SPI 879: Are Online Courses Dead? with Matt Gartland

SPI 879: Are Online Courses Dead? with Matt Gartland

Pat Flynn: I’ve said it before and I’m gonna say it again. Online courses are dead. What do you think about that?

Matt Gartland: I think it’s not only true, it’s increasingly the future in terms of how creators are using education products to help people and drive a business.

Pat Flynn: So I came out with a video not too long ago, by the way, Matt, thank you for being here.

Why don’t you quickly introduce yourself and we’ll dive into this ’cause this is a really important topic right now.

Matt Gartland: Yeah, friend and business partner, we’ve been at this for over 10 years, officially linked up at the end of 2018, and we were cutting our teeth on courses back in 2015 into 2016. So we’ve been there, done that, seeing the highs and the lows.

So it’s a really interesting moment to revisit a lot of it.

Pat Flynn: We’ve sold millions of dollars in online courses together. We have transitioned into what we now call community powered courses. So courses are still there, but the form of them is changing. The old way of doing online courses, of just putting information into some package to then sell and just kind of like let that be and you’re gonna make a lot of money is gone. Like, I feel like that’s not where we should be thinking. So where in your eyes, Matt, because I think this topic is gonna be really key for our understanding of where do we go, where do we put our time and energy for our educational businesses? What are you seeing out there in the market right now?

What changes are you noticing?

Matt Gartland: I think the big thing that build off of the big statement is that courses are dead as a business driver. They’re no longer differentiated. They’re no longer the really big value statement and the value offer to consumers and how they want to learn and develop skills and grow their own businesses and brands.

Courses today are table stakes. I think another big claim to think about and think about as you’re building your own brand and your own business is that you actually need maybe a course to be there, right? To demonstrate in a certain regard your knowledge, your expertise. But that by itself is not going to move the needle for your business, right?

You have to think about other forms of engagement, other forms of community driven networks, and relationships and engagement with the people that you wanna serve. The product idea that the course itself as a table stake, like it’s like a checkbox that kind of goes off in someone’s mind, like, oh, they’re smart enough, credible enough, have enough authority to have this thing, but I need more than that to really say yes to that person, that brand, or that creator.

Pat Flynn: It’s almost like a book, having a book in your sort of portfolio. Absolutely. If you will, positions you as an expert in a course. Okay. So does this mean for the beginning entrepreneur who’s like, okay, I need to. Put myself out there. I’m building a personal brand. I need a course, even though I might not sell any of it.

Matt Gartland: Yeah. I think of courses as almost lead generation these days where it plays into superfans and building of audience in a way that is connective, right? In a way that it is valuable to both sides of the relationship, the creator and the person learning from it. It’s just not the business driver. It’s not the the driver of revenue.

It’s not the thing that’s going to empower you to potentially leave your nine to five job, right, and be able to really build your solopreneur business.

Pat Flynn: I see. Okay. So let’s even go through the timeline. 2010s. The way to get found and even generate leads was through blogging, right? And then podcasting came in after that, but that’s how we put our information out there and structured it.

However, over time, people wanted less sort of noise around that information and more specificity on the outcome of that information. So please give me something that helps me go through a process to then get a result, whatever that result might be sooner. And so does this mean that we now have to basically give that information away for free in a course like format?

Matt Gartland: Potentially, yes, as table stakes.

And here’s some really great examples that come from a lot of our mutual friends that have millions of followers across different platforms like YouTube channels, and they have their own really prominent, very authoritative courses. And the shifts, the pattern that I’m seeing generally with courses is that they’re moving from a bottom of funnel offer as like a product that drives revenue and they’re moving up the funnel. They’re moving more into middle of funnel from a nurturing standpoint, so it’s free or close to free, right? It’s something that is helping to deepen the relationship with someone that’s starting to discover you on TikTok, on socials, mm-hmm, want to better understand your angle and your opinion on the addressable topic that you’re teaching. But that’s not the thing that they necessarily wanna spend money on. And it’s not the thing that’s ultimately, again, for the creator side, that probably you’re gonna bet your business on. Yeah. So if you shift that asset, you know, the course and make it smaller also, we can come back to like format length and video production and, and those things.

