group call some different days, but I think at the peak of the November cohort I had like 24 people in there. So group coaching.
Speaker 1:
Number three online business strategy that I am thankful for that had changed it for me is learning how to rank videos in the YouTube search. I learned this one back in 2018, 2017 from Sean Cannell Rhymes with YouTube channel. If you’ve learned from him, then you’ve heard of his course called Video Ranking Academy and I won’t go into all that, but I took it and, man, that just really helped me grow my business. Unfortunately, I used tons of those strategies back when I first had my other business elementary Chinese even way back before I had something to sell in that business. Now, I don’t recommend you do that. I recommend, since you already have something to sell for your business, grow your YouTube presence.
Speaker 1:
Youtube is king of the social media. You may feel like you want short form success on TikTok or Instagram Reels, but the thing is is that short form content does not always translate to people trusting you and knowing you and really liking you and actually converting into customers. Just remember that there’s so many stories of creators who have millions of followers on TikTok but just weren’t selling that much. Youtube, on the other hand, because of its ability, its search function and it’s the second largest search engine in the world seconds of Google and Google Alphabet now owns YouTube. What happens is in the name of the game is you can look for search phrases using a tool like vid IQ. I’ll link that up in the show notes below.
Speaker 1:
If you find search phrases that people are searching for because they need help that relate to your area of expertise, how you can help them and those search phrases are, let’s say, nuanced or long tail, as in, they have more words in the search phrase and there’s not a lot of competition from YouTube channels and videos that answer those questions then you can create a video that answers a specific question ASQ, that is another framework from Sean Cannell and your video then has a better chance of ranking for that search phrase that people are looking for Low volume search phrases, kind of like SEO, you can rank for. And then how would you like to the idea of, let’s say, in a given month, 200 people discovering your video that answers their specific question, and then a percentage of those people also opting in for a lead magnet that you made, that you talked about and said that you linked up in the description below? Sounds good, right? Well, that’s how ranking videos in YouTube search worked and that’s what I did to grow my YouTube channel to a little over 20,000 subscribers on YouTube the other YouTube channel, of course, for elementary Chinese. I’m head there if you wanna be entertained and I’m busy right now. But as the co-host, well, I’m working towards it. Actually, I commit. I feel like I’m a little early for New Year’s resolutions, but this is not a resolution. I have a Facebook ads business and a team and I’m working towards setting up the systems, because part of my responsibility for the Art of Online Business podcast is the YouTube channel and I am growing it. It is growing and it will grow more once I start to create content specific for that channel that will show up on that channel to help online course creators. So if you haven’t subscribed yet, go down to the show notes below click that link. It’s the Art of Online Business on YouTube. Subscribe and watch the visual things going on there and watch me grow the channel All right.
Speaker 1:
The fourth thing that I am really, really thankful for this I learned when I was coaching inside of Rick’s Accelerator program group. Coaching slash mastermind is I learned how to coach. Actually, I learned how to ask coaching questions. You know, when I first started there because of my Facebook ads expertise, I noticed something, and that was Rick and some of the other coaches. They would, you know, from an uneducated point of view, I called it. They would make people cry, and not in a bad way, but I just noticed it was like they were like psychologists. They would just ask and they’re not psychologists, but they were like them and or what I perceived to be a psychologist. They would ask questions and ask questions and a member would ask a question and they would be responded to with another question.
Speaker 1:
And next thing, you know like these deep things are coming up for you know, the members and some of them, yeah, were bought to tears as they kind of explained various motivations and deep things that had to do with their business and business growth. And then I realized, oh, it’s this art of asking questions that allowed the person being asked to go deep, and because they went deep, they were able to discover the answers they needed. And then the subsequent strategy that, like Rick would deliver, was even more effective. And so I remember just asking Rick, like how do you do this? Because, like you guys have listened to Rick on the podcast, like he’s just Rick, he’s super down to earth and he really knows how to think about online business, and if you’ve had the opportunity to work with him coaching wise, then you know how good he is about helping you discover solutions in your own business.
