How to Sell Tiny Courses for a Living with Worldwide Ads with Sergio Estevez

0:02Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation? JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by High Level, the all in one sales and marketing marketing. Today, we'll be breaking down how to sell tiny courses for a living with worldwide ads. To drop these value bombs, I brought Sergio Estevez into EO Fire Studios. Sergio is a seven-figure course creator who started out with absolutely zero followers, and now he runs SellTinyCourses.com, where he teaches how to sell 20-minute tiny courses with his worldwide ads method. And today, Fire Nation, we will be talking about what a tiny course is and why do they crush it so well.

0:38We'll talk about the worldwide ads method, one-timer ads, and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Sergio and our sponsors. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white-label your own software. Say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. Fire Nation, it's time to stop guessing and start winning with a proven playbook. Inside the Freedom Circle, you'll have access to my step-by-step systems for creating offers, building processes, and driving traffic, all in just 90 days.

1:25Ready for freedom? Visit freedom-circle.com to learn more. Sergio, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Hey, Fire Nation. Nice to see you guys here. An interesting concept is you don't need to have a crazy long product. A tiny product always performs better. Well, that's why Fire Nation today, we're talking about how to sell tiny courses literally for a living. And of course, Sergio is going to rock the mic because we've all seen those massive, never-ending courses out there. But you have flipped the script, Sergio.

2:08What's the real power behind these 20 to 30-minute tiny courses? Yeah, it's really interesting, John. So the concept is that it is not a low-ticket offer. It's not like selling a book. It's not like another online course. I think of it more like a paid lead magnet, right? a 15 to 20 minute express training that sells really well to a cold audience, people who don't know you, right? And the idea, of course, is that anybody that joins this 20 minute training, 30 minute training that they pay for, right? They're gonna watch it. It's 20 minutes, right? They're gonna consume it and they're gonna want more.

2:45And that's the magic of the strategy, right? You can keep selling other courses. Instead of selling the whole book, you sell like one chapter at a time. People are happy because they watch the thing. And you're happy because if you want to sell coaching or high ticket or whatever, you can as well because they're ready for that, right? So in summary, it's just that, right? A simple 20-minute screen share instead of a 12-module crazy course like I used to sell a long time ago, yeah. Well, you didn't think about this yesterday, Sergio. So I want you to take us back to the beginning. How did your journey actually start when it comes to Tiny Courses?

3:19I mean, I'm pretty sure it kicked off like back in 2017. Yeah, yeah, for sure. It all started also listening to EO Fire, like you guys. So I'm glad you guys are listening to me. Yeah, yeah. Long time ago. But yeah, it all started in 2017. While listening to the podcast, getting motivated, right? I launched a course. It didn't work. I launched another, right? And let me tell you, these courses were massive. They were like 12 module things, six modules, right? I wasted lots of money on ads. And the worst part, I didn't have an audience. I had no audience whatsoever, right? So it was looking really bleak.

3:55I had to turn things around, no audience, no money, almost for ads. So I decided to flip the script, right? And I was like, you know, the long courses I'm working, I'm going to focus on sending little gold ideas, right? Little golden ideas, tiny value bombs, right? Like we say here. And one afternoon, I just sat down, I hit record, and I said, whatever happens, happens. And I recorded my first tiny course barely with like 15 to 20 slides, right? By the next day, not next month, it was up and running, and honestly, it blew up. It really did. The ads were finally profitable. I'm hoping to talk more later about how I run the ads and the methodology.

4:35But the funny part is that even when that first tiny course blew up, I still had no audience. No email list, no following, nothing. People would just come in and buy directly from ads. That's what I did. I leaned on the only thing I could really control, which was ads, reaching out to new people. If I had followed, I believe, the traditional advice of just build an audience first and all these things, which can work, but it's going to take a long time, I believe I would still be stuck. What led me really blew up and go from zero to a massive course empire, in my opinion, is that it's ad. Not waiting to build an audience first, but rather tiny product.

5:15you can build it in the afternoon, right? Go sell it. Go to market. Go find your little gold mine because nobody knows you. Now, let's get raw for a second because the reality is a lot of people listening are like, man, this might sound a little too good to be true because when nobody knows who you are, how in the world do you actually sell a course? So can you dive deeper into that methodology? Yeah, it's really scary. I think it's really scary for most people, for me as well. The answer is you run ads, right? If you want to run a restaurant, you need to pay rent. In the online world, when it comes to selling courses and passive income, rent is either you doing TikToks, doing Instagram, doing a blog for a long time, or paying a little bit for ads.

