Welcome back, empire builders. Today, we have a long overdue interview with Felix from Giant Lifestyle. He’s been a part of our community in the past, and we haven’t talked to him since he was in our Inner Circle community years ago. Since then, he’s turned a $1,000 program of ours into well over a million dollars, and he knows all about how to sell a course profitably.
He’s here to show you how to take the same information we have here and use it to share your own information products. Felix has done this tremendously well — and thank you for jumping on here with us.
Back to the Beginning
For about ten years, Felix has been a full-time entrepreneur. But first, establishing a Giant Lifestyle YouTube channel was a labor of love. He wasn’t trying to make money out of it. He just enjoyed doing it. It was getting him by, but it just wasn’t hitting that next level. Then, he learned how to pitch his information products.
Eventually, Felix attracted enough interest in his online business, flipping diabetic testing supplies, and heeded a viewer’s encouragement to formally share his knowledge. We helped him learn how to package his offline skill set into a high-dollar course, and things started taking off. Felix went from making $5–10,000 per month to 30, 60, 90… and then he started hitting six-figure months.
“My life completely changed.”
This is the power of online marketing; you’re amplifying a great idea others haven’t fully capitalized on yet.
How to Sell a Course: Stick With Your Foundational Idea
Over 30 million people in America have diabetes, and they often wind up with a surplus of supplies. Felix glimpsed the profit potential of buying and selling diabetic test strips from a former colleague, though he was unwilling to show Felix how it was done. Felix persisted, reverse-engineering the process on his own and then sharing it with eager students.
It’s interesting how the obstacle he experienced with his former business partner corresponds exactly with the niche service he himself went on to conquer.
“I remember I was 20 or 21 when I made my first six figures…, providing a great service.”
As fast as it came, he needed better money management to keep it sustainable.
It’s exactly where I came from when I started Ecommerce Empire Builders on YouTube. I was just looking for a place to upload tutorial videos from a mastermind group I was in, where no one understood how funnels work — and to this day, I tell people, just go look at those videos.
It’s about more than selling courses. It’s about being an expert at what you do. This is how Felix was able to package his experience and strategies into a lucrative information product. Things that seemed like common sense to him were exactly what others needed to hear to achieve the same success.
You’ve Already Developed Your Pillar Content — Now Publish It
Whatever you’ve already gone through, the challenges you’ve overcome, we’re telling you: START A CHANNEL. That’s your pillar content, where all the other channels (Instagram, etc.) pull from — and it’s still a big, blue, wide-open ocean.
You don’t even need to generate subscribers at a massive scale to start making money. Felix, I’m sure you didn’t have your 50,000 subscribers back then, right?
“I had like 2,000. I just showed [my friend] how to do it in a partnership deal, and he just crossed 2,000 subs — and he’s making $2,000 a week.”
Felix is improving his own life and the lives of others by sharing his expertise on how to sell a course and other content.
“If you’ve got a skillset or an expertise in something, not only can you make a lot of money, but you could change a lot of lives. I’ve got students who make $10, $20, $30,000 a month from the information I gave them. It’s very fulfilling.”
Multiple Streams of Income
This is where multiple sources of income start happening. Your pillar idea/content sets you up for:
- Affiliate links promoting the products you use and love
- Courses transforming into coaching packages
- Consulting opportunities, as your reputation grows
All along, you’re continually honing your original processes to a razor-sharp edge as you teach them.
“It’s still good to have some offline businesses — but with the power of the internet, all I need, really, is this laptop I’m talking to you on right now, an internet connection, cameras, and other equipment.”
It’s all about growing your channel/brand, deciding how to sell a course for continual success, and creating different experiences.
“I just want to make decent money, travel, and live life at the same time.”
Rhythms and Turning Points
This was when I asked Felix how he manages to travel with his most productive routines. Batching content whenever possible gets him through travel spurts, and he’s honest with himself about productivity. Establishing a temporary home base for a month or two becomes all the more valuable. Once it becomes exhausting, you can sign three-month leases between periods of jumping around.
Felix had this to say on the factors that initially brought his brand to the tipping point:
“I do four things. I have:
- Good titles
- Thumbnails
- Tags/descriptions
- Consistent content
If you can get a video to go viral… keep doubling down on it. Whatever… piece of content works, keep making content on that content.”
What about paid advertising as part of how to sell a course?
“I had some success, and then Facebook just shut my ad account down. My YouTube organic was so strong that there were times where, working maybe… 20 hours a month, it was almost completely automated. I just never could get into ads… I just stick to organic.”