But if you shift it up in the funnel, that’s where it’s starting to get stickier. It’s a nurturing asset. So, if you make them smaller, punchier, more micro, almost, right? Like mini course kind of style and you allow people to further develop trust. ’cause that’s what nurturing is, that’s what middle funnel is all about.

That is the go forward strategic value of courses. It’s middle of funnel nurturing.

Pat Flynn: So to me, it almost speaks to this idea that I talked about before, which is like, provide a small win earlier in the journey, the small win no longer is, here’s this blog post with all this additional info that you don’t need and just extra noise.

’cause there’s a too much of that noise out there. And B, it’s just information that probably is just gonna be surface level. Let’s go deeper, but let’s get you to a result much faster. For example, we have stuff that does exactly this and we’ve had it for a long time. For example, our a hundred emails challenge, we help people go from zero emails in their email list to 100 in three days.

Small win. It’s basically a course, we position it as a challenge and after three days they wanna go deeper with us. They now will potentially come into our community and get access to the much larger courses or, you know, join some cohorts. And that has even once led to live and in-person workshops as well, which only happened because we were able to get people started. Right? So this idea of something small but impactful upfront is great. And it in a way almost feels like how books once used to feel. It’s like this is the authoritative thing. It’s the thing you’re gonna see up front. Like I remember when I wrote my first book, Let Go, back in 2013, which actually you helped me on.

This is how we connected, actually that’s the, you helped me edit that book. That’s a business mentor of mine at the time had asked, okay, well you’re publishing this book, but like. How does it connect to everything else you’re doing? And I didn’t have an answer for that. I was just like, oh, the book is the product.

And he’s like, no, this book is a part of an entire ecosystem that you are building. What’s step two after people read the book? And I didn’t know that. So I had to build that out and, and turn it into a lead gen opportunity. Now, the lead gen opportunity is not books because again, I mean, I’m trying the books, the books are out there and still people are reading books.

But even easier is to create something like a very specific course to solve a very specific problem, to help a very specific group of people get a small win and then go, okay, what’s next?

Matt Gartland: Exactly. Courses aren’t the destination. It’s not the thing you’re ultimately trying to get them all the way to that is then again, like an economic, the center point of you.

Still, an interesting metaphor is perhaps to no longer see it as the destination, but a vehicle. So depending on how you deploy it within your audience building kind of framework, it helps them on that journey. It’s a vehicle they get on and goes deeper into your ecosystem, which is a great point.

We did this even back during the pandemic. We took Smart From Scratch, which is one of our flagship courses, and we sold and made lots of money even just from that one course alone and we made it free.

Pat Flynn: Made it free. Yeah.

Matt Gartland: To give a tremendous amount of value, you know, to everyone in that moment that was turning to potential different forms of making income for themselves and all of the scariness that was transpiring during the immediacy of the pandemic.

Right? Yeah. And we had dozens and dozens of thousands, so I think it was like 30,000 to 40,000 people start coming through Smart From Scratch, right?

Pat Flynn: That’s true.

Matt Gartland: And. Build the trust in us and begin to discover each other and the other things that we are offering. It just so happened that that came around when we first launched our first community offer.

Mm-hmm. Right. SPI pro back then, and that was a tremendously value acquisition element for us. So the course became the vehicle, not the ultimate destination.

Pat Flynn: So do you think there’ll be a trend of people who once had courses that they were selling to then start just essentially giving them away for free?

Matt Gartland: Yes, absolutely. We’re starting to see some of this, and even in private conversations I’m having and that you’re having, you know, a really prominent YouTuber comes to mind that we both know very well. Who has remarkable courses and this person is thinking about taking their courses and not only going middle of funnel, but making them free, top of funnel, going all the way to his YouTube channel because the courses are video based.

And just pumping them up there, probably doing some reproduction and slimming them down, but taking them all the way back up public YouTube videos.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. That were once held in private.

Matt Gartland: That were once commercial offers. Right? Yeah. There were things that we were selling. And just saying, okay, now they’re all free.