6:06So think of it this way when it comes to ads, a little bit of a value bomb here, hopefully. there are two types of traffic. Hot traffic, usually people who know you really well, and cold traffic. We need cold traffic, right? Just like when I started out, I had no audience. So how do we get cold traffic? With ads, right? So to answer the question, we need to run ads. In my experience right now, Facebook ads are easier for beginners, but it's also, you might have seen it, the easiest one to get banned, right? So everyone listening in, be careful being compliant as you run ads. But here is my value bomb.

6:42The rule, even to this day, is to only target the US and Canada when selling online courses. So back then I was doing that, right? And people today do the same. But then, John, something clicked. And I realized that, my God, the US is the most expensive ad space in the world. It was really expensive and it still is. So I flipped the switch and I went, well, I'm from Spain originally, right? even though I spend a lot of time in the US, why not target Spain or Europe or the whole world? So I switched the settings on the ads, and now, since then, I'm targeting every single country. But there is a little trick to it.

7:20Maybe I can share it. You still target the US, Canada, and the UK, but the idea of running these tiny courses is while these countries are sleeping, your ads are still running on the rest of the world. So you're not forcing Facebook to show your ads in the US and Canada when it's even more expensive, less people away, right? That's A. And B, second trick you want to follow is place a bit cap. This is very little known, but a bit cap, maybe I'll teach more about this later, is you telling Facebook to only show your ads when it believes it's going to sell your course for a profitable price. But anyways, yes, if anybody knew me, if nobody knew me, right, I was from zero again, I would do that.

8:05I would literally pick a tiny idea, right? Go run worldwide ads. Spend$50 to$100 and start snowballing from there. Either selling other courses or if you want, sell group coaching, sell one-on-one coaching, do whatever you want, right? But anyone coming in now, it's already pre-sold because they will watch the course. Okay, we are actually going to be diving deeper into these processes, Fire Nation. We need to learn more about coming up with the right idea, some more details about the ads, and of course, strategy. when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Okay, let's talk about a platform that's completely changing how entrepreneurs are running their business.

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10:30What's also important to me is that Quicksilver has clean formulations. All of their supplements are non-GMO, have no unnecessary fillers, and are allergen tested. Quicksilver Scientific makes advanced liposomal supplements so you can actually feel the difference. Energy, focus, calm, recovery. Get 10 % off plus free shipping at tryqs.com slash fire. That's T-R-Y-Q-S dot com slash fire. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Okay, Sergio, we're back. And listen, coming up with the right course idea, I mean, it's everything.

11:11What's your process for uncovering those goldmine tiny course ideas that actually sell? Oh boy, you're right. I call it the goldmine ideas. So I'll give you the short and the long answer. The short answer is the big three, right? Personal development, and you can copy these ideas if you want to, right? Personal development, anxiety, hypnosis, productivity, traumas. We have a lot of success there. Second one, business, of course, right? And third one, relationships and health. I cannot combine both. And even I, to this day, I think I've shared that I run my own relationship course company along with a partner, right?

11:50But here's the value bond. You know the six degrees of separation, right? You know how everyone is separated by six people, I think it is, right? Yes. Yeah, right? And even us, we had a lot of people in common as we're scheduling, right? Oh, totally. So I call this the three degrees of separation. The concept is that your core expertise is connected to your profitable goldmine idea by three little shifts. Usually it's the same expertise. So let's say it's hypnosis, right? Or productivity. so your core expertise and you shift it three times you shift the pain point maybe you are doing hypnosis for anxiety and through some research you now start doing hypnosis for panic attacks okay, pain point next shift, audience you go from targeting maybe only women to targeting everyone or vice versa and then the third shift which is the hook this is a little bit trickier for me to explain but the hook is basically like when you talk about tiny courses, right?

12:53The idea of tiny, very good. Or in our marriage company, we have the relationship reset. The idea of a reset, very interesting, right? So it's like the catchy angle of the course, right? But yeah, go to your core expertise and anyone listening, just shift it three times. The results are really good for this and the ads do become profitable. Of course, there is more to it, but if you really do the three shifts, that's how you find kind of your goldmine idea, right? you're already connected to it just a few shifts away I believe but yeah now listen fire nation Sergio they love speed I mean they're hearing what you're saying and they're just like okay I can do this but how do I do it fast so if somebody wanted to launch a tiny course literally tomorrow let's talk about how fast they could realistically realistically have it live and making sales?

13:44A week, literally a week. But here's what you don't do to get it done in a week or two, right? You don't go plan a super long course. You don't go try to build an audience first. You don't go build a huge marketing system, right? It's a week. Most of my cold traffic launches, so cold traffic, just running pure ads to people who don't know me, right? They take me a weekend. For you A week is enough. And I will give you a checklist for that even. All you need is one ad campaign. Of course, the right structure, set up the bit caps, target worldwide. The ads can be one-liners that I teach, just two, three lines.