Speaker 1:
I started off doing a lot more consulting, which is good, but coaching delivers a bigger and more permanent transformation, and consulting involves, like giving the answers related to your area of expertise, mine being Facebook ads and now online courses. You know systems and marketing and sales too, but then just Facebook ads and coaching really empowers someone to make their own decision rather than you just telling them answers, and it’s always better when somebody’s making their own informed decision. So the book I have that Rick told me to read and then I read and that really helped me, is called the Coaching Habit Say less, ask more and change the way you lead forever. I’ll link that up in the description in the show notes below. See, I’m so used to YouTube. I always say in the descriptions, but it’s in both places. If you’re watching on YouTube then yeah, it’s in the descriptions. And here’s a quote from that book which says build the habit of staying curious a little longer, rush to action and advice giving a little slower. You see, this encourages coaches to facilitate self-discovery in their clients, allowing online course creators to find their own unique strategies and solutions. The advice here is to stop giving so much advice and start asking the right questions. Which leads me to my fifth thing that I am really thankful for as far as online business goes, which is learning how to run Facebook ads.
Speaker 1:
Way back in my previous business days, in the Chinese teaching days, I used to boost posts. If you boost your Instagram posts, please don’t do that anymore, but I did, used to do it before. I really knew what I was doing and you know what? It got me a lot of followers, actually. Okay, cool story. So you guys know that China bans foreign social media, right, because they don’t want foreign powers influencing their populace, right? So they ban Facebook and Instagram and all the cool things basically are banned and China has their own versions. So what I was doing was actually I didn’t know at the time, but it was pretty genius for being famous which I was taking my content, which was a lot of collab content, and I was boosting that on Instagram to people who were in China.
Speaker 1:
But what happened was because the social media Instagram and Facebook was blocked when I was in China, the only people who could access it were mainly like foreigners, expats, people who weren’t Chinese but were living in China. And so, also because of that unique environment, because Facebook ads, instagram ads it’s a marketplace. If you run ads right now, you notice your ads are probably a little more expensive towards the end of the year because it’s Thanksgiving time and Black Friday time and marketing time and Christmas time and more people are marketing on Facebook, which means that you have to pay more to have your ad be shown in somebody’s feed, right? So in China, nobody was interested in showing Facebook ads to people who were living in China, right? Because the market is kind of closed off to foreign companies.
Speaker 1:
So what happened was is I was getting views on my really engaging Learn Chinese Instagram posts like teaching Chinese phrases for on the cheap, on the super cheap, like it was. It was nuts, and I will conservatively say that what happened was is I would just boost the post to people in China and next thing I knew it was like I was a B list, maybe C list, no B list, b list celebrity among the foreigners on the streets, because my ads were just showing up all over their phones and their iPads and they were loving the content. So I would say like three out of 10 people who weren’t Chinese would recognize me when I’m like out in China doing the daily thing. You know and see them and they would be like they wouldn’t know my name but they’d be like you’re the elementary Chinese guy, like true story.
Speaker 1:
I was going out like on a date for dinner with my wife and we’re eating this really cool up Pita, pita like Middle Eastern restaurant and we were eating Pita’s there. And then there’s like these Russian girls because there’s lots of Russians in China and lots of Koreans too and they’re like sitting a couple tables over and like I happened to glance because I hear like I couldn’t understand what they’re saying, but I knew like I had been spotted and so, like I glance over, and my wife had like never experienced this before, and like they see that, I see that they saw me. And so next thing, you know, then, like one of them, the brave one comes over to our table and is like you’re elementary Chinese, right? I’m like yes, and my wife was just like oh, you are kidding. Like people really do come up to you in public. And so then they proceeded to want to take a picture with me, you know, and say hi, and I introduced them to my wife and it was fun.
Speaker 1:
And I think my wife no, I don’t think she would go, and then we’re going to get right back to Facebook ads but she would go to speak at conferences in China, because basically, in China, like, if you’re like a Christian and you’re here in the US, you know you get to go to church with people who believe, like exactly like you believe, and you can go to whatever church because there’s like freedom of religion in the states. In fact, you can worship whoever you want to worship in the states, and that’s like one of the beautiful parts of being an American in the states, right, but in China, no, uh-uh. So there’s just like one church and everybody’s together and it’s actually really really, really cool because you get to like meet people who maybe don’t believe like all the exact things that you believe, but you can then like just come together around like the core things, like the core Christian things that you believe in, like Jesus, you know, and so, like my wife would go around and speak at like various conferences because she’s like a really good worship leader and she would like, you know, inevitably when you speak you have like a slide and you know this is my family and this is my husband, these are my kids, but like whatever she would show my husband, like easily a third of the room would be like I know these elementary Chinese because of me boosting my posts. So, to bring it back, unless you’re in China, don’t boost your posts, because it’s just you don’t have a lot of control and it doesn’t really get you followers that actually convert into clients. And for me, I had a lot of followers on Instagram, I think, and this was back in the day, but like I think at the peak I had like 27,000 followers, which you know in 2017, 2018, that’s a lot of people.
