Podcast notes – Buying Caitlin Pyle’s Proofread Anywhere for $3M (online course) – Acquiring Minds

Guest: Dom Wells
Host: Will Smith

$3-3.5M annual sales with extremely high margins

Proofread Anywhere – teaches people how to make money online as proofreaders
Female founder was face of the course

One-time fee, various tiers
Community access
Smaller courses as side offers

Buyer didn’t think of it as just a proofreading course, but as one of many ways to “make income online”

$500 course is main offer

How can she charge that much?
-Premium positioning
-Large audience, with existing brand affinity
-Course has a good reputation

Launched in 2014
Founder is Caitlin Pyle
50K people have done it
Backend uses Clickfunnels
Well-known in Clickfunnels community

Buyer was already familiar with her brand

She started as a proofreader herself, teaching her own experience and story

Big risk if buyer takes over a brand whose founder is the face
In this case, Caitlin created all the content, but she wasn’t running the business – already had a professional operator
She wasn’t actively marketing it, either — mostly from Facebook ads
She’d already created 6-12 months of ad creatives
They bought rights to use her image for 2 years after acquisition

Buyer had previously done a similar transaction – had sold his own business and was face of that brand, saw it play out successfully

One way is slowly transition a new face in
Did it with a podcast host before

“Most people don’t care”
New users won’t really know or remember

Plan to hire some of her best students as brand evangelists – already 50K (or 15K?) students
Could be even more powerful story – took the course and now make living as proofreader

Most users’ intro to brand is a free webinar, free workshop – but stepping up immediately to $500 course can be jarring
Want to implement a lower priced ($29) offering

Downside of Udemy – difficult to build sales funnel to really grow students (top classes on Udemy have say 1000 students)
Proofread Anywhere uses Clickfunnels
Buying a course and taking it off Udemy can be risky – but could be potential strategy