This level of information is usually free or it’s going free in terms of some of the broader trends. Mm-hmm. Why don’t I just get on board with that and not kinda like fight that trend, so to speak? Lemme use it as an asset actually, in terms of top of funnel growth for YouTube. Yeah. They haven’t made that move yet, which is why I’m not gonna share any names, but like it would be a big move in, right, if and when that happens, we’re gonna, I think, see more and more people begin to see the practicality of that and the value potential for superfan building, right? It, it kind of goes back to the framework, right? Like how do you stay current with what people are really looking for in terms of a relationship with you in terms of content online?

And I think that’s the future of courses is repositioning the value in an alignment sense in your business model. Like more top of funnel, middle of funnel, and not so much what you sell and be the economic driver of your business.

Pat Flynn: So to reframe what courses actually are today. They’re dead as your primary business model.

Matt Gartland: Yes.

Pat Flynn: They are very much alive for your lead gen model.

Matt Gartland: If you’re daring enough to do that. ’cause I do think it’s a daring thought still, especially for folks that are kind of OG like us that kind of came up on this.

And or oh my gosh. Like I, I remember the golden days and the glory days of this and you know, what had happened.

Pat Flynn: Well, information used to be valuable. Yeah. ’cause it wasn’t there before. Yeah.

Matt Gartland: And you’ve always pa led the way with this Crash Test Dummy style. It’s like if you are willing to reinvent yourself and do new things and learn from that, this is a bold move for a lot of people, especially like in a kind of older guard, to take really valuable assets and repackage them and use them in a different way.

I think those that are willing to give that a shot, especially in certain niches, perhaps maybe more than others, will find a lot of new value in a resonance with a new crop of people that are discovering them. And I think that’s how you stay relevant. I think that’s how you continue to stay on trend, right?

Yeah. With audience building.

Pat Flynn: I’m reminded of Chris Donnelley on LinkedIn.

Matt Gartland: Yeah.

Pat Flynn: He teaches on LinkedIn how to grow on LinkedIn, and he basically gives all that away for free. His slides shows and his PDF files that you can download. I mean, he’s teaching master classes and giving that away for free on LinkedIn.

He’s got over a million followers on LinkedIn, but then people get access to that. They’re building a relationship and they’re like, I want more of you, Chris, let me pay you lots of money to get access to your communities and to your, your knowledge and your direct advice and coaching. So is that the new customer journey is from course to like with this YouTuber who shall not be named, what will that lead to then if once what was being sold were these courses, but now they’re gonna be put more top of funnel and free on YouTube, on a platform where yes, you can get more algorithmic help.

Where does that lead to now?

Matt Gartland: The general pattern there, especially with top creators, tends to be a recurring revenue offer. So one version of that is a private network. You know, formally we’d call that community communities become really sort of an inflated idea. So it’s kind of in that mode now where, but we have community.

Pat Flynn: That’s, that’s we, we have community recurring revenue, right?

Matt Gartland: So a membership model a membership driven thing that is a, a recurring, you know, price point. But there’s different versions of these things. Micro SaaS, small software softwares that are very niche. In nature, right? You and I happen to have one right, called Fusebox.

These composite offers, right, that are recurring revenue. That tends to be the powering idea. ’cause it’s more sustainable, it’s more predictable. You can forecast that out, and especially in the community sense, right? That’s increasingly where there’s demand to find more localized, people like you, right, that are in much more niche topics that increasingly have a sense of like smallness to it, like a, a smaller togetherness to it.

You know, we have that. Our good friend Justin Welsh just came out with his version of that right around bolder opinions. Like in Justin’s case, you know, it’s called The Unsubscribed. Unsubscribe, right? So he’s taken a really bold and opinionated, which is what works. Now you have to be opinionated, to have to penetrate and to stand out, right?

And he’s doing remarkably well. He’s at. 850 members already in three months or something like that.

Pat Flynn: What’s the price point on that?

Matt Gartland: It’s actually lower ticket. It’s less about maybe the full scope of interaction in the learning environment. Say that we have. Right. So we’re very complimentary in that regard.

You know, his, I wanna say is like $19 a month as as the low tier, and then his upper tier is called the Inner Circle, and that has in-person access as well, which is kind of woven into the conversation around that’s much more expensive.

Pat Flynn: I would imagine, much more expensive, right? The sort of customer journey now is from the top, top, top, getting found on social and or YouTube or other platforms like that.