Speaker 1:
Now it’s just small change that ticktocks a big thing, and so the skill with Facebook ads. You’re probably like Kwejo what are you talking about Facebook ads? For? The skill is controlling the flow of quality leads coming into your business’s sales funnel via a lead magnet. That is a crucial skill that you should learn how to master, because if your funnel is healthy, then your business is converting leads into sales, as in you’re getting more opportunities to serve people who you are meant to help with the skills and passions that you have. Right, and you can do it the organic way for sure. But eventually, if you want to scale more quickly, setting up Facebook ads is a strategy that you want to learn. So for me, it opened the door for a lot of things up until this day. It opened the door for me to coach Facebook ads inside of Rick Mulrady’s accelerator program, which is no longer in existence. He keeps reminding me to tell you that If you’ve heard an episode that has both of us on it, he’ll say that too. It allowed me to start my own Facebook ads management business. I’ve been able to meet some really cool clients and people who I could say some of them will be lifelong acquaintances and others will be lifelong friends. It allowed me to create a course.
Speaker 1:
When I got stuck outside of China literally right when the pandemic began, we didn’t know it was beginning, even though we were in China. We took a vacation to Mexico, me and my wife, my two kids, one check-in luggage and a couple of carry-ons and got stranded in Mexico and never to this day, november 14th I’m recording the episode right now, even though you’re hearing it on November 25th, I believe I still have not been able to go back to China. I was forced to sell. My wife and I had to get on FaceTime and look through our phones. If you’re on the YouTube channel this phone right here, I still have it, it’s the iPhone 11. We were looking through our phones. Our friends were on the other FaceTime end in our apartment. We had to get a four-bedroom apartment down to six-lugages, which we didn’t even see until a year and a half later. My gosh, those were hard times.
Speaker 1:
You know what I was able to then have a job managing Facebook ads. Now I’ve been able to create a course called the Lead Gen Cheat Code. You’ve probably heard about it before. If you haven’t, there’s a link in the description below. It’s for you course creator, who may still be on the rise to 150K annual gross annual revenue years. It might not quite make sense for the current phase of your business to hire someone like me. I would be honored, but it might not make sense to hire a Facebook ads manager just yet. But you absolutely, in that course, can follow my same step-by-step blueprint that I use to cut lead costs for my Facebook ads clients and grow their email list. You can follow it. It’s funny. I had somebody DM me and she asked is this course like some of these other Facebook ads courses that talk about why you need to run Facebook ads but don’t really teach you how? I’m like? Oh no, god forbid. This is literally my step-by-step Do this, do that, do this, do that, do this, do that to get the kind of results that I do, which is cutting lead costs and growing email list. At any rate, I wouldn’t have had that opportunity if I didn’t learn Facebook ads.
Speaker 1:
Those five skills are really, I guess, what have gone into making me who I am now. They really changed at each stage of my online business career. They really changed and helped me level up my business. I hope that those skills can help you level up your business so that when you’re thankful for something. It can be thankful for that, because I do absolutely believe that God blessed you with some gifts and some passions and things that you really can help tons of people with through your online coaching or your online membership or your online course. I believe that your business should be growing and you should get the privilege to serve more people, but that also more people do need help from you. More people need help from you.
Speaker 1:
Take these skills. I hope they help you level up too. If you’ve already learned some of them, do more of them. Give me on Instagram at Quajo the link is in the description below. There’s tons of links down in the descriptions below. Lots of good old stuff. Tell me what you liked about this episode. Until the next episode, be blessed. Happy Thanksgiving. If you’re American and in the US, or just celebrating it in another part of the world, I get it. I’ve lived outside the country for 16 years. Now I’ll see you in the next episode.