Peaks and Plateaus
He was pulling up to $70,000 a month doing almost nothing. But he noted that he suspects ads would get him to the next level. It’s true, and it takes a lot of money and effort — especially at first, as you discover which messaging works.
Paid campaigns still need a core of organic content. It makes people want to pick you compared to people who only have content from five years ago. If you do have that consistency, mixing in paid advertising is a huge credibility boost. Even basic retargeting ads for your video audience could be just $10 a day.
Felix brought up the question of whether paid ads stifle your organic reach. For our channel, we built a second channel for running ads to avoid these potential issues.
Other Factors to Felix’s Success
In our 30-minute discussion about how to sell a course, Felix and I hit on many other elements that proved invaluable to big long-term profits.
- Felix takes a one-man army approach, but he has a virtual assistant and continually supports his affiliate base. This creates a wider profit margin, and it’s when my own profit margins were largest (before radical scaling forced me to accept a slimmer margin).
- Flexible thinking and confidence that “there’s so much going around for everybody… you could get started with any niche, any business, at any time” matter.
- We’ve also found that the market is veritably infinite. There’s no need to stress about others taking away your hard-won niche. Your message, personality, and brand will attract or create a whole new niche for yourself.
- Diligence matters. He made 100s of videos before they made him a ton of money. With every video you make, even with just a few consistent views, you’re building credibility.
- With Ecommerce Empire Builders, I honestly feel conversions were stronger when I had very few subscribers. Those were the highest-quality views from the most determined viewers.
- Accept the complexities behind creating your pillar content, even when it seems like just “one simple thing.” Again, Felix was diligent, operating with commitment and consistency.
It’s All About Mindset and Consistency
To set your own schedule and work in a field with limitless profit potential, you just have to get past that barrier to feeling comfortable with being uncomfortable. Even when you’re getting just 20 or 30 views with something, you still need to do it every single day. That’s just part of how to sell a course. This requires trust in yourself. I asked Felix how he got past any initial self-doubt, wondering, “What am I doing? Is this a waste of time?”
His was a project of passion first and foremost, and he wasn’t totally dependent on its success. Slow initial profits didn’t even get to him, but the low numbers of subscribers did. With humility, his self-talk revolved around the conviction that if others had cracked the code, he could do it, too. He reiterated the importance of:
- Good titles
- Good thumbnails
- Strong tags
- Consistent content
He also added SEO to that list.
“If there’s other people doing it, anybody could be like me, anybody could be like you; they just don’t know what they don’t know. And if they’re able to obtain that information, it could literally change overnight.”
We won’t be surprised if we talk again in another four years and see each other at even new heights. The power of the internet has been so impactful for both of us that we can live anywhere and take care of our loved ones.
Felix’s Prime Takeaway About How to Sell a Course and Other Information
With so much content about making money online out there, I wanted Felix to leave us with the one core piece of advice he hopes new online business owners remember:
“Take action. I started my entrepreneur journey — I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad — in 2013, and now it’s 2022. Don’t let the people on the internet with the watches, and the cars, and the success, and the mansions fool you… Just keep going, and don’t quit. You really only fail when you quit.”
“If you quit, you already know what you’re going to get… That’s why I try to stay humble because as high as you go up, in a snap of a finger, you could fall and lose everything. If you’re at the bottom, the only place you can go is up — but you can’t go anywhere if you stop taking action.”
You can’t just go back to what you were doing when you hit setbacks, and you only need one big win to really put you up on a plateau, to see what’s possible, and to permanently motivate you.
“If you miss 100 shots, the next time you go back and take another 100 shots, I bet you won’t miss all of them.”
We hope our audience doesn’t take this lightly. Responsibility levels rise even, or especially when you start making retirement money. One of the Ecommerce Empire Builders team members, Jordan, has a saying, “New level, new devil.” When you want to reap the reward, you have to be willing to face new sets of problems. The secret to handling them is, as Felix said, “Just keep going, and don’t quit.”
Keep Going on Your Journey and Focus on How to Sell a Course
You can take action now, with no risk, by mastering the tightly honed funnel system I used to create a full-time income online by signing up for my free Ecommerce Masterclass. Because I want you to succeed, I also include the funnel template that helped me and others earn $100,000 each month. If you have the diligence, passion, and conviction that Felix and I held throughout our journey, I’m confident it will work for you, as well. For even more advice, subscribe to the Ecommerce Empire Builders YouTube channel.