Not really relying on search engine optimization anymore, like we once used to. Offering super high value by solving problems with these mini courses or some sort of program that would allow a person to go through without you having to be there, right? These courses are great because it’s information that has a very specific result that you can get people through without you having to do any additional effort after you create it.

You just talk about it, you, you share it. From there, going into something like a community or some membership, even a smaller level program, but then within there, pooling people who wanna go even deeper with you, right? It’s the ascension ladder for, you know, the relationship you have with the people who maybe once found you and didn’t know you, to now your superfans who want to pay for more access to you or personalized information perhaps.

Matt Gartland: Yeah, I think that’s right. In terms of some of the bigger patterns and woven into this, is that the, I think, important distinction between information and utilization or utility, right? So information increasingly free, right? Increasingly at least cheap in different ways, including with courses like how to, how to teach against that.

But part of what’s really special, we do this supremely well within our SPI community, is helping people take action, right? You know, giving them. Toolkits methodologies, utility, right? Like how do you not just learn information, but how do you apply it? How do you get feedback? How do you share that work with others?

Going through the same sort of a thing, right? When we run our accelerators around power of podcasting, around affiliate marketing and all of our kind of addressable topics, we’re helping people actually make progress, right? And then share that progress along the way.

Pat Flynn: And that’s a key performance indicator for us is the results that people get.

Yes. Not just like many people are going through these courses, but like the outcome of that.

Matt Gartland: That’s right. That’s right.

Pat Flynn: And that’s what we hope to continue to, at least from our position and our connection to other entrepreneurs to encourage, is to, you know, help people get results, not just like get customers.

Matt Gartland: Yeah. And then to quickly bring back in tools, right? Micro SaaS is one version of a tool. It is something that people can use, right? To help them make progress, take an action and keep moving forward. Yeah.

Pat Flynn: And almost more immediately.

Matt Gartland: Absolutely. With the pace of everything, right? Like custom GPTs that are out there and you know, friends that have notion templates that help them improve their organization and almost like their business operating system.

Pat Flynn: Jay Clouse. Yeah.

Matt Gartland: Jay Clouse. Exactly. So like these things are increasingly now like the business epicenter, right? To design a business. Like what is your business model, which I realize is. Kind of like a heady idea, but like, how do you make money? Well, you make money from these things. ’cause these things are increasingly what people find the value in and, and what they are willing to exchange dollars for is programs and relationships in private community that I can trust and that I’m safe in.

I can apply what I’m learning, make progress, find other forms of tools to use as I’m making progress. That’s the big idea. Now, in terms of where there’s value. Everything else just becomes a lead in, right? Like leading them in through different channels or different pathways into that idea of what you’re building.

Pat Flynn: Where is your head for the future? So if this is the now, what’s coming?

Matt Gartland: I think just more networks. So being a creator is awesome. I think the more that creators could even band together, refer each other as we’re building more localized, smaller, more discreet things, you know, ecosystems, communities.

Justin’s again is like fantastic and he’s very narrow with what he does and doesn’t wanna be too broad. I. Which is excellent, right? We have a bunch of other friends who are taking stronger, more narrow positions. I think the idea of like super teams, right? Yeah. Or like Avenger style, right? Banning together and having more networks.

That helps sort of across everything. Even going all the way back to top of funnel distribution is the word of the moment, right? Distribution is your LinkedIn following and your YouTube channel size. It’s all of the top of funnels assets. The more that we could potentially band together. Not everyone, but if you can find other people that are adjacent to you that you share values with, right?

Yeah. There’s multi-channel distribution potential that can lead into co-created experiences that nurture trust, and then ultimately into different forms of activation with different offers. Right? Right. That I think is increasingly the future is like a multi-channel idea.

Pat Flynn: I mean, that’s not anything new.

I mean like collaborations between creators and stuff has always been around, but I feel like that word network where it’s more formalized is gonna be key. And you know, we’ve seen this in other pockets of, of creation. For example, I know a lot of YouTubers who have specifically. They have maybe ties to two or three others.

They’re always kind of supporting each other, linking to each other stuff. I know like there are LinkedIn networks That’s right. Like private groups of people of however many to like go. Okay. When you publish, I’m gonna comment and we kind of will just kind of grow together. The more formalization of that for your business is great.