14:21Ad campaign, get one really good hook, which is like the concept of your course. It's not supposed to be just the name of the course. It's the overarching idea. Why is it unique? and how do you show people through this one hook that this is not something they already know. And then, of course, the goldmine idea, which is kind of like not the niche, but the overarching topic of the course itself, right? And once you're done with that, you have the ad campaign, you have a little page to sell it. We call that a validation page in the method. All you need to do is fill out the page, get it out, and, of course, record the course, which should take you an afternoon, right?

15:01All of this ties into the worldwide ads method, right? Like how to run ads. But we'll talk more about that later, hopefully. But yeah, that's all you need, right? Get the gold money at the end. Get the page out. Get the worldwide ads. They're good to go. It's really fast. I mean, listen, we have been teasing this for a little bit and we've alluded to this quite a bit as well. We've talked strategy. Now let's talk visibility. What does a truly effective ad for a course look like? And why does it work? Yes, we've teased this a little bit already, right? I get excited thinking about it. But it's true.

15:35So you have your idea, you have everything. What do you have in the ads? Two core concepts. Most people are thinking that they are not creative. They don't know what to write. They don't know how to write copyright. Or they don't even want to get banned, which is another challenge, right? I overcome all these issues with, of course, the worldwide ads, which makes it cheaper to advertise, but with what I call one-liner ads. So one-liner ads are what's working really well right now. And they rely more on the image than on the text. The text itself is basically one line, maybe two lines or three, right?

16:12And you simply go and you describe your product. You don't focus on copywriting. You don't focus on putting benefits. You simply explain what it is in one or two lines in a little catchy way, right? what really makes an ad stand out specifically for courses is that it is text heavy so back in the day you were not able to put a lot of text into your images now you can and the kind of images that are working really well for us is the images in which you don't explain so much in the actual text of the ad you have a lot of the text embedded into the image itself now the question is what do i what do i put in this text right i like to go to the big three i like to have an analogy and you can explain it, right?

16:53You can have simply show the name of your course and below it can look like a Twitter post. You guys have seen my ads. It can look like a simple comment, right? Like a screenshot. And you share an analogy or you share one of the hooks from your page. My pro tip here as you write ads, which hopefully is going to be helpful, is don't worry too much about the copy itself. Worry more about how do you make it relevant to the page you are sending people to. Because sometimes we just write ads and we forget that people are being sent to another page, right? So keep that in mind as you're writing these kind of one-liner ads.

17:27Keep them really short. Focus on the image, which needs to have a little bit of a pattern interrupt and a lot of text, very text-heavy, is working really well. And of course, finally, the congruency factor, right? What are you sending people to? You're sending them to your tiny course page where they're going to buy, right? So keep the language the same, keep the imagery the same, and keep the concept the same. people will go and they will buy my friends. It's possible for you guys. Sergio, you have done nothing except to drop value bombs. I mean, we talked about the beginning, how you launch your tiny courses, about how to sell a course when nobody knows who you are, coming up with the right idea, how to do it fast, how to do ads correctly.

18:06What is the one key takeaway, Sergio, that you really want Fire Nation to get from our conversation today? What's the one takeaway? The one thing is that, A, it's possible for you to run a passive income business, but B, and this is the real takeaway, that don't create a crazy course. Don't even like fully record something long. Get something small out. Find your little gold mine and then double down on that. Fire Nation, find your gold mines. And Sergio, if Fire Nation wants to find you, what is your call to action for our listeners today? I have something very special because I'm also part of this community.

18:43If you guys go to selltinycourses.com slash fire, anyone that gets the tiny course method, super cheap, as a unique bonus that I don't know for how long I can offer it, I will personally write one of your ads. So if you join, you watch the little tiny training, I will write your ads myself. And no AI shenanigans. I will even share you a screen recording of me writing it so you can see it's real and so you can also learn from that. So it'll be crazy, I think, but I'm happy to over deliver here. Wow, well, I love that. That is a absolutely a great call to action. So thank you for that, Sergio. And Fire Nation, you know that you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

19:25You've been hanging out with SE and JLD today. So keep up the heat. For links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com, type Sergio in the search bar and the show notes page will pop right up. And Sergio, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. See you, John. Bye-bye. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Sergio for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, over the last decade, I've interviewed more than 4 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, and I've created a revolutionary 17-step roadmap to your financial freedom and fulfillment.

20:02I put it all into my first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, which is personally endorsed by Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk. The Common Path to Uncommon Success is the step-by-step guidance that you need to achieve the lifestyle of your dreams. Visit UncommonSuccessBook.com. I'll catch you there or on the flip side. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white-label your own software. Say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today.

20:45Fire Nation, it's time to stop guessing and start winning with a proven playbook. Inside the Freedom Circle, you'll have access to my step-by-step systems for creating offers, building processes, and driving traffic, all in just 90 days. Ready for freedom? Visit freedom-circle.com to learn more. Thank you.