This is why relationships are key. It’s why going to events is really important, right? Getting to know who’s out there and, and understanding that the YAP network, young and profiting, I mean, this network has brought together a number of different podcasters and part of the benefit of formalizing it again is now they have access to sponsors and advertisers by combining those numbers together and kind of sharing and reaping those benefits as sort of a collective versus just like the individual trying to grind and kind of do it on their own.

Matt Gartland: That’s exactly right. I’ve been spending a lot of time in the brand deal space, not my favorite term, but it’s really fascinating and we’ve done this remarkably well at SPI and Caleb’s doing a great job really activating some of these new strategic partnerships that are themselves interested in multi-channel.

Right. We have a great relationship with Stan Store. We’re using Stan Store that’s also Yeah’s great. A utility, you know, it’s a platform, a tool of the future.

Pat Flynn: SmartPassiveIncome.com/stan.

Matt Gartland: Yeah. And now like Stan is building into what they’re calling their dream team in terms of marquee relationships with creators like Justin, like us, like Ali Abdaal.

Pat Flynn: He was on Diary of a Ceo.

Steven Bartlett’s the big one

Matt Gartland: from last week, who’s like become a co-owner in the company. He believes in it so much. Like it’s remarkable. Right? Yeah. So Stan believes in this broad idea too, of like. Almost trying to own their own network and as one, like that’s really smart. My go-to phrases right now is like whoever owns the network owns the future.

So the more that you can try to build into it yourself or be a part of a network that’s leverage.

Pat Flynn: Right? Or your network is your net worth. Exactly. Those kinds of things.

Matt Gartland: So, and I’ll slide in if I can. One more quick thing in terms of the future. Sure. Slide on that you and I have started to talk about and we have some really fantastic reference points.

And this won’t be for everyone, but thinking about licensing your core methodology, you know, we’ve seen remarkable examples like Donald Miller and StoryBrand, StoryBrand story brand. Yep. Right.

Pat Flynn: Dave Ramsey. Not

Matt Gartland: for everyone, but if you can get to a point with what you’re teaching and how you’re teaching it, that you can then become an enabler of others to use that framework with their clients and customers.

Right. That’s like a franchise. It’s basically franchising. Yeah. Right. That is, I think, a really next level business model idea. Which again is nothing to do with courses, like courses is maybe another vehicle for how you might teach a licensee or, or something that becomes Sure, sure. Studied in your methodology, but the course isn’t really the thing.

Like the bigger, exciting, much more valuable idea on both sides of that relationship is I have a really proven os an operating system for something. Think Gino Wickman with EOS, right?

Pat Flynn: Yeah. Well, profit first. Profit first as Right. Mike Callow. Right, right.

Matt Gartland: Those are remarkably relevant and exciting and big examples.

To then create a whole other form of like a network. You could create a network of people say around like super fans, right? That are trained and certified in that methodology.

Pat Flynn: Implementers of Superfans.

Matt Gartland: And they can go out and kind of wear that hat and wear that banner. I am certified in the Superfans way of doing things and I can help your company, your brand, do that too.

I think that is a new unlock in terms of how we think about the productization of content and, and ideas that overlays with network. Because if you can build into a network, and I don’t know the sizes of the EOS worldwide, I mean, that’s the company name behind it where, say StoryBrand, but tens of thousands, maybe not hundreds of thousands, but tens and tens of thousands of licensed implementers of these ideas. That’s a network right there.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. So the courses aren’t done. They’re used in a different manner now. They teach the methods that inject itself into a much bigger potential ecosystem, whether that’s other business services and models that you have, or this more franchisee type model, which is really interesting and maybe worth exploring.

So lemme know what you think of the comments section down below. Or if you’re listening to this on the podcast, hit me up on social media at Pat Flynn and we can keep talking about this. ’cause this is, we love it. This is great. This is how we understand and start to unlock certain things that are happening in the world right now is by having these discussions and just kind of opening up those doors.

So thank you Matt, for being here. Appreciate you. Always fun. Thank you. And you. All the cameras in here, and thanks to the Kit Studios here in Boise, Idaho for letting us host this here.